Rats in the Attic

By Lorna Elizabeth Witt

This is the story of Lorna Elizabeth Witts childhood growing up in the Los Angeles area. Elizabeth relates her memories of such grim events as the Great Depression, which forced her family to move to a small cabin on Seal Beach, and the Long Beach earthquake. She also recalls normal events of girlhood, such as vacations, summer camp, school, birthdays, and the small joys and tribulations of living with two sisters. Spoken from a childs perspective, she brings to her recollections a straightforward practicality, genuineness, and enjoyment of new and exciting experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532006111

Lorna Elizabeth Witt

Lorna Elizabeth Witt was born April 18, 1926. She and her two sisters were raised in Los Angeles. She married Ralph Witt in her junior year at UCLA, had three sons, and taught elementary school for fifty years. Ralph died after sixty-seven years of marriage, and Elizabeth now lives in Kona, Hawaii.

Book preview

Contents

Elizabeth And The Bus

The Beach House

The Birthday

The Earthquake

The Library

The House On Bronson Street

Saturday

Camp Torqua

The End Of Childhood

There were some rats in the attic and they scampered overhead, sounding as big as cats. Mother kept traps in the attic and would measure the rats from tail to head after they were caught. She bragged to her friends about the size of the rats.

ELIZABETH AND THE BUS

Elizabeth was waiting for the Seventh Street Bus. She swung her black patent leather pocket book from side to side. She could hear her nickel sliding and clunking. The nickel couldn’t fall out. The pocket book was closed securely with a big gold snap.

Happy Days are here again, sang a radio in the grocery store behind the bus stop.

Elizabeth shook her pocket book and the nickel in time to the music. Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected president, radios played Happy Days continually.

A big bus came down Seventh Street on the opposite side of the street. A bus should come up Seventh Street on her side of the street soon.

This was the first time ever Elizabeth had waited for a bus all by herself. Always before this time, Mother had kept her company. Elizabeth knew how to climb the steps into the bus. She knew how to drop the nickel in to the collection box. She had every confidence that she could do this by herself. She had a paper to show the driver her bus stop on Meyler and Thirteenth Streets. She was impatient for the bus to arrive.

Elizabeth had just moved to a new house on Meyler Street. The house was on a hill that looked down on the Port of Los Angeles. Mother, Daddy and Skippy, the cocker spaniel, had moved in the house with her. Also, sisters Dorothy and Nancy had moved into the white stucco house with the red-tiled roof.

There was a goldfish pond with water lilies in the backyard. The front window overlooked the busy harbor. Matson liners sailed to Hawaii. Red, yellow and blue tugboats assisted Japanese freighters. Little seaplanes landed and took off for Catalina Island. Waves broke on the breakwater.

The new home was nice, but Elizabeth would have to go to a new school. This was not so nice. Since it was spring and the school year was almost over, Mother and Daddy decided to let Elizabeth finish kindergarten at the Seventh Street School.

The school was too far from Meyler Street for Elizabeth to walk home. Mother and Daddy thought their oldest daughter was responsible enough to ride a bus by herself.

Baby, baby, kindergarten baby, yelled some first grade boys walking home for lunch. Elizabeth stuck out her tongue and made a horrible face at the boys.

Mother and Daddy thought she was old enough to take a bus, but the kindergarten teacher thought Elizabeth was not quite ready for first grade. Children could start first grade in the spring or the fall, but Elizabeth had to wait for fall.

She couldn’t tell her right hand from her left hand. She really could if she looked at her left thumb because the thumb had a big brown freckle. The teacher wouldn’t let her peek.

Elizabeth was small for her five years and nine months. She had short blond hair cut in bangs over her high forehead. She didn’t like to play rough games because she was so small, and she got pushed over. But the worst fact of all was that she had not mastered tying her shoe strings. The teacher thought this showed Elizabeth was not ready to learn how to read.

The kindergarten teacher told Elizabeth that she was keeping her one more semester in kindergarten to be the teacher’s helper. This was a lie, of course. Grown-ups could lie, but little girls had their mouths washed out with soap.

Elizabeth looked impatiently down Seventh Street. She could see the harbor and a big oil tanker. A bus was coming, but it didn’t slow down. She waved frantically with her purse, but the bus driver didn’t stop. He waved back and drove up the hill.

She may have seemed like a baby to the bus driver, but she was the big girl at home. A long time ago, she was the baby. When she was three years old, Mother went to the hospital and came back with sister Dorothy.

Elizabeth suddenly became the big girl and had to share Mother and Daddy. She was displeased with this sharing. Once when baby Dorothy was airing in the wicker buggy on