A little background on this. I have a bias against writing a history of my life. Both of my brothers made attempts at this in their later years. However, as I read their efforts, I concluded that people have an inescapable tendency to glorify themselves, a position I did not want to be in.
But two things happened to change my mind. First, my daughter Kitty begged me to write it as a birthday present to her. And second, she gave me an angle that saved me from self-promotion and focused on the early years of my life only. "Write about life as you perceived it, with special regard to the quality of life and early technology, or lack of it. You lived before the days of television, hi-fi systems, jet planes and computers. I would like my son to learn about life in those days."
In order to organize my thoughts, and make more interesting reading, I have departed from a purely chronological approach. Instead, I have divided my early life into two periods that overlap in time:
My early years in Brooklyn, New York, 1920-1928
Here’s the setting, I lived in this period with my
father, mother, two older brothers, two older sisters (sandwiched
in age between my brothers) and a live-in maid, whose identity
changed from time to time but was always Norwegian, our
family’s heritage, 
We lived in a high-ceilinged,
3-story shingled house (weathered, not painted -- which is the
sensible thing) at 357 Ovington Avenue in
Brooklyn, New York. The house was located between third and
fourth avenues and between 69th Street and 71st Street, in Bay
Ridge.
The house shared a common wall with its mirror twin, occupied by a family named the "Hansons," We never saw nor heard the Hansons. But they must have heard us, because the whole second floor of our house and part of the first was given over to "The Munson Institute of Music." Pianos were bellowing forth from three "studios" on the second floor up to six hours a day starting at noon. Longer on Saturdays. But never on Sundays.
My dear sister "Wiggles" (not really her name but given to her by Alex, oldest of the children, because she resembled a camp counselor with a similar name), nearest to me in age, was puzzled by the economics of the music school, "Does the money roll out of the piano when pupils play it?" she asked.
More about the house. It had a long hall running from the front of the house to the rear on each of the three floors, foreshortened slightly at each end on the second and third floors. Opening off the hall on the first floor -- from front to back -- was the living room (used as a reception room for the music school), a dining room, a pantry and a kitchen. In the same order on the second floor were a large studio (my father’s with his Steinway grand piano fitted into an alcove provided by the Frank Lloyd Wright-like tower on the front corner of the house on the side away from the Hansons). Then came two studios. There were commodious closets separating the studios from each other, used mostly to store quantities of sheet music. A bathroom was at the end of the hall in the rear.
Since the hall was next to the common wall shared with the Hansons it had no windows. It was always dark. Add to this the fact that the interior was paneled on the first two floors in dark oak. Pretty gloomy. Oh yes, before my time they must have used the old gas lighting fixtures that still stuck out of the wall in the hall although no longer used. In the hall on the second floor there was an old fashioned telephone on a small shelf It was a two-handed one. One hand to hold the base and mouth piece; the other to hold the earpiece to your ear.
We had a coal furnace, which generated a quantity of ash that had to be deposited in ash cans and placed outside to be picked up by the "Ash Man," who came in an impressive large truck. Dad had to "bank" the furnace at bedtime so the fire would not go out overnight and revive it at the crack of dawn by opening the draft and shoveling more coal on to the fire.
We also had a "Garbage Man," who removed our accumulated garbage, and an "Ice Man," who regularly delivered a large chunk of ice which he carried in a burlap bag slung over his shoulder. He would deposit it noisily into our icebox which was on a narrow porch outside the kitchen. It seemed like a dreadful way to carry ice around. Later in life, I was to see some men cutting blocks of ice out of a frozen lake and storing them in an "ice house" that had some primitive insulation - thick walls and partly sunk into the ground like a Long Island potato barn. I believe they used straw to provide separation between the large blocks of ice.
Of course we had no television, hi-fi systems or computers. We eventually did have a large piece of furniture that housed a hand-operated phonograph. It had a hinged top which when opened provided a 78 rpm turntable and a movable arm with a needle to track the groove in the shellac records. How this produced a sound loud enough to hear, I still do not know. There was a unit that looked like a giant earphone that deaf people used to use which apparently amplified and directed the sound that came from the pressure of the needle in the groove.
We rarely used this appliance. I can remember two record albums that we had, One was a collection of marches used to accompany morning exercises called "The Daily Dozen." The other was Dvorak’s New World Symphony, the slow movement of which was played at Mother’s funeral service in 1929. I also remember being instructed by Mother to destroy publicly some jazz records that Alex brought home and were considered "sinful."
The kitchen was sunny and simple. It overlooked the back yard and part of the driveway. There was a gas stove with four burners and one oven, all on four legs. A plain table with four chairs was by the window. I can still see Sally Reimond sitting at that table. She was Mother’s best friend and loved to drop by for coffee and cakes. She was a jolly person and got Mother to join in many good laughs.
I presume we had a hot water heater in the basement, connected to the furnace. We always seemed to have enough hot water coming out of the faucets. In addition we had a dirty coal bin in the basement, an old pool table and a workshop for Alex (my oldest brother). It had a dank smell.
Most of the activities I remember were family oriented. We all went to the 46th Street Lutheran Church every Sunday. From time to time the church would give a prize for the family who appeared with the most members -- a bible. We won this prize a number of times.
The children all lived and played on the third floor or outdoors, except for meals and evenings. But we had to go down to the bathroom on the second floor for our baths (no shower). Mother would occasionally have to leave me alone in the tub and told me to say "no mittens" if anyone came to the door. Why those words were so magical I had no idea.
The girls played with dolls and I played with blocks and soldiers. Every year, Alex -- in anticipation of Christmas, would make a new layout for our electric trains in the cellar. Then, on Christmas Day I was allowed to see his latest creation I remember one in particular. He used an old pool table for most of the track but had some very realistic trestle bridges that he made himself to connect the center section with a track that ran along the wall for a considerable length and then returned to the center table. The trains were much larger than those that came later: "Standard" as compared to "0 Gauge" and even smaller which came years later. The trains we had were most impressive when they raced around that layout.
We spent a fair amount of time visiting relatives. Mother used to take me on the Long Island Railroad to visit her mother (Mor-mor) and father (Da-da) in West Hempstead. Dada had a farm out there with real sheep, which Henry (my other brother) used to like to ride with his cousin Burton. Burton was a year or so younger than Henry and lived with his parents (Aunt Helen and Uncle Oscar) in Flatbush. We also visited them from time to time.
Curiously enough, I don’t remember taking pleasure drives in our car, although it was readily available in the detached garage we had in the back of the house. We used it to visit relatives and to make the annual trek to Cragsmoor, the family summer place. I can remember a large Studebaker Touring Car with open sides. In those days you used a crank which you connected to the end of a shaft in the front of the car to turn the engine over. My job, on occasion, was to sit in the driver’s seat, turn up the gas and turn down the spark as soon as the engine started up. Sometimes it took a bit of cranking to make that happen. In case of rain, we had some strips called "isinglass" that we would snap in place to keep out the rain while preserving some visibility.
My recollections of the people around me in those years is still vivid in my mind. The dominant character in this play was my mother, who (I’m told) idolized me. She was loved and adored by all of us with an intensity that is difficult to recreate in words, an intensity that may be magnified by her early death in an automobile accident. She not only ran the household. She was the creative and energetic manager of the music school. She organized some social clubs around different musicians in which people would meet together. Years later I was told that the Bach Club had continued to exist for a long time after all its members had graduated from the Munson Institute. My father once said to me, "Whenever I saw a certain look in Mother’s eye, I knew I would have to do something 1 wasn’t too keen on doing." One of those somethings was to make some recordings for the Victor Company, then a big name in recorded music.
She was religious to a fault. We always had to go to church on Sundays and we couldn’t play cards or use scissors on the Lord’s day. Smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages were major sins. She spent some part of every day at her "devotions," kneeling beside her bed and praying to God. I once asked her what she said to God and she answered "mostly to take care of you and all my loved ones."
She gave herself unselfishly to others. Alex once told me that he was driving Mother along fourth avenue when she said "stop the car." which he did. She then went into a small retail store and spent ten minutes looking at merchandise. She came out without having bought anything, then explained to Alex that she just wanted to stop a fight that she had seen in progress between the man and woman who apparently were the proprietors.
Dad was a talented musician but a
poor businessman. As long as Mother was in charge, the Munson
Institute of Music thrived. Without her, and assisted by the
Great Depression, it barely survived. The bank foreclosed on the
house we had moved to in Garden City, Long Island and we had to
move into a small apartment on 223 Seventh Street there. Dad was
a kind, caring father who left the children’s upbringing to
my mother. He would dutifully deliver spankings when she asked
him to. But his heart was never in them.
Alex was my "big brother." We were 12 years apart but I enjoyed keeping him company while he worked at his workbench in the cellar. During these years in Brooklyn he was going through the difficult teens. Always full of spirit (and mischief) he must have bridled under the tight controls that Mother exercised. We were still living in Brooklyn, I believe, when he went away to college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania -- Lehigh. Alex suddenly found himself in an environment with new freedom. He had already taken up smoking (and developed a smoker’s cough) and now he took up drinking. He ended up being kicked out of Lehigh for having stolen some wooden Indians from the front of a cigar store in Bethlehem .
Marian (the second oldest) would later become a second mother to me after Mother died, and even before then was occasionally put in charge of me. But mostly, to me, she was one of two sisters. Four years apart in age, the two were good company for each other. They both attended Shore Road Academy, a private day school that overlooked New York Harbor.
Henry, my other brother, who was two years younger than Marian and two years older than "Wiggles" was a beautiful child. So much so that Marian was jealous of him and asked Mother why every one singled him out for praise when the two were taken out together. Henry was a dreamer. His teachers reported he spent large amounts of time looking out the window dreaming. He once told his siblings that he would "join the kings" when he grew up, which in a sense he succeeded in doing. He later became very much in demand, an unusually attractive bachelor living in a chic apartment at 57 East 72nd Street in Manhattan.
In later years, Gretchen (my wife) and I reflected that a major reason we all got away to Cragsmoor each summer was the fear of polio. But get away we did.
From an early age I can remember the enormous task of packing the car with the whole family, two parents, five children, one maid, and sometimes a cat, with all our baggage into the old Studebaker. Dad took long vacations in the summer. The Munson Institute was shut down and he got someone to take his church services on Sundays.
Trunks had been sent on ahead, but it still was a major operation which took most of the morning. The worst part was actually the trip itself. Almost always we had tire trouble. Also some mechanical emergency would usually force long delays, not to mention stops to eat and go to the bathroom. The distance from Brooklyn was about 110 miles, North and slightly West. Years later we used to make the trip in 3 hours, but then it was an all-day experience.
The excitement would grow as we climbed the mountain winding through the woods until finally we could see Bear Cliff, the rock formation that crowned our mountain. (Years later on visiting Cragsmoor after having seen the Dolomite mountains in Italy, I realized it was a rather small mountain -- perhaps 1200 feet above sea level). It was always a game to see who could see it first. But then we had to pass Miss Wright’s farm and enter onto our private drive that continued for about one half of a mile to the crossroads where the coming and going roads of the Lee Void Lodge converged on us. It was an unkempt dirt road with deep drainage ditches on each side, grass growing in the middle, and flanked on the sides by overgrown fields. Another two turns and we could see our beloved cottage. (All the houses in the Cragsmoor area were called "cottages." I suppose because with very few exceptions they had no central heat and no insulation).
By present day standards it wasn’t much of a second 
home. Small living room, small dining room,
large wrap-around covered porch, kitchen and bathroom on the
first floor. One large and two medium sized bedrooms on the
second floor. Weathered shingles on exterior walls and sloping
roofs. Stained vertical tongue and groove wainscotting for the
interior walls. Furnished inexpensively. An upright piano in the
living room which opened without doors into the dining room.
Wicker furniture for easy chairs. A simple, rectangular,
maple-stained wooden dining room table with eight straight-backed
chairs filled most of the space available in the dining room.
On good days we used to eat out on the porch, which gave rise to one of our family sayings: "Don’t go out empty handed," Dad would say. If every one helped clear, it was easier to get the dirty dishes through the dining room and into the kitchen at the end of the meal.
We had an ancient grape vine that provided a screen in the way of our view to the South (away from Bear Cliff) from our much lived-in porch. Dad used to delight in "feeding the grape vine," by pouring leftover liquids over the railing. He had a similar practical approach to building up the bank of the road that circled from the kitchen door, down and around our great five-trunked oak tree and back beside the grape vine on its way back up to join the incoming road. He encouraged us to dump trash there! You couldn’t see it easily for the bank was fairly deep and largely hidden by wild sumac. Funnily enough, it wasn’t much of an eye sore and it really seemed to work.
Our cottage sat on one acre on the sloping side of the mountain surrounded by some 78 acres that Mother’s father (whom we called Dada) had bought. Lest you think this was some beautiful estate, let me state that almost all of these acres were rocky, wooded and on a sloping mountain side. At one point the land must have been farmed, at least in part, because there were wild vestiges of what must have been cultivated fields in the dim past. It was a constant battle to prevent these fields from relapsing into underbrush and ultimately forest.
There was one other cottage on Dada’s property, the "Upper House," which was higher up and at the start of the trail we took through the woods to get to Bear Cliff. He had given it to his other daughter, Aunt Helen. But she never used it. Instead, Dada and various elements of his family would take turns using it. Many summers it stood idle.
Except for the Lee Vold Lodge, a large 3-story boarding house that had been successively extended from the original small farmhouse atop a bill to our East, we never had any close neighbors. The Lee Vold was run by a Mrs Larson and her sister Miss Lee (Helen I think), relatives of Dada’s whose family had been good to him in Norway as a small boy. He either gave them the property or made it very easy for them to buy it.
The Lee Vold Lodge was ultimately torn down after my brother Henry bought the property. The wrecking company paid him $1500 to demolish with the lumber, furniture and furnishings going to them to sell. That was fine with Henry, who had long referred to the structure as a "hideosity" and was happy to get rid of it. Many years later, when I went antique hunting with Gretchen, I was to see the same kind of porcelain basins and pitchers that the Lee Void had in every sleeping room. The Lodge guests all had to use public bathrooms. Some of the ugly furniture in the living room and parlor seemed to re-appear likewise in antique shops.
Even in my memory span, for several years we had neither electricity nor telephone service. We used candles and kerosene lamps for lighting and a kerosene stove for cooking. My job was to fill the lamps and the glass container on the stove with kerosene. We had an old wood stove in the kitchen that had once been the only means for cooking and was still needed for many years to get hot water. We had no furnace. A few kerosene heaters were available on cold days, which I also had to keep filled. We got deliveries of ice for our ice box which we kept under the porch, but we had to take care of our own trash and garbage.
A Miss Wright, whose farm was located next to the entrance to our driveway, used to come on two days a week to get our order for food and supplies. She seemed very old to me and had a pinched mouth as though she hadn’t really taken care of her teeth. She did this for many Cragsmoor residents. She would drive her Model T Ford station wagon on the "Gully Road" down the mountain to Ellenville, where she did all her shopping and then made deliveries later in the day or the next morning. She would get anything for us. I remember ordering such things as a kite and a scout knife. She let us run a tab for the whole summer and got paid in the Fall. How she kept her vendors at bay escapes me. She was devoted to Mother, which I think partly explains the excellent service she continued to give the family for many years.
Cragsmoor was mostly a summer community. There were three outstanding features. The Cragsmoor Inn, surrounded by a nine-hole golf course was a ten minute walk through the woods and a 15 minute drive back to the main highway and around to the North.. Beyond the Inn and next to the seventh hole on the golf course was what passed itself off as the central village. It consisted of the post office with a gasoline pump and soda fountain on one side along with the Catholic Church. On the other side was the Protestant church, from which you could hear familiar hymns as you hit your golf ball to the seventh green on a Sunday. Next to the church was the Cragsmoor Free Library. The third notable feature was the Episcopal Church about a mile farther along. Made of fieldstone, it was perched atop a ridge that fell sharply away to a stream far below. As a result, it provided a breath-taking view of the Catskill mountains farther to the North. The church was probably visited more by sightseers than church-goers.
Well, that’s the setting. Now, what did we do with it?
Much of our activity was family centered. Since there were quite a few of us, and often had guests (who must have stayed at the Lee Void Lodge). We would entertain each other. We loved to go on picnics. Sometimes we went to places in the valley which had swimming facilities. Other times we packed our picnic on our backs and went down to a number of groves we had prepared for this purpose in the woods below our house. We had a pine grove and a birch grove, for two that I remember. We would often do this in the evening and have campfires, which gave appropriate settings for ghost stories and singing.
Conversation, a much-neglected art today, was an important part of our lives. I can remember as a small boy listening to adult conversation as we all sat around the living room after dinner. Usually on such occasions we would have had a guest or two for dinner who added special interest to the sharing of views. Sometimes it would be a member of the staff at Dad’s school, or a minister that Mother had gotten to know in one of her varied religious activities. Once we had the tympanist from the Boston Symphony orchestra, a Mr. White, who held us all spell bound by his narratives.
A Cragsmoor resident, Lloyd Almiral, would occasionally join us. He was a member of a more wealthy Cragsmoor family and made almost annual visits to Beyreuth to hear Wagner operas, which impressed me immensely. Dad would often play the piano for us. We had no TV to watch, no radio to which to listen, nor any home movies to show. But I would sit there quietly, listening to their talk, hoping no one would notice it was past my bedtime, until I could keep my eyes open no longer.
Frequently, as I worked thy weary way to bed I would beg Dad to "Play Beethoven" for me. I wasn’t trying to impress anybody. But at an early age I had developed a great liking for this composer. He created a good deal of piano music, which when I hear it today strongly reminds me of lying in my comfortable bed in Cragsmoor, listening to my father play Beethoven sonatas and other pieces. Just to add a further touch of drama, I often associate this with the sound of rain on the roof. We had very little roof between us and the rain, which produced a dramatic pounding when the rain came down hard.
If Mother dominated my early years in Brooklyn, my brother Henry - certainly after Mother’s death in an automobile accident in 1929 - has to be said to dominate my Cragsmoor years. Since he remained unmarried until after World War II, and lived in New York City -- an easy week-end trip away -- it isn’t surprising that he developed the strongest attachment to Cragsmoor. He would look across the fields at the distant valley and be clearly thrilled by the magnificent view. In later years he would organize groups of friends to go to Cragsmoor for weekends. The rule was to work in the mornings, enjoy a mid-day martini (or two!) and relax in the afternoons. (A policy I adopted when I brought Harvard friends to work around the place during Easter vacations). His favorite comment, when we would rest from our heavy labors clearing some fields, was "It’s truly Wagnerian," his way of extending highest praise to an unspoiled mountain scene. His eyes would mist a little and his face would reflect such intense pleasure.
Henry ultimately succeeded to the ownership of the whole place Dada had once bought. It didn’t occur without some hard feelings, although we all had to agree he was in the best position to take care of it. It was Henry who would organize shingling projects to keep the roof sound; extend the small, second floor porch, and, much later, build a fireplace in the living room to make the house more comfortable in off-seasons. He would even get me to go with him on "transplanting" expeditions, which usually took place in bad weather and which I didn’t particularly enjoy.
Dad also loved Cragsmoor in his quiet way. I don’t think he ever got over losing Mother. He broke down completely when he saw her lying in the casket in our living room in Garden City when the finality of the situation fully struck him. (I’m sure this is the reason I am bitterly opposed to the practice of viewing the body). Most probably the place evoked continuing memories of her, which warmed him and saddened him at the same time. He loved to sit in a rocking chair on the porch reading a good book, feeling the breeze play with his thinning hair. He enjoyed our large lilac bush which was a blaze of color in the early Spring. He would also play croquet, a game at which he was very good.
I don’t remember much about Alex in Cragsmoor. He got married, had children and left the family hearth at an early date. He was the architect and principal builder of a large 4-car garage on the property. I helped by carrying nails. It was quite a piece of engineering. The design had two cars side by side, two deep. Then on the second floor, which was never completely finished, there were overflow sleeping quarters. He ran a strong cable from the peak of the roof to the center of the floor (and ceiling) area and supported the floor largely by suspension from the roof
Alex and Henry had to learn plumbing in addition to carpentry, all of which they taught to me. In those days you had a pipe cutter, to cut pipe to the size you wanted and a pipe threader, to put thread on the ends so you could screw the pipe into connectors and sockets. Both, of course, had to be worked by hand. The three of us had to replace the pipe from the hut, halfway up the hill, that contained our water storage tank to the system of pipes for the kitchen and bathroom. The tank, by the way, was filled by pipes that connected it to the gasoline pump and the well near the Lee Vold Lodge, which provided fresh water to all three units.
Marian & Wiggles, particularly Wiggles, benefited from our proximity to the Cragsmoor Inn. Every summer the Inn imported about 7-10 strong young men as waiters, bus boys, dishwashers, etc, who somehow learned -- probably from last year reports -- that there were two lovely girls who lived in a house only a 10 minute walk through the woods. These fellows would come over, help us roll the tennis court, mend fences and do other odd jobs in return for their company. There were dances every Saturday night at the Cragsmoor Inn, which would usually find one or both of my sisters in attendance.. By this time we had electricity and telephones, which made communication easier. Wiggles developed a good tennis game (wooden racquets), which became another drawing card taking us to the Cragsmoor Inn and the Inn help to us,
In those days, girls were expected to take care of kitchen work and housework. But on rainy days, the boys would take over the kitchen and make some special dishes. Sometimes it was candy, other times it was French pancakes or biscuits. We always made a dreadful mess. I guess cooking an entire meal was beneath our dignity! How times change.
As for me, I was much younger than the others. I was allowed to play with them but contributed little. In the early years, Mother used to import playmates for me. One of these was my cousin John who was great company. We slept in the top of the garage Alex built, which is where he taught me about smoking. We loved climbing around Bear Cliff together. I still have a picture he took of me perched on a rock on the face of the cliff. It was while we were doing this that I had my only accident in all the years I spent there. I was picking and eating some blueberries, holding on to a bush with my left hand, when the bush came off at the roots and I went plunging about 10 feet onto some rocks. John was panic stricken; told me to lie still until he could work his way down and came to my aid, Carefully moving one limb at a time I was relieved to find that there was no serious injury. I had scuffed a knee a bit; but that often happened. John was overwhelmed with thanks for my good fortune. He would have been in deep trouble, being two years older than I, if I had really been hurt.
At a relatively early age I started to earn money by caddying. $4.50 for 9 holes and $ 7.50 for 18, per bag. I played more tennis than golf in those days, but gradually switched around to golf. Dad had given a recital for the benefit of the Cragsmoor Country Club for which he got a greens fee ticket that allowed me many free games.Why? I don’t know. Golf was more difficult and more exasperating. But you did get the thrill of hitting a very good shot. More so than in tennis where everything happens so fast.
Somewhere along the line, I think after my brothers and sisters had left the nest, I got a 22 caliber rifle, which I had to keep in Cragsmoor and discipline myself to use most carefully. I remember going to bed with the rifle on the floor under the bed -- not loaded. I fancied myself as a kind of pioneer when I stalked through the woods with it in search of crows. I don’t remember bagging any. But I did shoot at some. I was a great hero when I pointed my gun out of a second story window at the request of the family and successfully shot a frog that had invaded our small goldfish pond underneath the giant oak tree and had annoyed us with its croaking.
You can be sure that having a summer house gave me considerable standing among my friends in Brooklyn. That, and having a backyard to play in. I don’t know why I never had any of these young friends join me in Cragsmoor. It simply never occurred to me. Perhaps because I was the lowest one on the totem pole in terms of influence on family decision making!
Well Kitty (my daughter), I hope this gives you what you wanted. I enjoyed doing it but doubt that your son Paul will find it anywhere near as enjoyable as I did creating it. I wish I could close with some down-to-earth philosophical thought. But I can’t think of any.
All my love,
December 7, 2001
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Copyright © 2002 Kitty Munson Cooper