It was heaven lying about us in our infancy.
Porches and playhouses are reminiscent of a gentler time when families sat on porches and little girls created playhouse wherever they could find a quiet spot to call their own. Such was my own childhood, establishing my lifelong interest in creating living spaces, playhouse by playhouse.
Prelude: Jessie, Katherine, and Margaret Jean
It Began in the Summer of 1913:
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hile the Pifer family lived only a half block from State Street (the primary thoroughfare of the town and its two-block main shopping district) the young daughters were not permitted to go “downtown,” not even to the corner. Their boundary was the back porch for play and the front porch for company and for sitting quietly on a Sunday afternoon or summer evenings. While Katherine and Margaret Jean were content to play on the back porch, Jessie, the oldest of the three younger sisters and very confident, often would find a reason to deliver something to a friend in the next block or even farther away if her story were plausible enough. The younger girls liked to play “house” under the back porch which was large enough for the little ones to stand in. They used cardboard boxes for pretend furniture and a few old pans contributed by Mama. Occasionally when their father was out of town for several weeks, they would set up a play house in the shed, which had been rebuilt and was now referred to as the garage. They preferred under the back porch to the garage, however, as the ground floor of the garage was oily (even though Mama placed cardboard on the ground to make a clean floor to play on). On rare occasions or when it rained, Mama allowed them to use the adult furniture on the porch to shape a playhouse there. The Pifer girls, however, were not allowed ever to go barefoot, on the porch, in the yard, or anywhere else, and held to the rules of the ever-sought-after mark of gentility.
Judith and Jo Ellen
Act I: Schofield Street
Scene 1: The Summer of ’42
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he favorite pastime the summer of 1942 for Jo Ellen and me was “playing house” under the “back porch.” (The house actually had two side porches and we identified the one that opened into an interior anteroom as the front porch and the one that gave entrance to the kitchen as the back porch.) We would drag out dolls and the one doll bed we shared, doll clothes, and anything else we could use for furniture. We would make pretend food by adding water to sand or mud, taking an egg from the Frigidaire (which we thought was the term for any refrigerator) to try to bind the mixture so it would not split when it dried. Irises, both purple and the old-fashioned yellow, white, and brown variegated variety, grew in clumps in various areas in the yard and provided other ingredients and spots of color to our “cooking.”
Even at ages four and five we could barely stand up under the back porch and we coveted the area under the much higher front porch. That space, however, was used for storage of the porch swing and odd sizes and shapes of lumber scraps, thus limiting the room for play. Hollyhocks and climbing flowers covered the trellis on this higher porch, making the space even more appealing even if off limits. Regardless of the restriction on the choice of play area, we spent many hours, safe and secure, surrounded by family and neighbors, Milligans on one side and Bresslers on the other.
Indoors when it rained or in the winter, we claimed underneath the dining room table as our playhouse where we could pretend that sofa pillows were doll beds that I then topped with a satin quilted doll-size coverlet Evelyn Milligan had made for me. The dining table was large, and its placement allowed for us to play for hours and days on end, secluded in a corner of the room, without disturbing the household routine.
Scene 2: The Summer of ’44
At ages six and seven, indoor and “on the porch” activities included cutting out paper dolls and coloring in coloring books, scarce at that time. Our older sister had a large collection of paper dolls, all packed neatly in a suit box, each set carefully stored separately with sheets of tissue paper between each layer. How we younger sisters were thrilled when invited to join her in playing with that coveted collection. A remembered favorite was Gone With the Wind paper dolls. Jo Ellen and I shared a coloring book, negotiating which double page to color, as rarely were both sides of the page equally appealing. Jo Ellen sat on the right and I (preferring to color left-handed) on the left. We recall in particular a Snow White coloring book. Occasionally Aunt Jessie would give us unused, “left over” third grade papers from her classroom to color.
With wages and prices frozen because of the war, many youngsters pitched in to help the family coffers or to provide their own spending money. Our older sister was resourceful and that summer set up a comic book stand on the front porch steps, which provided four display levels. She charged 3¢ for comics that were a bit shopworn and 5¢ for those in prime condition. No one in town had the vast collection that she did, and word soon spread that good comic books could be purchased from her at half-price. Several weeks and several dollars later, Mr. Forest Bornhoft, a barber on South Side who had a vast stock of new comic books which he sold retail, telephoned our father, expressing his displeasure that his daughter was “stealing business from me.” Our dad thought this amusing and said to Mr. Bornhoft, “Surely, the few nickels she earns can’t make that much difference in your business.” In a small town this had other dynamics as well, for Mr. Bornhoft was a fellow Drill Team Member and Mrs. Bornhoft served as the home nurse who took care of many of the community’s newborns.
Later, I also set up a comic book stand (on the less desirable two-stepped “back” porch), but was quickly put out of business by my older sister who not only claimed exclusivity, but also told me it would be illegal to have a second comic book business in the same location. Soundly dejected, I gathered up my few comics and stacked them back on the bookshelf in the dining room.
Scene 3: The Summer of ‘45
The summer of 1945 was exciting to us not because of the impending victory in WWII, but because of a large chicken coop, all of brand new, scent-filled wood.. The lumber order our father had placed a year earlier at Sandri’s Lumber Yard was delivered in early May. The 8 by 12 foot chicken coop looked to us very much like a playhouse and that is just what our dad allowed us to use it for the entire summer. No more playing under the porches. Mother said all four of us could share the space, but with the youngest not yet three and the oldest an adolescent, the playhouse was completely owned by Jo Ellen and me. Bliss it was.
Judith and Jo Ellen
Act II: Thompson Street
Scene 1: The Summer of ‘46
Our family moved on March 9 (my birthday when I couldn’t stop thinking, in a typical nine-year-old self-centered way, that it wasn’t fair to move when I would “only once ever be nine on the ninth”), shedding tears because we did not want to leave the Milligans and the Bresslers. Amid promises to return to visit (the distance was less than a mile), we said our good-byes, feeling somewhat mollified by leaving the lawn swing for the Bresslers’ use. There it was to remain for a quarter century, enjoyed by both Laura and John, although it became John’s “station,” a replacement for the single lawn chair he had sat in under the horse chestnut tree, the tree whose barren fruit we futilely had tried to peddle three years earlier.
The house we move to on the euphoniously named Thompson Street had been a stunning property and still retained many of its original amenities at $6,000, almost twice as much as my parents had paid for the Schofield Street property. It was large, with an immense kitchen (Mother always added, “with seven doors”) and a sizable walk-in pantry, a dining room with full-length glass French doors to the generous foyer, a formal living room, and a sitting room on the first floor. We children loved the double staircase, the one in the main hallway being open on one side with very ornate woodwork. The “back stairway” was enclosed and could be entered from the kitchen or the sitting room. The two stairways met on a shared landing where they took separate turns leading to the four bedrooms and a bathroom. Jo Ellen and I originally shared the largest bedroom, with the baby in the smallest room. This changed after a couple of years to give me more privacy, Mother realizing how important it was to me have a room of my own.
My mother and father each had a bedroom, and our sixteen-year-old sister was given the private suite on the third floor complete with its own small bathroom. She decorated the sloped ceiling of the room with a border of Vargas and Petty girls, which we younger children found scandalous, although we didn’t have the vocabulary or full understanding to voice the source of our discomfort.
Importantly, a capacious porch graced the front of the house with large, comfortable wicker furniture left by the Wall family, our father’s cousins from whom the property had been purchased. This became Mother’s favorite place during the hot summers as, with its broad awnings, the porch was relatively cooler than the interior of the house and we all gathered there, with the children more likely to be sitting on the wide steps. No one had air-conditioning.
There was also a small back porch at the rear of the house with a second story porch above it, accessible from the small hallway between the back bedrooms. In addition, the full-height basement area boasted a concrete floor, with plenty of space to play around a large round oak table the Walls had left behind. This heavy table was ideal for such activities as working with clay (“real” potter’s clay Aunt Jessie had ordered from the teacher’s catalog of “authentic artist’s supplies”).
Best of all, the area under the back porch also was concreted halfway back and made a perfect playhouse, although why we didn’t establish our playhouse area in the basement I don’t recall. Perhaps under the porch just felt more personal. What I really had my eye on was the brick two-car garage with its side door accessed from the yard, an interior sink with running water as well as wonderful paned windows and cupboards. It was a perfect playhouse on days the car wasn’t housed there which, unfortunately, was seldom.
Scene 2: The Summer of ‘47
The summer of 1947 was near to a last hurrah of childhood. There were the playhouses to furnish and excitement generated by an old army cot to be assembled—with the idea in mind of sleeping under the back porch. This was also the year Jo Ellen and I became fluent in pig Latin and, as a result, Jessie and Mother had to devise a short cut version by which to communicate information when we children happened in on a conversation. Sometimes our mother and her sisters spelled out words in their conversations they didn’t want us children to understand, but, as we became adept spellers, that method also had to be dropped.
Many of the family conversations were held on the large front porch as it was cool and held the large wicker furniture with its thick cushions. Although the wicker was a bit “old-fashioned,” it was of perfect proportion for the age and size of the house. The porch itself was commodious and had decorative banisters and spindles on its three open sides. These had to be scrubbed with a brush, a most tedious job, and one we girls performed reluctantly. An easier task was the bi-weekly (in season) porch floor scrubbing handled by two people, one to carry the hot water and one to scrub with a broom, the method my mother had learned from her own mother and sisters years earlier.
Until we girls were older and had the strength and ability to balance a bucket without spilling its contents, Mother carried bucket after bucket of hot soapy water from the kitchen sink, through the front hall and to the doorway of the porch where she would carefully pour the water over the ledge of the threshold. The young “scrubber” would swish the broom back and forth on the surface of the wooden porch. Working from the center out to both sides, the scrubber herself would have to carry (less full) buckets of water once leaving the center of the porch. The buckets of hot water were followed by buckets of cooler water to rinse off the soapy water, and finished with cold water from a hose attached to an outside spigot. We were permitted to be barefoot for this job, one of the rare times this was allowed. A sense of satisfaction at the completed job was the only reward, along with being part of family gatherings that evening on a “nice, clean porch.”
Scene 3: The Summer of ‘48
That carefree summer of ’48 saw the formation of The Pigtail Club, established under the back porch, its headquarters replacing for most of the season the “living room” area of the playhouse. Based on a concept made popular by a comic book series, Jo Ellen and I obtained orange crates which we planned to transform into chairs, following the directions we had read in the comic book. Having no saw or hammer, or any idea how to use either, we dragged the crates a block up Thompson Street where we sought assistance from our Grandfather Pifer, returning triumphantly with our orange crate chairs to the clubhouse-under-the-porch, not realizing that by the following summer we would be too tall to use the clubhouse and would seek wider pastures.
Jo Ellen soon was invited to be part of a four-member club, “The Hiking Spooks,” and I blithely ensconced my four best friends, “The Five Follies,” into the “clubhouse” space above Edie Wright’s garage where we, even when the temperature neared 100 degrees, religiously held our scheduled meetings, planned our lemonade stand for the town’s “Sesquicentennial” the following summer, and plotted how to get the boys interested in us as we prepared to enter junior high school following that Summer 1949 event. As we focused on new territories, porches and playhouses, bastions for a decade, were now abandoned.
