Childhood Memories

by Nadine Call (Tate) Started 2006

I was born in an average house in Tucson, Arizona and 10 February 1927. The doctor said I was premature because I had no eyelashes or fingernails, still he estimated I weighed 8 lbs.

The house was a wood frame with a front porch across the front of it. It was on a side road coming off of the road that ran East-West between Rosscruge Elementary/Jr. High and the High School.
We lived there for 6 months, while Papa built an office building at 509 No. 4th Avenue. This was not downtown Tucson, but still a business district on a main road going North-South from downtown to the edge of town and out to Sabina Canyon river road. (A river road is one that has flash floods across it enough to make the road up and down like a miniature roller coaster.)

Papa’s office building was made of brick and 2 stories high with a ½ basement. True Wyoming style building. Everyone told him it was not the right type of building for Arizona, but he couldn’t see why not. Later on the family discovered the problem.....cloud bursts that cause quick flooding the streets...... One summer after being gone on vacation.......usually up to Logan, UT to see Papa’s sisters, Aunt Vinnie (Winifred) Roberts and Rosa Spackman. Then on to Afton, Wyoming to visit his brothers Charles and Thomas and Mama’s sisters and brothers Nettie, Ethel (married to Thomas Call), Royal and Harold.........upon returning to Tucson, they discovered a couple of feet of water in the basement. Everything was ruined and getting moldy. The biggest loss was Mama’s trunk that held her treasured memory items of her parents, siblings, and most of all, of Worth (Hoarce Papworth Call), my oldest brother. He was killed at 7 years old, when a train hit their car when moving from Afton.

Back to the building: It had 2 offices across the front...one was Papa’s Chiropractic Office and the smaller one was Mama’s beauty shop. Papa’s office went back the length of the building, ending with the family bathroom which was also the office bathroom. On Mama’s side, her shop was a small reception area with a divided room behind it with the sink for shampooing on one side of the partition and “the chair” (where one’s hair was rolled onto metal rollers and the electrical connections hooked into a cap like hood that hung above the head. When ready, the electricity was plugged in for a few minutes. Mama stood beside the chair - lifting the roller one said was getting too hot and she would blow on it, or fan it with a round paper fan with a stick that looked like a popsicle stick. Behind Mama’s office was Papa & Mama’s bedroom with a hall down the side that lead into the family Living Room. Behind that was the kitchen (which lined up with the bathroom & water-heater on Papa’s side. There was trap door with a ladder that went down into the basement where we kids slept. There was also a cement stairway outside that led into the basement. It had two wooden doors over it.

The yard seemed very large. Papa had a workbench and area with a corrugated metal roof over it. There was a narrow pathway from the street out front that led to the backyard. It had the building on one side and two large billboards on the other side. This formed a barrier between our yard and the gas station on the corner. At the back end of the gas station lot there were two more billboards. We drove our car through the back of the gas station - in front of the billboards - to access the back side of our yard where we parked our car under another corrugated metal roof. That left a small corner at the back where the kids had built a playhouse.... Two sides were formed by the chain link fence that surrounded the backyard, and one side was closed off with a pomegranate tree (large bush about 6 feet tall), the last side was old lumber and boxes. The roof was leftover metal sheeting from the carport and Papa’s work space roofs. I’ve been told that my sibling acquired a metal bedstead for the playhouse and in setting it up it fell on me and broke my collarbone, but I had no lump or anything to indicate this. We kids spent many happy hours in that playhouse. We also had another pomegranate tree and a “Chinaberry” tree. It was a lovely shade tree between the house and Papa’s work area. It was also the “ladder” to the roof of the add-on that Papa built on the back of the office building. This add-on had a larger bedroom for Papa and Mama, a medium bedroom for Eva and I and a tiny room for Vaughn to call his own. They partitioned off a tiny room at the end of the kitchen for Verla to have her own room. They tore out P & M’s old bedroom making the LR much larger. Then they used the end near the kitchen for a dining room. The eating area in the kitchen had become Verla’s bedroom. The basement became a storage and play area.

Upstairs in the building, were 2 small apartments on one side, and 3 sleeping rooms on the other side and the one bath shared by all the rentals on the floor. The stairs came straight up from the street sidewalk out front, between Mama and Papa’s offices.

The was one window cut between Papa and Mama’s office where the telephone stood. It could be reached from either office. I felt so grown up when I became the “receptionist” to answer the phone when I got home from school...about 8 years old.

It was very scary to go into either office at night to answer the phone or to get something. There were no light switches, but just a long string hanging down from the ceiling light. In Papa’s office - the worst - it was about 10 or 12 ft into the hall that ran down the side in front of the dressing/resting room. The door at the back by the bathroom had a door-closer on it, so when one entered and it closed it was pitch black (no windows in this part of office) and one just walked along in the dark with a hand up trying to find that string.

Papa had in his office, a beautiful roll top desk that he had made. Above it was where a storage shelf which is where Christmas & birthday presents where hidden. Verla & Eva came home from school one year and announced there was no Santa Claus. So one of Papa’s patients, a large policeman, was hired to come Christmas Eve. We kids were all in the basement so we saw nothing, but heard the knock on the back door (no fireplaces in Tucson) and this jolly deep voice talking to Papa and asking about the children. All the kids were convinced for several more years. Finally Verla began questioning again and so Papa took her in and showed her the gaily wrapped packages on his office shelf.........”That’s Santa Claus” he said.........and Verla was crushed. Vaughn told me at about 6 years of age....by say just look at the handwriting on the tags. They all said from Santa, so I didn’t get what he was trying to tell me. I don’t know when I finally realized that Santa was Mama & Papa.

In Tucson they started school in the Fall and in the Spring. Being a February baby, I fell into the Spring Semester to start kindergarten. So I started in February. I had chicken pox when school started so missed the first couple of weeks of kindergarten. It made it difficult to come into school late. The others kids were used to the routine, had their friends and were moving ahead. The teacher treated me as if I had always been there... never telling me to bring a little blanket to play on during rest time, to help me meet the other kids, or tell me what was going on. A very nice little girl, Beverly Marsch, invited me to share her blanket and was friendly...bless her heart.

I was a small, tan enough to be a Mexican, frizzy hair (Mama practiced on me to do perms after she went to Beauty School and opened her shop), and scrawny. My friend was childishly plump, natural curly hair that hung in beautiful black, long, ringlets and self confident. We were quite a contrast. (See picture)

In third grade the teacher suggested to my parents that I was way ahead of the class and that they accept my being skipped up a half grade. This put me out of the class with Beverly. I enjoyed the class work in this new grade and did well. The teacher was great and we learned rapidly.

When Verla finished high school, they sent her up to Brigham University in Provo, UT to collage. Then when Eva graduated she went up and moved in with Verla. I really missed them. When Vaughn was into the dating age, Mama talked Papa into moving to Salt Lake City, Utah so the kids would have some Mormon kids to date and eventually marry. I was 10 years old when we moved in 1937.

As of 1995, Papa’s building still stands. All of Papa’s & Mama’s offices have been made into a restaurant with the kitchen and bath where our living room and kitchen had been.