Lorraine – a snap shot of her childhood in her own words

I was born October 5, 1922 in Duluth, Minnesota, at a hospital. My mother had my sister at home, but me in the hospital. I think Daddy paid $25 for me. I always think he got a bargain.

I have one sister, Arlene Mae, was born four years and nine months before me and my brother, Donald Lambert, was born six and a half years after me.

I had a happy childhood. I remember, probably the outstanding things that happened to me or the traumatic things. Things...like how my mother handled it if we got a cold. First, Mother would put us to bed with a hot mustard plaster on our chest. My grandmother always had a goose on Christmas and would give my mother a jar of goose grease. So, next, Mother would put goose grease around our necks then wrap with a flannel cloth. While you laid there, the mustard plaster would burn. Your whole chest would be red when she’d take it off. Then she would fix a hot lemonade with a shot of whiskey in it and cover you up. You’d lay there and sweat. Somehow, we lived.

Things...like my dog named Spot. Yes, I really had a dog named Spot. I think he was a sheepdog. He was black and white, long-haired. When I started to go to kindergarten, he would walk me to school and then go home. Mother would let him in and when it got time for me to get out of kindergarten, he’d seem to know, and he’d raise a ruckus at the front door. So, Mother would let him out. The schoolyard backed up to our backyard. She’d let him out and he’d be right there at the door of the school, waiting for me to come out. All the teachers knew him. Well, when mother had Donny, she decided that long-haired dog had to go. I guess Daddy found a home for him and gave him away. Old Spot found his way home and Mother was furious. I can remember my dog disappeared again, and I never saw Spot again. They told me he went to heaven. It broke my heart.

Things...like the winters. I have many fond memories of the winters. It was cold in Duluth. One of my favorite memories is waking up in the winter time and hearing my dad down in the basement putting coal in the furnace. We knew that soon we could jump on the warm register and put our clothes on.

We always had a little air in our bedroom, the storm window had three little holes in it. You’d wake up in the morning, there would be little mounds of snow inside on the sill between the window and the three little holes.

I can remember when it snowed so much that my father dropped out of the second story window of our house with a shovel to shovel away the snow from the front door and the back door so that we could get out to school.

A favorite treat was going downstairs to collect the milk that the milkman delivered before dawn. The bottles were glass with little cardboard lids. The cream would separate and raise to the top. When it froze, well boy, that was just like ice cream. My brother and I would race down there, trying to get it and see if we could get a spoonful before Mother caught us… because the cream was for daddy’s coffee. We thought, wow, ice cream in the morning.

We used to make igloos cut in blocks of snow. Being up near the border with Canada, Duluth has a lot of snow. Also, when there was fresh snow, we made snow angels. The trick was to lay down, make your angel and get up without destroying any part of it.

And of course, winter sports were all the rage back there. The adults used to make a frame in the schoolyard, fill it with water and it would freeze into a wonderful ice skating rink. We would put on our ice skates at the house and tip-toe over, we lived that close. The rink opened after school until 5:00.Then they would squirt some water on it, it would freeze, and it would open again at 7:00 until 9:00 for the kids. After 9:00 it was adults only. As I grew older, boys would ask you to skate like they asked you to dance. They had an old wind-up phonograph and I can remember them playing Pennies from Heaven and the Skaters Waltz. It was a big thrill if a boy asked you to skate with him. I really had a happy childhood.