Lost in the Crowd: Memoir of the First Baby Boomer

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Prolog

My birth was a joint venture between Mom, Dad, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

My parents, my five older sisters and my lone brother lived in a cramped second-floor apartment overtop my Grandpop Taglieber’s grocery store. The store stood at the corner of Powell and Wood Streets in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Space was in short supply in their apartment. Mom mastered the art of keeping busy, the only form of family planning available to her. There was, of course, the occasional kiss when Daddy left in the Stroehmann Bread truck for the countrified landscape of Hatfield and points north. Maybe someone could catch them smile across their dinner of baked beans and hot dogs when Dad’s humor made her laugh. But, for the most part, the closest they came to each other was during the Sunday drive to St. Patrick’s Church in Dad’s old Packard.

One night in early April, their Philco radio statically announced the death of their beloved President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Though Mom never revealed her political leanings, she was visibly saddened. Forgetting her personal vow to keep her distance from Daddy, Mom wrapped her arms around him on their green horsehair sofa. They cried together. Mom shared his Schmidt’s beer from a 4 oz. jelly jar while he threw down a shot of Four Roses reserved for these special moments of Irish melancholy.

After they discussed the benefits of the four terms of President Roosevelt, the conversation changed.

Remember our honeymoon in Atlantic City? Daddy asked with a twinkle in his blue eyes.

Um Hm.

Remember when I told you I was going to marry you before we even started seeing each other?

Um Hm.

Ella Fitzgerald, with Chick Webb’s band, sang A Tisket, A Tasket in the background. One thing led to another. In between conversations about what kind of president Harry Truman would make, they kissed. Slight pecks at first. Then, right before I was conceived, there was a long, meaningful kiss. Mom forgot her vow to be busy. Before the clock struck midnight, I came into being.

Some die so that others may live.

CHAPTER ONE

My First Crowd

I am carried across the threshold of 210 Summit Street in Mom’s embryonic fluid. I leap like John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb when I get inside the big home. I hear the patter of my siblings’ feet. They laugh and cry and argue. There are a lot of people in this new home. I can’t wait to be one of them. In spite of a rough gestation period, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed to dust and all the pine oil and paint fumes emitted from cleaning up the dirty house on Summit Street, I am anxious to be born.

In the fullness of time, Mom packs for the hospital like she is going away for a year. Everything smells of Jean Nate, except her carton of Pall Malls. She tells Trudy Duddy, a friend and neighbor at 203 Summit, that she can’t wait for the usual ten days rest after she delivers her baby.

Getting served three meals a day while I lay in bed is worth it, she says like she won a prize on Queen for a Day.

Mrs. Duddy, a staunch Democrat and my future godmother, doesn’t agree.

On Saint Agnes’ feast day, January 21st, 1946, I am born. My sister, Dot, wants me named Agnes after her doll baby. Since I am born on the young martyr’s feast, Mom feels I should be called Agnes as well. Dad insists on naming me Kathleen. For Mom’s entertainment, he sings a few lines from I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen. Guess who won?

The nursery is crowded. I am one baby among many known later as Post-War Baby Boomers. I weigh a whopping six pounds so I get relegated to the edge of the nursery. The nurses complain about all the babies and wonder what Montgomery Hospital expects of them at the low salary they are paid. I find my thumb and suck on it. If I’m going to get ignored, I might as well enjoy the rest.

CHAPTER TWO

The Crowd at Home

My mother’s full name is Dorothy Ann Taglieber Mulhall. She’s German, married to an Arishman. Grownups call her Dot. My older brother and sisters call her Sarge. She is a petite ball of fire with short, wavy brown hair.

Everything is black and white with Mom. Though Dr. Benjamin Spock’s latest best seller on child care is changing the way women think about child rearing, Mom will have none of it. Though I am born into what Walter Winchell calls the Atomic Age, her mothering dates back to the Stone Age. She is usually a quiet woman. She has nothing to say except little quips like good things come in small packages or I’m busier than a one-armed paperhanger with an itch.

Mom eats weird things like cow’s brains and oyster stew. According to Daddy, Germans are known for eating creepy stuff. Mrs. Fleming next door makes Mom some colorful junk called chow-chow. You’ll never find that on menus. Trust me. Every color crayon I have is represented in the jar of disgusting vegetables swimming around in strange juice.

John Joseph Mulhall, my dad, works at Stroehmann’s Bread Company. His friends called him Jaynor. He drives his truck through rain, snow, sleet and hail to get upcountry people their bread. Some of them pay him with pennies, some don’t pay at all.

Daddy brags about being Irish.

They built the railroads and won the West, he says.

He’s pretty smart. He is the only man anyone knows who can sing all the words to Finnegan’s Wake, an Irish ditty that has a million verses. Daddy is very patriotic. During World War II, he’d have a few drinks and try to enlist. The recruiter would say, Go home, Jaynor. You got six kids, for Christ’s sake.

CHAPTER THREE

Growing Up In A Crowd

Before I have time to be spoiled as the baby of the family, Mom is pregnant again…this time for my brother, Tommy. He is born in December of 1946, the same year as me. His birth makes us Irish twins.

After a few years, the baby of our clan, Michael, is born. The massive rooms in our home quickly fill up. Now there are nine children and two adults roaming around in the three-story twin’s massive rooms, its front and back porches and its long, side yard.

A lot of people know my parents. Most of them know my face, but can’t figure out where I fall in line.

Which one are you? they ask.

I am Kathleen, the youngest girl, I reply with face tilted to the sky in pride.

How many children are there?

There are nine.

Nine! Glory be to God. How does your mother keep all of you straight?

It’s easy, I say. We split ourselves into the three older ones, the three middle ones and the three little ones. It is simple for us. There’s Patti, Carol, Margie, I say, pausing for clarity. Then Jack, Dot, Mary. Then there’s Kathy (that’s me), Tommy and Michael."

CHAPTER FOUR

The Three Older Ones

Patti, Carol and Margie are the oldest. Patti is like a second mom who babysits for us when Mom and Dad go out, which is almost never. Patti, the oldest and a teenager at St. Patrick’s High School, doesn’t act like she’s the boss. She says we all drive her nuts just like my parents do. She works at Keyser’s Luncheonette after school and likes a really big man named Tex. His slicked-back black hair and dark eyes remind me of Sunset Carson, a pretty famous cowboy I saw once in person. Tex is in the Drum and Bugle Corps, whatever that means. They are probably going to get married because they sit next to each other on the couch pretty close.

Carol, who is a blonde thanks to peroxide and ammonia, is a year younger than Patti. She isn’t afraid of anybody. If she tied me to a railroad track, I wouldn’t cross her. She hangs out at another luncheonette across the street from St. Patrick’s called Minnie’s. She jitterbugs her head off in front of the jukebox. I sneaked in with my two little brothers one day to ask her for money. She has a soft spot for Tommy, so Michael and I make him ask. Depending on how much he gets from her, we will buy squirrel nut zippers and maybe even two-cent Reese peanut butter cups, even though they are expensive. One thing great about Carol is that she’d never squeal on us little ones like my other sisters do.

Margie talks all the time. She tells stories at the dinner table about high school and funny things that happen between the nuns and her friend, Barbara Pierce. She laughs so hard telling the stories, that she can’t finish them. Her big brown eyes light up when she tells about crushes she has on guys. She has it real bad for Jackie Cooper right now. When nobody’s looking she sings My Prayer by the Platters and pretends she’s slow dancing with him. Every other sentence out of her mouth had his name in it.

Carol and Margie fight. Margie is fussy about her things; Carol thinks she’s a snob. They argue back and forth. They don’t argue with anyone else in the family, just each other. I think teenagers are crazy. For some reason, each of the three older ones chose one of the three little ones to spoil. Patti likes me; Carol likes Tommy; and Margie likes Michael.

I know Patti likes me because she takes me to Philadelphia on the Reading Railroad. Her friends Blinkey, Tinkey and Genevieve giggle the whole way to Market Street. I figure they are talking about boys because they whisper. A few times Patti looks at me as if to say You didn’t hear that, did you? I get my first taste of growing up and acting like a teenager sitting on train seats that face each other. I sit erect looking out the train’s dirty window as it passes towns like Conshohocken and Miquon. When we get to Horn and Hardardt’s in Philadelphia, Patti lets me put nickels into a slot so I can get a piece of lemon meringue pie from a small window. The machine is like a robot that eats nickels and then magically puts the pie in the window slot. Did you ever see something like that? The pie isn’t as good as my Grandmom Mulhall’s, but it’s the first one I ever ate from a machine.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Three Middle Ones

The middle kids are Jack, Dot and Mary. They are all a year apart in age. Jack is one boy wedged in between six girls, so he has problems nobody can understand. His friends call him Muddy. They have names like Booper, Reds, Yock and Beak. When his friends see me, they call me Little Muddy. It makes me feel good around the girls in my class.

Jack usually complains about being a boy when it is his turn to do dishes after supper. There are at least eleven plates and glasses, not to mention pots and pans and a million pieces of silverware. He is lucky because he doesn’t have to do any ironing. Even though it is his cassock and surplus that we have to wet with starch, roll up and put in the icebox for a while before we iron them. It takes years to do the ironing. Jack likes to run track and isn’t around much when the assignments are given out at home. Boys seem to have more important stuff to do in the world. Us girls just clean up and iron.

Jack is Mom’s favorite, too, which gets my sisters mad. When I complained my friend, Rosemary, said the first boy in an Irish family is always the prince. Jack’s royal standing is sealed when he wins a four foot statue of the Virgin Mary from St. Patrick’s. Mom gets my Uncle Jim Foley to make a shelf out of the dining room closet. The Blessed Mother stands over us kids in all her glory. It becomes the backdrop for all of our Easter, Christmas, First Holy Communion and Graduation pictures.

Dot is the sweetest of the nine. She had big brown eyes and always has her hair in rollers. I can forgive her for wanting to call me Agnes because whenever I need some money for candy, I just act sad around her and she’ll give it to me. One day she gave me enough to get a bottle of Orange Crush, a big ten cent bag of potato chips and five squirrel nut zippers. She babysat the night before for a doctor’s kid and has a fortune. Five seconds after she gives me the money, I was at the corner store’s candy counter bothering Frank and his overburdened wife, Agnes, (why I didn’t want the name) about which candy I wanted. When I see Agnes getting mad at me for taking so long, I remind her that I am born on the feast of St. Agnes, her namesake. It was interesting at first, but now that fact is beginning to rub her the wrong way.

Mary is the prettiest of the nine of us. She has blue eyes and a long brunette pageboy that hangs halfway down her back. Daddy says she looks like Saint Maria Goretti, whatever that means. Mary takes a year to put on her makeup. Sometimes when she is primping in front of the mirror in our bedroom, she’ll put a fake beauty mark on her cheek with an eyebrow