The Thief and The Prostitute....Ink and Wash
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Middletown, NJ pictures
Margaret and Susan, Margaret cooking?, Jack in the old jalopy with the rumble seat and a sketch of Margaret bathing.Sorry about the wide spacing in the text. I don't know what happened.
The House in the Woods
Sometime in the late thirties my father bought a one room school house and had it moved into the woods in Middletown, NJ.
There was no electricity, running water or anything else, like a bathroom. They carved a bedroom out for Susan and me and added a small screened in porch. I think we managed for a summer or two and then they put in a well and added a kitchen. We still had to use the woods for a toilet and the brook for a bathtub.
The kitched had a stove that was fed by bottled kerosene and there was a pump in the sink for water. I still have a lamp from that house...now electrified. I believe there was some kind of radio that ran on batteries or maybe just a wind up victrola.
Outside of our bedroom was a large table for eating and drawing. A closet had been built in our bedroom covered by a silk screen print of children's faces...I can still see it.
We would leave NYC in Jack"s old car and drive down some road (no Jersey turnpike then) Maybe I sat in the rumble seat. Sometimes we would stop at a road side stand for hamburgers and root beer. This was really a treat and very good food. Off we would go, again...probably stopping in Red Bank for some food...Did we have an ice box? I seem to remember Jack hauling blocks of ice. Driving on we would make a right onto a dirt road and then on to our house.
I was about eight years old and Susan about two. Jack would make me paper doll dresses and tell me stories. His idea of a paper doll dress was to cut a shape out of stacked papers and then I could paint them into different outfits. Paper dolls were my passion.
I had friends from school here...I can't imagine what they thought when we told them that they had to go to the bathroom under a tree. I hardly think that my grandmother would have enjoyed this...so I think visits with relatives were in Manasquan.
This was a great place and we all had a wonderful time. Though I do remember one year when we were leaving, and my parents were hammering some boards on the windows that they disturbed a hornet's nest. They were jumping around and yelling for us to stay inside.
Eventually my father sold the place to a friend and they followed the other artists to Rockport and Provincetown.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Sketch for a New Yorker Cover
They actually did this years ago....Margaret trying to sell yet another cover to the New Yorker.Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Photos of Manasquan.
Jack painting on Main Street and two of me in front of 45 Parker St. with Grandpa and painting on the porch.
Summer Vacations-Manasquan, NJ
Since my parents were free lancers and worked at home, they could take long summers away from the city. This depended on the school year, but we usually went away for at least three months.
A lot of the vacations were spent in Manasquan, NJ at my grandparent's house at 45 Parker Avenue. Sometimes a month or just weekends. My grandfather was a printer and a notary public, also an elder of The Friends Meeting. He would get up early Sunday mornings to stoke the furnace at the meeting house. My aunt Nanny later became the secretary there and my aunt Gillette played the piano.
My grandmother Trafford was something of a prima donna. She would sit at the piano in the parlor singing areas. The downstairs at 45 Parker Avenue had a parlor, dining room, kitchen, and the old kitchen that my grandfather used for his printing press. The upstairs had three bedrooms and a bathroom. There was an attic with shelves of colored paper that my grandfather used in printing pamphlets. Nice, ready to use colored paper...and I did, reducing his supply quite a bit.
Below is a watercolor of my grandfather reading in his bedroom, painted by Jack. Ther was a floor to ceiling bookcase in his room that held books on Abraham Lincoln, his hero.
The attic was a large space with skylights and a wood stove, where my parents slept, and a small room that held the childhood of my mother and her siblings. Toys and sport's gear, small tables and chairs and boxes of wonderful books, that my cousin Mary and I gobbled up.
Susan and i slept in the blue bedroom, that had twin beds. You could lie there at night and hear the bump, bump of the cars passing by and see the headlights reflected on the wall.
There was a wrap around porch on the house with an entrance to the dining room on the side.
The beach was about two miles away, My parents liked the more secluded, empty beach, while we wanted to go to the main beach that had the penny arcade.
These were great summers. I had my cousind to play with, and there was swimming, picnics and the movie house was at the end of the block, where you would meet all your neighbors on Saturday night.You could walk to Main Street and buy everything you wanted, without a car. My grandfather rode a bicycle all his life. I don't think he could even drive.
All this ended when my grandfather died when I was eight years old and the house was sold. It's amazing how much I remember of this house. Happy childhood, I guess.
A lot of the vacations were spent in Manasquan, NJ at my grandparent's house at 45 Parker Avenue. Sometimes a month or just weekends. My grandfather was a printer and a notary public, also an elder of The Friends Meeting. He would get up early Sunday mornings to stoke the furnace at the meeting house. My aunt Nanny later became the secretary there and my aunt Gillette played the piano.
My grandmother Trafford was something of a prima donna. She would sit at the piano in the parlor singing areas. The downstairs at 45 Parker Avenue had a parlor, dining room, kitchen, and the old kitchen that my grandfather used for his printing press. The upstairs had three bedrooms and a bathroom. There was an attic with shelves of colored paper that my grandfather used in printing pamphlets. Nice, ready to use colored paper...and I did, reducing his supply quite a bit.
Below is a watercolor of my grandfather reading in his bedroom, painted by Jack. Ther was a floor to ceiling bookcase in his room that held books on Abraham Lincoln, his hero.
The attic was a large space with skylights and a wood stove, where my parents slept, and a small room that held the childhood of my mother and her siblings. Toys and sport's gear, small tables and chairs and boxes of wonderful books, that my cousin Mary and I gobbled up.
Susan and i slept in the blue bedroom, that had twin beds. You could lie there at night and hear the bump, bump of the cars passing by and see the headlights reflected on the wall.
There was a wrap around porch on the house with an entrance to the dining room on the side.
The beach was about two miles away, My parents liked the more secluded, empty beach, while we wanted to go to the main beach that had the penny arcade.
These were great summers. I had my cousind to play with, and there was swimming, picnics and the movie house was at the end of the block, where you would meet all your neighbors on Saturday night.You could walk to Main Street and buy everything you wanted, without a car. My grandfather rode a bicycle all his life. I don't think he could even drive.
All this ended when my grandfather died when I was eight years old and the house was sold. It's amazing how much I remember of this house. Happy childhood, I guess.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
New Yorker Cover
My mother was always trying to sell a painting to the New Yorker, for their cover. Never had any success....I think this one would have been great.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thanksgiving
When my father was a boy they celebrated Thanksgiving as well as Halloween by dressing up and parading up and down the streets.
Here is a lithograph of Thanksgiving on the Lower East Side. The children are my cousins, Mary Elizabeth and Chickie Trafford and I'm pushing the baby carraige.
This is one of my favorite lithographs.
From Little Red School House to PS41
From running around and singing rabble rousing songs to dusty rooms, frustrated teachers, and discipline.
This school was so old and dilapidated that when they had a fire in an adjacent building a lot of the parents kept their children out of school fearing that the building would collapse on top of the school. The teachers were an odd group, some old battleaxes, a few enlightened ones ( Mrs Gutowski) and one teacher that used to nip at a hip flask all day. We made fun of her, but later found out that her husband was a prisoner of war (WWII had started).
I met all the people that I knew for years after…Greta, Priscilla Perry, Marcia Langsford,.
Nancy Chandler, Emily Lapowski (later Jay Lyle), Neil Snider, Arthur Halpern and our big crush Romer Schwartz. There were many others. A small town in the middle of a big city.
I must say that I hated school…and tried to feign sickness whenever I could. Don’t know why. I was fairly popular but not an a-one student. I never got math, much to my father’s surprise. He was so good at it.
The class I remember the most was Mrs. Gutowski’s. She taught Geography and the last term, we took over a spare classroom and each month did a different country in Europe. We made history maps, food maps, painted pictures and the children brought things from home to display. It was such a success that we didn’t have to take a Geography test that year. Hurrah!
PS41 ran from K to 6th grade and still exists, except in a beautiful new building around the corner on 11th Street. Our site on Greenwich Avenue is now their playground. I couldn’t find pictures of the old school on Google. Gone forever.
Across the street from the school was a candy shop that had all the usual stuff: wax lips, candy dots on a long strip of paper, wax bottles with some sort of drink inside and my favorite, tiny candy bars. I guess I took my lunch to school most days, and went home to lunch when we moved to Perry Street. It was so close by. My parents also made a deal with a small shop down the street where I sat in the back room and had a grilled cheese sandwich and a malted milk for lunch.
When the war started we had to wear a disc around our necks with a number so we could be identified in case we were hit with a bomb. The thought didn’t seem to bother us. We had enemy plane cards. We never spotted any, and lost interest in that. Each week we bought war stamps (about a dime each) and pasted them in a book. When it was full we could buy a bond. ($25 at maturity) Years later I cashed a bond in so I could go to Ballet Theater performances every night and every matinee for a season. Great!
Of course there was a super bad boy in our class….he used to take us down the street and into an apartment entrance and tell us ‘dirty’ jokes at lunch time. These jokes were very vintage, and not very dirty. But we thought he was wonderful. There was also Romer Schwartz. We all had a crush on him. I thought he looked like Danny Kaye. We flirted, giggled and screamed and he paid no attention to us. Ah well!
Most of us went on from PS41 to PS3 (7th through 9th grades) and most of us knew each other up into adulthood.
This school was so old and dilapidated that when they had a fire in an adjacent building a lot of the parents kept their children out of school fearing that the building would collapse on top of the school. The teachers were an odd group, some old battleaxes, a few enlightened ones ( Mrs Gutowski) and one teacher that used to nip at a hip flask all day. We made fun of her, but later found out that her husband was a prisoner of war (WWII had started).
I met all the people that I knew for years after…Greta, Priscilla Perry, Marcia Langsford,.
Nancy Chandler, Emily Lapowski (later Jay Lyle), Neil Snider, Arthur Halpern and our big crush Romer Schwartz. There were many others. A small town in the middle of a big city.
I must say that I hated school…and tried to feign sickness whenever I could. Don’t know why. I was fairly popular but not an a-one student. I never got math, much to my father’s surprise. He was so good at it.
The class I remember the most was Mrs. Gutowski’s. She taught Geography and the last term, we took over a spare classroom and each month did a different country in Europe. We made history maps, food maps, painted pictures and the children brought things from home to display. It was such a success that we didn’t have to take a Geography test that year. Hurrah!
PS41 ran from K to 6th grade and still exists, except in a beautiful new building around the corner on 11th Street. Our site on Greenwich Avenue is now their playground. I couldn’t find pictures of the old school on Google. Gone forever.
Across the street from the school was a candy shop that had all the usual stuff: wax lips, candy dots on a long strip of paper, wax bottles with some sort of drink inside and my favorite, tiny candy bars. I guess I took my lunch to school most days, and went home to lunch when we moved to Perry Street. It was so close by. My parents also made a deal with a small shop down the street where I sat in the back room and had a grilled cheese sandwich and a malted milk for lunch.
When the war started we had to wear a disc around our necks with a number so we could be identified in case we were hit with a bomb. The thought didn’t seem to bother us. We had enemy plane cards. We never spotted any, and lost interest in that. Each week we bought war stamps (about a dime each) and pasted them in a book. When it was full we could buy a bond. ($25 at maturity) Years later I cashed a bond in so I could go to Ballet Theater performances every night and every matinee for a season. Great!
Of course there was a super bad boy in our class….he used to take us down the street and into an apartment entrance and tell us ‘dirty’ jokes at lunch time. These jokes were very vintage, and not very dirty. But we thought he was wonderful. There was also Romer Schwartz. We all had a crush on him. I thought he looked like Danny Kaye. We flirted, giggled and screamed and he paid no attention to us. Ah well!
Most of us went on from PS41 to PS3 (7th through 9th grades) and most of us knew each other up into adulthood.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Caricatures
My Dad as a rooster, in a gag trance, and as a painter. I don't remember having this much fun as the daughter of a supposed funny guy. Most cartoonists were dour souls and cartoon editors were even worse.
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