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Growing Up On Jefferson Street, set 6

“Hired Help” and “The Ghost Of Jefferson Street”

Dear Jack,

Here I am on my sixth letter, and it doesn’t feel like we’ve made a dent in our lives. I want to write about others who made an impact on these early years, both families and friends. I think that one of the things that we’re learning has to do with how fortunate we were, not only with having wonderful parents, but also in being lucky enough to have had contact with so many wonderful people.

I couldn’t leave these particular letters without paying tribute to several people who were with us for only a few years, but had quite an impact on my life.

Tied Threads
First come the parents who nourish and guard,
Trying their best to protect us from harm,
They soften the blows that attack and leave scars,
Loving us through all the dark and the light.
Others come near who give us support,
When life hands us lessons to learn,
Acting with friendship and love in their hearts,
They bolster our sadness and joy.
Each weaves with us a fabric of time,
That wraps us quite tight for a while,
Then loosens its grip and let’s us fly free,
To soar through the days of our lives.

*****

HIRED HELP
by
MARILYN LOUGHARY KOK

Sometime after the episode of my roll in the dust, our parents decided that they needed to hire a full-time live-in housekeeper. Mom was teaching eight hours a day and both she and Dad traveled to Springfield each day. They left early in the morning and returned home at 5:30 each evening.

We had a series of housekeepers and babysitters ever since Mom returned to teaching, notably had been the presence of a woman named Helen. As you may recall, Helen had a number of characteristics that made her unique. Although both Mom and Dad smoked, Helen had an eternally present cloud of smoke that followed her wherever she went. Cigarette butts filled the ash trays and the kitchen drain boards were dotted with ash burns where she often left a cigarette burning.

She had a list of habits that could have made headlines. There was the time that she became pregnant without the benefit of sex. She swore that she had gotten “that way” via a misplaced sperm on a toilet seat. I recall the day I found her eating ashes as she cleaned our fireplace. She had heard somewhere that charcoal was good for you. Then there was the time when I was four or five and in bed with a sore throat and had hidden the prescription of pills in the sheets. (They seemed like the size of silver dollars to me and I hated trying to swallow them). Mom and Dad had left for work and I had immediately hidden the bottle in the blankets. When Helen came looking for them, I never said a word. Of course, Helen panicked and called Dad to come home from work. He came home (how he explained his absence on his time card, I never knew) to remedy the situation. It took him about 30 seconds of smart detective work to discover my game. Thankfully, when Mom and Dad decided to hire a live-in housekeeper, Helen was not on their list of potential candidates.

Eleanor had recently come west after graduating from high school in South Dakota. She was from a large German farm family and was well acquainted with all the rules of keeping house and tending children. She had been staying with relatives who lived in a suburban area of Eugene when Mom and Dad heard of her through some relatives of ours. An interview was arranged and, as she seemingly had all the attributes they were seeking, Eleanor soon became a member of our family.

She took on many of the jobs that had been Mother’s such as washing, ironing, cleaning and preparation of the evening meal. She was able to follow Mother’s recipes and instructions: she made bread and rolls that filled the house with the sweet aroma of yeast; baked delicious cakes and cookies; and made the most wonderful sour cream vanilla fudge each Christmas.

My walks to and from school were now accompanied by Eleanor and Mom’s work load was lessened to the point that she and Dad could have an occasional night off. I never recall Eleanor ever losing her temper or expressing displeasure with us. She was truly a gem and a person I could completely trust.

In the summer months when Mom was home from school, Eleanor got a job working at Thompson’s Lodge, a resort up the McKenzie River. During her second summer there she met and married a man who was temporarily working as a river guide. Our family attended her wedding which was held by candle light in the log cabin lodge. For me, it was a romance straight out of a Van Johnson movie, and stayed in my mind as the most wonderful of perfect moments.

Remember the dining table hula?

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Dear Marilyn,

Well who could forget Eleanors’s Hula Dance on the Dining Room Table. As I recall, Dad and Mom were out one evening and you, Eleanor and I were engaging in some silly sort of banter. One thing lead to another and then we decided to play Spin the Bottle. On one particular spin, the person to which the bottle pointed had to do a Hula Dance on the dinning room table. Eleanor was it! Some how we all had a vision of hula dancing (not clear ones, but sufficiently operational) and soon Eleanor was barefoot atop the dining room table doing a hula version in the Royal Hawaiian style. Eleanor was no island native girl, so it must have been quite a sight.

Next morning you spilled the beans to Mom and all three of us caught hell!

As for Helen, my most vivid memory is of the family sitting in the living room on a cold winter’s evening. People would be reading and listening to the night news and of course Dad was smoking. Helen wandered into the room with coffee can lid in one hand and a pack or smokes in the other. As was her habit, she sat down across the living room from Dad, lit up, and struck her Buddha like gaze at Dad. She didn’t look right or left, but just kept starring at him, puffing regularly and flicking ashes as needed. Within a few minutes you and I and Mom had all we could do not to crack up. But Helen just kept puffing, eventually snubbing out her cigarette in the coffee can lid and lighting another. Dad didn’t find any of this amusing and kept crawling deeper and deeper into his newspaper. Finally he couldn’t take any longer, folded up the paper and headed for the back porch to some woodworking project. This scene, as you imply, was repeated several evening each week.

The Ghost of Jefferson Street
by
Jack Loughary

It was in the winter of 1943 that the Ghost of Jefferson Street began his random evening visits to the stucco house at 1832 Jefferson. The Ghost nick-name was Dad’s creation and it was certainly apt because the weather was either rainy, cold, foggy, very windy or a combination. The ghost would arrive around 7:00 p.m. and knock on the door. He never acknowledged that there was an electric door bell, or perhaps he was just more comfortable knocking. If another family member answered the door he would ask, “Can Jack come out?” If I answered, which soon became my conditioned behavior the question was, “Can you come out?”

We had a quick study here, and the Ghost soon learned that Jack could come out but Jack better well not go any place, or even think about it. The Ghost and I had been classmates for four years at Francis Willard Elementary and were now into the eighth grade at Woodrow Wilson Junior High School. He was a quiet, almost withdrawn kid and lived a couple blocks from us. He was studious and bright as I look back, and often involved in projects that attracted the attention of some of his peers. For example, his dad had a substantial shop in their basement that included a metal drill press. Some how, the Ghost acquired a supply of 4 inch long by 1 inch round solid steel rods. They looked much like the barrel of a revolver, which if you are thinking ahead, were soon to become that with the aid of the drill press. Once he drilled the hole, the Ghost rigged up some device that allowed a twenty two caliber bullet to be inserted and held in place. Then he would place the “loaded barrel” into a vice, tighten It and give the end of the shell a good crack with a hammer, causing the shell to explode and shoot the head of the bullet towards the facing cement wall. Follow a few nearly disastrous ricochets, The Ghost discovered that if he removed the bullet head, emptied most of the gun powder, and replaced the head he could create a much safer demonstration.

The night visits to our house were a function of an expansion of the Ghost’s interest. By this time in WWII, rationing was going full blast. In addition to food stuffs, some clothing was also rationed, including shoes, which happed to include ice skates. There was a commercial ice rink in Eugene, and therefore a small but significant demand for shoe skates. The vehicle for enforcing rationing was books of Ration Stamps. In order to purchase a rationed item, the customer had to first fork over a ration stamp.

The Ghost thought this through, analyzed the ice shoe skate market and found that many people were reluctant to spend a shoe stamp for a pair of ice skates for their kid. So, the Ghost develop a list of kids who would pay for a shoe stamp, and then systematically buy a supply of stamps from his peers, who evidently pinched them from the family ration books, and then resell them to needy ice skaters. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, and I was not about to steal ration stamps from the family’s ration books. But, there appeared to be a market for shoe ration stamps, and soon the Ghost expanded his trade to sugar and coffee stamps. Ah, American Ingenuity.

The most difficult part of the situation to me was explaining to Dad why in hell that kid kept showing up. “Don’t his parents wonder where he is?” he would ask. I thought I had the answer, but though it best not to provide it. At first I made up excuses such as he forgot his homework assignment or he wanted another kid’s phone number. Eventually, I told dad that the Ghost was just a little weird and there was no need to worry. The Ghost and I drifted apart by the end of the 8 th grade and so did the issue.

Love, Your so much for ghosts brother,

Jack

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