“Puberty for a girl is like floating
down a broadening river into an open sea.” Psychologist Granville Stanley Hall
Unlike the phrase “Sold
down the river,” which originated two centuries ago when troublesome slaves
were transferred to plantations in the Deep South where conditions were truly
horrific, Marcella Portman Cutter employed the title “Down the River and Thru
the Gap” to highlight how her life broadened after she finished high school and
boarded a train to Chicago. Marcella sent me a sample of the manuscript after I
gave her son Kevin a copy of the Steel
Shavings volume “Age of Anxiety,” which contains recollections of celebrating
V-E Day in Chicago at age 15 and riding the Ferris wheel at Riverview Amusement
Park to impress a date the following year, much to her regret. Her cover letter stated: “I am now 87 years old and about 25 years ago started writing my family
history. I will never finish my book but
have put together several three-ring binders for family members.” Hopefully I can obtain a copy for the
Archives because what she sent along is in this social historian’s opinion, solid
gold. Here are excerpts:
Late
in October of 1939, the Portman family arrived in Whiting from Kentucky, and
Aunt Kate took Tunstall Barton me to a Halloween bonfire. I attended fourth grade at McGregor
Elementary and then South Side Elementary, both in Whiting. We lived with Uncle
Otha and Aunt Kate on Schrade Avenue, then moved to the old Standard Hotel (now
the location of a War Memorial). We
lived on a third-floor front apartment.
On a clear day, I could see Lake Michigan from the bay window.
For
the most part, I was just another poor little girl from the South. In grade school I was asked to collect Red
Cross money each week from classmates.
After a few weeks, without any explanation, the job was given to another
student. I just assumed it was to afford
another student the opportunity. It
wasn’t until later, when a teacher apologized for suspecting me of stealing
money, that I realized the reason for my removal from the job.
December
7, 1941, was a turning point in everyone’s life. I remember returning home from the movies and
hearing the news of Pearl Harbor on the radio. From time to time, my mother
would send ration stamps to my grandmother Tunstall in Kentucky. Since she canned fruits and made jellies, she
used more sugar than our family. At the end of ninth grade, we had a dress-up
dance. Of course, the boys stood on one
side of the gym and the girls on the other, too shy and lacking in social
graces to mingle.
During the summer of 1944, I worked as a
waitress at Brothers Restaurant in East Chicago. I told them I was 17 when in fact
I was just 14 years old. But it was
wartime, and most women were working in war plants making big bucks, so they
didn’t question my age.
Whiting High School
All through high
school I worked at Gambini’s, the local teen hangout and malt shop full-time
during summers and part-time during school months. Ma and Pa Gambini and their
two sons, Harry and Tom, owned the business.
Harry Gambini was in the navy and his wife Jean helped run the
restaurant. There was a jukebox, and Jean
made sure “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” by Kitty Kalleen and the Harry James
Orchestra was among the turntable selections. It was about someone welcoming
home a spouse or lover at war’s end.
Jean was a role model, everything I wanted to be – attractive,
intelligent, well-educated, and self-assured.
She was the only female I knew who drove a car. Expert at sewing, she once made yellow
flowered wrap-around uniforms for us with yellow aprons. The best part was that, unlike rental company
uniforms, they really fit. Jean sewed
curtains and drapes for her apartment and even made automobile seat
covers. That lady, it seemed, could do
anything.
My first job after
graduating from high school in 1948 was a clerical position at First Savings
and Loan in Chicago. Others would follow.
Marcella and Paul Clutter, August 19, 1950
In
1950 the Korean War began. Paul
Clutter, whom I had been dating since high school, was subject to the draft. To
marry or not to marry? Did I want to be
a war bride and risk having Paul killed or captured? In August, with the Hammonddraft board breathing down his back, we decided to get married. All the blood work was
done, and then I changed my mind. Finally,
the weekend before the draft board deadline I changed my mind again, and we
purchased two gold rings at Peacock’s Jewelers in Chicago. We got married by a
justice of the peace in Crown Point but didn’t make it back to Hammond by noon,
so Paul was drafted and eventually was stationed in Germany. While he was overseas I worked at American
Steel’s Cast Armor Plant and, after the war, at American Steel Foundries in
East Chicago for close to 15 years, until 1964, when I became pregnant with
Kevin.
. . . .
After 30 years of steady employment at Youngstown
Steel Door, my husband Paul Clutter found himself unemployed at age 50. We found out about the plant closing in the
Sunday paper. Paul was finally hired at
Pullman Amtrak but after six years came another long stretch of
unemployment. I had been working part-time
as a school librarian and decided to return to work full-time. I became secretary to two assistant
principals at Hammond Gavit until my retirement in December 2000 at age 70.
aerial view of Hammond Gavit
