From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today Aunt Tillie called for me at school with a horse and carriage and two of her friends with her and we drove to the park. I don’t like one of the ladies. She always looks as if she sees all the way to my underwear. Her name is Pauline and I have to call her Aunt Pauline. I have to call all ladies “Aunt” and gentlemen “Uncle.” Well, we went to a very pretty restaurant full of mirrors, and pink velvet chairs and waiters instead of waitresses, not the same restaurant that Grandmother takes me to. The ladies didn’t have coffee and toast as Grandmother always does; they had something yellow to drink served in little glasses and it made them so much nicer than they usually are, although Aunt Pauline did jump on me about biting my nails. She made a big fuss saying, “Hilda, a big girl like you biting your nails! Ladies don’t bite their nails.” I told her ladies don’t smoke. Aunt Pauline is the only lady I know who does and everyone laughed. Aunt Tillie ordered a lemonade for me and it matched their yellow drinks. I was glad that the color matched and I did not have to drink milk and it looked grown-up and everyone would think that I was. When I got home, I started to tell Grandmother about the restaurant and the pink chairs and mirrors but as I started to, Aunt Tillie pinched my arm hard and she started talking about something else and I didn’t have a chance to say more.

By 1912, automobiles and horse and carriages were sharing the road. I found a photo online taken in Golden Gate Park in 1908. We can pretend that the carriage’s occupants are Hilda, Tillie and her friends. It seems fitting given my family’s love of literature (and particularly Goethe) that they are posing in front of a stature of Goethe and Schiller!

Note to blog subscribers: Hilda did not write in her diary on January 19, so there will be no message tomorrow.