Growing Up in the 30’s
So what was it
like to grow up in the 1930’s or 1940’s? What was the
world like and what did we do every day? I suspect that from about 1900 onward, most homes in cities and
towns had electricity and hot and cold running water. Horses were
already non-existent before I came along in 1929. (At the same
time, this wasn’t the case in deep farming country,
especially in the South.) Cars, paved streets and highways, were
ubiquitous, though not as much so as now. Our street in Cuyahoga
Falls was paved with cinders. Sackett Street at one end of our
street was constructed of dirt and gravel. Chestnut Boulevard at
the other end of our street was a paved, four-lane, divided
parkway. There was bus service on Chestnut Boulevard in the early
30’s. There were streetcars and city buses in downtown
Cleveland at that time, and in downtown Akron.
There were also Greyhound buses from
Akron through Cuyahoga Falls to Stow, Kent, and Ravenna. Dad and
Mother used long distance telephone service several times a week
to call Willoughby.
Then, as now, housewives spent a
lot of time on the phone. ("Telephone, Telegraph,
Tell-a-woman.") We took vacation trips to the South,
including the Skyline Drive, the Adirondacks, New England, and
the Ozarks. In the 30’s, we drove the nation’s first
Interstate, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, to Harrisburg and to the
Skyline Drive. In 1939, thanks to Aunt Florence and Aunt
Gertrude, we were able to buy one of the first Bendix automatic
washers. As I remember, it cost $150, equivalent to about $2,500
today when corrected for inflation.
Most weekends,
Dad drove us the 40 miles from Cuyahoga Falls or Stow, Ohio, up
Ohio 91 to our Sheffield grandparents’ house in Willoughby.
There was electric lighting and running water all along the way,
although it went through rural areas. It took about an hour, as
it would today.
If you were to
step out of your house today into our house in Stow in 1939 (or
even into the Patterson house in 1932), you would probably have
felt right at home. We had a radio instead of a television, we
didn’t have a microwave (or "radio range" as we
called them then), a freezer, a dryer, or air conditioning.
Still, in northern Ohio, air conditioning wasn’t that
important. Heating systems weren’t thermostatically
controlled. (Actually, ours was when we lived in Stow.) We were
eagerly awaiting television but it hadn’t yet arrived,
except experimentally in a couple of cities. However, the
furniture, the rugs, the dishes, and the silverware would be
fully in fashion today. We had a swing set in the back yard and a
little pedal car in the garage. We only had one car. Dad took the
bus to work so that Mother could have the car to drive us to
school and to go out during the day. We had a bath upstairs and a
lavatory downstairs.
A word about
inflation: there was no long-term inflation until after World War
II. Prices in 1936 were lower than they had been during the
Revolutionary War. In the 1930’s, a double-dip ice cream
cone with chocolate sprinkles on top cost 5¢, as did a Coke and
a bag of potato chips.
"Pepsi-cola
hits the spot!
Twelve full
ounces... that's a lot.
Twice as much for
a nickel, too.
Pepsi-cola is the
drink for you!"
Bread got down to
9¢ a loaf. A hamburger or a chocolate milkshake cost 10¢. At
the Saturday matinee at the (Cuyahoga) Falls theater, 10¢ would
buy you a double feature, a news reel, a cartoon, The Lone
Ranger, and a science fiction serial, plus a Nestle’s Crunch
Bar on the way out the door! A new Ford cost $645. Our
second-hand Packard grand piano cost $100. Our house in Stow cost
either $5,500 or $6,500. Dad’s salary bottomed out during
the Depression at about $2,400 a year, equivalent to about
$37,000 a year today. (We had help from our aunts to make it on
Dad’s salary.)
18th
Street, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (Akron Suburb) in the summer of
1930, looking east.
"Now lemme get
this straight. You're telling me that, as fat as he is, Santa
Claus can go down all the chimneys in the world in one night? OK.
How about the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy? How do they get
in?"
1756
18th Street: The "Patterson" house, Cuyahoga Falls,
Ohio.
Box house. $40 a
month rent. Faced west.
Downstairs: Front
steps, landing, entry into living room. Fireplace, French door to
screened-in porch on south side. Dining room on northwest side,
kitchen on northeast side. There was a gas stove on the northeast
side of kitchen, a 6'-wide white porcelain sinktop with draining
grooves on either side of the sink and cabinets below. There was
an icebox (until 1932) and then a refrigerator on the south wall
of the kitchen. There was a breakfast nook with one of the old
pre-popup electric toasters on the east wall of the kitchen. The
southwest corner was taken up by an entryway to the back door
where you could hang snowy coats and mittens on a cold day. East
of the refrigerator along that south wall of the kitchen were the
stairs to the basement.
The basement was
dominated by the coal furnace, with its coal bin on the east
wall, and its heating ducts snaking across the low 7' ceiling of
the basement. Heat was transferred strictly by convection. There
was no blower forcing air through the ducts. There was also the
usual return-air plenum coming from, I suppose, the living room.
There were one or two 12"-high windows at the top of the
back wall of the basement to let in a little light. Along the
south wall of the basement, Dad had his workshop.
Upstairs, there
were three bedrooms and a bath. Two on front (west), one nursery
with French doors onto upstairs porch in Southeast corner. High
window on the east side. Whit ceramic-tiled bathroom on northeast
corner. Stairway on east side.
18th Street:
street was cindered and oiled. Tank truck with transverse pipe,
spray nozzles on back.
"Straw
hat" steetlamp reflectors, green on top, white on bottom.
Used on untility poles. Protected hot light bulbs from rain.
Milk-glass globes on 10'-tall street light poles.
Sackett Street
was unpaved.
Chestnut
Boulevard, Broad Street were divided parkways.
Movie cameras:
Keystone, Bell & Howell, Eastman Kodak
Sound recorders:
Cut a record.
Separate garages
The Patterson House... 1756 18th
Street, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, c. 1932. Looking east again, a few
doors to the right of the above picture. 
"Euey"
McCoy and Bobby Seitz in Bobby's new swing, in the back yard of
the Patterson house, looking east, 1934. "Euey's" house is the second
from the left.
256
Munroe Falls Road, Stow, Ohio
Cape Cod
House Cost $6,500? in 1936. On Ohio 91. Fruehauf, Peterbilt
tractor-trailers.
Downstairs:
Just inside
the front door, there was a brown-and rust-ceramic-tiled front
vestibule with a coat closet on the right side. 8'-w ide,
carpeted front hall. French doors into dining room on the left.
Hardwood floors. There was a Brunswick floor radio on the inside
(east) wall of the hall. It was boxy, with an inlaid wooden
cabinet, eight tubes, and a lighted dial. On the south wall of
hall, beyond the dining room French doors was a desk where the
telephone was located. Across from the desk were the French door
into the living room. At the back end of the hall, there was, on
the right, a stairway upstairs, and on the left side, a back
hall, a landing, and then a staircase to the basement. To the
left of the back hall, in front of the dining room, was the
kitchen, and on the right (west) side of the kitchen, a lavatory,
a refrigerator nook, and then a breakfast nook. In the kitchen,
there was Marion electric stove on the northeast corner, then a
doorway into the dining room, and then counter space and
cupboards along the rest of that east wall. Along the south wall,
there was one of those white, 6'-wide porcelainized sinktops
On the far
(north) wall of the living room was a red-brick fireplace with a
white mantle and white surround. To the left of the fireplace was
a window and a warm-air register where we used to stand on winter
mornings, trying to get warm. To the right of the fireplace was a
matching window. Along the right (east) wall of the living room
were French doors onto a screened-in porch where we spent many
happy summer hours. On the left (west) side of the living room
was another window, and the Packard grand piano. Along the south
wall of the living room was the sofa that Mother had gotten at
half-price at... "Sterling and Welch"? There was an
expensive Oriental rug on the floor, and chairs places
strategically around the room.
Coming through
the front door of our house in Stow, you could see a doorway
farther back in the hall that led into a short back hall, down a
step to a landing, and then to the back door. To your right as
you entered the front door was a coat closet. In the double width
hall beyond the coat closet was our Brunswick Majestic floor
radio, backed up along the coat closet wall. As I remember, it
had cost $100, equivalent to $1,600 today. Between the front door
and back hall was our telephone. It was a regular dial telephone
with a big box on the wall. On the right side of the hall were
the stairs up to the bedrooms.
To the left of
the hall was the dining room, and behind the dining room was the
kitchen. There were double French doors that could be used to
close off the dining room. There was a brass chandelier in the
dining room. The dining room had a hardwood floor and a large rug
that covered it out nearly to the walls. We used to eat supper
every night in the dining room. Mother would fix dishes like
scalloped potatoes and ham, baked beans, spaghetti, fried
potatoes, pork chops, Waldorf salads, green beans, peas, corn,
salads, and during World War II, spam. We raised some of our
fruits and vegetables in the summertime and Mother canned quite a
bit in the fall, which we stored in the fruit cellar. The rest of
our food came from the store.
In the kitchen
was the Marion electric stove, the Grunow (Frigidaire)
refrigerator in its alcove at the back of the kitchen, and the
pop-up toaster. There was a lavatory that extended behind the
refrigerator, and a breakfast nook at the back of the kitchen.
There was a white porcelain double-sink along the left wall of
the kitchen. There was linoleum on the floor.
On the right-hand
side of the carpeted front hall was the living room. Again, there
was hardwood floor with a large Oriental rug that went nearly to
the walls. Straight ahead, along the inside wall of the living
room, was the sofa. In the far corner (the outer corner of the
house) was the aforementioned $100 Packard grand piano. Directly
across from the double French door entrance was the brick
fireplace with an antique-white mantle. At the front of the
living room were double French doors that opened onto a
screened-in porch. (I spent many a lazy summer hour on the glider
on that porch drifting in and out of sleep.)
If you turned
180º at the back landing, you could go down the basement stairs.
The basement was divided into two rooms: the furnace room on the
left side of the basement stairs, and the rest of the basement on
the right side of the basement stairs. Back under the stairs was
the electric hot water heater, and after 1939, the Bendix
automatic washer. In the right-hand corner across from the water
heater was an alcove that contained the automatic electric pump.
The corner diagonally across from the stairs housed Dad’s
workbench, and later, my chemistry lab with its beautiful, sexy,
Corning Pyrex glassware. There was an opening in the wall at the
far corner of the cellar stairs that led into a dirt floored,
dirt walled fruit cellar and potato bin (under the screened-in
porch). To your right as you went down the stairs was
Mother’s big freestanding double laundry sink and, before
1939, her washing machine, with its wringer. We used to
roller-skate in the basement.
In the furnace
room, there was the coal bin on the back wall and the coal
furnace in the middle. The furnace was about 4 feet in diameter
and five feet high, with a Medusa-like collection of round
sheet-metal ducts springing from the top and running between the
floor joists to the outside walls of the house. The furnace had a
waist-high door into which you could shovel coal and a door at
the bottom where you could remove the ashes. The upper door had a
mica window through which you could look to see how the fire was
burning. On the right side of the furnace was a long handle that
came up from the floor. You moved that "shaker handle"
back and forth to shake down the ashes from the "fire
box" into the "ash pit". At night, Dad would bank
the fire by putting in quite a bit of coal topped with some ashes
to force the coal to smolder all night. In the morning, he would
shake down the ashes with the shaker handle and then add more
coal to the "fire box". Meanwhile we kids would be
standing over the register in the living room, trying to capture
whatever trickles of heat oozed out of the register. Normally,
heat filtered up to the rooms by convection, but in our house in
Stow, it became necessary to install a forced air fan and a
thermostatically controlled damper. The Meriweather-Lewis Company
was induced to install this for only $250—the equivalent of
$4,000 today. The fan and a filter were lost in a gigantic metal
box that contained nothing but the fan and the filter. Dad and
Mother were convinced that the huge box was to make us think that
we hadn’t been ripped off.
Upstairs on the
right was my bedroom with Mother’s very pretty inlaid double
bed and a Beautyrest box spring and mattress. There was
mother’s pretty matching inlaid dresser in there, with the
cedar chest over in the corner. When I was seven (1936) Aunt
Florence and Aunt Gertrude bought me a 5-tube super-heterodyne
short wave table radio. Wow! Window to the world! Now I could
listen to "Pretty Kitty Kelly", "Road of
Life", "General Hospital", "Jack Benny",
"Fred Allen", "Fibber McGee and Molly",
"Duffy’s Tavern", "Bob Hope", "Baby Snooks", "Terry and the Pirates", "The Lone
Ranger," "Jack Armstrong. The All-American Boy",
"Lux Mystery Theater", "the Inner Sanctum",
and a host of other potboilers, not to mention foreign stations.
I used to stay home from school when I could muster a cold or
some other acceptable alibi, building model airplanes in my
bedroom.
Upstairs on the
left was Marlene and Barbara’s bedroom. It had twin beds,
and a dresser, and a cedar chest.
In front of
Marlene and Barbara’s room was Dad's and Mother’s room,
and across the hall in front of my room, was the guest bedroom
with a studio couch. Alice Badger and my aunts used to stay there
when they came to visit. (Later, we had double-decker bunk beds
in there.) The bathroom was front and center, with the tub on the
right and the sink and commode on the left.
Our 50¢ dog,
Noodles, was supposed to sleep on his rug in the back hall, and
during the day, he did. But at night, whenever you got out of
bed, you'd hear a scuttling sound downstairs and if you came
to the bottom of the stairs, you'd find a warm spot on the
hall carpet at the bottom of the stairs. We never caught Noodles
flagrante delicto at the bottom of the stairs but we knew.
Shall I tell you how, when we let Noodles out at night to go
wee-wee, he wouldn’t come back but would show up barking in
the Irwin’s yard at two o’clock in the morning? Mother
and I would go across the road to the Irwin’s yard in our
bedroom slippers and our pajamas, softly calling, "Here,
Noodles. Here, Noodles. Nice dog." when we wanted to
cheerfully wring his neck.
I bought Noodles
for 50¢ next door one day at the Marhofer Farm when I was
10. That afternoon, I wanted to take him over to show Eugene
McCoy but Mother said no. So I waited until she wasn't looking
and then started off through the field beside the house,
into the woods, across the creek, up the other side of the gorge,
and down the trail to the road that led to Euey McCoy's house.
I was walking along, crooning to my new baby puppy when I
almost walked into an open car door. There was Mother. She'd
seen me sneak into the field and head for Eugene's house. She
knew where the trail debouched onto the road. She said she could
hardly keep from laughing as I walked along talking to Noodles
straight toward the open car door. There wasn't a whole lot I
could say other than Mea culpa . I
had to stay in the yard for a week.
Noodles died of
yellow jaundice when I was 17. He was the smartest dog we ever
had.
On school-day
mornings, as I mentioned above, I remember standing over the
living room register, trying to get warm. (It would probably have
been 68 or 70 in the house—not terribly cold,) Mother took
us to school when we were in grade school. After I started
seventh grade, I usually took the school bus in the morning and
walked home from school in the afternoon. A lot of times, I went
to David Gradolph’s house after school. Like me, he was
interested in science.
We three
kids were good in school and we enjoyed it. I never had to bring
home any homework, having gotten it all done in class.
I have vivid
memories of oppressive summer heat—of hovering by the
screens, trying to catch any breath of air that wandered in. Some
families had attic fans that would cool down the whole house at
night but we didn’t possess one. I can still smell the
metallic smell of those galvanized screens, especially when they
got wet with rain. In the summertime, we lived a lot closer to
the outdoors than we do now. With the windows open, you heard the
crickets and other noises of the night. Sometimes, you would wake
up to a thunderstorm, with rain blowing in on the bed linens.
You’d have to close the windows and go back to sleep. Then
there were the occasional times when a mosquito would be humming
around in the room, and you would have to get up, turn on the
light, and try to exterminate the little vermin.
I and my
Grandpa (and my little sister Barbara) in front of
the house at Number 8 Second Street, Willoughby, Ohio, 1934.
RECOLLECTIONS
Christmases at Number 8 Second Street
My
grandparents lived in a wandering seven-bedroom house with 11'
ceilings in downtown Willoughby, at No. 8 Second Street. Second
Street was brick-paved and there was a hitching post in front of
their house. Every day, my grandfather hoisted a flag (yes, it
was an American flag) and swept off their sidewalk (yes, he
considered it to be sidewalk). It was a very harmonious
household. My grandparents had seven children. Their household
was so harmonious that three of their children never married and
never left home.
On Thanksgivings
and Christmases, the other four children, their spouses and their
children (e.g., me) joined my grandparents, my two aunts, and the
uncle who lived at #8 Second Street, along with three other
families who comprised part of our extended family. On holidays,
there would usually be twenty-something for dinner. We surely
must have had the best Thanksgivings ever experienced in the
annals of hedonism. And on Christmases! What Christmases!
There would be fires in the living room grate, the dining room
grate, and the library grate There would be happy people
everywhere. There would be Luther and Gertrude King, and Joe and
Gertrude Noll, come from Cleveland. There would be Al and Irene
Voth full of news about what was happening in Fremont. And there
would be all the sisters and the brother and the cousins and the
aunts. (I remember Irene Voth as an old woman of thirty or so,
but remembering how she looked then, she must have been a
stunning and fun-filled woman.) There would be their beautiful
daughter, Pat, who was Barbara's age, with whom we could play. In
the library, there would be presents piled halfway to the Milky
Way under a shimmering 11' Christmas tree. There would be candy
canes and hot chocolate. There would be tantalizing discussions
of what we wanted for Christmas. Once or twice, Grandpa took us
on a horse-drawn sleigh, sleigh bells jingling, to ride down the
brickwork streets of Willoughby--past the World War I cannon that
was aimed menacingly at the cars coming up Erie Street (on whose
massive barrel Barbara and I used to perch to eat our raspberry
sherbet cones in the summertime), past the Civil War statue of
the soldier-with-the-saber in front of Willoughby High School,
and up cobbled Center Street to pick up Aunt Eva. Sometimes, we
would go out with Aunt Florence and Aunt Gertrude and Grandma to
deliver food and sundries to needy families. Then all too soon,
we would be banished to bed, steeped in sugar plums and barely
able to sleep for excitement on the longest night of the year.
The next morning,
the library was off-limits until the grownups finished their
breakfasts. We got to unload our bulging stockings but that was
all. After breakfast, the grownups would prolong the agony by
eating oyster soup. Ugh! I still don't speak to oysters in
public. We minors would wolf down our breakfasts and then
separate the halves of those little round oyster crackers between
our teeth and hover over the adults, trying to peel them away
from their oyster orgy. Finally, finally, they'd be done.
At last, they'd open the sluice gates. Of course, with all those
affluent adults outnumbering us kids three-to-one, Christmas was
a licentious affair. A chemistry set, sleds, ice skates, games,
clothes, galoshes, ear muffs, dolls, a doll house, doll
furniture, a toy stove and so on were common quota. And of
course, there was always a letdown when the last present was
opened. But then we did what kids do: we played with our new toys
while the grownups prepared Christmas dinner. But with all those
congenial and affectionate people happy around us, there was a
sense of warmth and feeling of security in those family
gatherings like something out of a Dickens novel or the
World-of-the-Waltons come to life.
Across the street
was Mr. and Mrs. Crawford's house. Bert and Mrs. Crawford lived
in a well-kept Victorian home crowned with mini-merlons and
crenels, and filled with Victorian furniture and china figurines.
They had no children, and Barbara and Marlene and I were their
surrogate offspring. Bert used to take us down to the Nickel
Plate tracks and up into the crossing tower where he had worked
part-time since his retirement. There was a bell that rang when a
locomotive was on its way, and a wheel that one turned to lower
the crossing gates. I'm sure Barbara and Marlene and I little
grasped the role that we played in the Crawfords' emotional
economy. There they were, old and childless, waiting to die. We
must have seemed, blossoming in one of their beige velvet chairs,
like gardenias in November.
There's a
Twilight Zone story called, I think, "Next Stop,
Willoughby". A downtrodden New York advertising executive,
beset with ulcers, hagridden by his wife and his job, and living
only to support her excesses, dozes off while riding his commuter
train out of New York City. He awakens hearing the conductor
call, "Next Stop, Willoughby". He exits to a
picturesque, Early American town. But realizing that he's made a
mistake, he gets back on the train and goes home to misery.
Later, he longs to find Willoughby again--life has become
unendurable--but it isn't there. It was only a vaporous dream.
Then one day, at the end of his tether, he dozes off again, and
again, he hears the conductor call, "Next Stop,
Willoughby". This time, he exits and stays. And everyone
knows him by name, and everyone's glad to see him and there's
immediately a job and a lovely, interested lady for him in
Willoughby. He's come home. Then it switches back to the train.
There's been an accident. He has stepped off the back of the
train and is lying dead between the rails....in Willoughby.
I wonder if Rod
Serling ever passed through Old Willoughby and fell in love with
it. Except for gas lights, it would have fit the description. And
Old Willoughby today? How are things in Brigadoon?
Then There's Dad's Family
Then there's
Dad's family. My grandfather, Henry Seitz, was reputedly a
cracklingly-brilliant man with a violent temper. (Dad felt that
he was the brightest person the Seitz family has produced.) His
first wife, Lydia, died after delivering seven children, so he
married my grandmother, Susannah North. She was apparently a
brilliant woman—an only child—who loved opera,
literature, and history. She couldn't handle money to save her
life. They also had seven children. Dad was the youngest. Then
they separated. The family sometimes went hungry because of her
utter inability to manage money—a trait which her children
acquired, including Dad. (My mother always handled our money.)
Anyway, they fought like Kilkenny cats. One minute, they were
lovey-dovey and the next, they were at each others' throats. My
aunts had to quit school in the third or fourth grade and scrub
floors to live. And yet, perhaps because of Henry Seitz' respect
for knowledge, or perhaps because they were deprived of the
respectability of an education in keeping with their prodigious
intellects, they had a lifelong thirst for knowledge.
Aunt Addie
Phillips was a pepper-pot of a woman with yellow-green eyes and
lavish freckles (Dad always said they were rust spots or the
wickedness coming out). Aunt Ava Carter was a jolly, brown-eyed
olive. Aunt Addie and Aunt Ava had two of the three divorces in
the family on both sides. They had violent tempers and loved each
other but couldn't live with each other.
Aunt Chris was
said to be one of the most beautiful women in America. She was
allegedly approached by Flo Ziegfield to become a Ziegfield
Follies chorus girl. At one point, she headed to Hollywood for a
screen test but Uncle Mac proposed to her on the train. Uncle Mac
was thirty-room-estate-with-twelve-room-gatehouse rich. He became
a vice-president of Standard Oil of Ohio and drank himself to
death. He was a very unhappy man from a very unhappy family,
which had everything and nothing.
Aunt Myrtle
married a millionaire-florist in Florida, who started a
nation-wide chain of florist shops.
Cousin Kenneth
was scheduled to go the 1936 Olympics as an acrobat but went
professional just before it happened. (In those days, if you
performed for pay, you were excluded from Olympic participation.)
He later became an electronics technician in Southern California.
He married the lead singer in Ted Williams' band and they were
married several decades until she died of cancer. They have two
daughters.
The famous movie
actresses of the twenties and early thirties, Dorothy and Lillian
Gish, were Dad's and my aunts' second cousins. They shared the same
Grandma Gish.
Growing up, we
considered Dad's family the ne'er-do-wells because they weren't
respectable like the Sheffields. But looking back at it now, they
were the talented and exciting side of the family.
Cousin Chuck is
the fire-chief in Eastlake. He and his wife have two daughters.
Cousin Lou's
first wife, Carol, died. They had one daughter, Joan, with Down's
syndrome. He married again and stayed married. He was living in
Florida when he died.
Dad fell
head-over-heels in love with Mother the first day of school, when
he was fourteen and she was fifteen. He was new at Willoughby
High School and was assigned the seat behind her, where he could
admire her pretty face, her long auburn hair, and her voluptuous
figure. He never fell out of love with her. Dad was a handsome
man, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, there was never
another woman.
One day, Dad told
Mother that he was going to marry her. She stomped her foot and
said, "Over my dead body, Francis Seitz!"
Twenty-Seven-Year-Old Dad holding
his infant son in front of his 1928 Buick behind the 18th-street
duplex depicted in the top photograph
Stylishly-dressed Mother holding
Little Bobby (who doesn't look terribly jolly), same time, same
place.
The Lord's Prayer
Back in 1918,
when Dad and Mother were students together in Willoughby High
School, the principal used to open the school each morning with
The Lord's Prayer at a genera; assembly in the auditorium. Mother
had a cousin who was a real cut-up. One morning, when the
principal reached the passage where it says, "--and give us
this day our daily bread," a loaf of bread fell out of the
sky (or maybe off a balcony) and landed at his feet. Mother's
cousin was caught and expelled from school for his heinous prank,
but later, Mr. Otis, the principal, confessed that he had never
had to fight so hard in his life to keep from laughing when that
loaf of bread landed at this feet.
The Silver Carving Knife
One day when Mother was out shopping, Eugene McCoy came over to
play with me. Dad had given Mother a new silver carving knife,
and we began to play mumbledy-peg with it in the back yard. All
of a sudden, the blade stuck in the ground and the heavy silver
handle kept on going. An hour later, when Mother got home, the
two halves of the knife were sitting on top of a piece of paper
on which had been written a series of crossed-out notes. Neither
boy was anywhere to be found. The first note said,
"Mom, it isn't my falt. Euey
started throing the nife playing mumbuldepeg and he kept throing
it and throing it and he brok it. Love, XXXXXX Bob"
That was crossed
out and underneath it was a note that went something like this:
"Deer mrs
Sitz Bob's liing I did not brak the nif It was all his falt Love
Euey"
Beneath that was
another note that said,
"Thats not
truw. I didn tuch the nife. It was all Euey's falt. He was the
only one who playd with it. Love, XXXXXXXXX Bob"
"Deer mrs
Sitz that is a derty li Bob thru the nif I told him not too but
he did it anywa Love, Euey"
"Deer Mom,
Eueys the one thats lying. I hardly thru the nife at all. Euey
was the one who thru it when it brok. It was his idea to play
mumbuldepeg. Love, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Bob."
And so on down
the page.
After a few
hours, I returned because it was suppertime. Eugene didn't show
his face for two weeks. I guess the punishment couldn't have been
too Draconian because I don't remember it.
Decades later,
for Dad and Mother's Golden Wedding Anniversary, Eugene McCoy
bought a silver carving knife, broke it in two, and had the two
pieces silver-soldered back together again. Then at the
Anniversary celebration, he got up and told Mother that he had
gone to our old house in Stow, had combed the back yard until he
found the missing pieces of the silver knife, and was now making
restitution for our little accident. Then he pointed to me and
said that he wanted to establish once and for all that it was I
who had broken the knife and not he. Then I got up and said
"Euey, I did not! It was you!" And he said "You
did too!" and we went back and forth a couple of times.
The Little Shepherdess
Mother was proud of her beautiful little shepherdess with the
ceramic-lace skirt that she'd brought back from Italy. She didn't
believe in corporal punishment. But she went shopping one day..
Of course, Barbara and I got into a pillow fight in the living
room where we weren't allowed to pillow fight, and..
When mother got
home and found how we'd done what we'd done, she was furious. She
said,
"Young man,
you march right out there to the willow tree and bring me back a
switch."
I went out to the
willow tree in the front yard, thinking fast. I broke off a
brittle twig about a quarter of an inch in diameter and about
four feet long. I took it back to the house. I was scared because
Mother had never whipped us before. Mother took one look at the
twig and started to giggle. Then she brought herself under
control.and swung it at my legs. I felt a gentle love-tap before
it broke off in her hand and she was left holding a four-inch
stub.
"Young man,
you go back out there and this time you bring me a real
switch!" she said.
With the eldritch
wisdom that protects children and puppies from their just
desserts, Barbara and I knew that if we could Mother laughing,
the jig was up. I found a leafy willow frond about ten feet long.
I had to work to get it off the willow tree. (Willow withes are
second only to nylon cord in tensile strength.) When I brought it
to Mother, she took one look at it and choked with laughter. But
apparently, the gravity of the situation kept her from stripping
off the leaves on the living room floor. She doubled it over and
went swish! swish! swish! at Barbara's and my legs. She might as
well have spanked us with a palmetto leaf. Then she sent Barbara
and me to our rooms.Later on, she cried about it, and then we
felt bad, too. We were out of danger and we could see how
disappointed she was.
Poor Mother! With
her tender heart and girlish humor, she was no match for our
juvenile criminal minds.
Mother's Trip to Europe
When Mother (Elva Mae) was in her middle 20's (in the 1920's),
she and her best friend, Alice Badger, took a trip to Europe.
That was a rare occurrence in those days, when transoceanic
passages took a week by ocean liner each way. Mother wanted to do
something spectacular and worldly before she settled down to
become a housewife and Mother. She worked as a secretary for a
few years for Mr. Blythen (who later became the Mayor of
Cleveland) and saved up a thousand dollars. They went to England,
France, Germany, and Italy.
When they were in
England, they walked up to one of the Coldstream Guards who was
guarding Buckingham Palace and started in on him. Mother said,
"Oh look at this one, Alice! Isn't he cute? He has such
pretty eyes." Meanwhile the guard was staring straight
ahead, trying to stay wooden-faced. Then Alice said, "Oh,
look at this other one, Elva. Look at how handsome he is."
Quirky smiles began to tug at the corners of both guards' mouths.
Mother and Alice went on with this roguish torment for a few
minutes until they finally took pity on those poor boffins who
were trying to do their duty by King and by country.
On their
Channel-passage from France back to England, they slept in
Napolean's bed.
One night on the
trip, they were sitting at supper in the ship's formal dining
salon. The entree that night was pork chops. All of a sudden, the
lights went out. Alice whispered to Mother, "I'm going to
pick up this pork chop, Elva, and eat it. Nobody can see
me." Then the lights came back on and there was Alice,
dressed to the nines, gnawing on a pork chop bone.
The French Doors
One time Barbara and I were quarreling. Mother set us down on
opposite sides of the French doors that separated the dining room
from the hall. Barbara and I glowered at each other. Then we
stuck out our tongues at each other. Pretty soon, we were making
faces and starting to laugh. After a few minutes, we were doubled
up laughing and Mother let us out.
Camping Out
One night, Leslie Abernathy, Sammy Boston and I decided to camp
out in the field across the road from Sammy's house on Echo Lane.
None of us owned a tent so I suppose we made one out of blankets.
Come nightfall, we settled into our tent, where Sammy began to
snore. Leslie started cracking jokes. After a couple of jokes, he
said,
"Sammy,
wasn't that a funny joke?"
"K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k.. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s".
"Sammy, that
was a funny joke, wasn't it? Tell me it was a funny joke, won't
you?"
"K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k.. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s".
"Sammy,
laugh, or I'll think you don't like me."
"K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k.. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s".
"Sammy, tell
me you care. Tell me you really are fond of me. Speak to me,
ple-e-e-ease!"
"K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k.. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s".
"Sammy, if
you don't speak to me I'm going to have to wake you up!"
"K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k.. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s".
"Sammy, I
have to find out if you really care." And Leslie shook him.
"Junior, let
me sleep. I gotta'
get up in the morningand milk the goat. K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k.. S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s".
This went on
about three or four times, with me rolling in the aisles,
laughing. Finally, we got tired of the game and let poor Sammy
sleep while we giggled and cracked jokes that we thought were
terribly funny until 2:00 a.m. About 2:00 a.m., I went home to my
own bed so we could get some sleep.
The Trip to Canada
In the summer
of 1945, Dad got railroad passes to North Bay, Ontario, and I was
allowed to invite Eugene McCoy and Leslie Abernathy to go along.
(My 13-year-old sister, Barbara, had a crush on that suave
debonair Elder Statesman, Leslie Abernathy.) Eugene, Leslie and I
got jobs as stock boys at the A. Polsky Company to earn money for
the forthcoming trip to North Bay. After three weeks, we took our
ill-gotten gains to a sporting goods store in Akron and bought
rods and reels, fishing lures, and among other things, a large
gaff hook to spear the large bass and muskelunge we were going to
catch.
When we got to
North Bay, we bought a 2-inch-thick steak (meat was unrationed in
Canada) and some potatoes to cook when we got to the camp where
we were staying. At Boy Scout Camp, we boys had learned how to
cook hunter's twist (out of flour and water) and we were going to
do all our own cooking. When we got to the camp, Dad and Mother
picked a cabin at one end of the camp so we picked our cabin at
the opposite end. Then we gathered up our rods, reels and
expensive fishing lures and climbed into a camp rowboat at the
end of the dock to catch a mess of fish for supper. While we were
getting into our boat, we saw little 6-year-old Minnie, the
daughter of the camp owners, out on the pier using a bamboo pole
and worms to catch rock bass for supper. We snidely sneered and
snickered at this crude lack of piscatorial sophistication. If
she could pull in rock bass with a hook and worms, what do you
suppose our high-tech lures would attract? After half an hour of
casting and unsnarling our lines, and reeling in sea weed, we
finally gave it up and rowed back to shore just in time to see
little Minnie carry a string of rock bass in to her mother. But
no matter. We still had our 2"-thick steak as our fallback
position. We fired up the wood cookstove and put the steak on top
of the stove. (We didn't bother with a pan.) And we knew what to
do with the potatoes: put them in the ashes of the fire the way
we'd been taught at Scout Camp. After a while, we took the steak
off the stovetop. It was, of course, charred on the outside and
raw on the inside. And the baked potatoes were the same way:
carbonized on the outside and raw on the inside. We ate them, of
course, telling each other that they didn't taste too bad, and
that we were so glad that we were able to cook for ourselves.
The next morning,
I told the other guys that I was going to go down to check on Dad
and Mother and make sure they were OK. When I got there, they
were cooking bacon, eggs, toast and hot chocolate.
"Boy, that
bacon smells good," I said.
"Would you
like to stay and have some?" Mother said.
"Well, just
for a minute," I said.
I had no sooner
sat down and eaten a bite of bacon when who should we spy coming
down the path but Eugene and Leslie!
"Boy, that
bacon smells good, " they said.
"Would you
like to stay and have some?" said Mother.
"Well, just
for a minute," they said.
That was the end
of our independent cooking. After that, we knew which side of our
bread was buttered.
One night, a
storm came up. I woke up in the middle of the night amid pitch
blackness, punctuated by jagged lightning and crashing thunder.
The window had blown open and had blown out the kerosene lamp
that we were using as a night light. I was scared breathless, of
course, but I somehow managed to get the window closed and the
light relit. After a while, I calmed down enough to go back to
bed. I was almost asleep when something scampered across my
quilt. I got up and discovered that the storm had brought field
mice inside our cabin where they were recklessly running around
the floor. I went into the kitchen, got a butcher knife and sat
up in bed, prepared to defend myself against those feckless mice.
(The lines "..I cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind
mice." kept running through my mind.) By now, it was
daylight. Eugene and Leslie woke up. I went in and crawled into
bed between them. They laughed and hooted in derision. But it was
little manuevers like that which can make you a legend (as a
wimp) in your own time. I never lived that one down.
The only one who
caught a fish on the whole trip was Mother. She caught a
two-pound bass, using a hook and worms. On the way back from the
fishing hole, the guy who owned the camp was transporting Dad,
Mother, Barbara, Aunt Florence and Yours Truly in the lead
rowboat. With the aid of his 5-horsepower Water Witch, he was
also towing Eugene and Leslie in a second rowboat. Mother was
trolling on the way home, hoping to catch a second fish. All of a
sudden, there was a powerful tug on her line. We looked back and
saw something thrashing around in the water, struggling to get
loose. Mother got so excited. "Francis! I've got another
one! Look at it fight! It must be big!" Mother played it for
a minute or two and was finally able to reel it in. It turned out
to be a piece of cheesecloth that Eugene and Leslie had slid over
her line.
The 20th Century
opened with the invention of the airplane and the first practical
radio transmissions in 1903. It ended with space flight and the
"wired world" of the Internet.
The major
transportation news of the 20th century was
station-to-station air travel and personal, doorstep-to-doorstep
automotive travel.
The 20th
century saw the wakening of the world and the globalization of
commerce and industry.
The 20th
century was the Age of Team Research.
In retrospect,
the 20th century was divided into two halves. The
first half, 1900-1950, was characterized by
When we were
children, Dad did a lot of things with us. He and Mother went
ice- and roller-skating, sled-riding, swimming, and walking in
the woods with us. I remember so well sledding down Cobb’s
Hill next to our house while Dad built a bonfire, where we
roasted marshmallows. Then we would trudge home through the snow
where Mother would make hot chocolate and we’d get ready for
bed.
Soap-box derby.
Spaghetti at Camp
Manitoc
Dad believed
radical left but lived conservative right.
866A's, 872A's mercury vapor rectifiers. Type 40 triodes, acorn tubes, 6L6 pentodes, chokes and capacitors.
Trips.