Two Girls, Two Stories: Polly Pierce & Rogo the Magnificent

By Lucia Connelly

In 1936 to 1936 Polly Pierce was an eleven-year-old New Jersey school girl leaving the security of her grandfather’s home in Pennsylvania to travel east with her parents. Initially her problems were that of your average seventh grader; adjusting to a new private all-girls school, where she was placed ahead a grade. Polly worried over her studies, friendships, class and racial distinctions. Then like the present day, 1930s Europe cast a long shadow and Polly found herself in the middle of a life-threatening crime where she alone must save a friend and report the truth. Her parents drank, had parties unaware of the treachery right under their noses.

Polly was under extraordinary circumstances in a world controlled by adults. In order to do right she lied, stole and snuck around. In the end her bravery went unrewarded, an adult authority figure co-opted it.

Set in the early ‘80s, the second story, Rogo the Magnificent, is about a bloodhound who brings people safely home and Isabella a young autistic girl who manages life with the help of ghosts. At first the ghosts appear as figments of her imagination, later they’re sinister. Meanwhile Rogo continues to-do good and Isabella, needing someone safe to love attaches herself to him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665720175

Lucia Connelly

Lucia Connelly is the author of three novels under the name of Lucia Bartlett. They are; The Donkey Club; for young adults, The King of Maine; continues the lives of The Donkey Club’s characters but with adult issues and The Vampire Squid and Other Stories leaves them to their own devices in the fictional town of Foster Lake, Maine. Because Two Girls; Two Stories doesn’t follow her previous sequels, she chooses to use the name Lucia Connelly. Her Facebook page is LuciaBartlettBooks She’s added photos of her mother, Kit Bartlett. She lives in Maine and is involved with projects concerning the Maine woods and creatures within. She shows her art, (ceramics) and is the mom of an autistic child. She studied at Tuff’s University, Portland Museum School, Boston Museum School and University of Wyoming. Now into her older days, her battle with words continues…

Book preview

Two

GIRLS,

Two

STORIES

Polly Pierce &

Rogo the Magnificent

LUCIA CONNELLY

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Copyright © 2022 Lucia Connelly.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

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.

Art Credit: Lucia Connelly

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2015-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2017-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022904593

Archway Publishing rev. date: 4/8/2022

Contents

POLLY PIERCE

Introduction

Chapter 1 I leave Pennsylvania

Chapter 2 My New School

Chapter 3 7th Grade

Chapter 4 Half Day Snafu

Chapter 5 New Jersey

Chapter 6 I turn Twelve

Chapter 7 Winter tip-toe

Chapter 8 Chilly Spring

Chapter 9 Saving Ann

Chapter 10 Changes

ROGO THE MAGNIFICENT

Introduction

Rogo the Magnificent

About the Author

This work is

dedicated to my mother, Kit, in tribute

to a life spent caring for others, particularly

my dad, Eliot and sister Amy both of whom

she nursed through decades of cancer.

This page acknowledges my sons and

their indispensable tech help

Polly Pierce

Chapters 10

by Christine Price Bartlett

Introduction and Edits by Lucia Connelly

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Introduction

Polly Pierce was typed on an old machine, when I’m not sure. The first-person narrative mirrors my mother’s life as a 1935 New Jersey school girl, (Polly Pierce begins in 1936). Like Polly, she was a student at a private New Jersey school for upper-class girls. Her classmates’ homes were large, single and suburban while she lived in an apartment on the edge of slums. Her real-life parents could only afford the first year, (Polly Pierce is that first year plus obvious embellishment), subsequent grades were scholarships. Like many of her generation she (and Polly) were children of alcoholics.

My mother, Christine Price Bartlett, (Kit), was an only child, born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, May, 1924. Her infancy was spent in Pennsylvania until her father, Richard Price, (‘Phil’ in the story) found work in New York City. The family of three rented a tiny apartment, returning summers to her grandfather’s home in Johnstown. This continued until the 1929 market crash saw them busting open Kit’s piggy bank for train fare back home.

The next five years were spent at the Mooreland, a twenty-three room Victorian mansion and her mother’s family’s ancestral home. The house was enormous with twenty foot ceilings, pocket doors, stained glass and tin tile throughout. Set in the hills overlooking Johnstown, it was surrounded by park-like acreage. Her bedroom was the same size in square feet as their NYC apartment and the house was lively with black haired, dark eyed, olive complected family. Dark daguerreotypes looked down from the walls. Like a bird dropped an egg in the wrong nest, Kit was a blue-eyed blond. Her real Dad wasn’t the tall fair man described in her book but dark, thin, sensitive and smart.

More cousins fell on hard times and trickled back home. Kit, young cousins and servant’s children all went to Johnstown, PA public schools. Christine Price is very nice and I think I am too, but mother and dad say we are bad and I know that isn’t true, They sang at the bus stop.

Unlike many Americans, during the early Depression, 1929-1935, the Moore’s were never without because servant families moved in, stayed without pay, (there was no money) turning the Mooreland’s well-trimmed lawns into a farm with laying hens, milking cows, vegetable gardens and ponies for the kids. In 1935, when her parents drove away from the Mooreland, she was leaving the happy security of a loving household.

Kit also came from toughness, hailing from survivors of the Johnston Flood and grew up listening to nightly narrations of terror and woe.

In 1889, her Grandparents, a newly married couple with one baby, were adjusting to the freshly constructed Mooreland, (wedding present from their mine owning families), when the flood hit. Rushing home with flood waters rising, her grandfather’s carriage horse refused several wooden bridges, forcing him counterintuitively down river to the Conemaugh Viaduct. Crossing over he turned to see the wood bridges smashed and carried off.

Arriving home soaking wet he found the only thing dry was his tuxedo. Many flood victims, stripped naked from the current, needed cover and his wife gave everything away. Since it happened on Memorial Day there was plenty of daylight left to witness him descend the stair in his tux. Traumatized survivors wearing his and her clothes or otherwise wrapped in sheets, blankets, some wounded and bandaged, drinking tea from cups, saucers …bowls, laughed and clapped at the sight.

The Moore’s sheltered over seventy-five people; housing, nursing and carting supplies for months … everyone did.

I remembered hearing how they rummaged shipping barrels of century’s old china to feed everyone. (Repacked in wood shavings, two barrels ended up in our basement. The ‘flood china’ had a distinctive odor of coal dust and wood grime). The story of the little mare refusing to cross wooden bridges was a favorite. It was ten years before my grandmother was born…that mare brought Kit’s grandfather safely home and saved our lineage.

The spirit of 1889 wasn’t long remembered when thirty years later in 1919 an attempt was made on her grandfather’s life. Aged fifty-three, engineer and coal broker, he was down in the mine during the steel strike when an assassin tried to kill him with a jagdkommando, (triple edged dagger). Luckily, the assassin was disarmed by pit police. After the trial the knife was retrieved from evidence and ended up on a shelf in my Great- Uncle Austin Moore’s, (the baby’s), home.

Like many children of her generation, Polly and Kit were obtuse to world events and what the future held for all of humanity. but she did feel the shadow.

Polly Pierce was published posthumously. My mother lived well into her ninety-sixth year. In life she was a charmingly brave person who loved swimming, even in a New Hampshire granite quarry famous for water snakes, like a vat of leather belts.

She graduated Wheaton College with a degree in English lit, twisted wire in a munitions factory during wartime and before marrying my dad, was a social worker in NYC. Kit spent all her childhood summers at the Mooreland and only on occasion did she mention the emotional pain of leaving her grandparent’s home.

I added chapter headings, illustrations, some paragraph indents, the rest is completely and authentically my mother (brutal descriptions of adults) … … her own semi-biographical, historical, action-packed thriller.

One

I leave Pennsylvania

My mother and father are taking me to my new home in the east. As we left Pennsylvania and drove into New Jersey, there seemed to be larger cities, less country and finally one big town with no country in between. This town started out with big estates then large comfortable houses on large green lots much like my grandfather’s house where I had been living, but we stopped at none of these. We drove through the center of town with its movie theaters and drug stores, through a large street with old houses and small lots, onto a side street and stopped before a large square flat red brick building with rows of windows and no space between it and the old houses beside it. There was a sidewalk in front and maple trees that had not yet started to turn although it was after Labor Day.

We entered a large vestibule tiled in white like a bathroom reeking of Lysol. In the front hall was a surprise, a little push-button elevator which whisked us up to the second floor, another hall and a door which my father opened with a key to reveal a small hall with a coat closet, a living room, dining room, also I found a kitchen, a bathroom and two bedrooms. One had twin beds and one had one bed, a desk and a dresser, also an old couch in one corner. This was my room for I could see my world globe on the desk and beside it the only doll I had left. My dresses were hanging up in the closet. The only view from the window was other windows in a wall beyond and a deep, paved court below.

So I was in a box within a box within a box and sat on my bed feeling very uneasy. It was something to do with: a fire escape? window? New Jersey? I leaned out the window and saw a fire escape which ran under my window, past the kitchen window and ended at the hall window. I could see the elevator door, for the window was open. It was warm although the sun was getting low. I had a small suitcase with me and this I unpacked, hoping to put things in the right places.

Two

My New School

Mother and Dad had said there was a surprise waiting for me but I could see nothing now in the room or closet. I was about to go out and ask about the surprise but a burst of laughter and the clink of glasses and ice told me that people had come in. Before he got his sales manager job, Mother and Dad had lived in this building for a year in a two-room apartment while I stayed at grandfathers. They were lucky to have friends here; I wished I had some!

Next morning, we were up early eating breakfast in the dining room served by our young colored woman who came earlier to cook for us. This is Beryl, Polly, said mother.

Polly Pierce, I said and Beryl grinned, tossed her head with a swaying of earrings and swaggered back into the kitchen.

Then I looked at both Mother and Dad and prepared to ask my questions. Mother had a hard look with a pale face, dark eyes and straight black hair cut nearly as short as a man’s. When she smiled the smile seemed to be put on from the outside rather that come from the inside. Dad was the one I resembled the most, but with none of his elegance and charm. He had wavy blond hair, blue eyes and six feet of height. His features were straight, his forehead high and his fingers long and tapering.

What is the surprise you have for me? Where am I going to school this year? Both questions burst from me at the same time, for both were on the tip of my tongue.

The surprise is a school, said Mother. We’re going to look at it this morning and meet the principal. Be polite, shake hands, and be as intelligent as you can. You must make a good impression." I suddenly felt sad. It could be easier to make a good first impression if I was pretty; if my hair was curly instead of short and straight, although it was blond. And my build was spindly, my neck long and skinny. I had common, large blue eyes.

After breakfast we got into the car and drove Dad to a street corner where he disappeared into a grim little hole to ride an underground train to his sales manager’s job in New York City. The way back from the subway entrance was a mass of building without a break, stone arches, brick tenements, brick apartment houses, wooden one- or two-family homes with sad little backyards and in the distance factories with long smoke stacks giving fumes off into air. We pass a school of red brick with arched windows like an old-fashioned factory. The school yard was all paved but no swings or slides and was crowded with badly dressed children, mostly colored, and a few dark haired pale white children. I held my breath but Mother didn’t stop there. Instead, she passed through the center of town near our apartment building into a section of large houses and well-kept lawns and stopped outside a large brown house which looked as if a school had been added onto it. It extended back in the form of halls and rooms, all surrounded by playing fields and fronted by playground equipment. It was surrounded in turn by a fence and gate on which a sign read; Corner Oaks Day School for Girls. Three large old oak trees on the corner had given the school its name.

We mounted a few steps to the front door and rang. A colored man in work clothes