My parents had a strange style of child-spacing — planned or unplanned, I don’t know. My sister, Joyce, was born in the 1920s, my brother, Kenny, was born in the 1930s, and I was born in the 1940s.
Diana Breit Wolfe
My sister married when I was 6 and my brother married when I was 10, so growing up I felt like an only child. But by the time I was 12, I was an aunt to four nieces and nephews, and when they came to visit, I felt like a big sister. Even though my older siblings were both married and gone when I was quite young, they still influenced me in ways that I remember and appreciate.
For example, in the late 1940s, Joyce typed the menus for the Avery Cafe that our parents owned. She typed two copies at once by inserting a sheet of carbon paper into our big, clunky manual typewriter. I was 5 years old and totally puzzled as to how she could type without looking at the keys.
I couldn’t wait to learn touch- typing myself, but it wasn’t offered in high school until my junior year. So when I was 15, I talked my mom into taking me to Sears (then located at Lincoln and George Washington Boulevard) and buying a portable, manual Smith-Corona in a carrying case. It came with instructions, and I spent the summer before my junior year sitting at the dining room table teaching myself to type. I made straight A’s in the typing class I took that fall.
My sister introduced me to something else very mysterious: She wrote squiggly lines that were called shorthand, which she used on her job as a secretary in an office just a block from our Avery Cafe. I was quite impressed when I visited and saw her big desk, typewriter and shorthand notebook. I decided that I was going to be a secretary some day, and I made straight A’s in my shorthand class. After high school, I worked as a secretary for 10 years. Then I became a business teacher, which included instructing students in shorthand and typing.
My brother, Kenny, introduced me to something that was fun — novelty songs. As a teenager, he would buy 45-rpm records, and I would sit on the floor in front of our record player and listen to one after another. The first one I remember was “How Could You Believe Me When I said I Love You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life?” from the 1951 movie “Royal Wedding” with Fred Astaire and Jane Powell.
Another novelty record he bought was “Sweet Violets” by Dinah Shore, also released in 1951. I can still sing the whole thing now, more than 70 years later. (It starts: “There once was a farmer who took a young miss/In back of the barn where he gave her a …lecture.”) When I was in high school in the late ’50s and more novelty records like “Purple People Eater” and “Yakety-Yak” came along, I enjoyed them all.
However, one thing my sister and brother took up in their younger years that I was definitely not interested in following was smoking. Even as a little kid, I considered it a smelly and costly habit. I will always be grateful to them for unknowingly teaching me that.
I treasure these early memories and appreciate the influence my siblings had on me. They are both deceased, and I miss them very much. If you are lucky enough to still have your siblings, enjoy them and be grateful.
Diana Wolfe is a former board member of The Active Age. Contact her at dcwolfe2000@yahoo.com.
