The Linen Closet

By Anne Mateer

I grew up in Yonkers, New York, and began my journey in life in 1940. A wonderful memory from my childhood is recalling stories shared by my parents with doses of history and humor on a lazy Saturday morning that lasted until noontime. The kitchen table with breakfast delights filled the stomachs of four children eager to learn about their world

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Mateer
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781737171515

Book preview

The Linen Closet

It is evening and I made my list of the things I have to do for tomorrow. There is always a bill to pay, leaves to rake, those darn leaves. Bruce and I fell in love with our fixer-upper house because of the wooded property. No one told us that these trees would grow taller and be accompanied with thousands of leaves that fall all year long. I remind myself that I have to call a fifth plumber to fix a leaky faucet in the backyard. Plumbers come with their own stories. Plumber number four went to the local high school and grew up with many of my neighbor’s children. They are all grown up and satellites somewhere else. He honored me with two visits to my drippy backyard faucet, gave me a plan, and promised a visit soon. Soon never came.

A new plumber, number five, has fixed the drippy faucet. The ongoing list of what has to be done is getting a new face as I cross off an accomplishment.

The linen closet. I am tired of pressing the door shut before something falls and I am tired of feeling guilty knowing that an item did indeed land on the floor of the closet. I remind myself that someday I will reorganize the linen closet, but not today. After all, there are five shelves and a box of articles. Every inch is accounted for. Because I do not want to act like the plumber who would not commit to a job, I dive into the world of cotton, lace and papers located in a box on the floor of the closet. I changed my mind, today is the day.

As unconventional as it may seem, I take everything off every shelf and toss the items into my hallway. I remove a box of papers and put that aside for a moment, it has sat safely on the floor of the linen closet for forty years. If I am ever going to do this task, I must make it harder for me to navigate my hallway, thus I have to look at the linens and then I make piles. Layers of sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths and any other item that belongs in a linen closet are scattered in a chaotic mess. Towels, too, bath and beach wraparound towels of various prints and washcloths are neighboring one another. I cannot navigate the mount, thus I have to explore my threads. I must admit I took some liberties asking designated shelves to accept items that were not in their linen genre. Since I am the boss here, I won. If I examine the items, I will be able to cross one more task off my list. My conscience is haunting me and saying, what about the basement? Oh that voice inside my head, it controls my lists and the lazy part of my soul.

What about the basement?

Yonkers

With a pile of linens on the floor, the cottony forest brushes up against a box of papers that reflect my past. I decide to read one article. Picking up a yellowed newspaper article, I pause to read on. It is dated January 27, 1980, and it is about Yonkers, New York, where I grew up. I sneeze twice, I always sneeze twice, and then begin to read. My father Alexander gave me many articles about this city and they have been sitting quietly for many years. This dusty paper refers to Yonkers as the City of Hills. Transmissions in the city’s police cars, fire trucks and garbage compactors give out well before their counterparts in New Rochelle and White Plains, the article states. I learned to drive a stick shift car navigating the hills that surrounded my home. My feet moved very fast as I worked the pedals of the car, and sometimes the emergency brake was added to the dance of shifting gears. My heart beat fast, especially if another car was behind me.

Continuing, tall walls support homes and apartments and buildings, which is why the City of Hills is also called the Terrace City. On Valentine’s Hill sits St. Joseph Seminary and I could see this iconic structure from my front porch. Although it is far away, the seminary architectural peaks and roofs could be traced with my eyes as I gazed into the distance. I loved sitting on my front porch looking at the distant hills with the restructures sharing the hilly landscape.

A photo shows a series of steps, 197 of them. My siblings, Alexander, Alan, Adrienne and myself climbed these steps to go to school. My mother rewarded me with extra cardiovascular exercise at her direction by asking me to return after school to the climb of 197 steps and get a particular food item such as a head of lettuce. My mother did not drive and the local stores did not carry produce. The base of these steps is on the corner of Orchard Street, where I lived, and Father Finnian Sullivan’s Drive. Right at the corner is a saloon. One could navigate it in three ways. I thought this was neat. Whenever I came home from school I would choose to go down the steps on two sides of the saloon or walk around on the sidewalk to get to Orchard Street or crisscross steps and street. I liked to use my imagination and enjoyed thinking about how I would get home.

Saloon where I first saw television. Down the street, first tallest house, 177 Orchard Street.

Even this saloon holds dear memories, it is where I first saw television. Besides not having a car, we did not have a television, and to boot, we had a party line telephone. Picking up the phone one could hear the operator say, number please, or a voice of the two party liners we shared this service with. Sometimes it took a half hour to get a call through. My father needed the phone the most. He was a musician and had to confirm a job or call a substitute musician to work with him; he’d ask me to check on the phone to see if it was free. He trusted me with the phone number he wanted to call. I would dial and if it went through yell, Dad, the phone is free.

At the saloon window I would peek in and watch the television. Some nice men having a quiet mug of beer invited me in to look at the television at close range and gave me a free Coke. I can still envision the darkness of the saloon, the dark oiled floor and the stale smell of beer and the smiles on some kind men’s faces. I was fascinated by the television. I brought along my younger brother and sister to the free television experience and they, too, were offered Cokes. One of my siblings spilled the beans to my mother, and she thought it was inappropriate for us to go into a saloon. After three experiences at the saloon and only being ten years old, I was forced to retire from drinking my Coke in a saloon.

Monastery Heights, 390 feet above sea level, is the highest point in the city. The Catholic Church on this site, Sacred Heart, is where I attended church. Sometimes I went alone for the nine o’clock service, climbing those 197 steps. My family did not attend church, so this was at my own endeavor. Up the street was another set of steps and they were called the giant steps. The grade of the land in this area was such that long stretches of pavers were placed and they joined a step, so one went up a step and then walked fifteen feet to another step. I thought it was fun to get to church this way at times, other times, the 197 steps led to church. I remember dogs barking at me, quiet streets, I was totally alone. I took chances. When a dog scared me, I crossed the street.

I took religion very seriously, especially after I made my Holy Communion. Crazy as it may seem, I even accompanied my grandmother to church at a later service. I attended church twice a day, first I went to the children’s service and then later with grandma. As I grew older, one church service was enough and the eleven o’clock service won. Sometimes, the Monastery Church of the Sacred Heart held high mass. This service lasted one hour and a half. My bony knees hurt due to the long period of time spent kneeling. The kneeling bench did not have upholstery, and it was hard wood. I enjoyed taking communion as often as possible. This required fasting from the night before. By the time eleven o’clock came around, I was woozy and feared I was going to faint.

There were a total of eight grandchildren living in our three family house. Grandma was on the top floor, my Uncle Steve lived on the middle floor. He was the driver, that is how we three got to church. None of the other children would offer to keep my grandmother company in church, even my Uncle Steve’s four daughters would not oblige. Uncle Steve sang in the choir every Sunday. I remember turning my head in search of my uncle as he sang from the choir loft. My grandmother thought going to church made you a good person. Grandma was religious, cold and unfair. She took her families who lived in the same house with her for granted. Considering my experience with the Catholic Church, it is a wonder that I still go to church.

I am not a quitter. My Aunt Ethel, who was Uncle Steve’s wife, contacted the church rectory and inquired if my cousin Janet, her daughter, and I could join the Brownies, which is the introductory troop to Girl Scouts. Aunt Ethel was told that only girls who attend Sacred Heart School could be in the Brownie troop that they sponsored. Although we were contributing members of the parish, we were treated like second-class members of the church. I was not a child that could sit still, and I loved the stained glass windows and the way light reflected through the colorful glass. I loved the chanting. The incense burning was not my favorite ritual in church. Every Sunday I sat in the pew with Grandma, I would turn my head in every direction looking at the beautiful artwork.

One Sunday a nun met me outside the church and yelled at me as I stood on the steps of the church. She admonished me and told me that I showed no respect for the Lord’s house because I fidgeted and kept looking around the church. I said nothing and my grandmother said nothing. My grandmother always believed that the Church was always right. Whenever I went to church after that reprimand, I glanced out of the corners of my eyes at all the artwork.

As an adult, I visited the Sistine Chapel and I wished everyone would leave the chapel so I could be alone gazing at this magnificent artwork. I wanted to lay down on the marble floor and stare up at this ceiling. If this was possible, I knew that a nun would jump out of the crowd and accuse me of not respecting a tribute to God. After all, this, too, is God’s house.

Near the church is the high school I attended, Charles E. Gorton High School, in the distance, steps that began twenty feet from the saloon where I viewed television for the first time would take me there.

Every Thanksgiving, Gorton played Roosevelt High School in a football game, and I was a twirler there for a time. After the game we walked home to a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. My mother was an exceptional cook and I was an exceptional eater. I competed with my brothers for the extra pork chop, and they would argue that I was a girl and should not eat as much. Meanwhile my sister was happy with chicken soup every night. Her big decision was the noodle she wanted. She liked wide noodles and I liked the thin noodles. She was pretty stubborn about her noodle choice, but sometimes my mother would ask her if we could have thin noodles for a change. She was the baby of the family and no one minded catering to her. Not only was she the baby, she was tiny, thus the nickname Teenie. We, too, had chicken soup but it was part of our meal; for Teenie, it was her meal. She never had the voracious appetite that my brothers and I had. She ate like a girl.

The Nepperhan Valley, down the hill from my house, was the home of the Alexander Smith Carpet Shop where my Grandfather Sutor and Uncle Emil worked. My dad shared with me the historic footnote that carpet made at this shop covered floors in then-Waldorf Astoria and the Czar’s palace at St. Petersburg. The children in my neighborhood appreciated the carpet shop’s five o’clock whistle, the workers would file out and head home for dinner. Men would be walking in many directions carrying their black lunch pail in their hands. When the weather was nice the men in the carpet shop sat outside on windowsills that had stone partitions abutting the window, a private perch if you will, to have their lunch. My Grandfather Sutor could not speak English well, and when I think about him I wonder if he ever communicated in full sentences while at work. I only hope that there may have been someone from Eastern Europe working there. I did know that most of the workers were Irish and they lived in apartments built by the carpet shop close by. Up the hill from the apartments were homes on a street named Orchard Street. It is here, on Orchard Street, that my grandparents bought the home that I would live in for twenty-three years. My grandfather bought this home, the three-family house at 177 Orchard Street, built in 1902. It is there where he raised his family living beside three Polish families to the left and two Irish families to the right and a backyard addition housing a Greek family.

My dad wanted to give my mother a break on Sundays so he took the four of us on walks. We walked everywhere, and as we walked he talked about the history of Yonkers. We walked through a cemetery, Oakland Cemetery, and he would point out famous gravestones. Eisha Grave Otis, the inventor of Otis elevators, is buried there. Looking at dates on the gravestones, history placed these resting people in a particular time immemorial. Still to this day when I travel the world I come across elevators with the name Otis inscribed on the saddle of the elevator. Dad explained that the Dutch name Yonkers came from the term, Younker’s Land, he who is a young nobleman.

When I visited Holland I ended up on a street named Yonkers; no saloon, no 197 steps, but nearby was an art museum. I felt at home looking at that sign and thought it was neat to discover a street named Yonkers.

Golf originated in Scotland and my father was born in Scotland, Glasgow to be exact. The sport of golf was introduced into the United States by way of St. Andrews Golf Course, Yonkers, New York. The first modern shopping center was built in Yonkers, Cross County Shopping Center. I remember shopping there as a teen and eating a slice of pizza and drinking a Coke after my sister and I spent hours looking for the right item. Somehow, that item always seemed to be what every other teen was wearing. It was so important to look like everyone else, to mirror one’s peers. My sister, being petite, went in one direction and I, being five feet eight inches tall, struggled to find pants long enough for my long legs. My sister, being only five feet two, had better luck. I just had to accept that sleeves would never be long enough and pants as well.

This was before clothing was made longer. What a funny stage in life, insecure and searching for an identity. And so, we boarded the bus home. Yonkers was the setting for Hello Dolly. In the dialogue of the show the name Yonkers is mentioned; what a great show. There are several milestones in New York State, and one in Yonkers reads 26 miles from New York. Gentlemen driving horse-drawn carriages depended on these milestones to note how far they were from the city. My father took pictures of these milestones throughout Westchester County. He loved history.

I cannot put these yellowed pages down that talk about Yonkers without mentioning a place called Getty Square, the main shopping area for the citizens of Yonkers. Shoppers flocked there on trolley cars and later on buses. At the foot of this shopping area is the railroad and a statue of Ella Fitzgerald. When my dad was in high school in 1935, he would stop with his friends to hear Ella sing as she stood on the steps of her house. She sang scat and had an audience quite often. He said everyone was spellbound by her voice. The street she lived on was School Street, and I would take a detour from time to time when in Getty Square to look at her house. Of course she no longer lived there, but I always hoped walls could talk, and so I imagined her a young school girl living in this rather poor section of Yonkers singing her heart out.

My dad was not pleased with the statue of Ella, he felt it was too small and should not be placed so close