Celebrating Christmas, 1930

The picture shows Ruth in a canoe on her honeymoon in Detroit, 1929.  The diary entries below were in 1930,when Ruth and John Kellogg were married 18 months.  The Depression had been running the country downhill for over a year.

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 1930     "It was cookies we got Mon. from A.A.  Rec'd gift from Wanda - sent John with hers.  He didn't have to work today.  Had the first of 3 pots of baked beans for supper (4:00).  Again."

The cookies came from John's family in Ann Arbor, Michigan...Wanda was such a close friend of Ruth's in high school, but gradually drops out of the picture.  At this point John was still working for Montgomery Ward, but not Ruth.  After being shunted from department to department because of the huge layoffs of workers, Ruth was finally let go in August, 1930.  She went to an employment agency and attempted to find another job, but the economy was collapsing around her with jobs were fewer and fewer.  Notice that baked beans, a thrifty dish, was on the menu. Again.

Christmas Day, 1930      "Nice sunshiny day.  Took snap of John carrying Xmas bundles over to the folks.  Had a big turkey dinner and played cards later.   Ate a lunch in evening too.  Drove us home with our gifts.  Gifts listed under 'Memo'."

I didn't find a tally of the gifts for 1930, though the ones for 3 other years in this 5-year diary were listed.  I'm sure there were few of them with so little money coming in.

The Kellogg's Christmas in FL, Complete with Polaroid Camera

There's a lack of Kelloggs-in-Florida pictures from the early 1970s.  This one is from 1975, showing the family playing cards around the table.  In the picture are Ruth (65), John (72) and grandson Phil, who was 15.  He, his brother, Roger, and  father, Ken, had moved to Florida in June, 1971 after Ken was divorced.

Here's a Christmas entry from Ruth's diary that wasn't in Pieces of a Life.

Christmas Day, 1971 
"A gorgeous, warm, sunny day!  We went for Mom and Jim early and went in for 20 minutes.  Then all drove to Ken's - who took movies of our arrival.  Philip got started fast on gift-giving and soon the living room was cluttered with papers, boxes and games!

In A.M. I opened John's gift - a new Polaroid camera & case!  We studied it for over an hour & decided it was too complicated for the little use it would get.  It's going back!  Also opened all our other gifts here.  List in back of book.

Xmas dinner was FUNNY.  Two places we went to eat were too crowded.  So we ended up with carry-out fried chicken & back to Ken's to eat it & potato salad & Jell-O mold - our Christmas Dinner!  We were hungry enuf to enjoy it - no work!"

"Mom and Jim" were Lottie and Jimmie Meredith, Ruth's mother and brother.  At this point, Jim was living at home with Lottie, medicated for his schizophrenia.  Ruth did write a list of her gifts in the back of the diary. Besides the camera, she got a green nightgown and Hallmark diary from us, a cookbook with some of my recipes in it from the 3 girls, gold scuffs, tennis socks and 2 half-slips from Lottie, a purse and a diary from Jim and a sliver evening purse from "B & K & boys".  That was habit or maybe a hint of the dementia to come - to add Ken's former wife to the list. She was no longer in the picture.

John and Ruth had stopped coming north to Illinois for Christmas by this time.   Back in Palatine, Dan, myself and our 3 little girls (Lynn, Cindy, Katie) were having our first big Christmas dinner in a lovely new house in Hunting Ridge.  A few relatives would have joined us. 

A Slice of Ruth's Life in 1940

In the photo, probably taken in Ann Arbor, Diane and Ruth are wearing outfits Ruth had made.  Apparently I wasn't keen on having my picture taken.

Let's view a slice of Ruth's life in the Fall of 1940, as a 34-year-old homemaker with two children, living in the Austin section of Chicago.  Her words are in a tiny diary with 5 days on a page, so brief snippets sketch her activities, thoughts.

Thursday, Oct. 31, 1940 - "Diane got her first permanent.  Her head is full of curls.  Cute.  Cried a little.  "  I remember this. The curlers were attached to a big machine and it was very uncomfortable because of the heat and being unable to move around.  I was only 4 1/2, so I wonder why my mother felt the need for curls on my straight, fine white-blonde hair.  Maybe it was Shirley Temple's fault.  She was a wildly popular, adorable child movie star with curly hair.

Friday, Nov. 1, 1940 -  "Had my hair done and a manicure.  Jeanette drove (with Will) 4 of us to Vange's for sewing club meeting."  This may have been after Evangeline moved very far away to Arlington Heights.  That was considered "the boondocks" by Chicagoans.

Saturday, Nov. 2, 1940 - "Shopped, baked.  Show was 'All This and Heaven Too' with Bette Davis.  Good.   Ruth and John are still going to movies, but now on Saturday, always arriving before 5:00 when the lower daytime prices changed.  Ken and Diane went too.

Sunday, Nov. 3, 1940 - "Took a lot of toys to Nursery of Church.  After ride we ate at new Robin Hood's Barn and then saw show."    Going to the Baptist Church on Sunday was also part of the pattern of their lives.  They had wrestled with the question of whether to go to John's Methodist Church, but decided on Baptist right before they were married. Robin Hood's Barn was a huge, rustic restaurant on Lake St. in Oak Park.  We went there about once a month for several years.

Tuesday, Nov. 5, 1940 - "Voted for Wilkie.  Got my FUR coat finally.  Bought Kenny nice overcoat."  Ruth's fur coat was a full-length mink-dyed muskrat.  I remember the soft feel of it.

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 1940  - "Wilkie lost!"  The other guy running - for his 3rd term - was a chap named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.    My parents were very Republican politically, but wasn't their party's day. They would have been stunned to know that FDR would run in 1944, deep in WW II and win a 4th time.

 

Ruth Kellogg Tells of Daughter's Hospital Stay in N.Y.C.

Daughter Diane (me) is pictured here at 26 (1962) at a windy Chicago beach near Lake Michigan, close to her Astor Street apartment.

In 1964 Ruth and John, Diane's parents, still lived in Oak Park.  After a trip to Florida, they drove back to Illinois on Friday, Feb. 21.  On Feb. 22 Ruth wrote in her diary: "Diane phoned Ken this morning from N.Y. hospital where she's been since Thursday with kidney infection which is being treated with shots every 6 hours.  Tests are being run for cause.  Ken said she sounded chipper."

One day in mid-February, I didn't feel very good with several symptoms - such as back pain.  The only doctor we knew of was one some friends had just met at a cocktail party, so that's who I saw.  He examined me, but missed the kidney infection diagnosis, and sent me home.  In a couple of days, I was back - but this time with a high fever.  The doctor put me right into Beth Israel Hospital in lower Manhattan, where I laid around for about a week. That's where I was when I called my brother, Ken

What were we doing in New York City?  Dan Pellettiere was hired by N.W. Ayer, venerable old ad agency in Philadelphia, in Dec., 1962.  We got married in February, 1963.  At that time I had been working for Continental National Insurance Group in downtown Chicago for about 3 years, training employees in letter and report writing mostly, but also writing and editing materials and manuals.  When I left, I finished a project for them, working out of our apartment in Philly.

We expected to be there for a year, but were transferred to NYC in late April.  I was hired by another insurance company on Maiden Lane at the south end of Manhattan, this time working as a technical writer in the electronic data processing area.  The computer was the size of a room.   

John's Big Break Comes in 1934

Most people wouldn't look at this situation as a "big break", but with John's work ethic, he did...as you know if you have read Pieces of a Life.

In the early 1930s, deep in the Depression, John Kellogg took a sales job with a new company called "SealTex." They were starting to produce a new kind of bandage, invented in Germany in about 1930, which was cohesive instead of adhesive, so it stuck to itself rather than the user.

John was barely making enough money for he, Ruth and little Kenny to live on, even including repeat orders from Chicago area drug stores.  Kresge stores asked SealTex to provide demonstrations in stores all over the eastern U.S. John was doing that - and working with "a talkative female employee" in each store whom could he'd coach to demonstrate the bandage.  Even then, his income was low.

In 1934 when John was selling in Boston, he got a letter from Byerley, one of the 3 owners of SealTex.   "While I was trying to find answers to our money problems, I got a letter asking that I return to Chicago at once as the firm was broke.  The cash I had in my pockets was barely enough to buy the return bus ticket, and I knew that Mom had little also."  (Ruth no longer was working.)

My own comment was: "John must have been horrified to hear that SealTex was broke.  However, on the other side of the coin, John was focused on achieving - and would have looked at this as his best chance to make his mark in the world.  He was a risk taker.  It's a good thing he was not a gambler."

It appears that poor management undermined the company.  Byerley was finding new items to have his 12 detail (sales) men take to drug stores, but they flopped - and SealTex was stuck with those bills of $8,000- $9,000, some 2 years past due.  "Byerley said that if I would take the responsibility for paying all those old bills he had run up, he would give me his stock in the firm and just bow out.  I agreed."

Newlyweds in 1929

Just a few of Ruth Meredith Kellogg's many diaries are displayed, priceless to me because of the people they bring back to life.

Oct. 30, 1929
"Foggy day.  As I wasn't busy for a time this morning, I wrote Mamma a letter, telling her about the new Retail Store, plumbing to be done in our flat, etc.  

John refused to to go the Chicago tonite because I said it was a silent picture.  We got there and I managed to get him into the show.  He had to admit that he liked it but - it would have been better with talkies.  It had music, dancing and crowd noises in sound."

Talking pictures were quite new, but all the rage.  In the transition from silent movies to talkies, background noises and music made the silent movies seem more modern.  Both John and Ruth loved going to movies, so perhaps John felt a silent movie was better than none - and apparently he enjoyed it more than he thought he would.

The "Retail Store" belonged to Ward's where Ruth worked in the offices across the street...It seems quaint that Ruth wrote to her mother, whom she saw and talked to often.  At this point Ruth had been married about 5 months.  The two families lived a few miles apart, with Ruth and John in a building he'd bought at 4705 Byron St. in Chicago.  People used to write letters frequently.  I kept a chart of letters written in my twenties, 25 to 30 a month on average.  

Engaged...and A Bit of Choppy Water

Friday, May 18, 1928
"John shocked me this morning by telling me he traded his 2-flat building in for a new fashion 3-flat brick.  I have thought about it all day.  We drove out to see it tonight.  I don't care for it."

Saturday, May 19, 1928
"John signed for the 3-flat house.  The two of us saw the best play yet - 'Just Married!'  It was a scream - the whole four acts!  Home at 11:00."

Ruth is clad in true flapper attire, including the cloche and the long straight top with the fur-trimmed coat.  She seemed to get over the disagreement with John about the 3-flat quickly.

Ruth would learn over time that John liked to talk about financial plans, but did not want or accept her advice.  That went back to his feeling that he was the smart one, the college grad, unlike Ruth with her high school diploma. Did he make mistakes in investing?  Yes, but one did not remind him of that!  The Depression was only 17 months away, but no one really saw the depth and breadth of it coming.