Nevada & Lake Tahoe

Summer at Tahoe, 1906 (source, Wikipedia)

Here’s a new excerpt from the memoirs;

Mom and her mother are driving across country from New York to their summer home on Lake Tahoe. This is the last day of their drive:

 Home Stretch

We got up at the crack of dawn for the final leg of the journey. Mama was nervous that last day. She had to coax the old Packard over the Mount Rose summit; it was always the hardest day of the trip.

First of all, we had to drive across Nevada, from Elko, in its northeast corner, to Lake Tahoe, at the angle in the middle of its western boundary. The terrain was flat and beige, flat and beige, as we sped down the state routes paved in tar. Including stops for breakfast and lunch, we made the foot of Mt. Rose by early afternoon.

 The mountain rose without warning from the desert floor. The gravel road up to its summit was quite steep and included several hair-pin turns. Halfway up, the car boiled over, and we refilled the radiator from the can we had brought along. Then we found ourselves facing another car coming down the road; creeping down in reverse, we found a place to move over into (we were on the inside lane). We were lucky; the spot was only a few dozen yards down the road; sometimes people had to go back a mile before they found find a space big enough to accommodate their car.

It was all very exciting. The gravel road twisted and turned at the edge of the mountain, revealing spectacular views of Reno, mountains, and the lake along the way; I could look over Mama’s shoulder and see down the mountain. “How far down do you think it is?” I asked.”You stop that, Nancy! Just keep your eyes on the road for any big rocks.”

After a long while we reached the top of Mt. Rose and looked down at the lake. No matter how difficult the trip had been, we knew it was worth the effort when got to the top. The gorgeous blue of the lake’s waters would shimmer in the sun and Mama would say, “It gets prettier every year!”

 From our vantage point, we could see the lake spread out beneath us, surrounded by forests of mixed fir and pine (among them, lodgepoles, Jeffrey pine, and Douglas firs), and beyond it, distant peaks. The lake is large, covering more than 170 square miles, and deep, about 1,650 ft deep, and is famous for the clarity of its water—nothing grows on the bottom. From the pass (8,911 feet high), no sign of people could be made out, but by the 1930s, houses had been built wherever the shoreline permitted; together with several townlets, the human presence was significant without being overwhelming.

Our house was built on the north shore near the town of Brockway. This was the most densely populated part of the shoreline, in part because of the long view of the lake it afforded, in part because it was close to the town of Truckee, which lay along the original transcontinental railroad (and the Lincoln Highway). Gambling was legal on the Nevada (eastern) side of the lake, and during the summers, the area was home to a pleasant, friendly community of vacationers and year-round natives.

 In fact, as the years went along, we found that Tahoe never disappointed.

Egg or Porridge?

Folks:

Here is an anecdote from the 1st chapter of the memoir, when Mom was still quite little. Her adoptive mother had brought in a *French Governess* (named Marie Diane–and also frequently called Mamselle) to give Mom the advantages of culture at an early age. The only problem was that Marie Diane spoke no English, and Mom, of course, knew no French. Here is one result of the language barrier:

 After that, I didn’t see much of Mama; I was on my own with Marie Diane. We communicated in sign language at first, but somehow I always seemed to know what she was talking about, and gradually I learned to understand her words and even to repeat after her during our meals in my room, served on the table with folding legs. If I wanted the butter, I had to call it le beurre, or she wouldn’t hand it to me. I learned that gentil meant nice, and that if I flushed my panties down the toilet, I was méchant.

I also learned some tricks. Once, I told Mama that I didn’t get porridge for breakfast any more; I only got a plain old egg in a shell, and Mamselle chopped off the top with her knife and made me eat it out of the shell with a little spoon.

Mama said, “Well, I never!” and turning to face Marie Diane so she could read her lips, said carefully and slowly, “In America, we cook our eggs before we eat them.”

“Mais, bien sur! (But of course!)” Mamselle replied, leading Mama by the arm to the kitchen. She got hold of the hourglass egg-timer, and, turning it up and down furiously, insisted, “Trois minutes! Ni plus, ni moins! (Three minutes! Neither more nor less!)” Mama looked to Anna, our Swedish cook, for help with translating, but Anna only put her arms around my shoulders and said, “I donna understand her neither.”

“I want porridge with syrup for breakfast!” I wailed, pressing my advantage.

Faced with the insurmountable barrier of language, Mama capitulated, and after that I got to eat breakfast in the kitchen so that Anna could supervise. It remains a remarkable fact that, while Mamselle and I slowly learned each other’s language, Mama never picked up a word of French.

Toy Store

Here is an anecdote from Mom’s memoir.  Read, enjoy, and provide feedback, if you are so moved. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Toys

As winter was coming on, I was invited to a birthday party by one of my schoolmates. So Mama and I took a cab one evening to the famous F.A.O. Schwartz toy store, then located on Fifth Avenue at the corner of 58th Street. Although I was not to be the beneficiary of our expedition, this was still my first trip to the store, and I was excited.

It didn’t take me long to find a toy to admire. As the cab pulled up to the store, I saw a huge doll house in one of the display windows. We got out, and the house was so spectacular that even Mama stopped to admire the workmanship. The doll house was larger than usual and was in fact a minature replica of a real house. The exterior was white clapboard with black shutters, and the interior was filled with the most gorgeous reproduction furniture. There was a chandelier in the dining room with real electric lighting that could be turned off and on. There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms and a kitchen, all with appropriate furnishings. A sales clerk, noticing our attention, came over and removed the roof, revealing an attic.

Once inside the store, Mama started a conversation with the clerk about toys that might be appropriate for a six-year-old boy, leaving me free to inspect the many wonderful offerings. What I picked out of all the goodies meant to captivate a child’s heart wasn’t the stores famous plush toys; the first thing I noticed were the shelves of wonderful dolls behind the cash register. The dolls were so beautiful, all lined up in rows; I’ve never forgotten their frilly dresses and bonnets, little bare feet sticking out over the edge of the shelves (some had on white booties). While I was admiring them, I thought about what Mama had told me about going somewhere and picking me out from all the beautiful babies to choose from. I felt warm all over just thinking about it, but when I asked Mama, who was talking to a sales clerk, if she’d come to a place like this when she got me for her own, the clerk laughed so hard Mama grabbed me by the arm and marched me out of the store. We hadn’t even got the birthday present, a fact that Mama remembered after a moment, and we reentered the store, where Mama made her selection.

But I was so happy and excited by the idea of coming from F.A.O. Schwarz, it didn’t bother me that Mama was mad, and for quite a while I continued to believe that I had been chosen from a row of dolls at a toy store.

© 2010 Mom’s Memoirs

How we got started

Last winter, I found a copy of a memoir 

that my mother had been compiling over decades–since at least the late 1970s. The typescript (which she had composed on old wordprocessors) was 113 pages long and contained anecdotes of her childhood, from her earlier memories to her entry into college and marriage to my father. I decided that I would put the entire manuscript on the computer and see if it was publishable.

So far the story is not that unusual, but there was one further consideration behind my decision: my mother is still alive, and I thought that now was the moment, if I was to get the full story and she was to see her writing in print.

*

So at this point, the manuscript is on the computer & being edited, and we’re thinking about getting it published in paper and on the web. Any suggestions for the next steps? We’d appreciate constructive advice. Thanks!