My final few stories concern the back door area and back yard. Most of the deliveries to the house came to the back door - usually from the Dover Street side but sometimes from the Arlington Street side. In addition to the mail we had regular milk delivery. The milk came in returnable bottles and the regular milk had a 2-3" layer of cream on the top. I didn't like its consistency but my brothers would drink it right from the bottle. Another popular delivery came from Mr Ward who came with cans of fresh home baked cookies. He was a quiet and unassuming baker whose cookies did not stay in the returnable cans very long.
Beyond the ice box in the kitchen was a steep winding stairs leading to a tiny room with a small sink. I don't think anyone 'lived' in the room which was on the way to a storage area and then up some stairs to the attic itself which stretched the length of the house. We each had our own storage unit but there were many shelves filled with presents (some unused) from my parents wedding in1928. We still have a few presents in our Kirkwood basement storage from our wedding in 1961 in our basement storage. It must be in our DNA.
We did spend some time on the back stairway. We were usually eating such family favorites as a potato chip
sandwich with catsup on white bread or a homemade milkshake with vanilla ice cream and some pure maple syrup. Another oddity on the stairs: one of us would have to kneed the white packet of margarine so that it would turn yellow and more resemble real butter. This type of 'protection' devised by the Dairy Industry was destined to fail from the start and soon we could get already yellow margarine.
The back yard was small and fenced. In the north-east corner where 3 garages came together it was easy to climb the yard fence as boys are want to do and then get up on the shed at the back of the Levering's garage. From there it was simple to get on the roofs of the two garages to the north. What was not so easy was the jump from the middle garage to the garage on the right. Only a few daredevils (of which I was Not one) could do that. I think that these neighborhood gambols were much more valuable in forming who we are than computer games currently popular with young kids now. Just saying'.
Finally a story about the results of winning a drawing. My mother always entered the American Legion drawing to win prizes. She won at regular intervals and her prizes included a mink stole, a 22 gauge rifle, and even a Sedan Deville Cadillac. She always laughed about the time she picked up the phone and a man said, "Well, you won the damn Cadillac". Anyway one day at the carnival, which was always held off of south La Grange Road, we won two live chickens. That's a little different than bringing home goldfish which we had done. We brought the home the prize chickens in a box. Much to our surprise my dad said that we would have fresh chicken for dinner that night. He had been brought up with chickens in Marietta Georgia. We all gathered in our small back yard and with no warning my dad wrung the necks off of the chickens which started to run around the ' like a chicken with his head cut off". It was a total surprise and a shock. There was blood everywhere. We had to catch the chickens, put them in a pot with boiling water and pull all their feathers off. This was a real mess. There were feathers everywhere. Finally our huge live chickens had turned into scrawny little dead birds. My mom cooked them up and they tasted pretty good but it did transform our view of the current FDR saying that for everyone there would be "a chicken in every pot."
I want to thank Stacy for including us in the next chapter of "29 Dover". I am sure the new owners will write another chapter in this home's fabled history.
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