The Saturdays

Every Saturday, the Melendy children pool their weekly allowance. Each child, in turn, takes the weekly amount and does something special, just for themselves, on their given Saturday. The idea is formed on yet another boring Saturday as they gather in the top floor “office” of the family’s well-worn Brownstone in New York City with nothing to do. They convince their father to allow them to do this and he agrees, warning them to not get hit by a car, never talk to strangers, and ask a policeman if they have any problems.

The story, of course, is set in a different era. 1941. A time when a child could leave home  and walk the streets of Manhattan, know where to go and how to get there. A time when a parent could allow such adventures.

Each of the Melendy children are unique and inquisitive and delightful and their choices are interesting and sometimes scary and sometimes so funny I laughed aloud.

I read The Saturdays as a child and it made me want to travel to New York City. The idea of four siblings coming up with the idea (and naming themselves I.S.A.A.C. – the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club) seemed so remarkable to me as a child, and, in fact, still do. I’m not sure that at an elevenish age I would have chosen the opera, let alone walk all the way there, buy a ticket, and climb so far up to my seat I could almost touch the ceiling. I do know I would have loved it, though, and remember so clearly the time my father took us to the Civic Opera House and how its grandeur mesmerized me. Each solo Saturday adventure brings about a subplot with interesting stories about being kidnapped by gypsies, meeting the actual child in the painting at an art gallery, or how to get red fingernail polish off of one’s nails before nail polish remover was widely available. (That one reminded me of the time my sister decided to dye her hair Lucille Ball red and is a story for another time.)

As an impressionable youngster growing up in the suburbs of Chicago who longed for the day to be able to got into the city by herself, The Saturdays gave me a way to explore within the restrictions of my own family. It was one of those books of childhood, we all have them, that stayed with me throughout my life and I was delighted to find it in the library and surprised to learn it was part of a series about the Melendy family.

I was not surprised to find the author, Elizabeth Enright,  had written many books, including Thimble Summer, but, I was surprised to learn that she lived in Oak Park and was a niece of the renowned architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Enright illustrated the book as well as writing it and the illustrations are whimsical and capture the mood of the book. It is her words that paint the best pictures for me of the Melendy children, their widowed father, Cuffy the housekeeper, and Willy the handyman/plumber and general fixer-of-things, and of the worn but loved Brownstone, five stories tall with a huge coal furnace in the basement.

It is Saturday here on the Cutoff and I’m off to my own Saturday adventure. I won’t be going “into the city”, but, instead, heading out west a way to a church bazaar and then it is home to the leaves and the leaves and the leaves, which have had a glorious time blanketing the area.

How about you? Any adventures, big or small, for your Saturday?

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