1955 Coronet

My grandmother's name was Frieda but she liked to be called Lorelei.  She was like no one else I have ever met.  She and I were close.  I was the first child of her first child.  

Frieda had not had it come easy and she had built a small greeting card business into a one-of-a-kind antique shop called Coronet.  It was on Beacon Street.

Busy Bee and where Coronet was to the left

Pelham Hall

One of my great treats when we would return from overseas, would be to go spend a few days with Frieda, just the two of us.  She lived in a studio in a building called Pelham Hall.
Her place was very small but it was full of antiques and special things.  She always said if something means something to you, have it where you can see and touch it.  I follow that principle to this day.  She had a Murphy bed in her living room, and a tiny little kitchen.  

Pelham Hall

Pelham Hall

We would come in to the lobby and call the elevator.  There was an attendant but he always let me push the buttons.  Usually, we would have had dinner after leaving Coronet, but before bed, while we watched the news, I always had a bowl of Cheerios and milk.  Then we would sleep in the Murphy bed.  The next morning, I would have my Cheerios again, and we would take the streetcar to Coronet, which wasn't far at all.  

Streetcar

Usually, I would spent the day with her at Coronet.  At lunchtime, I would go next door to The Busy Bee (which is still there) and bring back lunch.  

The Busy Bee

Sometimes if the weather was nice and the Red Sox were playing a night game, we would take the streetcar to Fenway Park and listen to the crowd, hoping a ball would get hit over the Green Monster onto Lansdowne Street.

Brookline

Coronet was very small and filled to the ceiling with antiques.  One of the things I remember best was a ceramic garden stool dating back to one of the Chinese dynasties.  I was the only one ever allowed to sit on it. 

Chinese Garden Seat

Rose Medallion

She had incredible jewelry; diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, pearls, gold, platinum, everything, all antique.  The walls were covered with shelves floor to ceiling, and every shelf was packed with unique treasures.  I don't know where she got them, but they were incredible.  

I learned a lot about silver, and porcelain, and jewelry.  I remember exactly what Rose Medallion dishes look like.  She would lock me in the tiny bathroom where she had a small safe, and I would take out all the money and play with it.  We would go to the bank every day and into the vault.  That's where she kept a lot of cash, as well as some items that she wanted to keep out of the shop.  

I remember when I was about 8 or 9, she commissioned me to make a doorstop for Coronet.  I got a brick from my Uncle Abbey and painted it white.  Then I painted a gold crown on each side, with a gold rim on all the edges.  She kept that doorstop until she sold Coronet when she married Irving, many years later.  That means the world to me.  

Some of her clients were the Mayor of Boston, as well as both the DiMaggio brothers.  The shop became a destination.  I was the only who really experienced it; my sister and my cousins were too young, and by the time they were old enough, they had no interest.  

I still have a few things she gave me, miscellaneous things like a little plaster dog my mother chewed on as a baby, a small metal box with an enamel plaque on the top, and a platinum mesh bracelet with a buckle of sapphires, my birthstone.  I also have a silver dollar from 1989 that she gave me.  

1950 Brookline

When my dad got back from the Pacific, they moved back to College Station so he could finish Texas A&M University.  After graduation, around 1948 or 1949, when I was still a small baby, he was sent to Abidan in Persia (now Iran) by his first employer, Foster-Wheeler, to work at the refinery.  At the time, it was the world‘s largest.  My mother and I went to live in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her parents until he returned in 1951.  I don’t remember much about that time.

Refinery in Abidan

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I would sit on my grandfather Arthur’s lap facing him and comb his hair down over his face.  In the style of the times, he had long hair combed back.  I would come it all down over and over again.  I remember he had a mustache and he laughed when I did this.

Another thing I remember is going to nursery school.  My mother would walk me there and back, or sometimes my Aunt Audrey did.  She was my mother’s sister and she loved me, I was her little doll.  She was probably around 20 or so at that time.  My grandmother Frieda and my mother both would yell at her for putting her laundry rack in the bathtub and never taking it out.  Funny the things you remember.

We would take my mother’s Cocker Spaniel Muffin for walks in the snow.  I remember a coat with a round collar with a bunch of buttons that took forever to fasten.  I remember we lived on Sewell Avenue.

I don’t remember it, but apparently we went to see the Red Sox at Fenway Park fairly often.