Under the Circumstances: How to Meet Celebrities Without Leaving Home

By Estelle Craig

A phone and a typewriter were all Estelle Craig needed to start what turned out to be a lifetime of fun and the road to meeting famous people, from a prime minister of England, to a mountain climber, Sir Edmund Hillary, changing diapers and booking celebrities at the same time she created and directed the World Adventure Tours for 41 years. Estelle satisfied her hunger for travel by escorting people on trips around the world. She wrote travel articles, interviewed people for the CBC, published a national magazine, “small types” for children, and at the same time raised 3 children and ran a household for the family.
Evening gowns were Estelle’s working clothes when she appeared on the stage to introduce the artist of the evening. Many shows were sold out. Armchair travelers subscribed to the series year after year. After 41 years Craig decided it was time to turn to other fields and when she received an offer to sell the WAT, she did. At Ryerson University she discovered Act II Studio and auditioned and appeared in two plays. She has written several plays which were produced by Act II Studio at the Robert Gill Theatre in Toronto. She has also written a newspaper column, radio scripts and a mystery novel. Her special delights are music, the theatre and her grandchildren and four great grandchildren, and the untold mysteries and wonders that tomorrow might bring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 8, 2005
• ISBN: 9781418408183

Estelle Craig

A phone and a typewriter were all Estelle Craig needed to start what turned out to be a lifetime of fun and meeting famous people, from a prime minister of England to a mountain climber, Sir Edmund Hillary. Changing diapers and booking celebrities at the same time, she created and directed World Adventure Tours for forty-one years. Evening gowns were Estelle’s working clothes when she appeared on the stage to introduce the artist of the evening. As many shows were sold out, armchair travellers subscribed to the series year after year. Estelle wrote travel articles, interviewed people for the CBC broadcasting network in Canada, published a national magazine, Small Types for children and satisfied her hunger for travel by escorting people on trips around the world. Estelle became the President of the Toronto Women’s Variety Club and Press Club. At the same time, she raised three children and ran a household for the family. When Estelle decided it was time to turn to other ventures, she received an offer to sell World Adventure Tours. At Ryerson University, in Toronto, she discovered Act II Studio and auditioned and appeared in plays. She has written several plays, which were produced by Act II Studio. She has also written a newspaper column, radio scripts, and published three autobiographical books. Her special delights are music, the theatre, her grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren, and the untold mysteries and wonders that tomorrow might bring. After the age of 100, Estelle wrote The Pelicans of Palm Beach and The House That Swam. At the age of 103 Estelle Craig has written Barry Weds Minnie.

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Under the Circumstances

How to meet celebrities without leaving home

Estelle Craig

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2005 Estelle Craig. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/05/2020

ISBN: 978-1-4184-0817-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4184-0818-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

About The Author

CHAPTER ONE

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It was the hottest day of the year, that June day in 1946, when I was thrown off the train at Fort Erie, Ontario with my two infant children. What had I done wrong? I later found out it was because I was an American moving to Toronto and I had not brought the proper papers with me.

Why are you going to Toronto? the immigration officer asked me.

Oh, I‘m going to live there, I answered truthfully. At that time, few Americans were moving to Canada. In fact, many Canadians were trying to move southward, and securing green cards for work permits was the ambition of many.

Well, said the immigration person, show me your papers.

Papers, I echoed. What papers? My husband said he had taken care of everything. Immigration departed, and I sat back, breathing easily again. Our train was already hours late, having been delayed in Buffalo. My husband, Lou, was waiting for me at the train station in Toronto. I had already been traveling for sixteen hours, on what should have been a twelve hour trip, and was nowhere near my new home. I was tired. So were my children. Immigration returned with a stern face.

You will have to get off the train, he said.

I’m not getting off the train with my children, I answered angrily. I’ve been on this train for over sixteen hours, and my husband is waiting for me in Toronto. Please call him. He will set everything right. You’ll see.

Immigration scowled. The train won’t move until you get off. He was angry now.

I’m not getting off. I settled back in my seat. Immigration picked up all my luggage and threw the cases on the station platform. The other passengers glared at me, at my five-month-old baby and threeyear-old daughter. I lost the battle and left the train.

I was mad mad mad. It seemed so ridiculous. I was thrown off the train, but I was already in Canada. All I had to do now was wait for the next train. It would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so ghastly hot, and if the train had been able to stick to its normal schedule. It wasn’t funny because my son was not able to have his milk on time, and my daughter was weary and just wanted to go to bed. The normal twelve-hour trip turned out to take over twenty-four hours, so it wasn’t really funny.

Why was I moving to Canada anyway? Because my husband wanted to. He had been asked to open a pharmaceutical company in Toronto, having just completed his work on the Manhattan Project, on his phase of the atomic bomb. After much soul searching, I decided to give him the opportunity to do what he wanted. However, my family was loath to have their only grandchildren taken so far away. Especially my mother, who came from a close-knit family. She was one of seven sisters and was so attached to her family that she had persuaded my father to leave Waltham, Massachusetts, where he had an established business, and move to New York so she could be close to her sisters and her parents.

Mama and her sisters were used to meeting weekly. I remember when the sisters, their husbands, and their children would gather together most Sundays, at their parents’ home in Brooklyn. It was a brownstone type house, with six steps leading to a stoop. Inside there was a front parlor, rarely used, which contained a couch and a leather chair which had a button on one arm. When you pressed the button, the back of the chair flopped back and a foot tray slid out from the bottom of the chair. This was for stretching out your legs and was probably one of the first recliners ever made. No one was allowed to use this chair except my grandfather. When he wasn’t around and we were visiting, I always ran to sit on it.

Behind the parlor was the dining room, and this was used for holiday meals and family discussions.

All sorts of important issues were brought up around that table, where my grandfather sat at its head, as a judge dispensing justice. The second floor had three bedrooms, and the third floor was rented out to one of my aunts and her husband and young son. But I did not like visiting there. My Grandfather was a very tall man, slender, and wore a little Vandyke type of beard at a time when most men were clean shaven. He looked very distinguished. He had a vile temper and when he spoke in anger, we all trembled. Actually, there was no need for him to raise his voice. It was enough that he had spoken. He was very intelligent and spent his time writing, studying, and devising a calendar that could be used for 2,000 years.

On Sundays when the sisters met, they would talk intimately about their children, their husbands, their friends. Their husbands talked together, mostly of their businesses or of the baseball season or of the beastly weather they had had or expected to have. The grandchildren were placed in another room which rang with laughter. The room of the adults buzzed with animated conversation.

I was perhaps nine or ten years old and somehow escaped being put away with the other younger children, since I was a few years older. I loved gossip and I had my ears perked up for the tidbits I knew I would hear. Two of my uncles were talking. They didn’t realize I could hear them. One said, I’ve collected lots of asses over the years The other said, Well, I haven’t done that, but I’ve collected a lot of assets over the years. I’ve still got mine. What have you got?

They both laughed. I knew my uncle Harry was rich. Uncle Jack, the one who said he collected asses, was very good looking, had a great personality, but wasn’t so good at making a living. I thought everyone had uncles and aunts like mine. We were very familyconscious and it was taken for granted that we would meet at my grandparents’ house every week. The aunts and my mother would sit around the kitchen table and the uncles and my father would gather together in the dining room where a help-yourself bar was set up. In the summer, the men would sit outside on the back porch. My grandmother would flit back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room, listening but hardly ever saying a word.

It is not unusual today for people to celebrate their 50th or golden anniversary, but when my grandparents celebrated theirs, it was a really big event. Not too many people lived that long then. The family was so excited. They talked about it for months before the actual date. Mama and her six sisters planned the event very carefully—where it would be held, what would happen, who would be there. They wanted their parents to exchange their vows again. Why, I couldn’t imagine, since my grandfather had a bad temper and I never saw any sign of affection exchanged by either grandparent when we visited them. But I was excited, too, because I was getting a new dress and a pair of SILK STOCKINGS. Nylons had not yet come into fashion, and since I was only ten years old, I had never owned a pair. This was the height of fashion, I thought: silk stockings and a new dress.

The entire family assembled for the ceremony, the seven sisters beautifully gowned, their husbands in tuxedos. My newest and youngest uncle sang before and during the ceremony. My grandfather looked stern, my grandmother seemed ill at ease. She was not used to having her hair done, to wearing fashionable shoes or an elegant gown. Even at ten, I could sense that she would rather be home in her kitchen, But there she was, standing under a canopy with this man she had lived with all those years. She had borne him eight children, had had several miscarriages, had moved to the United States from a small town in Russia when he had sent for her, having gone there first to test the waters, find work, find a place to live. But did he find work? Did he need to find work when he had seven daughters and a son who would find employment and hand over their salaries to him? For that is what he did. He found jobs for them all.

So they stood under the canopy, repeating their vows. I watched them, feeling so adult in my new silk stockings. I wondered what it was like to live with the same person for fifty years. I would never marry a man who did not smile, who had a bad temper. I would never dress like ny grandmother. I would never have so many children. Maybe I wouldn’t have any. I would go dancing every night. I would be a famous writer. I would travel the world. How could anyone settle for less? I would have it all, and lots of silk stockings and silk underwear and satin sheets. I would have it all!

The daughters mostly spoke of their domestic affairs, their children, their husbands, and their problems with their married life. It seems that most of them had problems, but none more than my mother.

I’m thinking of getting twin beds, Mama said. I’m tired of making excuses. How often can I say I’ve got a headache? Since I was only ten, I thought poor Mama really did have headaches. Some of her sisters nodded their heads. A few of the sisters looked over to where I was pretending to read. I loved listening to them. They often said things I didn’t understand, but I would remember what they said and try to sort it out in my mind later. Then Aunt Frances spoke up. We all called her Aunt Fanny. The sisters tried to hush her but she carried on. You don’t know what you’re missing, she said to my mother. It’s a wonderful way to express your love, your feelings for your husband.

Mama snorted. The best way I can express my feelings for my husband is not to sleep with him. I don’t have to pretend any more. Women don’t enjoy sex the way men do.

The sisters gasped. Aunt Fanny laughed; I was puzzled. What did she mean, on top? In fact I was puzzled about many things. Why didn’t my grandmother ever smile? She seemed so stern. She was always busy, even though all her children were married. My grandfather was always asking for this or that. For years, he had kept her busy having children. Now he kept her busy keeping house for him, catering to him. He never showed any emotion for her that we could see, but when he saw me, he would hug me so hard I would lose my breath. I didn’t like that very much, especially when he would let his hands wander over my body. I never told anyone about that to this day.

Well, Mama got her twin beds and I grew a little older. Mama never had another job after she was married, but she did help my father in his business. She would tell me to be sure not to work after I was married; but I was only fourteen then and was hardly worried about that. Besides, I was not going to get married for a long time, and only after having started my career, in whatever it was I was going to be. Mama always said that men didn’t appreciate their wives. Women, she said, could work from morning to night. We are not appreciated. If you work, you still have to come home, do the housework, get dinner, take care of the children. What do they do? Come home, eat dinner, read the paper, go to bed. Go to bed to make love! Love, they call it! Love is hugs, maybe a kiss or two. A smile. A pat on the shoulder. Someone who tells you how nice you are. How nice you look. He tells you that you are a good wife, that you do a good job. That’s love, the way I look at it. Not fiddling around with the bodies, getting hot and sweaty.

I thought Mama was old, but she was probably in her mid-forties then. I felt a lot closer to Aunt Fanny. She was about fifteen years younger than my mother, but she looked and acted so much younger. We would have fun just walking, talking, stopping in for a soda, or buying ice cream cones. She wore her hair real short, with bangs. She was blonde, not really blonde, but she touched up her hair and didn’t care who knew it. She used lipstick, something Mama and most of her sisters didn’t do. And she used mascara, too. She was really pretty and she laughed a lot and I learned more about life from her than from anyone else. I knew I could talk to her about anything. One day, I asked her why she thought Mama felt the way she did. Aunt Fanny said I guess it’s because she never really loved your father.

Well why would she ever marry him if she didn’t love him?

Fanny thought that over for a moment. First, let me tell you this. Your mother was a beautiful girl. She’s lots older than I am but I can remember her flashing dark eyes, her auburn hair, her lovely complexion. All the boys fell in love with her, but no one seemed to please her enough to want to marry any of them. Then some of our sisters became engaged, got married, until there was only your mother and me left at home. And I was fifteen years younger than she was. So your mother decided she had better marry someone, and your father was the one who had hung around all these years, even though she had said no to him a hundred times.

I thought about that for a bit. Mama had been a beauty. Aunt Fanny said that and she should know. And my father had cared enough about her that he just waited and waited years until she decided to marry him. And I looked a lot like my mother, people said. Maybe I would grow up to be beautiful too. This was romantic, almost as thrilling as some of the books I took out of the library.

I really didn’t know Papa very well. He worked hard, and when he came home, he seemed tired; he ate dinner, read the newspapers, and went to bed. He wasn’t very tall, and he looked a lot like Harry Truman, the man who later became the president of the United States. He never seemed to have very much to say. I think he was frustrated because he had wanted to do so much more with his life. He never seemed to have much fun. But no one really seemed to be having much fun because there was a huge depression on. Jobs were scarce and people were being laid off all the time. I thought I would help and I applied for a Saturday job at a five-and-dime type store where I worked from nine o’clock in the morning to nine at night for $2.00. Papa didn’t like it, but I told him I didn’t have to take an allowance from him anymore.

I felt so grown up, working. It was funny how I got that job. A lot of girls showed up looking for work and we were lined up, like we were in a beauty contest. The store manager went up and down the line we had formed. He would point at a girl and say You and You. Then he pointed at me. I was under age for a work permit, but I was tall and looked sixteen. I felt so good when he selected me. So I began working on Saturdays from then on. Later, I went on to work at Macy’s while I was in high school. They paid one dollar more and that seemed a lot to me then. And I only had to work until six o’clock. It’s really strange, this feeling I have about working, paying my own way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Depression seemed to affect almost everyone except my aunt Lisa’s family. She was the rich