My first memory of the farm was sitting beside a dog name Jack watching him eat. The bowl of gravy he was lapping up looked so inviting, I stuck my thumb in it to get a taste. Jack didn’t like that and he gave my thumb a good nip which made him my enemy for ever more. We had a nicer, friendlier, dog named King. I think we had more than one dog named King. He was a long haired, black and white collie and I loved him. Later he was accused of chasing the neighbor’s sheep and the dog catchers took him away. We all cried hard over that and that neighbor (Mr. Kader) was not too well liked after that either.
On the farm we had two horses: Blackie and Maggie. Maggie was a cranky horse I was afraid of her, but Blackie was calm and sweet. The horses were working horses and were to be used only for that. It was understood that riding was bad for them for some reason and we were forbidden to do so. But one time when my parents were away, we did try riding them (bareback as we had no saddle). I remember being very scared when someone put me up on one (most likely Blackie because we would have been afraid to mess with Mean Maggie). Horses are very high off the ground! I didn’t spend too much time on that horse until I was screaming to get down.
We didn’t have the horses too long before we got a tractor. I was upset because Pat told me that Blackie was sold to a glue factory and was going to be killed and made into glue. I don’t know what happened to Maggie. I guess she was younger and healthier as no one said anything about her being turned into glue, which I wouldn’t have minded so much.
All the animals on the farm were considered pets by us kids. We had many cats, but most of them were barn cats. They would come around at milking time and Mom would squirt some milk into their mouths for fun. Mostly they drank from the lid of a milk can.
We had a black cat named Tom who was friendly and would let us pet him. I think all our male cats were named Tom. The rest were very wild. I wasted a lot of time trying to catch them.
When a new calf was born Dad would give each of us a turn at naming them. We had a cow named Bossie and one named Star because she had a white blaze on her forehead. When my turn came to name a calf, I named it Heart because it had a heart-shaped blaze on it’s forehead. Pat thought that was the dumbest thing he ever heard of. No one would name a cow “Heart”.
Someone gave us some goats once. And the goats had two baby kids that became the pets of Pat and I. There is nothing cuter than a baby kid. They are so playful. We had a two wheeled wagon whose one end rested on the ground. The goats would run up one end and jump off the other end. One of the goats had a rope around his neck which became caught on the wagon and he hung himself. It was Pat's goat. We buried the goat and Pat tried to make a cross for his grave but gave up, maybe it was because he was crying so hard he couldn’t see what he was doing
The farm had a barn, and a chicken coup. In the beginning there was a blacksmith shop. That probably went with the horses. We had some sheds and a spring house. The spring house was near the well. It had a concrete trough in it and it filled up with cold water from the well. In the summer, we put the milk and butter in there to keep them cold.
The house was very old. It had red shingles and a tin roof. When the rain fell on the roof it made a pleasant musical sound softly drumming on the metal. The rafters were held together with wooden pegs. There was no central heat when we moved in. Dad and the uncles installed a furnace in the basement which was made of rough unfinished stone. The house had no running water, so of course, we had an outhouse. In the winter, we had a chemical toilet, but I didn’t like to use it. So I made Mom take me outside to the outhouse at night if I had to get up in the middle of the night. I was afraid to go alone; it was so dark.
The well was a short walk from the house, but we also had a cistern right outside the door to catch the rain water which we used for bathing and washing clothes. Since all the water had to be heated on the stove, we took a bath only on Saturday nights. That’s what all the farmers around there did.
The farm was small, not really big enough to make a living on. We had Dad’s pension and he worked on the railroad some of the time. But he wasn’t well because of his war wound and he was in and out of the VA hospital a lot.
We went to school in Huntington. It had only four rooms: two grades in each room. It had running water but no indoor bathrooms. We had to use outhouses there too. One time the well went dry and they had to bring drinking water from inside. Our teachers taught us how to make cups from a sheet of paper and we would line up to get drinks ladled out from a bucket.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Murray and my second grade teacher was Mrs. Kuhn. There was no kindergarten. Mrs. Kuhn was really nice but Mrs. Murray was kind of mean. She spanked me a couple of times. Once was for talking to Gerald Abbot. Gerald Abbot liked me. I didn’t have the slightest idea why. Anyway he decided that I was his girl friend. I hardly knew him!
I learned how to read as soon as I could. I loved reading. I remember when I was old enough to get my own library card, the first book I read was “A Doll House”. But I kept it over the due date and I was afraid to go back to the library after that.
There was a Town Hall next to the school. For every holiday the school would put on shows. I remember for one show, every girl in my class wore dirndl skirts made out of identical feed sacks. Feed sacks cost 10 cents then and they were printed with a pretty flowered pattern. Mother often made me dresses out feed sacks and I liked them.
Mary was the Queen of Hearts in one pageant and she had a beautiful long red dress made of crepe paper I used to love to play with.
On Memorial Day the town would have a parade. All the kids would get a flag and we would parade to the cemetery. We would run to find a grave with a star on it. That meant that it was the grave of a veteran. We would then put our flag on that grave. By the time I got there all the starred graves already had flags and I felt bad. Mary told it was all right to have two flags on one grave so I felt better.
The church we went to was St. Patrick’s in Wellington. There was a protestant church and a Grange Hall in Huntington. We weren’t allowed to belong to the Grange because we were Catholics and the Grange had some sort of affiliation with the protestant church. There was only one other catholic family in Huntington, the Horvaths. However they didn’t go to church very often at all.
On Saturday, all the farmers went to town. That was Wellington. Wellington had some fine old Victorian Mansions on it’s main street. The mansions had widow’s walks on top and gazebos in their back yards. A couple had large mill stones in their front yard. Later, Pat told me that the town made a lot of money during the potato famine in Europe. Ireland was not the only country that suffered from the potato blight. The other European countries imported grain from the U.S. to feed their people. Wellington farmers sold a their grain overseas for a good price and became very prosperous. There was a grain mill and elevator in town next to the railroad station. We took our wheat there to be ground for flour.
Once a month when Dad got his pension check, we would all get our allowance. I used to get a nickel and everyone else got a quarter. Finally I told my Dad I wanted a raise. He was so amused by my asking that he started to give me a quarter too. It was so much more than I was used to getting, I didn’t know what to do with it. Pat had the idea that he could help me spend it until Mary straightened him out.
We would usually go to the show and do a little shopping. Mom and Dad had friends in town, the Tehans who were from Ireland too. I think they were the only other Irish in town. Most of the people were Germans or New Englanders, I believe.
When the war started Mom got a job working at the Belle Vernon Dairy. One day James and Dad went to town without us. Mary and Pat didn’t like being left behind, so they decided to walk to town. Since they couldn’t leave me home alone, I had to walk too. I think it’s about 10 miles. A long way to walk for a girl of 6 or 7. We found Mom at work and she wasn’t too happy to see us but she gave us some money for treats and we found James and Dad and got a ride home. I don’t know where John was. We didn’t have much money to spend and I didn’t have any friends to play with because the farms were set so far apart. Besides, all those German kids had too much work to do. They weren’t allowed to play. Even kids as little as me would have chores to do in the morning before school. Feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, etc. Mr. Horvath was very mean to his kids. He kept them out of school so they could work on the farm. Mary Rose Horvath was in my class, but was a couple of years older because she was kept out of school until the truant officer got after her parents. One day she ran away and hid in the woods for two days because her father beat her.
James & Mary were very creative. They used to make puppet theatres and haunted houses. The vacuum cleaner was used for sound effects. Sometime the haunted house would be in the barn and sometimes in the second floor of our house. There was a sort of attic over the kitchen that didn’t have a window or a light. There were two holes at one end to let the electric wires run in. It looked like two glowing eyes when the sun shone in. They (the older kids) told me it was a ghost and for while I believed them and was afraid to go in the attic.
Ghost stories were big then. On the radio there were several mystery theaters we used to listen to. The “Inner Sanctum” was one and “The Mummy”. I would get so scared, I’d have nightmares and have to sleep with Mom and Dad. Mom used to try to get the kids to turn off those scary stories so she wouldn’t be bothered with me in the middle of the night.
Mary was very artistic. She used to make paper dolls for me to play with. We played cards a lot. That’s how I learned to count. They made up a lot of stories. They told me that Mary won the Shirley Temple look-a-like contest and the prize was a trip to the Milky Way. They all went on the trip except me because I was too little. They stopped at the moon to get some cheese and then went on to the Milky Way and got Milky Way candy bars. That was the night we slept outside on the lawn so we could watch the stars.
We used to have car loads of relatives come visit us on Sundays in the summer. Our uncles would come and help do some repairs in the house and barn. Pat used to like scaring our ‘city’ cousins. Years later, one told me Pat had convinced her that there were bears in the woods. I remember another crying because she picked up a chick and it pecked her. I couldn’t believe she’d cry over that. Most of the relatives left with fresh vegetables from our garden.
One time the uncles came in and helped slaughter a pig. It’s squeals were very loud and I covered my ears so I wouldn’t hear it. I wasn’t supposed to go look, but I did anyway and I saw the pig split open and hanging from the roof of the shed. It was a very gruesome sight but we had bacon from that pig all winter.
I used to watch my mother cut the heads off the chickens. Sometimes they would jump down off the cutting block and run around without their head. I couldn’t understand how she could be so cruel. I couldn’t watch her clean it and take the guts out. It would make me gag and she would get mad and chase me away.
The Rice’s, on the farm next to us, raised a lot of sheep. When a mother sheep had twin lambs, sometimes she would reject one and the farmer would give us one to raise. That’s how we got Butch. Baby lambs are almost as cute as baby goats. Butch had a little bed under the stove in the kitchen. We took turns feeding him from a bottle and he became quite a pet. He followed mom around the farmyard like a puppy. I was very fond of him. I loved to hug his soft cuddly body. When he got big Dad sold him to Mr. Kader, the neighbor on the other side.
At school in the spring we were given seeds to sell. We would get a quarter for every box we sold and I suppose the school got something too. I got my box of seed and went over to Mr. Kader’s to see if he would buy some. There was no one at the house so I went out to the barnyard to see if I could find someone. Butch came out of the yard and trotted up to me and gently bumped me. I rubbed his furry head and said “Hi Butch”. He had two little bumps where his horn were starting to come out. Then Butch backed up and took a short run and bumped me again. “Hoo boy don’t do that!” Then Butch backed way up and got a good running start and started running at me like he really meant business. When I saw he was serious I started running too. I ran all the way home with Butch on my heels. I ran straight on into the house and he ran right up on the porch behind me and stood at the door waiting for me. We were all imprisoned in the house till my father came out of the barn with a pitchfork. Somehow, someone got a rope around Butch and led him home. I don’t know what happened to the seeds. But Mom was mad because she had to pay for them. I was told never to bring anymore seeds home to sell.
Mr. Kader was a character himself. He was as tight as a fish and that’s water tight. In the fall he would hire us to tramp down the silage in the silo. Silage was a combination of chopped up cornstalks and alfalfa which he fed the cows in the winter. He paid us (me & Pat ) a nickle. Pat was mad because he thought we should get much more for such difficult hard work. I thought it was fun just jumping up and down trampling stuff. Once he asked Pat to do some work for him. Pat told him he wanted an Eversharp pencil for his work. Eversharp was the brand name of a mechanical pencil that you fed lead into. Every school child wanted to have one. Mr. Kader gave him a lead pencil that he had sharpened. Pat said, “This isn’t an Eversharp pencil!” Mr. Kader said, “It will stay sharp forever if you don’t use it!”
That was the last time Pat ever worked for Mr. Kader.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor all the grown ups were talking about it. They were discussing who would be drafted. The draft would get my Uncle Hugie they said, and maybe even my father I worried. When Mom told me to shut the upstairs door so the draft would get in I made very sure it was shut tight. Another time James was telling us how strict the nuns were at St Ignatius where he went to school in Cleveland. He said one of the nuns scolded him. I thought he meant “scalded”. Scolded is a nunish word. None the teachers at our school used it.
When we took a train into Cleveland for a visit , it was the first time I saw nuns and I was very afraid of them. I didn’t want to get “scalded”.
We were very patriotic and the war propagnda very effective on us. the Japanese and everything connected were considered evil. One day when my parents were away. My sibs went on a rampage breaking every item in the house that was labled "Made in Japan" . That included all my mother's wedding china and my favorite doll. I don't know who was more devasted, my mother or me.
Most of the kids in the rural areas were active in the 4H and our family was no exception. Every one worked hard on a project to be entered into competition at the county fair in August. At the end of the fair, the animals would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. One year John raised a bull and Pat raised a pig for the fair. I think they both won blue ribbons. The auction brought in a nice bit of money for the boys. Mary did a sewing project. I was too little to belong. I don’t remember James having a project.
When the kids took their animals to the fair, they would sleep in the barns with the animals. One year in the middle of the night the Sheriff knocked at our door. He was bringing Pat home. He had an asthma attack during the night. This was his first attack, probably brought on by all the hay dust he inhaled while sleeping in the barn. The beginning of the many problems he would have in the future.
The City-Cleveland
They bought a house on Highland Drive in Cleveland. John had graduated from Rochester and was working at Western Automatic. His company had obtained a deferment for him, but he decided to register for the draft so he could get his service obligation over with. He went into the Counter-Intelligence Corp and was stationed in Pittsburgh. This is how he met his beautiful wife Marge. I’ll let him tell the details of that romance.
So now we’re back in Cleveland where it all started. Three members of the family are in the service. Pat is a gunner on a B-52?, stationed in Japan and flying missions over Korea. He could have avoided service altogether because of his asthma, but he wanted to be in the Air force.