Marjorie, 1947-48

Regarding getting married, Marjorie's mother (Mrs. Ruth Holzer) took charge of the whole operation basically. Her husband, "Buck" Holzer, urged us not to just elope, which of course would have been one of our options.

Her mom had a beautiful wedding dress made. The wedding took place in the living room of the apartment at 748 Warrington Ave., Pgh, over the candy store. We chose a minister of a church just down the street on Warrington Ave. (I can't recall the denomination). The night before the wedding, Mrs. Holzer slipped me a "fiver", saying to take it and give it to the minister to get her baptized. She explained that Marjorie had never been baptized because it had been unknown prior to that what type of person she was to marry. So we went across the road, down the street to the Rev., and asked him to baptize her, giving him the $5.00.

He said "Oh, there's no charge for that, I'll just put it in the offering." He also said that the normal procedure was to put an announcement in the weekly buletain two weeks ahead of time, but "under the circumstances", he would just go ahead and perform the ceremony. So we went over to the baptismal font, and he read from a little black book written by a believer saying essentially that he was putting Marjorie into my care until such time as she would come to know the Lord. Then he sprikled her from the font, and that was it..

So the day of the wedding arrived. I believe by that time I had just purchased, under the advice of my brother-in-law-to-be, Chuck Minster, a body and fender man. It was an 11-year old beater, a 1936 Ford V-8 4-door with only mechanical brakes. I got dressed and drove over to 748 Warrington Ave. Then I looked down at my shoes, and noticed one was brown and the other was black! My sister Barbara Neill was coming in from the east on the train that morning, and I told all I was about to run down to the station to meet her. Chuck Minster would have none of it, saying that I was the essential one here that day, and said he himself would pick up my sister from the station.

My intention had been to rent an apartment once we were married, but Marjorie was fully under the control of her mother, and couldn't part with her at that point, so we were to move in with them. There had been a porch built between their building and the one next door, ove the alley; how well supported, no one knew. But Buck volunteered to convert the porch into an extra bedroom for us, and have it ready.

Now normally the Blankenburgs (my mother's family), would get together every Christmas, but this year they delayed the get-together so that we could join them. Marjorie and I were married on Christmas day 1947. The next morning we boarded a Pullman with a through ticket to Hartford. After about a day and a half, we arrived in Hartford and were met by my Uncle Charlie Blankenburg. There had been a very heavy snowfall, but all went well otherwise.

Once we returned to Pittsburgh, Marjorie did all the cooking for the whole family, and also worked for her mother in the shop she had up the road, plus did demonstrations for her with the cosmetics. I contributed some of my G.I. bill money to help with the groceries, and regularly commuted to Carnegie Tech using now my '36 Ford V-8.

Marjorie's father, Ed Minster, who also lived with us gave us a very expensive bedroom suite, solid blond maple set: bed, vanity, and two chests of drawers. The two chests of drawers have survived, but are getting rather old and in need of replacement. Marjorie's mother gave us the living room furniture that was already in the living room.

There were some rather severe fights between my mother-in-law Ruth Holzer, and her husband Buck Holzer. So it was not always such a peaceful environment. Furthermore, the physical environment left quite a bit to be desired. I once hung out a line of wash to dry in the back yard, and when I took the laundry in there was a black ine running right through all the clothes. My father-in-law said "Anybody in their right mind is going to wipe off the clothesline before hanging clothes on it!" But I didn't know that.

Marjorie was still pretty dominated by her mother. Taking all the foregoing into consideratin, I decided the best thing to do was to transfere to the Univesity of Connecticut in Storrs, CT, which I did at the end of my Sophmore year at Carnegie Tech. Marjorie was expecting our first child at that time also.

So in the summer of 1948 we moved from her folks in Pittsburgh to my folks in Vernon, Connecticut. My parents gave us what had been their upstairs bedroom when I was growing up. We still used the '36 Ford, and it held up well. We wanted to get all our furniture, so I bought an old truck (with the idea of selling it afterwards), and drove the 500 miles to Pgh, loaded up the furniture, and drove back again (I think sleeping in the truck between times). I didn't shave the whole time, and when I returned, I shaved all but my mustache; there is or was a picture of me somewhere with my temporary one and only mustache.

I did a certain amount of work on the truck and put it up for sale, advertising in the local papers for maybe $300; I had bought it for say $250. One evening in response to my advertisement, there came a knock at the door: two men, and one was a sheriff. He said the truck was his, and he had sold it to Mr. Goodchild by a conditional bill of sale, on condition that all the payments of the agreed upon price be paid. Mr. Goodchild had told him that the truck "had tipped over with a load of potatoes up in Massachusetts, and wasn't worth a nickle". Mr. Goodchild was a realtor in Manchester and had a reputation for sharp dealing.

So that night I went to bed without the truck and without the $300. Next day I went down to Manchester, found Mr. Goodchild, and told him that he should know better than that, to do what he did, and I wanted my $300 NOW, or else I was going to the Connecticut State Police. He didn't have the money on him right then, but agreed to meet me later that day with the money, which he did, and that ended that.

The advice I had gotten from those at Carnegie Tech was to spend the summer working in an office to become familiar with office procedures. But I just couldn't tolerate that. I wanted to be outdoors. So that summer, besides doing electrical wiring, I worked on tobacco for the Thralls. We also went on a few trips. We went up to Maine camping, and crossed over the line into Quebec. It was strange. On the USA side was all woods, wildereness basically. On the Canadian side it was fairly well settled. Recently my grandson Jesse Tomes, a native Canadian told me that Canada encouraged dense settling along the border to prevent the USA from grabbing any Canadian land.

The ditches along Quebec country roads were quite deep, and in just pulling over to park at one point the car fell into the ditch, and I had to get a Quebec farmer to pull it out with his tractor. One Sunday morning in Quebec I saw a strange (to me) sight. There was a buckboard wagon with about 6 or 8 men in it all dressed up in full suits, no doubt on the way to church.

On another occasion, Marjorie and I went up north and crossed Lake Champlain on the ferry, and I do have a picture of that. On still another occasion, we wanted to go out to Cape Cod, and we got as far as the dunes, and almost to the Cape Cod Canal, but then it was time to go home, as we had run out of not only time, but especially money. On another occasion we went with my parents to Providence, RI and visited my Great Aunt Louise Blankenburg, who had life-use of the home of the former governor of RI.

In the fall I transferred to the University of Connecicut and continued my studies. I had gotten restless, and had wanted to drop out for just one year, and build a house on land my parents owned on Skinner road. They gladly would give me a building lot for this, but were dead set against my temporarily dropping out of school to do this, saying I'd never go back to it again. I wasn't convinced, but finally gave in, and continued at U of Conn. I had gone so far as laying out a building lot on Skinner Road, next to Luther Skinner's place, and had bought a bag of nails to use.

So for my Junior year in college I became again a commuter, this time from Vernon to Storrs, about 17 miles of country, hilly roads, not too bad except sometimes in the winter. I was the first one who had ever transferred from Carnegie Tech to Univ. of Conn., and Prof. LaVerne Williams, my advisor told me to take a light load at first and give it all I had as it would affect the gransfer grades from Carnegie. It was sound advice.

Next time, more on my commuting, experiences on the arrival of our firstborn, etc.