interview with a (gram)pire

My grandmother got a television in 1953, sometime in between her father getting sick in January and her getting married in November. My grandfather was fascinated by the newness of it, he said. He used to go down to his Uncle Joe’s to watch Friday night fights. They watched TV in his living room, he said, at least before he went into the army in 1951. My grandmother, on the other hand, watched TV in her living room, which doubled as a bedroom for her brother Danny.

The reception was clear on my grandmother’s television, but my grandfather said it was questionable. Car engines would interfere with the reception, so the screen would flicker as they drove past. Both of them agreed that there were very few stations in their area. My grandma had three. My grandpa started out with channel 5, he said, and then 2, 4, and 11 were added. Later, 9 and 30 also became available.

http://mashable.com/2012/10/03/mickey-mouse-club/#0wduNIv_3Zqp

My grandmother watched TV with my aunt Toni when she was born- Mickey Mouse Club was a favorite, apparently, and they watched it in the mornings.

She also watched soap operas as she ironed. They were called that, she explained, because they were sponsored by soap companies. She remembers shows sponsored by Lux, Bristol-Myers, Kraft, cigarette companies, and appliances.

https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/drama/lux

They remember hearing about the assassination of President Kennedy on the radio and turning the TV on for extended coverage. The moon landing and the walk on the moon they watched with my mother and my aunts. They said that they watch a lot more TV now than they used to- it’s grown to be a habit.

When VHS tapes came out they got a VCR. Although they use a DVR often and it is more convenient, because you can tape one thing while watching another or set it up to record while you aren’t home, my grandmother prefers the VCR. The transition from cable television didn’t change much, other than how much content was available to watch. They have AT&T U-Verse, which they use to watch old movies on TV. The new channels, they say, don’t have the same censorship that the old ones do.

My grandmother included a story with this interview. She said my aunt Toni was on a tv show called “Romper Room,” a show for preschoolers on channel 2. The host, Miss Joan, asked if anyone knew what a secret was, and Toni said she did. She said, “It’s like when your Uncle Chuck buys your Aunt Dolly ice skates as a surprise present, but you can’t tell her.” Well, turns out that Aunt Dolly was watching, but at least she liked ice skating!

This time, instead of sitting down with my grandparents face to face, I interviewed them through email, which was certainly different from our other interviews. My mother was assisting them in their neverending quest to be more technologically adept when they answered my questions, so she got the esteemed position of “interpreter between the grandparents and gmail.”

A picture my mother took of my grandparents, since I wasn’t able to see them in person today. They’re so adorable.

I asked my grandparents what their favorite records were, but neither of their families had owned record players. When they got older, some of my grandmother’s siblings had record players in their house that she listened to. Some of their favorite artists I knew, like Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby, but others I’d never heard of- Tommy Dorsey, Perry Como, Margaret Whiting, and Helen O’Connell were the ones they mentioned. They liked listening to Big Bands and swing music. My grandfather thinks that Jo Stafford had the smoothest voice of them all.

A picture of an unknown relative listening to records. It was in my grandma’s basement. If I figure out who it is, I’ll come back and add their name in here.

In previous interviews, I learned about movies that they weren’t allowed to watch due to their Catholic upbringing, so I inquired about any music they weren’t supposed to listen to. They said there weren’t any songs that played on the radio that had to be turned off, but only because the powers that be in the record labels and radio stations were very particular about what they put out.

In regard to parental limitations, my grandparents said there weren’t many. As long as his mother and father weren’t listening to anything, my grandpa could listen to music whenever he wanted. My grandma could listen whenever she wanted, as well, except at meal times. Her father wouldn’t come home until late in the evening, and her mother only listened to religious programs at night.

Both of them only heard about new artists through disk jockeys on the radio. During high school, my grandmother went to dances with live music, usually from local boy bands, as well as “Teen Towns” at local churches. These bands played mostly big band style music. My grandpa didn’t go to dances or Teen Towns. As they got older, they went to hotels that had bands and dancing. They also went to the Muny and took advantage of the free seats there. Their upbringings differed in that my grandmother learned about church music in school, while my grandfather only heard it in church.

At this point in their lives, they only listen to music on the car radio, not on the internet. My grandfather, apparently, informed my grandma that she can turn on the TV and listen to the radio on there.

Mostly, they remember the serials on the radio. They gave examples of shows like Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy, Dragnet, and The Shadow Knows. Their radios were each in the living room, and my grandfather had one in his car. My grandma’s family didn’t have a car.

https://www.oldtimeradiodownloads.com/adventure/jack-armstrong

By the time my grandpa started listening to the radio after his brother was already in the Navy, so he always listened alone. My grandmother listened to the radio with her brothers and sisters. If she didn’t have school that day, she would listen as much as she could. 

As for content, the commercials were just as annoying as they are today, although they were less frequent. There was one ad that played before the show, one in the middle, and one at the end. The way my grandma described it, there was only one advertiser for all three ads, and it was usually the company that was sponsoring the show. They don’t remember any educational shows, only ones about entertainment, news, and weather.

The tubes in the radios often blew out, they said, and they could be expensive to replace. There was a lot of static, as well, which was only helped slightly by the addition of FM channels.

Listening to the radio is something I always remember doing with my grandparents from when I was a kid, so I wasn’t surprised when they said they still listen like that. We would get in their car and it always smelled nice, even in the backseat. They would turn on old music (Sirius FM, the 40′s station- my grandpa calls it “the music of our youth”) as we drove to wherever we were going, and sometimes they would tell my brother and I stories about where they’d heard this music when they were young, and the artist who sings it. Even now, we get in the car, and they refuse to change the station. I asked a lot when I was younger, but now I’ve grown to appreciate it.

My grandmother reading the newspaper on vacation. VACATION. I don’t even read facebook posts on vacation.

“What are we doing for supper?” My grandma starts. I roll my eyes, but I’m not exactly surprised- she always goes off on a tangent.

My grandpa is much more focused than my grandma, and he says, “Let Grace talk,” with little effect. My grandmother invites me into the kitchen to look at what’s in the fridge.

Five minutes later, we’re back on track.

“What newspapers did you have in your home growing up?”

“Well, when I was a boy, we pretty much had three newspapers: the Globe, the Star, and the Post-Dispatch. The only one surviving is the Post. But we always had a newspaper in the house, and I’ve had the newspaper ever since. The 63 years we’ve been married we’ve always gotten the newspaper,” my grandpa said.

He continued, “My father read the newspaper. I’m not sure if my mother did. She probably did but I don’t remember it. My brother went in the Navy when I was 16, so I’m not sure. We read a lot at the beginning of World War II, just to see what was going on. I’ve been reading them ever since. You read the obituaries, as you get older. And if your name’s not in there, you go on with the rest of the day.”

An obit my grandmother clipped from a newspaper.

My grandmother nods along with the last few sentences. “My father was a barber, so he bought papers for the barber shop. And so I would read them faithfully because other than that, the only way we could get information through the radio. I don’t know what time- well, what year- TV came in, but then we got the news from the TV. Not as much as now. A TV back then was mostly for entertainment, it didn’t have a lot of news. But we both still read the newspaper.”

“And as for magazines- you had to pay for magazines. If someone gave us a magazine we read it,” my grandpa said. The way he made it sound was almost as if newspapers didn’t cost any money, and when I asked him about it, he said, “No, you paid for newspapers, but back then you only paid three cents for newspapers. Magazines could be $12 for a subscription. Her daddy bought magazines for the shop,”- my grandmother nodded solemnly- “and he’d keep them there for a month or so, then bring them home to read it.”

“He bought the Life magazine, for sure.” My grandma added.

“That was probably the biggest and most popular one during the war, because it had all the war news.”

“And it had the known photographers, and all the good stories, and they were always current. I read them when my daddy brought them home.”

“So,” I started, “did he buy the newspapers at the store? Or did he get them delivered?”

“Oh, I’m sure he got them delivered,” my grandmother said.

“There were regular paper routes, just like now,” my grandfather said, “They’d come and throw your paper right at your doorstep.” My grandmother’s brother, apparently, had a paper route. My uncle Tim still throws newspapers.

“What was your favorite content?” I asked them.

“Context?” My grandmother said, squinting.

“Content,” I repeated.

“Contest?”

“Content.”

My grandfather answered. “When I was young, it was the comics. Some young men, it was the sports page. Your grandmother read the funnies and the sports pages.”

“I had more time to be interested in sports,” my grandmother said. “Back then, they still had big ads for the department stores, but back then, they were really big! So I looked at that stuff too. And I read the news, but I got most of it from radio and newspapers.”

“What kind of political cartoons were there?”

“Oh, in our younger years, no one paid attention to those,” my grandfather said dismissively, “and now that we’re older we pay more attention, but they’re probably much more vicious now.”

“See, I didn’t turn 18 until 1949, so I didn’t really pay attention to those, I was too busy.”

“What kind of books did you read growing up?”

“Fiction, mostly.” My grandfather answered. “Mysteries, whatever the library had because they were free.” Most of the books that they read were either required school readings or books suggested by friends. They didn’t read a lot because they were, apparently, very busy. When I asked with what, my grandmother replied, “Dating.”

A picture of my mom leaving for school. I’m not sure why she had so many textbooks, but my mom’s the youngest so some of them are probably hand-me-downs.

“As you get older, things change. By the time I was 24, I had kids, and then I really didn’t have time to read,” my grandmother stated. At that point, she mostly read children’s books to her daughters.

“Did you read at the library, or did you bring the books home?” I asked. They brought the books home- it was 7 blocks from my grandfather’s, 8 from my grandmother’s. They also informed me that they never really bought books from the bookstores.

“How have newspapers and magazines changed over the years?”

Sitting around my grandparents’ kitchen table, eating a grilled cheese sandwich, I started the interview. 

“Do you remember any signs or billboards you saw out the car window while traveling?” I asked. My grandma heard the word car and immediately remembered something absolutely vital she had to tell my aunt about, so she twisted in her chair to look into the living room. My grandfather shook his head fondly and began to answer for her.

“The only ones we really remember is the Burma-Shave ads,” he replied. My grandmother was still turned around, discussing her car with my aunt. “Then again, you gotta remember, her parents never owned a car.”

“Never?”

“Nope. And my parents didn’t own a car until after World War II,” he continued, “and we were never on the road before then. But Burma-Shave was still around after then.”

Taken from: “http://acoustictalk.proboards.com/thread/31149/burma-shave-signs”

“Did you guys have, like, ads painted on the sides of buildings?”

“Oh, yeah! I remember seeing them... I don’t really remember anything earthshaking about them. There are still whole lot of them around downtown. You drive down, uh, Shaw Avenue from Grand, and there’s several of them on the walls of buildings there. If you, uh, basically, if you look hard enough you’ll find them on the walls in the city. If you find- well, I’m sure there’s a list of them somewhere.” He looked around the kitchen, and for a moment I thought he meant he personally had one, hidden behind the sugar jar, but then he continued. “You know, people study those things, and, uh, I know there were some I knew, but offhand I cannot remember what they were. One was for brain sandwiches!”

“Brain sandwiches?” I scrunched up my nose at his remark.

“Brain sandwiches! That’s quite a delicacy around town for some people!” His voice took on an almost scolding tone, as if he couldn’t believe I could be disgusted by brain sandwiches.

“What brains?” I asked. “Lamb?”

“Animal brains!”

I rolled my eyes.

“What kind of animal brains?”

“Pig, I think. I think they were all pig brains, but I don’t know.”

Taken from: “https://onestylishlife.wordpress.com/category/art-design-photography-graphics-ads/”

At that point, my grandmother turned back around and started talking about Burma-Shave signs. My grandfather sent me a look, and then said, “Yes, Marie, we know. We already went over that.”

Unphased, my grandmother continued. “Did you play any travelling games that involved road signs?” She read off of my printed sheet of questions. “No. Do you remember any road sign posters? No.” She hummed while reading through some more questions before finally finding one she deemed answerable.

“Propaganda posters! War bonds, rationing, troop support...”

My grandfather interrupted her, saying, “Oh, they were very very prolific during World War II, but they all went away after that. Everything that was for sale was related to World War II type stuff. The most memorable one was the slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes. ‘Lucky Strike Green has gone to war’. Whatever dye they used to make the green that their cigarette packages were wrapped in was necessary for war. So they turned their packages white with a red bulls-eye on ‘em.”

Taken from: “http://nosceipsum.blogspot.com/2005/11/lucky-strike.html”

“And,” my grandma said, “in our day, uh, people questioned stuff. And it wasn’t like it is now, where they question everything, and they protest everything... we didn’t have that growing up. We accepted what they told us in school, we accepted what our parents told us. We didn’t go out and protest like now. Everything is more open now. Especially with the presidential campaign. Back in our day, we talked about it, but people didn’t argue about politics like they do now. My dad owned a barber shop, so we could not talk politics. I mean, he had both republicans and democrats for customers, so we could not distinguish.”

“Did they print political ads in newspapers and things?”

“Oh, yeah. They used any means that they could to get it out there, but I think that local committee-men, back then, I think they controlled it a lot better. They made sure if there were labor problems, they took care of it with the employers.”

Trying to get back on track, I nodded and moved on. “Did either of you have posters in your bedroom growing up?”

“No,” my grandmother shook her head, “I didn’t, and he didn’t either, but we lived in rented quarters.”

My grandpa nodded sagely. “If you did damage to property, when you moved you were gonna get a bill for it.”

“Did you ever go to, like, friends’ houses and they had posters hanging up?”

“No, most of our friends back in our day rented their homes too. Well, a few of my girlfriends owned their own homes, but... When we were growing up, the haves owned the houses and we just rented them.” This was, apparently, not a concise answer. My grandparents ended up explaining the entire layout of their neighborhood, as well as describing the people who lived in which houses, who owned their houses, and, in some cases, how they’re doing nowadays.

“Did your parents hang up art or anything?” I asked. My grandparents have pictures of Biblical figures, paintings of Italy, and cross-stitched quotes lining the walls of every room of their house.

“Maybe, I don’t know, two pictures at the most.” My grandfather answered. My grandmother only shook her head, saying the only thing her mother hung up was a crucifix and pictures of relatives.

“Did you guys read catalogs?” I asked.

“Yeah, we did. We looked at, uh, the styles of clothing. Because we only bought the furniture we could afford.” My grandma didn’t elaborate more, so I moved on again.

“Have newspapers changed since you guys were little? Like are there more ads or anything?”

“I don’t think they’ve really changed,” my grandma responded.

My grandpa added, “They still heavily relate to good looking girls. There’s a lot more exposure of body parts- they’re different in that way.”

“Back in our day, they didn’t advertise, like, panties or bras, or men’s undershorts, or shirts. That was more, you know, personal. Well now, they have bras and everything all over the newspaper and everything... and TV.”

“A sheet manufacterer probably ran the most outrageous advertisement. It was published in men’s magazines.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“It was an Indian woman in a teepee with the caption ‘a buck well spent’.” He answered.

“Do you ever feel like you just can’t get away from advertising?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so- I just go get up and get a drink, or read the newspaper. Sometimes I’ll use the restroom.” My grandma responded. Distracted again, she asked me if I wanted anything to drink and then got up to get me a glass of ice water.

My grandmother is sitting at the table in her kitchen, two pieces of paper in front of her. One is the list of questions we were given for this assignment, which she suggested (read: demanded) I email to her. She has yet to figure out how to copy and paste text into a Word document, so she simply presses the button that says “Print Webpage”. The ads on the side give the paper character. The other piece is a list of important points she wants to hit in her answers to my questions. It’s adorable, really, that my grandmother is so prepared for this.

I started off by asking her where she used to watch movies and what the theatres were like. “We watched them at a neighborhood theatre-” pronounced thee-ay-ter, which is one more syllable than I use “-and they were just, you know, just like now. They were real small ones, just like now. When we got older, we could afford to go to the big ones, like the Fox, which aren’t around a lot anymore.”

(A picture of the ceiling inside the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, taken by me.)

“In fact,” she continued with a smile, “I worked as a candy girl in a downtown theatre, so I got to see all the shows, and they had all the big shows, but that was only as I got older. We really didn’t go much, because there were five of us, so we really couldn’t afford to go often. Did you go much?” She directed the question at my grandfather, who only had one sibling

“Only earlier, when I was a lot younger; we stopped as I got older,” he responded. With a nod, my grandma continued.“There were wooden seats- not chairs, the seats were wooden.” Her hand flapped from horizontal to diagonal, to demonstrate that she meant the cushioned part of the seats that flips back up into place automatically nowadays. “But when we got older and we could go to the bigger theatres, they had better seats- and they were big theatres. I mean, you’ve been to the Fox, and to Powell Symphony Hall, that’s huge, and that’s where I worked. So that’s what they were like.”

(A newspaper advertisement for a theatre in Connecticut, from the Shore Line Times, 1977, 74th edition. My great-aunt sent it to my grandparents, because one of my grandma’s brothers was featured. I took a picture of it in her basement.)

As two Italian immigrants, I knew my great-grandparents couldn’t have always been in the best financial position to take five rowdy kids to the theatre, much less buy them candy, so I wasn’t expecting much when I asked my grandmother if she went to the concession stand often.

“No, because we couldn’t afford… well, if we got to the movies, we were lucky we got to the movies! Even though they were ten cents, we couldn’t afford it. Or we’d split it.” My grandmother has never been one for overpaying for snacks. In an example of how fiscally responsible she is in regards to food, she went on to say, “Like, when your aunts and Grandpa and I used to go to buy shoes, we would buy three pretzels. Toni and Frances split one, Judi and Teresa split one, and your mom and Grandpa and I had a third because she was littler. Usually, she got a half and I got a fourth.” This trend has carried on into my life- when we have family dinners, each aunt and her family has to bring a different part of the meal to avoid people paying for a lot of food.

Nowadays, going to a movie in the morning or early afternoon can be cheaper than an evening show, if only by a couple of dollars, but my grandma says it used to cost the same for everything. They used to go to Sunday matinees, but not for any particular reason. Everything was the same price, but movies were cheaper back then, anyway, my grandpa pointed out.

“Did you guys ever go to drive in movies?” I asked them.

“Well, they came in later. In fact, it was mostly after we had the kids. We mostly tried to stay like right in the middle. And we stayed in the car. You know, if it was really hot, some people brought lawn chairs and sat in front of their cars, because those cars could get hot.” My grandma stopped and looked back at my grandpa, who added, “Basically drive-ins came in after the war. Veterans started remarrying and moving into counties, and so they moved the theatres out to follow them.”

My grandmother nodded in affirmation, and then continued with her story. “Well, some people came out early, and, like, barbecued. Like tailgating. We never did that. The few times we went, we had the kids in their pajamas, hoping they would go to sleep. If it was earlier they would go play on the playground, but that was very rare.”

“Were there any films that you couldn’t go see?”

“The Catholic Church had a legion for decency pledge and if it was forbidden by the Church, we didn’t go. I mean, we were taught that in school.” Church officials, apparently, went and saw the movies and then condemned them. The list was published in the newsletter at their church. It was so normalised that my grandparents didn’t even go back and watch any of them- my grandpa laughed at the idea and said he didn’t even remember any of them at this point. My grandma shook her head and described it as being brainwashed.

(I took a picture of a remark about the Legion of Decency Pledge in a book my grandmother had in the basement, called “The Catholic Girl Examines Her Conscience” by Rev. Leo F. Griffin.)