Our low-rent-but-good-school-district choice of abode was very important to my parents, who aspired to nothing less that a college education for their daughter.
The janitor's apartment we rented was such a compromise. It was below ground level, but my small bedroom window could look out onto the front courtyard at sidewalk level. My parents bedroom had a similar window. The room where I slept, actually more of a storage room, had a door leading to a back passageway, with a short flight of stairs up to ground level opening onto a back alley. Nearby was the chute to the coal cellar. The coal was delivered by a truck that poured coal noisily down to the coal bin, coal that would feed the large furnaces that kept us warm.
The entrance to the apartment building was blocked by the main door opened with an owner's key or a buzzer if you were a visitor. To get into our apartment we went down a half-flight of stairs to our front door. This opened directly onto a living room. To the left was a small hall which opened onto my parent's bedroom and bathroom. Going down the hall the other way the living room became a kitchen, and beyond that, my room. We ate at a small table in the kitchen. In the evening we would listen to the news on a three foot high wooden radio in the living room and live radio shows Sunday nights.
At eight I still believed, a teeny bit, in boogy men! It was fall and I had found an acorn tree and gathered some acorns in a paper bag. I put them in the passageway, closed the door into my bedroom, and forgot about them. Sometime in the night I heard noises. Snapping, popping noises. Dare I look under the bed? The sounds continued and half frantic with fear, I finally got courage to flee out of the room, through the kitchen, through the living room down the hall into my parents room. They got up to investigate. Nothing under the bed. Someone thought to look in the passage way and found the acorns were snapping and popping away, perhaps due to worms inside. I never cared to find out.
Fall turned to winter, and my parents were able to buy me a sled. Across Sherbrooke Street was a little park, where children used to gather to slide down a snowy hill on toboggans or sleds. I had never done this before and found it quite delightful. The boys wore woolen knickers to keep their legs warm, but girls didn't wear pants in those days. The problem was solved by the so-called Red River outfit, hight fashion for little girls, consisting of a heavy navy pea coat calf length, a red knit hat called a toque, a matching knit sash and heavy red stockings and mittens. I longed for one, but, alas we could not afford it. I do not remember making any friends there, but while sliding down the hill I would play with the other kids as kids do, and enjoyed the novelty of so much snow.
