Memory Lane: When I Grow Up I Want to Be an Old Woman

They said that time would fly. Before I knew it I’d be an old woman and wonder where the time went. I didn’t believe them. I once imagined how old I’d be when the year 2000 rolled around – 39 – seemed impossible and exceptionally ancient. My 40th class reunion was a couple of years ago and thanks to Facebook, I was able to see how everyone turned out without having to leave my desk chair. I was thinking how I haven’t changed at all, but it appears, like them, I have. My hair is almost all white, I've got extra weight around my middle, and a much wiser, less impetuous outlook. Cedar Falls, Iowa – is the place I call home but hadn't been to but for a handful of times in the 35 years before I moved back permanently in 2013. I think it’s necessary that time clouds perception and leaves with whimsical nostalgic snapshots of a time that for me, was often tumultuous. The place that shaped the original me and laid the groundwork for the evolution of the future me. 

Where I grew up – it was like two sides of a coin. College town next to factory town. Some of my relatives thought we were uppity because my mom insisted on Cedar Falls schools for us. Waterloo was the town of Rath Packing and John Deere. In my area, everyone worked for either the University of Northern Iowa (formerly Iowa Normal School, Iowa Teachers College, etc.), the factories, or one of the businesses who were kept in business by them. My folks’ families weren’t exactly the Montagues and the Capulets, but Mom’s side were Cedar Falls people and Dad’s side were Waterloo people. I just remember a lot of green grass and blue skies. Little snippets of happiness and adventure. Moments of sadness and adjustment.

Great Grandpa Hansen was one of a mess of kids born to a Danish/Swedish couple who emigrated at the end of the 19th century. Not unique in Cedar Falls. Great Grandpa's father owned a restaurant in town, but then went to work for the railroad and would die in a rail construction accident just months later, leaving a bunch of little tow-heads who had to drop out of school and get jobs to support the family. Isn’t America great? It got better and those kids all worked hard. Both of Great Grandpa’s sons grew up to be education leaders. There is a picture somewhere of Great Grandpa sitting on a horse-drawn dray in front of this ice house, circa 1918 or so. He’d go on to own a successful trucking firm that he sold off in the 40s. Way before I could inherit, dammit.

When I was a pre-teen, this guy named Jon Crews, who was recently out of college, ran for mayor of Cedar Falls against a long-time councilman. He won. I think he was the youngest mayor in the US at the time. His mom was my preschool teacher. He stayed around a while, then moved on but somehow got back involved in city politics so he ran again..and again. He was mayor when I moved back in 2013. Then, he got sick and sadly passed away in 2017. No one every did the job as well as he did and pissed off fewer people.

My dad’s dad used to take us to baseball games – double or triple A at the time – at the wooden
stadium built in WWII in Waterloo. There was a train track running behind left field. The old stately cemetery next door was where I taught my sister to drive. Figured she couldn’t kill anyone there.

The biggest thrill shopping was before malls. We’d go to Black’s Department Store in Waterloo. It had several stories and both an elevator and a mezzanine. I just like saying that…mezzanine. There was an actual person who took the elevator up and down. It was the ultimate in elegance to me. I remember when my mom bought a dress there. Once, I got a pair of red sneakers with black rubber and stripes. I loved those sneakers so much! I wore them swimming at a local waterway. My shoes were full of sand, so I took one off to empty it, set it down to do the other (in the water) and off it went downstream. Dumb ass started early.

My sister and I were baptized in this tiny chapel – thought to be the world’s smallest at 6’ x 8’ feet.
Fortunately, we weren’t very big then. That little chapel ended up in Elkhorn, IA, where the cumulative knowledge of Scandinavian immigrants is held.

I used to regularly go visit an old lady who had been introduced to me through my 5th grade teacher, Miss Ford – she was nearly 100 and lived in The Western Home downtown. I was fascinated by her stories which included what it was like to visit the Cotton Theatre in all its glory during vaudeville and then the silent films. In my time, it was called the Regent, and I’d go for the double feature with a coupon from the Cedar Bulletin and get a popcorn and soda all for 35 cents.

This tree (on the corner of Tremont, no less) always fascinated me when I was young. I heard a bad storm got it not too long ago. It has a 50/50 chance of long-term survival, but it hangs on - tough, like the pioneer families who first forged the underpinnings of the town. A few years later, it succumbed to the damage and was torn down. I also used that tree as landmark. Thank goodness for GPS these days, because I am totally a landmark navigator.

In the heat and humidity of summer, we'd ride our bikes two miles to Ray Edwards Pool and proudly show the plastic tag as we entered, giving us season pass status. "Ticket," we'd say, as the lifeguard let us pass to the shower that was required prior to entry into the pool area. Getting kicked out for a 15-minute time-out for bad behavior seemed like an eternity. Adults got a break from the throngs of screaming kids each hour with "adult swim." The kids would swarm the snack bar and munch on all kinds of decidedly unhealthy things until it was kid time once more. Everything within a couple acres of the pool shut down back in 2005. The Teen Center, which was next door to the pool and across from Peet Jr. High also closed. I guess all of it was built on an old dump and methane was leaking everywhere. 

There was also this round barn right outside of town. It was pretty cool too. But, that wasn't the only barn with history and was always fun to go see the Fields Barn - a large and beautiful barn of stone. The Fields' were a family from England who raised premium livestock. They also had a bank in town. By reports, they weren't so popular with the townfolks and considered to be pretty uppity. When their bank failed, they hung on for a few years before escaping to Canada. Some of their children married people from town, so descendants still reside in the area. The owner of the barn, got tired of the expense and rate of needed repairs, so despite its historical listing, he tore it down. Can't blame him, but that was a very cool barn.

My dad used to take a trolley like this from Waterloo to Cedar Falls. It stopped on Grand Blvd. in Cedar Falls near where my grandparents lived when he was dating my mom.  

If we were really lucky, we’d get to stop and have a Maid Rite sandwich (loose meat). The joint has a long countertop and red-covered stools and is famous for its loose meat – way before Roseanne Barr’s character bought a place like that in her show (what, 20 years ago?). It's still downtown.

I once rode a Greyhound bus somewhere, I don’t remember where. It took off from the Black Hawk Hotel. It was a dumpy dive full of wanderers and lost souls. In its heyday, it was a true stagecoach hotel. Now, it’s a fancy schmancy boutique hotel.

The biggest treat for me was going to the Dog’n'Suds Drive In restaurant. They had Coney Dogs. Like chili dogs, but better. When I was like 30, my mom gave me the Dog”n’Suds root beer mug that had been inadvertently left on the floor of her car twenty years earlier. I’m thinking she could have taken it back, but I’m glad she didn’t. I’d kill for a Coney Dog about now.

My friend Barb and I would climb to the top of the domed St. Timothy's Methodist church at twilight in the summers and watch the Starlight Drive Inn’s R-rated movies (without sound, obviously). Sure, I felt guilty. All the drive inns are closed now. I blame myself.

We actually had a country club called Porky's Red Carpet Club. It was founded well before movie
Porky’s. It was very swank. My best friend's family belonged and we played 3 holes of golf in our swimming suits and held up real golfers and then went on our merry way to swim. On my 13th birthday, when my mom said I could eat anything I wanted, I went there for dinner (we didn’t belong) and I had escargot and filet mignon for the first time. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it sounded good, and it was.

On cold nights in high school, I’d go with older looking friends and have a beer at places like The Blue Room Tap. It was a cop hangout. They never hassled us – might have been because I was a Police Explorer. What do they call that, The Blue Wall?

I had always wanted to get into The Stein on College Hill, but looked too young. Rumor had it that Harry Chapin ran out of time when he gave a concert at the UNI-Dome and moved the show out to the lawn. I usually had to work during the best shows, but saw a handful of them before I left town. Our high school team played football there – on one of the only Astroturf fields for high school players in the country back then. I hated football. Oh, wait, I still do.

It was a different time and a different place from today. A much simpler time for children. A time when patriotism was more than just a fad and people didn't talk on their cell phones or wear their baseball caps during the National Anthem. One where Blue Star moms answered the door to a kid in distress. Where misbehavior didn't involve the police, but a call home to your parents which assured swift justice. Where a cardboard box fueled the imagination and gave rise to more fun on a rainy winter's day that any X-Box could. And one where neighbors spoke to each other at the edge of their property on warm summer nights as the darkness set in and kids all across the neighborhood would scamper back to their yards as the street lights lit up in unison with the fireflies.

Copyright 2011.Lori Hahn

Memory Lane: Detasseling, Port Tenderloins, and Dirty Old Men

The one thing I love to do when I go back “home” to I-O-W-A, is eat. Now, you’d think the food would
be pretty bland back in the land of hogs and field corn, but it’s some mighty fine eating at Café M-O-M. Back in the day we had a lot of recipes that were found on the back of Campbell Soup cans. But, then, everyone did. We didn’t get a lot of fresh produce in winter or know or care about healthy eating. Meat, potatoes, and some canned hominy and we were good to go. One day, we all grew up and moved away, and wow…Mom became a spectacular chef. She whipped up sauces and made meals from scratch of a quality that would put most big city restaurants to shame. She knew the theory and could execute.

I always wondered why she could make such a transformation, but I get it now. She no longer had kids around and had time to do it and time to enjoy it without the pressure of having to mass-produce carbohydrates and protein for our hollow legs. Now, I go home and she puts out a spread every meal that warms the cockles of my heart. But, most of all, I love her homemade noodles. I think they are the best in the world—she, on the other hand, thinks her mother’s are superior.

Iowa, particularly the area I was raised, is known for its world famous pork tenderloin sandwiches. Everyone thinks they know the best place to get one. Some people even make a study of it. Deep fat fried and served on a toasted humongous bun, They should use it for a recruiting tool for new residents and businesses.

I had been a short order cook in high school and applied to cook at a restaurant on University which was famous for its tenderloins. The owner actually had the nerve to say he could hire me as a waitress, but I was a girl, and would flirt with the boys cooking, so I couldn’t cook.

Once, I thought I’d get a job with Cenex because it actually paid minimum wage, and most jobs didn’t pay that much. Detasseling corn in the sweltering hot Iowa summer was about as miserable job as anyone could have. I got past it by imagining the paycheck I’d receive at the end of the week. I lasted one day.

The next day, I got a job at a full-service gas station at the corner of 18th and Waterloo Rd., where the manager, who can only be described as an old lech, slapped my butt every time he saw me. As disgusting as that was, I believed deep in my heart that being a gas jockey with hand prints on my jeans from an old lech beat the hell out of being a farmer.

I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa. ~ Grant Wood

Copyright 2011 Lori Hahn

Memory Lane: Cruisin' the Strip on Friday Night

Remember 8-track tapes?  I was thinking about those today.  I had five of them when I was young.  I didn’t have an 8-track player, of course, but my buddy Debbie did.  Debbie also had a 1968 Ford Galaxy 500 convertible.  It was red.    

I remember the music as it’s etched indelibly with a time and place of joy and unfettered freedom:  Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “I’m A Writer, Not A Fighter,” John Denver’s, “Annie’s Song,” Johnny Winter, “Live,” Beatles, “Live at the Hollywood Bowl,” and Glenn Miller, “Greatest Hits.”   Yes, I’m a freak who can’t pick a genre.  D  didn’t seem to mind.  Neither did S, who became the third in our little band of mischief makers.

We’d play those 8-tracks as we tooled down the road, my long, wavy hair flowing in the wind behind me, on our way to trouble.  We’d wait tensely for the

inevitable break in the music we knew was coming, as it clunkily switched from track to track interrupting the perfect moment of being everything and nothing at all. 

In Cedar Falls, Iowa, trouble usually consisted of starting the “cruise” up and down University Avenue, which stretched for about 7 or 8 miles through the entire length of both Cedar Falls, the university town, and Waterloo, the town next door.

Even though this was allegedly also Highway 218, there was a stop light every few hundred feet.  For much of the night, we’d drive up and down the strip, stopping at the lights and visiting with all the other cruisers and pull extreme stunts like the dangerous Chinese Fire Drill, where the driver jumped out and ran around the car before the light turned green—sometimes even switching drivers. I never understood why it was called a Chinese Fire Drill, but I’m sure it wasn’t a compliment, knowing the politically incorrect nature of the time and place. Sometimes, we’d see how many lights we could get through without stopping.  D used to like to come to abrupt halts once in a while, just to make sure I was paying attention.  

We used to carry squirt guns to squirt unsuspecting, law-abiding citizens at the stop lights should they be so foolish as to leave their windows open, until that fateful day when the man jumped out of his truck and leaped into the convertible in his attempt to confiscate our weapons.  Never squirt a guy with a clean pickup out on a date. 

Trips to McDonalds or the new place in town, Burger King, peppered our night.  The parking lot became an extension of our social cliques, with the jocks in one corner of the lot and the other groups in theirs.  Hanging with friends and laughing until we hurt, gossiping about who was going with whom and who broke up that week.  If we were feeling particularly wild, we’d cruise along dark and forbidding Airline Highway to the union hall, where we’d invariably invade the den of iniquity, also known as a kegger.  We’d pay our fee and down a couple brews and go back out to cruise, emboldened by our frothy friend.  Sometimes, we’d go our separate ways briefly to enjoy the company of someone who wanted to further our experiments in kissing, only to meet back up later and fly home, exhilarated by our night of decadence.

Somehow, by curfew, I’d be safely deposited at my back door, stepping inside—knowing my dad was awake, waiting for me to come through the door.  I’d slam the door a little, so he wouldn’t question whether I was in fact home and get up to check, then take two steps to the stairs and race down to my basement bachelor pad and climb into bed, wondering how being grown up could ever beat this.

Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world. 
~ Sylvia Plath

Copyright 2011 Lori Hahn

Memory Lane: Nellie Bly, Nellyl Bly, Bring the Broom Along

This post is part of my ongoing series of my memories for my children to read if they ever want to. I'm Lori. Some of these have been published elsewhere previously, but I thought while I was doing this, I'd also bring the stories together in one place.  

I’d sit in my little wooden desk, with that attached chair that was also wood and seemed to cause more squirming than not, fiddling with the pencil box tucked safely into the slot under the desk, wondering if I’d ever be so lucky to get a big box of crayons with 64 different colors with that cool crayon sharpener in the back instead of the paltry 32 crayons I currently had. 

I’d wait with barely contained anticipation for the teacher to hand out the book order form. I’d greedily grab the flyer from the teacher and begin to pour over all sorts of glorious books that I had to narrow down to two or three. If things were going well, sometimes I got as many as five. Once I turned in the order, I’d daydream about receiving a stack one day in the not too distant future and how I’d run my hand along the smooth covers and smell the new book smell with heady abandon. They cost in the 50-cent range back then, as I recall. Fifty cents would buy ten bottles of pop from the pop machine at Bob’s Rainbow Groceryland near my house. It was a lot of money.

There were a few books from back then that stood out in my mind, all of which I have—one I ran across the other day. Of course, my kids were never interested in them, despite the fact I saved them for them to enjoy. They are too old-fashioned. 

3^rd Grade: Nellie Bly, Reporter, by Nina Brown Baker. The intrepid girl reporter from the late 1800s, Nellie wasn’t like the other girls. This book, which I picked up last night and started reading, is a clearly feminist look at the life of Bly. Through sheer moxie, she broke into a business that hard-edged, cynical men had held title to forever. And made a difference standing up for the downtrodden masses. The message was: Chicks rock! Girls can do anything! Very different from most of the messages I received when young through most literature and television where June Cleaver was still the epitome of the American woman.

4^th Grade: Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. Ah, well, I was going to be Harriet. From that point on, I decided observing people was for me. I’d jump on my bike and ride the 1.5 miles downtown and go into Cole’s Cafe near the library on Main Street and order a grilled cheese and coke. I’d sit with my back to the majority of the patrons and open my ears. I’d listen to them talking, try to figure out their stories, then write it down. I’d describe what I thought they looked like based on my surmises.

  

6^th Grade: Rifles for Waitie, by Harold Keith. Well, I didn’t read this one on my own, but I bought it and have read it since. My 6^th grade male teacher, Mr. Staack, a big bear-sized young man with a balding head and a giant bushy beard, read it to us every day during reading time. It was, to me, as epic as The Odyssey. The 16-year-old-boy, full of testosterone and chutzpah, heads out to fight on the side of the North during the Civil War and spends the next four years learning about horror, honor, death, betrayal, friendship, and justice.  

7^th Grade: Captain Blood, by Rafael Sabatini. When I saw the 1935 Errol Flynn movie, I fell in love with his character. The book was far, far more exciting, but it was nice to put Flynn’s face into my mind’s eye while reading it—he was so pretty. I never wanted to be Olivia deHavilland, I wanted to be Flynn. The message: Even when injustice is the call for the day (or week, months, years), you can still live honorably, even as a pirate! I heart good pirates. Sabatini also wrote the exciting adventure, Scaramouche.

So, what books rocked your world when you were a kid?

Copyright 2011 Lori Hahn

Memory Lane: Litchfield Manson

Litchfield Manson, also known locally as Mandalay. (WCF Courier)

When I was young, I lived on a street called “Grand Boulevard.” It was an old tree-lined boulevard with beautiful historic house. I liked to imagine it as it must have been in the early part of the 20th century when they were built—carriages rambling down one side of the boulevard or the other arriving at the stately mansions made of stone or brick which were built every 2 acres or so apart from one another. 

At least one was purported to have a ballroom, servants quarters, and both a front and back staircase, though I never got to see this mythical place from the inside. 

As time went on, many of those palatial lots were subdivided to make room for homes built in 1930s, 40s, and 50s. At one time, it was THE area in which to live. 

Thing was, the boulevard part ended the block before mine, so my part of the street was just a bland street of houses built in the 1940s, 50s and a smattering of those built in the 1960s. Cedar Heights, as it was known in the beginning, was eventually incorporated into Cedar Falls, Iowa in 1935. 

Our family lived in a little Cape Cod 2+ bedroom joint with one bath - 1711 Grand Blvd. It all seemed so huge back then, but was only about 900 sq. feet, all told. Rumor had it that my parents got such a good deal on it because someone in the previous owner's family died in the home. I never knew for sure if that was true or not. My sister and I shared the entire upstairs of that house that eventually was covered in blue/green shag carpeting. We used the little gables as our private offices for the occasional game of “school” or “office.” 

The kitchen was much too small to seat our family of four. Off the dining room in the back of the house, French doors led to the fabulous screened verandah where we spent many a sultry summer night protected from being eaten alive by mosquitoes. 

I would catch the scent of the lilac bushes gently wafting around the verandah on those starry evenings long ago. The ample yard was full of fruit—pear, apples of various types, plums, and gooseberries. With great relish we waited every spring for the fruit to ripen so we could stop mid-play for free snacks. Mom would harvest the rhubarb that grew plentifully behind the garage each year and all manner of baking was had for weeks – rhubarb pie, rhubarb cobbler, and other concoctions of rhubarbilicious goodness happily topped with a little bit of Cool Whip. 

Endless minutes of fascination were provided by the ants scurrying across the peonies blooming in yellow, red, pink and white on the west side of the house before we raced off to finish our duel with trash can lid shields and stick swords. 

The trees were the perfect place to hide in hide-n-seek games held at dusk. Big old hickory trees lined the front yard and a long, curved sidewalk led to the front door. There were no fences in our neighborhood. 

Down near the bluffs, about a block away, and also just a block or so off of the boulevard, was a grand old mansion called “Mandalay.” Some rich manufacturing guy named Litchfield built it in 1922. Back then, it cost about $400,000 to build and had 22 rooms including a shooting gallery, gym, single-lane bowling alley, marble & bronze fountain, billiards room, and pipe organ. It had an early automatic dishwasher, a clothes washer and dryer, vacuum cleaning system, concealed radiators and an intercom. Such a thing had never been seen in our little town. The household furnishings and gadgets were purported to have cost an additional $400,000. The carriage house was nearly as big as the house to me—and had at one time been home to the servants working at the mansion. 

In my feverish imagination, I always pictured William Powell and Carole Lombard and a kind of My Man Godfrey kind of family living there. The people who built it lost it in the Depression. Brothers Arthur and J.E. Fergason ended up buying it for back taxes and $9,000 in 1932. 

The mansion was converted into a nightclub and restaurant. Images of an illicit speakeasy danced in my head—one in which the rich and powerful would arrive furtively, headlamps off, in their 1930 Pierce Arrows or Dusenbergs as they pulled around back and gained admittance through a series of secret knocks. 

Then, it became an inn (I pictured Holiday Inn and Bing Crosby as owner), and finally a bunch of dumpy apartments as the luster was long ago lost (more like the one-season show from the 70s, Hot L Baltimore). 

I always remember it for one particular reason. Trees had grown uncontrolled on the grounds of the apartments, which abutted the bluffs and the river below over the scores of years since it was originally built. One day, a construction crew started to clear the land down the road from Mandalay, extending the road and building a modern version of a mansion for a wealthy family on the other end. The crew needed to pile all the dirt they dug up somewhere, so they cleared some of the land adjoining Mandalay to pile the dirt. As the brush was pulled away, it exposed a fabulous stone gazebo, long neglected—16-paned windows glassless, but hinges and wood still intact—but the perfect place for a fort. 

My pal Doug and I knew we had just found our new home. Brooms were brought, the junk pile near the train tracks was foraged through, and in the end, we had a small wobbly table, two broken chairs, a wooden mantel cross, a stained-glass pyramid, and a Playboy magazine. 

We brought odds and ends from the house to cover the table, sturdy the chairs, and each day we’d ride our bikes to our cool place and eat our lunches, looking out down the bluffs to the river and look in satisfaction at our creation. It was a little bit of heaven. One day we arrived, and inexplicably, it just didn’t feel the same—the thrill was gone. 

The new houses were nearly finished on the street and the dirt pile was dissipating and would soon uncover our little hideout. Then, our Playboy was stolen and we knew for sure we wouldn’t be back, and abandoned it forever. 

Sometimes I wish I could go back to the days when I was young and my biggest problem was what kind of dress to put on Barbie or whether or not I had enough Legos to build a fort. 

 ~Anonymous, the 1960s 

Copyright 2007

Memory Lane Begins: RFK Assasination

My name is Lori. I turned 65 this year and started Medicare and Social Security. It was just yesterday
when I was a bright, young, 17-year-old smart aleck kid who left home in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and joined the Army. One day, my great grandma and I were sitting in her dining room, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. She said, "In my mind I feel like a teenager, but look at these hands, they belong to an old lady." 

I now understand exactly what she meant. She was one-of-a-kind and probably had some pretty thrilling adventures. We'll never know because she didn't write them down or tell them to me so I could keep those memories alive. I wish my Mom could tell me some of her adventures, but she is far too guarded to do that.

All I can do is try to write things down for my own kids.

I want to start with a memory that isn't even mine. It belongs to the kids' dad. He told it so many times, but it's still a good, if doubly-sad story of how a child is impacted by what is going on for the rest of the world. He was about 7 years old and had a gerbil. The gerbil lived in the basement and with some iteration of his brothers and sisters (there were 7), they got the gerbil out of its cage and it scampered across the floor. Mike put his foot out to block the gerbil from going too far, but instead accidentally landed his foot on the gerbil, killing it. This was his first experience with death and he was devastated.

Later that night, he was laying in bed. His parents had to walk through that bedroom to get to their bedroom, which was in the back of the house. His dad was preparing for bed because he had to go to work the next day and his Mom kept popping back to the room to update him on the status of Bobby Kennedy. She'd say things like, "They say he is still alive..." and she continued updating him throughout the night.

Mike said he layed in bed and would hopefully ask him mom, "Is the gerbil still alive?" He thought those updates were on his hamster, not RFK.

Robert Francis Kennedy, Sr. was the younger brother of assasinated president John F. Kennedy. He had been JFK's attorney general. He was running for president as a Democrat in 1968. Things were looking good in the primaries and the momentum was amazing once they hit California. After the California primary results came in and RFK was announced the winner, the campaign held a celebration at the Ambassdador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy gave a brief speech and then moved toward the kitchen, where he and his family would cut out to their limo through the back entrance. He never made it. At 12:15 am on June 5, 1968, on the way to the exit, Sirhan Sirhan jumped out in front of Kennedy and shot him in the head with a .22 caliber handgun. In front of Kennedy's wife and some of his children.

Kennedy was raced to the hospital where doctors struggled to keep him alive. All through the day and into the next night, the news would break in and update America on his condition. At 1:44 am on June 6, 1968, he was declared dead. 

RFK Funeral Train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYJ6Pk4Mo2Y

MUNSON TALES: Love, Abolition, Suffrage, and Frederick Douglass (Clan Ephraim) Part 2

Part 1 can be found here

The Civil War came and his sons Frederick, Lewis, and Charles all served in various capacities. Finally, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 and all slaves were free, if in name only. Frederick, on the other hand, met with Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and 1864 on the treatment of black soldiers and how to mobilize the southern slaves in the war effort for the Union. Come the election of 1864, Douglass endorsed John C. Fremont as he was deeply disappointed in Lincoln for not moving fast or hard enough.

In 1865, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed, changing everything for former slaves, but again, mostly in name only. They were free, but not really free at all.

During reconstruction, Douglass took some political appointments. He was on the board of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. His next political enemy was the Klu Klux Klan, freshly rerisen from the ashes of the South to end the progress blacks may have made in the few years following the War. He supported U. S. Grant for president and started his last newspaper, New National Era, in hopes that his country would live by their agreement for equality.

U.S. Grant affixed his signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (the Klu Klux Klan Act) and the second and third Enforcement Acts.

In 1872, Douglass got a surprise—he was nominated as Vice President with Victoria Woodhull as President on the Equal Rights Party! He never acknowledged this honor. 

He did serve as a presidential elector in New York and delivered the electoral votes in Washington D.C. 

Coincidentally, Mary Pitts was at that time teaching black children at the Hampton Institute of Virginia.

Mary Pitts Douglass

Later, she found herself in Anacostia in 1882 when she moved in with her uncle who lived next door to the Douglass family. 

Mary worked with partner Caroline Winslow to publish the feminist newspaper, The Alpha, the newspaper of the Moral Education Society in D.C. Caroline was the 5th woman to graduate from medical school in the United States. 

Douglass’ Rochester home also burned down in 1872. Arson was suspected. It was a big loss of belongings and all of his volumes of two of his newspapers. He decided then to move to Washington D.C. He and his wife built their final home above the Anacostia River in D.C. They called it Cedar Hill. They expanded it from 14 to 21 rooms and bought some adjoining property that would extend the property to 15 acres.

Douglass’ newspaper had failed and the bank went bankrupt. Douglass was struggling financially. President Rutherford B. Hayes named Douglass the United States Marshall of Washington D.C., and he was confirmed in 1877.

An older Frederick Douglass

He was also appointed Recorder of Deeds in D.C. in 1881. In 1882, his beloved wife died. 

Douglass hired Mary, the daughter of his good friend Gideon Pitts, as a recorder of deeds clerk in 1882. After a period of mourning, he started working with famed Ida B. Wells, journalist and co-founder of the NAACP. 

Mary later went to work for Douglass helping him complete his final autobiography and handling his correspondence. Their shared intellectual pursuits led to a relationship that culminated in their 1884 marriage. This, of course, was anathema to nearly everyone. 

Mary brought her new husband to visit her father and he refused to let Douglass cross the threshhold of his home. Douglass’ children were furious, but particularly his oldest daughter, Rosetta Douglass Sprague.  

Frederick and Helen Mary and Mary's sister

Rosetta had warned her father not to get involved with the Freedman’s bank, and now this.

In 1888 he became the first black man to get a vote in the Republican National Convention. And by “a” vote, he got one. Still historic. He continued to lecture and urge other African-Americans to turn away from the idea of going back to Africa. In 1889, President Hayes named him Consular General to Haiti, the first black-run country, a position from which he resigned in 1891 when he discovered that the U.S. had every intention to take control of the country.

On 20 Feb 1895, after giving a speech to the National Council of Women in D.C., Douglass went home and had a massive heart attack that took his life. 

Despite the feelings of others, Frederick and Mary lived a  happy 11 years together. Frederick’s body was taken to Rochester after his service at the Metropolitan AME Church for burial. He was buried beside his first wife. Mary would eventually be buried there also, without fanfare, in 1903. 

The children fought the will, which had some technical errors. Mary was to be the beneficiary of the house and property.  She proposed to the children that she be allowed to live in the house until death and then the house would become a memorial to Douglass. The children disagreed and had it sold—to Mary. Mary spent the last eight years of her life speaking and organizing his papers to keep her husband’s place in history alive. She started and funded the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. At her death, the National Association of Colored Women raised funds to buy Cedar Hill. 

It is now run by the National Park Service.