5# My middle years.

We moved again, in the summer after I completed the second grade. The good thing about it was that we moved to the same block where my Grandma Lagger lived with her son Norman and whomever else needed a place to live. Uncle Norman was a bachelor and he supported Grandma since my Grampa Lagger had died in the early 30's.  (I heard it was the year before I was born.)  Grandpa was about 15 years older than Grandma; but I am not sure how he died. His name was also William, a portly built, strict individual, I was told. 

Ma, (as everyone called Grandma) was a sweet, wrinkled old lady in her 70's at that time. She attended the Catholic church regularly and prayed the Rosary as often as she could. She helped me so much, in that way.  I finally had someone who knew the Lord and showed it in everything she did! She fed me her soups and listened and counseled me, whenever I came over. I loved Ma dearly and grieved when she died when I was 15 years old.  All my aunts and uncles would gather at her home- whether it was a holiday or not. What I enjoyed most was my aunts playing the piano and all of us singing. My mother played the Mandolin!  They were very colorful people. My Aunt Eileen and Pearl were acrobats. Aunt Pearl (my godmother, whom I was named after) traveled the world and appeared on stage with her husband Paul, and his brother Johnny.  They had a vaudeville act and one time they appeared at a theater in our neighborhood and we went to see them.in the act they performed a tumblers Except for the drinking it was always a happy time. The Laggers did like their beer, being German, but they were always happy and very seldom argued.    

Transfering to another school into the third grade, I met my best friend Mary McAtee. Mary and I remained friends for the rest of our lives. Even when we both married and had our own families. She was a good influence on me as a child, teaching me to emulate her in ways of personal cleanliness and dressing. Mary lived with her Mother and Father (she was an only child) in a cold water flat also but they were very clean people and there was no drinking and carrying on. I began to spend a lot of time at their house, and stayed overnight as often as I was allowed. I helped her also because she was not a good student and she always looked up to me for that. Her Dad used to take a bunch of us kids, in the neighborhood to the beach at Jackson Park. We loved swimming in Lake Michigan and it became a weekly pastime in the summer, as long as we could afford the "streetcar"  I am sure you have seen pictures of the streetcars, which were on overhead rails, and were on all the main steets in the city. They were great, and we used them all the time.  I can remember when the fares were only 3 cents. You could ride the streetcar from one end of the city to the other for less than 10 cents!  

Although I was always a good student, I never had many friends. Since we were on "relief" or welfare as they call it today; we were very poor. I was skinny and underfed. I felt ashamed of having no nice clothes and not being able to buy milk at school. The school program sold milk for 2 cents a day at that time in the schoolrooms. Our milk at home consisted of canned milk in our cereal. Very seldom, did we have an orange or any fruit for that matter. I know now that many children were as poor as I was, but somehow we always feel that everyone is looking at us. The other thing that made me ashamed was having lice. The school nurse used to come to our schoolrooms (once a week) and actually look through our heads, in front of everyone.  The children (and there were many) who had lice, were sent home with notes to the parents. Even though my Mama would scrub my head with Vinegar and some stinky stuff that burned it. It was nearly impossible to get rid of them! Oh, the shame!

You must remember cleanliness was not that easy in those days because we had no showers; and hot water was not easy to get. We took a bath once a week and washed our heads in the sink when there was water. I remember washing our clothes in the washing machine, in the kitchen. We had to carry buckets of water from the bathroom, which was across the room. We would wring the clothes with the old fashioned wringer, bring them to the tub to rinse, then back to wringer in the kitchen. Then we would hang them on a clothesline on the porch. In the winter, the clothesline was in the kitchen. As you can tell, it was not a well-liked job. Of course, everything had to be ironed! No wonder people did not live as long as they do today!