During the depression era, at the end of each month, we all sat around the old, round wooden table after dinner. It was a long sit, because we needed to decide which bills to pay first and which ones would have to wait. Money and bills went on the table.
“Has daddy had enough sign work this month to stretch out those dollars so I can have a new pair of shoes? I should put new cardboard in the soles of these old ones – it’s worn too thin. When I walk to school I can feel the hot pavement on the bottom of my feet. I think I’m getting calluses. The last time, that empty Cornflakes cereal box did pretty well by doubling it a few times and cutting a pattern for the soles.”
Mother’s job is secure and she is able to ‘bring home the bacon’ as grandma says. Even though she is lame, her job as Senior Director at South Park Playground and Exposition Clubhouse is enough to pay the rent and bring home food on the table. When she applied for the job, they wanted someone who could teach a mandolin class, so she wrote on the application that she could and learned how to play before the tests were given. She did so well as an instructor that before long, her group of three expanded into a woman’s instrumental group of twenty or more with violins, guitars, ukuleles and anything that had strings on it. Mother directed from the piano. The sounds of music echoed from the second floor down through the halls and was aired on the radio once a week. No one objected when I sang and danced around the clubhouse floor when they played, but when music was being recorded, I sat as still as a mouse.
I loved those days when we packed a sack lunch, and I could travel with mother to work. It was fun to ride the streetcar line up Vermont Avenue to Santa Barbara.
There was a ruddy-faced, stocky woman named Mrs. Wooten, who taught ballet to young girls downstairs and a very tall woman named Mrs. Michaels who accompanied her on the piano. My mother and these two women became great friends. I received free ballet lessons from Mrs. Wooten but wasn’t supposed to say anything about it.
Mother eventually worked at several Playground and Recreation Centers all throughout the city, serving in many capacities. She taught oil painting and water color to a large woman’s group at Van Ness Playground; several types of arts and crafts such as leather tooling, clay, weaving, soap carving; put on a May Day Program, giving try-outs for the May Queen, directed children in many plays, making stage props; dressed up as a Gypsy story-teller sitting out under the trees at South Park, making up stories for children who sat in wide-eyed fascination. Mom even coached a women’s basketball team and taught puppetry at Barnsdall Art Center.
There wasn’t anything that my mother wouldn’t try to do, and whatever that was, she excelled in it. It never seemed that she was just going to work – she was going to work to play – to play at the playground, and I got to go with her.

Copyright © 2008 Mary L. Ports