Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Memoir Spanning Centuries and Continents

By Judy Austin Rantala

From staid New England upbringing to retirement in the ethnic melting pot of Hawaii, Judy's life encompasses the history of a near-century. She crusaded for Civil Rights, sympathized with Vietnam war protesters, lived in Laos during the tumultuous '60's, and guided college students in search of a conscience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631925054

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Moving

Boarding House?

Although I was too young to remember it, one of the most memorable incidents in my life happened when I was but an infant. The maid had placed me carefully on a couch in the living room and tucked me in securely while she went about her household duties. A bit later, sensing that things were too quiet, she came back to find my four-year-old brother sitting on me. I had already turned blue, but fortunately she was able to rescue me. The story was told repeatedly during my early years and made a deep impression on me.

Why did my parents keep telling this story? Was it because I survived, or was it because they thought it an amusing story? What if I had died? Would they have thought that amusing? I found the retelling of the story disturbing, and I believe that periodically hearing about the incident gave me a basic distrust of my brother. Did they tell the story because I was of less value than my brother? Was it because the act was somehow cute, using me as a pillow? In some ways the incident laid a foundation for my uneasy growing-up years.

***

When I was two years old, my parents purchased a large house that bordered college property in Wellesley, Massachusetts. It was a three-story house with a complete apartment on the third floor, five bedrooms and two baths on the second floor, and three sitting rooms, each with a fireplace, plus a kitchen, dining, and living room on the first floor. It also had a full basement. From the time they purchased the house, I believe they had in mind that it would be necessary to rent out at least two of the five second-floor bedrooms. Perhaps they also had notions of converting two of the first-floor rooms into bed-sitters.

The house was originally designed to fit the needs of three Wellesley College professors, maiden ladies who each wanted a sitting room with a fireplace for herself. My great-aunt Hannah, my grandmother's sister, occupied the house's third floor apartment.

Outside, at the rear of the house, was a lawn between two elm trees, big enough to be a drying space for a clothesline, yet hidden from the street. On the adjoining Wellesley College property, faculty housing had been erected: a grouping of three, three-story apartment buildings. A long service driveway and a chain link fence separated our property from the college's.

One of the few times we had any contact with a faculty member was when I, a small girl of perhaps three or four, opened the casement windows of my room, which looked out on faculty housing. It being a warm, sunny day, I climbed onto the windowsill with my legs dangling over the side. Mother, totally unaware of this, answered her ringing phone to hear a concerned college faculty member say to her, I wonder, Mrs. Austin, if you realize that your little girl is sitting in her window with her legs hanging outside? Horrified, mother gasped a quick thank you, dropped the receiver, and rushed upstairs to find me peacefully basking in the warm sun, totally unconcerned about the twenty-foot drop beneath my perch.

Miss Elliot, the next-door neighbor, was a single lady who knew a lot about birds. She'd often lead bird walks in the woods that bordered much of the Wellesley College campus. She was a good friend and very generous to invite me to go with her, so as a youngster I learned a lot about identifying birds by sight, song and habitat. I loved going with her whenever I could.

This lady, as did others in the neighborhood, often took in renters with some relation to Wellesley College. In our case, it was usually graduate students--women, of course, since it was then strictly a women's college. Miss Elliot tended to accept short-term visitors to the college, lecturers, speakers, artists, for whom the college itself had no accommodations. The only public housing facility in town was the Wellesley Village Inn, but this was not very near the college and was quite small. The college had a designated employee whose job it was to maintain contact with town folks who were able to accommodate short-term guests.

I cannot recall a time during my growing up years when there were not unrelated people living in our home. Once in a while we had a boarder who was not related to Wellesley College. Miss Bruce was a middle-aged maiden lady who on the whole was a very pleasant person, but who needed her cup of coffee to get her started in the morning. This might have been less of a hassle for my mother if she and my dad were coffee drinkers, but they were not. As a consequence, Miss Bruce's strident calls for coffee often caused my busy mother to interrupt her breakfast preparations in order to deliver the needed cup. Fortunately, Miss Bruce occupied one of the downstairs rooms, just a few steps from the kitchen.

I had a special relationship with this woman. She usually ate her breakfast in her room, and I somehow discovered that she did not eat her bacon on those mornings when it was a part of our repast. I would, therefore, slip into her room, and she would pass her bacon over to me. This might have gone on indefinitely if I had not developed some kind of aversion to food, which was eventually traced to the double doses of bacon. I remember someone saying I had acidosis, but I have no idea if this is a genuine diagnosis or simply mistaken notion of my own. In any event, the surreptitious visits to Miss Bruce's room were terminated and I recovered. I did not, however, lose my taste for bacon.

We had another boarder named Eleanor who was diabetic. During the time she lived with us, Dr. Joslin, a well-known physician at that time who specialized in the treatment of diabetes, was running experiments to determine the relation of a variety of foods to their effect on diabetics. Eleanor was one of his patients. He contacted my mother, and after consulting with him, she agreed to carefully weigh, ounce by ounce, everything that Eleanor ate. Mother was a trained dietitian, and she found this challenge stimulating and interesting, even though it was also often very tedious. I do know that my mother's efforts contributed to a major breakthrough in discovering just which foods, and in what quantities, affected diabetics. His scientific experiments resulted in the formation of what were then known as Joslin clinics for the treatment of diabetics.

Our home was, on two occasions, also shared by a young boy for several months. One was the son of Gordon Allport, the famous psychologist. He and his wife went on a long European lecture tour and needed a place for their son Bobby to stay. Dr. Allport was then teaching at Harvard and learned about our home through some mutual connections. They suggested that the family contact Mother to see if an arrangement could be made. It worked out well, and I was delighted to have someone near my own age around.

Our other young guest was the son of Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, who was on the staff of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. When Dr. Coomaraswamy went off on an extended trip to the Middle East, he arranged for his son to live with us for six months.

There also were times of year when the college desperately needed additional housing for guests who were attending special events. These tended to be of two different kinds. One was the extended stay boarders; the other was when the college women were having a social weekend event to which the college girls invited their boyfriends: dances, theater productions, and similar occasions. The young men who were invited came not only from Harvard or MIT, which were reasonably nearby (within driving distance), but other Ivy League colleges, Dartmouth or Yale. These men all needed housing for weekend nights. At these times, my brother and I would give up our rooms, brother Bob often sleeping next door at the Howes' place and I in a bedroom that had been created in our basement.

It was very exciting to have four handsome young men invade our home. I dreamed up all sorts of romantic fantasies about them as they came in and out. Always these fantasies cast me as a slim, attractive young woman being wooed by a tall, good-looking, vibrant man who found me alluring. I would daydream about attending wonderful balls or other occasions with my handsome escort while I went about the mundane tasks of making up beds or washing the breakfast dishes. Always I was beautiful in these fantasies.

Mother was always cognizant of the inconvenience these arrangements caused. As a result she made it up to us by sharing with us kids a portion of the room rental fee.

By the time I was nine years old, I was overweight but also quite tall. This made it easy for me to learn how to assist the college men, who seemed to be all thumbs when it came to tying bowties for formal dances. I was happy to be called upon when they were desperate for assistance.

Most of the time having additional people in our home did not disrupt our family life. However, now and then I would be admonished to be quieter because one or another of the girls was studying for an examination. This admonition often triggered a tantrum as I stomped around, wailing that it wasn't fair that I had to restrain myself in my own home. I was promptly sent to my room to get over it.

Dinner hours were classic. The conversation was rapid and engrossing. Often, if she needed to go into the kitchen to replenish a dish, Mother would say, Now don't say anything more until I get back. Dad loved to show off his vocabulary of big words, and now and then would toss one into the conversation, causing us to pause and try to figure out what it really meant.

Normally my brother and I were well behaved and at times were able to contribute to the conversation. Bob, however, liked to be the center of attention, and when too much time had elapsed without references to him, he became restless. I will never forget the evening he began to flick water at my dad until Dad pushed back his chair, alerting the boy that Dad's patience was at an end. Bob also pushed back his chair, but still flicking water, raced around to the other side of the table. As Dad approached him, he grabbed a full glass of water and flung it at my brother. Bob ducked, and the water hit the glass-fronted cupboard door directly behind my mother. It bounced off and went down my mother's neck, causing her to gasp and shriek. We at the table were so shocked by this turn of events we were speechless, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Bob dashed out through the living room, Dad on his heels, while Mother fled to the kitchen for towels and something with which to mop up the water. Fortunately it was close to the end of the meal, and we all felt it best to beat a hasty retreat, I to the kitchen to begin washing up the dinner dishes.

Because the young women who shared our home seemed very much a part of our family, I never really thought of them as anything other than a series of older sisters who often helped me with homework or sometimes even just included me in a game of hearts or a board game.

It was, therefore, a shock when, years later, a casual acquaintance, listening to tales of my growing up years remarked, Oh, so you grew up in a boarding house.

My response was quick and vehement. I did NOT grow up in a boarding house!

He lifted an eyebrow and remarked that it sounded like a boarding house to him.

Later, as I began to think about it, I supposed he could have been right. But my home never seemed like anything but an extended family. I guess I had a somewhat negative idea of what a boarding house was like, and it certainly bore no resemblance to the close knit, affable relationships that I experienced in my own home.

Soup's On and Summer Camp

Certainly our meals were of a considerably higher caliber than anything I associate with a boarding house. Always in our home the meals were of posh restaurant quality. Mother was an excellent cook, and she pampered us with hot muffins for breakfast on the mornings when she didn't make doughnuts, starting at 6:00 a.m.

The first course at dinner was usually either soup or a fruit cup followed by a meal served family style. My dad carved roasts at the table and dished up the accompanying potatoes and vegetables. We usually had a salad, sometimes passed around, or individual salad plates prepared before we sat down to dinner. Always we had desserts.

Mother baked cakes, cookies or brownies, and there was often a plate of these goodies to accompany a pudding or homemade ice cream churned by Dad. Mother made wonderful lemon, banana, and fruit ice creams and sherbets that, if any was left over after dinner, were stored in the freezing compartment of the refrigerator where it seldom remained very long.

Mother's cooking skills expanded into the beginning of a catering service after the Stock Market Crash of 1929. My dad, who had been a statistician for Roger Babson, had purchased a copper investment service just before the crash. It lost all of its value and left Dad owing the seller money he could no longer expect from the business.

Mother began to market her culinary skills at first by preparing church suppers for the Congregational church we attended. Her prowess soon became known by other churches and local organizations, and they asked if she would cater their dinners. In the beginning these efforts did little more than keep our own family fed with leftovers, but, over a period of months, word got around that she might be available to cater for other groups, and this developed into a business.

I was very much a part of the catering service my mother developed, as was my dad. On the afternoon of a dinner I would go directly from school to the church kitchen to assist my mother at whatever task she assigned. My least favorite was sectioning, individually, grapefruit that were to be served as a first course. I also peeled potatoes, fixed string beans, set tables, and washed pots and pans.

I will say this for my mother: She treated me fairly, paying me by the hour for my services. And I certainly learned a lot about quantity cooking in the process. I didn't resent this call on my services, mostly because Mother's reputation was very