Dear Reader,
Faith Naber, our mother and grandmother, wanted to share with us what it was like to grow up in Mount Greenwood during the great depression. Mount Greenwood is a neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago, Illinois.
She started her book at the beginning of her first memory of THE HOUSE that her parents built. They built it as they could afford it. They never had a mortgage.
Today, the authorities would not permit a family with four children to live in a wall tent on the floor of a house without walls or a roof through a Chicago winter.
In 1924, that is what they did. Faith Naber was four-years-old at the time.
Paul David Robinson
March 6, 2017
Excerpt
7weed – THE NUTTY NABER
I think it may have been because my father dared to be different; or maybe because we children were encouraged to think for ourselves. My parents enjoyed all our innovations. And there were many.
In Kansas where I was born, we lived just off campus. Our home was an old farmhouse, I think. We had a dog that just had had pups. One day my brother Joe who was five years old, rushed into the house, got a large kettle from under the sink, and ran out again. My mother was busy caring for me. When he came back a while later, he was carrying the kettle and brought it to her and said excitedly, “Mother, Mother, we don’t need to buy milk anymore. See, I got three splashes.” Dog milk!
Ellenada, who was three and a half years old, and later became just Nada, went off to tell her friends about the new baby. She often visited the college students in their group homes. The big girls enjoyed her visits and since there were no close neighbors with little girls for her to play with, she often spent time with the college girls. They asked her what the baby’s name was and of course she said “Faith.” When she came home she asked, “Is own baby’s name weawee Faith, Hope and Chewy Twees?”
Now Joe was shy and stayed home near mom, but Nada was a social creature. We lived in Aurora, Illinois when she was five and in kindergarten. The kindergarten was at a Normal school nearby where the family lived. Some of the children had birthday parties and she wanted one.
So she told one little girl she was having a birthday party on Friday. The little girl’s grandmother wrapped up a handkerchief for the little girl to bring and she came to the party. Our dear and innovative mother produced a party
for two on demand.
