Dr. Ruth B. Loving - 1929-1940: Ruth remembers the Great Depression, her young adult years

Well, the things about my high school years were great, for the simple reason I remember signing up to go to Hillhouse High School...then, you had to take a foreign language, and I chose...selected French for the simple reason, I liked French songs, little ditties, and Eartha Kitt was very popular in those days, and I... took French for four years, and J'di parle en francais un petite aussi, today, and um, I'm just wondering why it is youth don't do that today in these schools around here in Massachusetts, have them take a language, but that's another thing. I enjoyed my school life.

Then my mother wanted to know, what did I want to do when I got out of high school, and I said to her, I'd like to be a singer. First, because I was playing the piano, and my mother could get that fifty cents together where I was going to a teacher for fifty cents in those days. ...I was being taught organ, uh, there...at twelve, thirteen years old, from our um...minister of music, Professor [John] Cadette. Only thing I couldn't reach the base pedals on the floor, but he taught me how to play the double console organ, pipe organ there in New Haven, and I learned how to play the organ without using the base notes and how to turn it on...so I had a very musical life, and in time, that my sister, older sister married and went to New York to live, and we began to hear about the two Jewish brothers who opened a nightclub. It was pretty important to people who were coming from overseas I said maybe, ... before I went to New York, that I might be able to get a job singing with Lillian someplace in one of those nightclubs or something, and Ma agreed..."she should go and try." Uh...but they were auditioning the time that I went there ...like in the...oh, June, July area, for dancers ...to be in the chorus line for their fall presentation of Cotton Club. It was becoming kinda well known and I said, well rather than singin maybe I, I could do a little tap dancing, a little soft shoe that I used to do with my brothers, so I...so anyhow, I auditioned. And uh, during the July and August months, we practiced and did our, our shuffling and tap dancing and soft shoe and had it down, and it opened in September, in the fall of the year for the regular season, the holiday season. And the night, the night they gave us our, our...costume to wear...there was older women who used to take care of me 'cause I was young then...

Q: How old were you?

Eighteen...eighteen, and um... and I looked at ...[the costume] and I held it up and said, wh..where's the other part? Where's the skirt? And she...they just said to me, put it on! I said, yeah, but where's the rest of it, 'cause it was just like a little strip...I learned that was a bra then. And um...there were these little, little panties, and I said, ... uh, I uh, I wanted a skirt, and no...anyhow, I put it on...put it on, and then there were six little...we were given six little...six uh...peacock feathers, with the long...part of their stems to it, that went in the back, the rear of our little pants we had on, so that uh, so that...I'm not even gonna look at your face... so that when we did our shaking and our steps, those feathers would left... and right... when you went left and right. And alls I could think of was, oooh, my goodness, I had nothing down in...in between my little strip across my bra and, and my panties. I said, kept saying to myself, oooohhh, my mother. I hope she not...don't come to the club, 'cause I g...we, uh, we didn't dress like that in those years there in twenties. Anyhow, my sister was allowed to be a guest...to sit along side there near the front row, and I remember when I was shaking, you know, I looked over at her, and all her mouth was wide open and so was her husband's, and I just kept dancing, kept dancing...so when it was over, Lillian came...my older sister came over, walked up, she just....you can't stay here! I'm gonna have to tell Ma what you're doing. I said, yeah, but look at the money I'm getting! Nah! Couldn't...anyhow, she called Ma, and told Ma...Ma told me come home. I didn't even spend the rest of the week. No, Ma wanted me right home before the end of the week. I was not to be in any kind of entertainment like that.

Q: So you had one performance?

No, I had to tell them I had to go. I couldn't stay! But they had substitute girls to go in...but that was...uh...I think I was very happy to have taken off, because I wasn't geared to undress to entertain. A singer, you know, keeps a well dressed...nice gown. So that was my first experience in entertainment and watching what I was getting into. Ma made me come home. She said, no, no, no...I had to go...but over the years I began to um...be a part of activities.

There was the, the days of the Depression when, ...everything when I say was rationed, it was rationed. And I remember my ...brothers, ...two oldest brothers, Alexander and Louis. They were out of high school, too, of course; they were older than I was, and they were trying to get jobs. And the only job they could get at the time...Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted the youth to come and clean up the areas, work in the green areas, so they joined up the Conservation Corps, the young men did. And...

Q: Now were they older brothers?

RL: Yeah, oh yeah. I was the youngest of seven children, and they were the oldest boy after the three girls and um, I had three brothers. And those two got a chance to um..go out to the corps. They were...um...left New Haven, Connecticut, at the time, and I think they were...went out west to where they stayed out there, where they...I think they had dormitories and things. I could hear my mother explaining it to friends where they were at. But they were making good money by the week that they sent home to help their parents and things, and help those...very good.

And I lived in those years where in that ... president, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's magic smile, fireside chat that Ma and Dad used to sit down and listen to, and I, I would listen along with them, too. And I could look at their faces. They were pleased with what he was saying. And so I began to be then, wanting to be involved with groups politically.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, even though he couldn't walk too well 'cause of his paralysis, he was, in my mind, was a great gentleman because he seemed to be doing things to help the little man. And, everything he...[garbled] time to ...he knew the people couldn't afford to take ...to have retirement fund, but he said, now if you put money away, you'll have it over the years, which is our social security. And as I grew older, listened to Mama and Dad, heard them talking, they, they figured, oh, that was great. Now, in my mind, I said, yeah, that is kinda great. You don't have to try to put a savings account together 'cause you're automatically saving it, by them taking out of your pay.