Ten in the Bed and the Little One Said…

I think the thing that people ask me most about growing up in a family with 10 brothers and a sister is “Where did everyone sleep?”

It’s a reasonable question, especially since I raised my own three children in a time when a “bedroom per child” was the norm. That didn’t happen at 828.

Let me say from the start—and this is directed more to the brothers who still think that Nancy and I, fifth and sixth in the birth order, had a room of our own: That simply wasn’t true, at least not always.

Nancy and I—born 18 months apart—shared a room at the back of the house, but my youngest brother Gary also was in our room in a crib at the foot of the bed. I know he was there until he was at least a toddler before Mom moved him to the little boys’ room, because I remember him standing up and walking back and forth in the crib. And since Gary was born when I was 10, I was practically a teenager by the time we girls had our own room.[1]

The upstairs at 828 had four bedrooms and a bathroom. There were two larger rooms at the front of

Alan, in 1958

the house that in my early childhood had been shaded by a large elm tree, before disease wiped out the many elms that lined Spruce Street. Mom and Dad’s room was the smaller of the two, it was on the east side of the house and had a nice cross breeze. It always felt several degrees cooler than the other bedrooms. (Of course there was no air-conditioning, only a window fan in the upstairs landing to cool those hot summer nights.)

The little boys occupied the largest of the four bedrooms. It also faced the street and had a cross breeze, but for some reason never felt as cool as Mom and Dad’s room. Maybe it was the sweat and grime of a half-dozen little boys huddled together that made the room feel less fresh, several in a double and the others in bunk beds. (A trivia question here: which of six "little boys"—George, Mike, Fred, Alan, Joe, and Gary—headed up an in-house singing group called “The Bunk Beds”?) The crib was also in there for a while, before it was moved into our room, and again after Nancy and I reached puberty.

I think it was my older brothers who complained most about us girls having our own room, for they shared a very small bedroom at the back of the house, probably only 8’ by 11’. It had an angled doorway that opened into what we called the upstairs hall, which led to all the rooms. But there was no real door to the big boys’ room, only a vinyl folding one Dad put up for privacy. But in a house brimming with activity, that flimsy folding door was soon broken and often repaired.

The big boys’ room, at least in the late ‘50s when I’m remembering it, was where Bill, Bob, and John slept in a double bed. By then my oldest brother, Dan, was at the diocesan seminary in Cincinnati and spent the school year there. (He left the seminary after his senior year of high school, and I remember some of the siblings joking that the reason he joined tin the first place was to to have his own room.)

I’m not sure, but I think John, the youngest of the older boys, was consigned to the center of the bed. Bill, the second oldest, slept on the outside, and Bob got the inside, facing the wall.

During the summer when Dan was home, Bob and John would often sleep on a small fold-out bed on the back porch, and Nancy, ever the tomboy, would sometimes join them on the floor when it was too hot upstairs. (Not sure where they slept when Dan was home for the Christmas holidays!)

It was crowded, no doubt, but that closeness also brought about some wonderful shared experiences. Bob’s going to talk about that more in our next posting!

—Linda

[1] Yeah, well, Linda seems to forget that the most important time to have a room of one’s own is during the teenage years.—Bob