1990
When I was born in October 1915, my parents lived on the old Girard estate in South Philadelphia, in a two-story brick house with a well-fenced backyard on Lambert Street, close to the Navy Yard where Dad was on duty as planning officer in the hull division. After Mother and Dad's marriage in November 1909 they spent three years at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia. They moved to Philadelphia on Dad's assignment there in 1913, and lived first in a house on the Main Line at Ardmore before settling in Lambert Street.
A very competent and faithful black girl whom I always knew as Bappy took over as my mentor, guardian, and retainer when I was first able to walk. We lived in the Lambert Street house until well after the World War I ended. When Dad got orders to New York in 1920 I was four years old. Meanwhile, my parents had started spending the summers at the Chalfonte Hotel in Cape May, New Jersey, on the specific recommendations of Virginia friends in Norfolk. Dad, of course, could usually come down only on weekends, by train from Philadelphia or New York. Mother and Bappy and I had third floor rooms that I remember quite distinctly because of the ropes coiled in wooden troughs by each window. Fire regulations required these lifelines, but fortunately they were never needed.
I also recall the great excitement of my going to the train station to meet Dad when he came down on weekends. There were two stations. The Reading stood at the center of town where the Acme parking lot is now (1990), and the Pennsylvania near the west end of the beach several blocks beyond Congress Hall. Horse-drawn station wagons took train passengers and their luggage from the station to their respective hotels. I got a big bang out of riding in the station wagons, particularly when I grew big enough to stand on the rear step and hold onto the vertical rails at the entrance to the passenger section.
Among my friends and contemporaries were other Navy juniors whose parents were living in Philadelphia and sojourning for the summer at the Chalfonte, including Pret Haines, and Carolyn and Elaine Chantry, who have all predeceased me by a considerable margin. Some of our light amusements were sliding down the bannisters (to the great annoyance of Susie Satterfield, proprietress of the Chalfonte), attending Punch and Judy shows in the hotel playroom, and clamoring for more desserts in the children's dining room. You were supposed to be eight years old to eat in the main dining room.
The most dramatic event, which I do not recall, but of which I was the central character, was so often retold by parents and the hotel hierarchy that it bears repeating. In the summer of 1917, while we were staying at the Chalfonte, I contracted such a severe case of croup that the local doctor arranged for a tracheotomy. As he was not qualified to perform the surgery and I was considered too ill to be taken to Philadelphia, Calvin Satterfield, son of the proprietress, arranged to have a special train from Philadelphia bring the specialist, a Dr. McGlinn, who, as it turned out, owned a cottage at Cape May. This arrangement required a $200 cash deposit with the railroad. Dad did not have the amount with him, but another Chalfonte guest, Colonel Barbey, did and advanced it. In the end it turned out that a tracheotomy was unnecessary. I was revived by less strenuous treatment, considered a frail thing for years after, and fed much codliver oil (which, unless mixed with Scotch whiskey, I found detestable) and beer (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and acidophilus milk (which I could have done without). Anyhow, I was always considered a rather puny child, and seemed to grow more slowly and be smaller than my contemporaries. Fortunately, however, I never broke any bones and had both a healthy appetite and plenty of energy, so my crisis in the summer of 1917 could not have been as dire as later described.
After lunch one day Bappy led me up to the third floor for my nap. Some kind soul had given me a large yellow sourball to ease my anguish. Close to the top of the stairwell I stumbled and the sourball stuck in my throat. Bappy reacted instantaneously. She seized me by the ankles and held me over the banister upside down, giving me a violent jerk upward. The sourball flew out of my gaping mouth, heading toward the floor three flights down, where it hit and burst, to my great dismay and howling protest. Over seventy years later, I can still feel the shock of seeing that sourball depart.
My parents owned a large Franklin touring car, which Mother undertook to drive down from Philadelphia to Cape May. She was a good driver and self-assured even though it was a dusty and bumpy four-hour drive over winding, country, dirt roads most of the way. A flat tire, however, was beyond the scope of her text. On one trip about 1920 we got a flat tire about twenty miles short of our destination. Mother flagged down the next car going our way. The occupants, who very politely stopped and proffered assistance, turned out to be ex-President Taft and chauffeur. I recall what a huge man Taft was and how graciously he offered us consolation while his chauffeur changed the tire and Mother apologized for her dusty condition. Taft became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court not long after and I was sure it was a fine appointment.
In addition to the annual Cape May visits, my parents arranged excursions elsewhere for me to see and be seen by various relations. We went to Houston and Dallas, where my paternal grandparents and my cousins the Wards lived, but frankly my memory of those trips is very fuzzy. I liked my cousin Margaret Ward, a real tomboy a trifle older than I, and my grandmother Court, a delightful hostess in my eyes and much less given to putting on airs than my other grandmother. But be that as it may, my clearest recollections of family visits were those among my mother's kin.
I was early made aware that I had been named John in honor of my alleged great uncle, John B. Pierce, who, I was told, had founded the American Radiator Company and become quite affluent prior to World War I and income tax. His first wife, my grandmother Martine's older sister, left Uncle John a widower. In honor of my baptism he and his young second wife Adelaide presented me with an elegant gold and silver porringer and plate, from which I recall consuming porridge at a very early age. Uncle John died when I was still quite small, leaving a large estate that included a big country home at Lynnfield, north of Boston. The house, called Holycong, boasted extensive grounds, stables, a private lake, and a couple of Pierce Arrows. Adelaide remarried not much later a large jovial gentleman known as Shorty Davis. They had an adopted daughter slightly older than I, known as Duchy, whom I found most companionable. Anyhow, the Courts and Davises all spent the snowy Christmas of 1920 at Holycong. Shorty got rigged up as Santa Claus and on Christmas Eve drove up in a Model T through the snow to the port cochere, climbed up a trellis and through the french doors to the big living room on the floor above, where the Christmas tree was. I recall peeking in as he distributed the presents around the tree and then returned, via the french doors and down the port cochere trellis, to the Model T and drove off into the snowy night. It was a memorable scene and the focus of much debate at the time as to why Santa had abandoned his sleigh for a Model T and why he came through the doors instead of down the chimney. I think I pretty well saw through the whole plot at the time but had sense enough not to make my inner suspicions known. Shorty and Aunt Adelaide also had a place at Palm Beach to which we were invited. It was there that I was first introduced to coconuts, orange groves, and alligators.
I believe it was Thanksgiving of 1921 that we were invited to my grandmother Martine's farm at Kingston, New Hampshire. Grandmother had a black retainer named Freddie. Freddie stood about four feet ten with his shoes on, and was an amazingly versatile cook, waiter, gardener, chauffeur, and jack of all trades. I had no contemporary cousins here so Freddie took me under his wing. He wanted me to learn how to raise potatoes, so I went with him to the garden behind the old house and helped dig about a six-foot-long trench into which we dropped and then covered cut-up potatoes. That night it snowed. Next day was Thanksgiving and I wanted to have one of the potatoes we were growing. Unfazed, Freddie took me out in the snow with a potato rake. Of course I could not tell exactly where in the snow we had been the day before, but Freddie pointed out to me a place to rake, and, sure enough, I turned up half a dozen mature potatoes in short order and took them in exultantly to show Grandmother what a fine gardener I was. Freddie grinned like a Chessie cat. I was duly congratulated by the assembled entourage, which included an uncle and a couple of great aunts, and became a great advocate of country living and farming ever after. Thanksgiving was a great success.
Not long after, my parents moved to New York and took up residence in an apartment on West End Avenue in Brooklyn, Dad was notified that he had won a raffle for a portrait to be painted by a then notable painter. It seems that Dad had had a guest card to a private gentleman's club in New York while on temporary duty from Philadelphia. The portrait painter, a member of the club, had offered to do a portrait as a raffle prize to raise money. Dad bought a raffle ticket to show his appreciation of the club's hospitality. There was a long lag between Dad's buying the chance and the actual drawing, so that he had forgotten the matter before he discovered he was the winner. His first idea was for my mother to sit for the portrait. She took such a dim view of the entailed confinement that I was chosen as the subject instead. Although I objected strongly, I finally decided to cooperate on condition that I would no longer have to wear smocks or long curly hair. Thus a deal was struck. I sat like little Lord Fauntleroy rather impatiently awaiting the portrait's completion, my haircut, and a new wardrobe. The dog in the portrait who so patiently sat with me was only a friend. He belonged to the landlord of the apartment house we lived in. His name was Spot, and though deaf he was very well-mannered. I very much wanted a dog of my own, but it was to be some six or seven years before that came to pass. In the interim, however, my dear mother did contrive to keep a series of dignified cats of whom I was quite fond.
While we lived in Brooklyn I started first grade in the local public school. I have one chief recollection of the undertaking. The only other member of my class who spoke English at home was a gangly black boy named George who stood about four inches taller than I. I liked him primarily because I could understand what he had to say, though it wasn't much, and because he did not smell strongly of garlic, which the rest of the class did.
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