Margaret-Unfinished Self Portrait

Margarets Sketch Book-World War II

Sort of grim, but I liked the drawings. She sketched all the time.

Margaret's sketch book-Kisses

The Little Red Schoolhouse and Waverly Place

I read on another’s blog that the tuition a year in 1938 was $125.00 a year, and now it is around $24,000. WOW!

Well, my parents scrapped up the $125. and I went to this progressive private school for two years…what they called the sixes and sevens (1st and 2nd grade) The funny thing is that I remember so much about it.

We sang a lot of folk songs every day, complete with a teacher playing the guitar.. Our lunch was served in a basement a few blocks away and we had to walk hand and hand. My partner was often Spike, who had one fingernail, grown long, that he used to grind into the palm of my hand.

We did a wonderful program on the Dutch in Old New York. We pretended to live there and even made candles and soap.

I met Mickey and Lauren Tucker there and knew them for years after. Once Mickey hit me in the hand with a belt, and I still have the scar amid the wrinkles. Boys were already giving me a hard time. Mickey made up for it years later when he came to see me after my sister died and had a long comforting talk with me..

I was still going over to Greenwich House afternoons and doing pottery, art and participating in their theatrical productions at Christmas.

While we were living in our second apartment in Waverly Place my mother’s cousin Traff came to visit and brought me a pretty silk dress. Traff was the scandel of the family. He was in the Navy, and had left a wife and son in New Jersey. While in China he had met a nurse, Jane (I remember her name because I thought it was so romantic) divorced his wife and married her. After that his name was only mentioned with scorn, except for his sister, Emily and my mother. He was her favorite cousin. Oh, yes. He was really good looking in a rugged way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_School_House

The Dreaded Arrival of My Little Sister

Susan Emily Markow 1938-1951

When I was Six years old I was told a little bundle of joy was soon to be added to the family. I, the spoiled, talented princess, sole owner of my parents, was to be replaced.

In the olden days, mommys were shipped off to the hospital for 10 days...a nice rest after giving birth. While my mother was gone, it was decided I would spend one week with Jack's family and one week with Margaret's family. I was totally miserable.

At Jack's family, my Aunt Sylvia, thought I looked too much like a waif and had my hair permed. I hated it. The only highlight of that was week was seeing Shirley Temple in "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm"

The week with the Traffords went no better. I drew pictures all over my Aunt Gillete's living room wall. She yelled at me "I don't know what they do in the big city, but we do not deface walls here". Obviously I was not meant to be outside the art community.

I finally went home. We lived in an awful place on Waverly Place, next to a Catholic girls school, and across the street, which was later to become a favorite watering hole, Julius' Tavern.
.....and there she was, my little sister.

Later we moved nearby to a much larger apartment, and she was still with us. I remember walking into the place one day and all I saw was Susan in her play pen, with a little blue knitted sweater on. During this time I put on my snow suit over my pajamas and ran away to the corner and begged passer bys for a nickel for an ice cream cone. Somebody did give me a nickel after I told him that I was a poor neglected child. (He must have been amused by that) As I was licking my icecream cone, my father came storming out of the house, none too pleased with me. By this time I didn't want the cone and was in tears. My parents very coldly said that I should eat the whole thing...since I had gone to so much trouble to get it. Boo-Hoo!

Of course I learned to love my sister (even though I used to scare her, once in a while) She was a very calm, even tempered person, and she adored her older sister (that always helps) She died when she was only thirteen years old, and I've missed her ever since.

Janet Drawing

Greenwich House

Settlement House:
Neighborhood institution generally in an urban slum area, where trained workers endeavor to improve social conditions, particularly by providing community services and neighborly cooperation.

I don’t know if you would consider Greenwich Village an urban slum area, even then. But it was a lot cheaper to live there than it is now.
The first school I ever went to was Greenwich House (a settlement house) at Barrow Street and 7th Avenue. I attended Nursery and Kindergarten there

You went through the double doors and up some steps, I think. There was a gated area on the right with desks for the staff and some benches. Opposite the front door was the entrance to the theater. I think a teacher came down and collected her charges.
This was the depression, around 1936, so on arrival every day we got a dose of cod liver oil, orange juice and a piece of French bread with a smear of peanut butter.
I don’t remember what we did all day, or half a day. But I do remember naptime on pads with a blanket and the roof playground. I also remember improvisation where we all danced around in little green tunics, led by a teacher with wild black hair tied back with a scarf. Remember it was the days of Isadora.
Since I was very thin, it was decided that I have “Sun baths” now and then. All this was done right there at Greenwich House. I think my mother did a wall border for one of the rooms. I remember a parade of animals near the ceiling.

The worst day I ever had there was my brave day. I must have been around four or five. I told my mother that she could leave me at the door and I’d walk in alone. I panicked just inside the door and ran out, just in time to see my mother’s bus going up 7th avenue.
I was in tears when I got into the building, but the worst was yet to come. They mixed me up with a child that had a doctors appointment that morning and by the time my mother got back I was hysterical. It’s amazing that young as you are, you remember things like that.

Every Christmas we had a pageant in the theater directed by Mrs. Murphy. She would yell and push us around, but I guess we were pretty good. I remember one play we did for a number of years “A Star Has Fallen” I started out as a little angel polishing the stars and graduated to one of the crowd.

The theater was also used by Equity players and I was the daughter Mary in a production of O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon” I was given a teddy bear by the cast and I died by the second act. I found the script for my part a while ago and it was all “Yes, daddy” and “No, mommy.”

All this was looked over by Mrs. Simkovitch, who would walk around saying hello to all of us. http://greenwichhouse.org/about-us/history
A wonderful place that launched us all.