Margaret was introduced to sports in fourth grade, especially softball. She learned to play volleyball in fifth or sixth grade. In seventh grade she began playing tennis.
Margaret tells the story of her family attending a Methodist summer camp. She wandered into a dining tent at the camp and, without her parents knowing it, had a meal. They had to pay for the meal, which they thought was too expensive and so Margaret…
Margaret remembers playing behind the house with Evangeline who was making mudpies, a common practice in those days. Evangeline would eat those mudpies, a habit Adelle had a hard time to cure her of.
Margaret's favorite doll was Daisy, the name it had when she got it. It was made by the company where her father worked. The company published three different advertising journals, and Margaret owned the journal in which Daisy was first advertised.…
Margaret always loved Christmas. One time A.D. couldn't be home for Christmas, so the family didn't buy a Christmas tree. Margaret found one that someone had thrown away by the road side. She dragged it home triumphantly, and Adelle realized how much…
Church was always an important part of life in the Mortenson family. Margaret's grandparents and parents were Methodists. The family was active in the Central Street Church. The Boyd family were educated people and made good money. William Boyd…
Aunt Minnie wouldn't visit as often as Adelle wanted, because she and her husband were farmers. She and her husband had a very nice house for that era but never had running water. Margaret and her aunt's children never were close: neither enemies nor…
Margaret learned very early not to lie or steal. She remembers the first time she lied, she quickly realized she was not good at it. She also recalls stealing a piece of gum and felt so bad about it that she decided that this wasn't for her.
By the time she was ten years old Margaret was famous for liking to make presents for people. One summer when she was visiting in Round Lake she earned money by swatting flies for her aunt. With that money she bought gifts to return home and give to…
During her many visits to Grandmother in Racine, Margaret would be sent to a store to get, say, a loaf of bread. Once she had to walk past a saloon to get to the store. She had never seen a saloon or a drunk person before, so she would get close to…
Another habit of the Mortenson family was family visits. They visited Grandmother often and many other members of the extended families. They visited people on both sides if the family.
Margaret recalls many black maternal families coming from the South to Evanston, IL, for work. She describes the many black women she met and talks about one in particular, Florida Mitchell, who worked for her mother Adelle. Florida was raising money…
Margaret recalls transportation in her childhood, how easy it was to travel around in the city and its neighboring towns because streetcars were everywhere. She tells about the shops on Central Street near the railroad station. The annual income of…
Margaret began traveling alone to Chicago at age seven. She would take to train and board the bus in the city to go see her eye doctor. She was always safe--there were dangerous areas but she never went there.
Margaret did third grade at an open-air school. It was a new idea to which Adelle subscribed, so she sent her two daughters there. The kids would wear their winter coats and sit in the cold for school, putting their feet in a box to keep them warm.…
Margaret reads from a 1976 issue of The Washington Post about children's games from the past that were lost with the coming of television. She talks about games they played in childhood. She expounds on her friendship with Mary Peabody.
In second grade the kids' piano lessons were from the aunt of one of Margaret's classmates, Mary Peabody. She and Margaret were companionable in an easy, relaxed friendship.
Margaret remembers her second grade with Miss Stevens, and her favorite song back then, "Marching Through Georgia." They always had music lesson; it was just part of life
Margaret has always been popular, a "top dog." She always had friends, always was team leader, class president, etc. It was natural to her and everybody took it for granted. In seventh grade she had her reverses: her parents wouldn't let her go to…
When Margaret was seven or eight years old she became very sick. The family doctor could not figure out what the disease was, so there was very little that could be done to help her. Suddently she had a terrible convulsion and the sickness was all…
Margaret's youngest uncle, Lawrence, was on the football team of Northwestern University. Her dad, A.D., began taking her to Lawrence's football games. That was when Margaret acquired her taste for football.
At the end of the winter the Mortensons found it difficult to continue to stay in Somers, especially for A.D. to be going back and forth in the cold weather, so before the fall they moved to Racine, Wisconsin, and they stayed at 1741 Villa St. In…
Margaret was born in the house at 8412 Highway, Somers, WI, on Sept. 7, 1903. It was in a tiny room , perhaps ten feet by ten. She stayed there with her parents, Adelle and A.D. through the winter.
The parents of Margaret's mother, Adelle, came from Norway to Wisconsin, where Adelle was born in 1877. The family later moved to Minnesota for farming, and then back to Wisconsin (in the Kenosha area). Adelle went to school and had excellent…