AN IOWA BOY SURVEYS HIS NEW HOME IN THE 1940s

An Iowa Boy Surveys His New Home In The 1940s
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 2006

Reference: This is an excerpt from Dr. Fisher’s book, IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE: MEMOIR OF THE 1940s WRITTEN AS A NOVEL (AuthorHouse 2003). It is to appear in an anthology of American Neighborhoods to be published in late 2006 or early 2007. This is a project headed by Senator John Edwards of South Carolina.



Imagine coming of age in the middle of an industrial town in the middle of the country in the middle of the century, snuggled against the muddy banks of the Mississippi River during World War II.

We lived in a closely-packed neighborhood, struggling to understand the larger world and make ends meet IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (AuthorHouse 2003), while the United States struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb.

There were no televisions, no mega sports, no big automobiles, or manicured lawns, but we had radios, movies, high school sports, and the Clinton Industrial Summer Baseball League. We had victory gardens, drove old jalopies, took the bus, or rode bicycles.

The Clinton County Courthouse cast a shadow across our neighborhood of two-parent homes and stay-at-home moms, and the four faces of its magnificent clock chimed every half hour. Most of our parents had no education beyond grammar school, and nearly all of our fathers worked at factories in Clinton or on the railroad.

In the hot weather, families slept with windows left open, doors unlocked, and bicycles against the side of the house, knowing neither neighbor nor stranger would disturb their possessions.

In winter, schools never closed, even when snow banks mounted four feet high on both sides of the walks. This was my world against the backdrop of the courthouse – St. Patrick’s Elementary School, Riverview Stadium, Clinton downtown, and Mill Creek.

We kids ran around entertaining ourselves, as our parents were often too tired, too involved in the war effort, or too busy making a living to pay us much mind.

In the shadow of the courthouse there was an Irish grocer, Frank Cramm, a family physician, Dr. Joseph O’Donnell, an eyes, ears, nose and throat specialist, Dr. Ed Carey, a family dentist, Dr. John McLaughlin, a family barber, Robert “Ripper” Collins, family tavern keepers, Harvey Sullivan and Leon Cavanaugh, and even a family mortician, Johnny Dalton.

My da’ (Irish for dad) was never more at home than in the company of fellow Irishmen. At our place, the coffee pot was always perking on the gas burner. You could usually find my mother at the kitchen table singing to herself as she whipped up a chocolate fudge cake in preparation for the arrival of the clan.

On Wednesdays, the group included my da’s coworker at the railroad Bill Knight, my uncle Bill Clegg, saloonkeeper Leo Sullivan and his wife, Alice, my mother’s girlfriend Cleo Hyde, and my mother’s brothers and their wives.

I would peek down the stairs to listen to their conversation even though I was supposed to be in bed. When the storytelling began, my ears would perk up. My da’ was a listener, while my mother (who was hard of hearing) would busy herself cleaning the ashtrays and refilling coffee cups.

One reason I have never smoked is the memory of our tiny house filled with haze as the smoke struggled in vain against the walls and ceiling to escape.

Uncle Bill would clear his throat and the room would grow quiet. Methodically, he would pack his pipe, light it, take a slow deliberate drag on it, and then theatrically launch into his latest story, invariably relating to his misgivings about the war effort. His thoughtful confidence mesmerized me, as did his crusty voice and a gaze that seemed to look over everyone’s head like he was seeing beyond them.

No one ever interrupted Uncle Bill (even though to say something against President Roosevelt in my house was a sacrilege) out of respect, for his son, Jack, a US sailor, who was almost killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
The house itself was a one-and-one-half story white clapboard box with a green-shingled pitched roof that we bought for $3,000.

My da borrowed the $300 down payment from my Uncle Arne. My mother told me he was never able to repay it, but bachelor Uncle Arne didn’t mind – he received suitable compensation in coffee, chocolate cake, shared cigarettes, and a place to go every night after work.

The house was small, a little over a thousand square feet, but still divided into four bedrooms, a formal dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and full basement. The basement had a terribly low ceiling, and even at eight, already four-eleven, I could not stretch to my full height. It was damp and always cold, even in the summer.

There was a small bedroom on the first floor that adjoined the stairwell. For us, it was the radio room, occupied by a reading lamp, a large padded sofa, a love seat, and a small credenza.

My mother would read to us out of books checked out from the public library, or we would sit around the radio and listen to the high jinx of Amos and Andy, Fibber McGee and Molly, and Fred Allen and "Allen's Alley," or, more seriously, to the “Fireside Chats” of President Roosevelt.

The master bedroom was off limits to us kids, but the glass door covered in lace curtains taunted us. I managed to sneak in a few times to find ashtrays everywhere: on both sides of the bed, on the dresser, and on a chair. What made the room special, however, were ceramic frescoes of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mother that my parents brought from Chicago.

Leo Cavanaugh, who owned the Silver Rail Saloon, repapered the walls of the living and dining room, in patterns that didn’t always mesh together. It was as if he created a wall montage and I loved it.

My favorite spot was the dining room table, a large, mahogany beauty that nearly filled the entire room. Its four chairs were jammed into the rooms four corners, along with a mahogany bureau stuffed against the back wall.

Here I would draw and write my little stories, imagining myself the hero of whatever tale I spun. When I tired of this, I would study the dictionary and try my new words on my mother in often inappropriately constructed sentences with something approaching religious zeal. “Language is the tool of the mind,” she would often say, “and since you must think with words, you must master them if you are to think clearly.”

Our courthouse neighborhood house was our first real home. For the first eight years of my life, we moved constantly from one rental place to another, always having to leave because my da’ couldn’t come up with the rent.

Once we were in our new home, my mother said, “Go and explore the house, then write it down, and I’ll read it, and grade you on it.” With her, school was never out, but she probably also wanted me out of her hair and besides, exploring was part of my nature.

I paced off the distance from the house next door, to the property line on the other side in three-foot steps: sixty-four feet. Then I walked from front curb to the back of our property: one hundred and ten feet. The house, I found, was forty feet wide, and thirty feet long. I took my pencil out and wrote it down in my little notebook.

Next I surveyed the property. A delicious apple tree sat outside the dining room window and currant berry bushes, a small asparagus patch, and a crab apple tree were all just behind the house. A crumbling cement walk divided the backyard symmetrically, with intertwined vines on the edges, and ending at a three-tiered chicken coop to the west of the walk and a small garage to the east, but since we had no automobile, these were mostly just eyesores. A plum tree was directly in front of the chicken coop, and a pear tree in front of the garage, creating a kind of orchard.

The chicken coop fascinated me, and I envisioned it as my secret place, which it soon became. I kept my comic books there and put pictures of my heroes on the walls. I even made a small altar to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It took a lot of work to cleanup, but I knew it would be “my place” and no one else’s.

Now, more than seventy years after the house was first built, it stands proudly and defiantly against time, but without the chicken coop, the garage, the grapevines, fruit trees, or the garden.

Luckily, I took all the important things with me in my mind. I took to heart my mother’s words at that dining room table and trained my imagination in that chicken coop. Today I’m a published author of eight books and hundreds of articles. I may not remain in that house anymore, but that house remains in me.