1239 Patton Street

This is 1239 Patton St. It's the first home of which I am cognizant. We lived on the second floor about my grandparents. There was one bedroom, a living room, a dining room, kitchen and a bathroom. My parents and my baby sister and I slept in the bedroom. My crib was in front of the only window and Janet's was on the other side of the room.

My Grandmother Ina McWhirter had been born in Scotland. She and her sisters were part of a large ladies club called "The Daughters of Scotia." Once a week in the apartment below all these Scottish ladies would come over to play cards. Lots of loud laughing from below. I remember thinking that one of the women sounded like a witch. It scared me everytime I heard her. My mother explained that it was just Mrs. So and So who laughed funny. They all had funny names, too, Like Coatsy Wilson.

Every year or so the daughters of scotia would have a big convention somewhere in the country. Big dinner with really fancy dresses. The photos show some men there, but my grandfather never went, as far as I know. My dad was an only child, and when he was growing up his father would watch him while his mother was at convention, so I guess he always had an excuse. I have a letter from my father as a child to his mother at convention telling her what he and his father had been up to.

For a while Mom Mom was the chairwoman of the whole shebang, and I think it was probably the highlight of her life.

My earliest memory happened at this house on Patton Street. The laundry was hung out to dry in the big side yard, in front of the beautiful huge mini rose hedge. My first memory is of lying in a wicker basket filled with dry clothes and watching my finger with a spring clothes pin on it flying back and forth in front of my eyes. When I was an adult I told my mother about that, and she was floored, and said I was only a couple months old when that happened.

I also remember being in my dad's lap at night on the big front porch upstairs in one rocking chair while my mom rocked my baby sister, Janet in the other rocker. I think this was my first experience of jealousy.

We got our first tv there, one of the first commercially available televisions made. We watched Howdy Doodie while riding our tricycles around the living room, with baby bottles filled with chocolate milk (made with BOSCO.) And that show, the name of which has escaped me, with a little rubber frog puppet, and the man would say "Plunk that magic twanger, Froggie!" I'll have to look that up. Also the Josie Carey show where Mr. Fred Rogers got his start in Pittsburgh.

I just looked it up. It was the Buster Brown Show and here it is: