Through Any Given Door ~ Catherine Sevenau

Catherine Sevenau Catherine Sevenau is a writer, humorist, and storyteller living in Sonoma, California. The stories in this series are excerpts from her book, Through Any Given Door, a Family Memoir. The full memoir is available as a web series at Sevenau.com. A longtime Realtor and Owner/Broker at CENTURY 21 Wine Country, she can be reached at [email protected]

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It was nothing but the best for mom

Posted on March 3, 2022 by Catherine Sevenau

Chapter 28: 1946 • Sonora ~ My mother, brother, and sisters loved to read. They regularly checked out books from the local library, and in every room at home someone would be sprawled somewhere with their nose buried in one. Larry’s favorites were historical adventures, dog stories, and biographies. He’d buy books when he wanted a special volume, and read them in his room. Betty read on her bed while Carleen read on the couch, Claudia read on the front porch and Mom read in the kitchen. Dad rarely picked up a book. He had work to do and saw no sense frittering his life away reading things other than the newspaper and an occasional story from Reader’s Digest or Saturday Evening Post

The family rule was lights out at 10. Our father was customarily asleep by 8:30 though Mom stayed up late reading; the kids read under their covers by flashlight far into the night.

It was nothing but the best for mom. She dressed to the nines for any occasion: hats and gloves, fashionable and in style—very forties in the 40s, very fifties in the 50s. It was embarrassing for Claudia; she wished Mom would wear regular house dresses like other mothers. She didn’t buy cheap clothes or wear chintzy jewelry, and wouldn’t be caught dead purchasing anything except linens and the kids’ things in JC Penney.

 Claudia’s first day of school

Esther Albertson, Carleen’s future mother-in-law, worked for years at Penneys in the women’s clothing department. From the time Claudia was four, she loved going there to watch the inner workings of the store. 

She was fascinated by how they made change at the register from one floor to another, pulling the cord to fly the money in pneumatic tubes upstairs to the accounts department on the mezzanine, the change and receipt in the canister whooshing back down for the customer. Penneys was in the Marengo building on lower Washington Street, and the only store in Sonora that had such a thing.

Mom bought her clothes at Sanford’s Dress Shop or the Orchid Shoppe: A Shop for Discriminating Ladies, or she shopped in Stockton and San Francisco. A few years later, when I lived with her in San Jose, she seldom dressed up or ventured out. Not that my mother wore crumpled skirts or wrinkled shirts; there were days she simply didn’t dress at all. Unless she went to work or to the library, her black slip is what I remember her in.

To be continued…

Catherine Sevenau is a writer, humorist, and storyteller living in Sonoma. The stories in this series are excerpts from her book, Through Any Given Door, a Family Memoir, is available at Sevenau.com. Catherine is an author of three books, several volumes of family genealogy, and a longtime Broker/Realtor at CENTURY 21 Epic Wine Country. [email protected]

 




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