Kathy Schmitt
Kathy Schmitt (1943-2022) was my mother-in-law. We got along great and had a lovely relationship for the 10 years we knew each other. Kathy was ill for several years and I wanted to capture the story of her life for her family while we were still lucky to have her around. The following interview took place on November 28, 2021 at her home in Wyndmoor, PA.
Katie: What’s your favorite story about being a kid with your siblings?
Kathy: Oh, well I was one of eight and I was right in the middle. I had two older brothers, an older sister, a younger brother, two younger brothers, and two younger sisters. I pretty much hung out with the older ones.
We almost felt like two families, the four younger and the four older. And one of the things I love to do best was, we had a grandmother that lived in Southwest Philly, and we had a grandmother that lived in New Jersey. My older brother, Joe, when he was in high school and my brother, Mike, and I think sometimes my older sister Mary would take the trolley down to Frankford. We would get a bus to New Jersey, and we would visit my grandmother for the day. She would pick us up at the bus station and I just loved to do that.
Some of the things we did there was, she was a great doughnut maker and she only made them in the winter when she could take them down to the basement and put them on the near the heater where the yeast would rise.
And then she would let us help her fry them. I never kept the recipe, and I regret that. She used to do it all the time when we went in the winter.
She had a parlor and then a sitting room and then a kitchen with the kitchen table in there. In the parlor, she had these albums, these very puffy old-fashioned albums with portraits in them. And we would go through those albums and she would tell me who everyone was, all my ancestors. Again, I regret that I didn’t write all that down, but I was a kid and I was just interested for the moment, but now I would have liked to have known who they were.
We’d go to see my grandmother down in Southwest Philly, this is always on a Sunday. My mom was usually busy with the other kids. And I was very lucky that my brothers let me tag along, because that doesn’t happen that often. I never was allowed with their friends, but when Sunday, that was a special day.
So, we would get on the El and ride all the way to Southwest, down to downtown to 13th street and get the trolley out to Kingsessing Avenue and walk a block to her house. The funny thing about my grandmother, she was from Ireland, and I don’t remember whatever she cooked, to be honest with you, we would eat there.
You know, to this day, I can’t tell you what we ate. The Irish at that time were not known for their cooking. She was a very, very plain cook. My mother branched off from that being the daughter of an Irish, into watching cooking shows when that became fashionable. We had a pretty varied menu at home, but I can’t remember what she made.
One of the things I loved is getting on the El and riding that. It was like riding a train, you know, and my brother Joe would often buy me a comic book, Archie or Little Lulu or something in that era. And I was just thrilled that he would do that, buy me a comic book. So that that’s one thing that always sticks in my mind.
There are times that we went off together. Sometimes my younger brother Joe would go too. But mostly it was my oldest brother, when he was in high school, he would take me and I cherish those memories and I was so pleased. You know, who wants to hang out with their little sister? I was six years younger, but he didn’t seem to mind.
My father was very strict, very strict. You wanted to just sabotage everything rule they had. We got caught sometimes. He never laid a hand on us, at least the girls. I don’t know if he hit the boys; he always threatened with his belt and I think he did hit the boys, but I was never hit by my father.
My mother, she was really the heart of the family. It always felt like she did all the work, even though my father had his own business. She cooked for 10 people every night, a lot of times from scratch. And I remember I was a little kid in the 50s, and then in high school, I graduated in high school in ‘61. So that was, the time that I most remembered hanging out at home.
I always remember my mother making a big Sunday dinner. It could be chicken, or a big roast beef, or whatever. And everyone went their own way on Sunday and then come back for dinner. We had to go to Mass, not with my parents, but, on our own because we all went to parochial school. Then we could go out with our friends, which is what I did, or if my brother was going to Southwest Philly or Jersey, we did that. And then we wouldn’t be home for dinner. And I guess my mom was overjoyed at that, that she had less people to feed on a Sunday, but my mother was very generous. She brought Peter to pay Paul, is what she really did, but she was very generous.
She had excellent taste. To be honest with you, she really was fashionable in a way in, in that she bought really nice things, you know? So, she engendered that in us too. I can’t remember my mother being a touchy, feely, huggy person, or my father really, but they were always there; they didn’t ever abandon us for anything.
Did you get to hang out with your grandparents a lot?
I did when we went down there, but I failed to mention my grandfather in Southwest Philly. My grandfather was still living until I was into high school. He was around. He smoked a pipe. My grandparents always came to my parents’ for holidays. They had 7 children. My mother was the oldest. She said because my father had the business, my mother helped him with it. She could never get herself together enough for a holiday.
She would come off and help do the dinner and everything, and they would always be there. My grandmother from New Jersey always came with one of my brothers. She could drive, but after she couldn’t, one of my brothers would pick her up. And it was really eerie because we always had 13 at the table on a holiday, 10 of us and the 3 grandparents.
One of the things, though, is my grandfather – he and my father started taking car trips, and the first one he took was with my 2 older brothers and my grandfather while my mother minded the business. They went off to Yellowstone, and that was the start of family vacations.
Down the shore, my mother always took a place in like Ocean City for 2 weeks in the summer. My father hated the beach, but she loved it. We would have to sit on that beach. But then we learned to do stuff like play wiffle ball, and you know, that kind of stuff, and cards. I learned pinocle on the beach. She took those 2 weeks and that was it. She was not going to relent on that.
So, we always had 2 weeks at the shore ever since up until the youngest, which is my sister, Chris, was probably still in high school and they were still on the shore for 2 weeks.
They started family trips, and then the next trip they took was they brought my sister and I to California. My father was in a movie rental business, and he rented religious films to churches way before internet, way before any DVDs. They were reels of film, a projector and a screen. He also had a Universal contract where he got the Universal movies and he would book them that things like convents and churches and that kind of thing, summer camps. He had such an array of stock, and he had the Disney contract on the East Coast for 16 millimeter.
And that was another thing, we loved to watch movies at home.
Did you have like a favorite one, like one that you would watch over and over?
Well, I did have a few favorites. I loved Lana Turner. She was so glamorous. I pretty much liked any kind of comedy or romance. We didn’t go to the movies a lot, but sometimes on Saturday afternoon we would go for the feature.
I started to tell you about the trip to California that we took. My father was going to meet all the people that he had contracts with. We rode cross-country and stopped in St. Louis. My mother had a cousin there and we visited them with their children. It was wonderful. If they still live in St. Louis – I know her cousin’s deceased – but her and the children that were pretty much our contemporaries in St. Louis. We visited family, and she had a cousin also that moved to San Diego, and we visited them. She also had an aunt from when my grandmother first immigrated.
She went to Chicago because that’s where her sister Helen was. And we stayed at Helen’s on the way home from Chicago. So, it was kind of a fun family car trip. My sister and I always wanted a place with a swimming pool because it was summertime, and we could take a swim. They would always get 2 rooms.
And we just had a great time.
Then we spent a week in Hollywood and we stayed at the old Hollywood-restaurant-era hotel. I forget what it’s called. We were wined and dined by all the film people, and even Disney himself. We met him. We even got to go to Disneyland, which had just opened the year before. They gave us tickets and off we went. It was pretty primitive compared to today, but it was fun. And it’s funny too, because we visited Knott’s Berry Farm, which is right next to Disney land, and that really was a berry farm. There wasn’t much to it. Now I hear it’s a big amusement park, so things have changed, but I guess for the better.
That was one of my highlights, taking that trip with my sister and my parents. As I recall, that’s the only road trip I ever talked with the family for that length of time. That was a while.
How long were you out there?
6 weeks. And those days, I guess it would take you, at the minimum, a week and a half to get to California. And then we were visiting relatives on the way. We were in California week and then we went up the coast and went home on the Northern route. We were able to visit things right way, Crater Lake. I saw a lot in California, even as a kid.