My Life Journey

Nov. - Dec. 1969

2009-05-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

My life changed forever during these two months. About 7 1/2 months after the birth of our first grandchild (Gifford Neill III), our seventh and last child arrived, John Peter Neill Nov. 4th, 1969. It was over nine years since our previous one, Mary. So Marjorie was already now a grandma, and now a mama once again! This one was especially "on purpose". She wanted to find out what it was like to have a baby this time again after being saved. She also, so to speak, "gave him to the Lord".

Gifford Jr. had already left home and was living in Winsted. Patricia was away at college at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. My dad and uncle Dave were still living next door, up the road towards the center of town.

I think it was within the previous year that Bill Barker and his family moved to a nearby town and started meeting with us. He had found us through the Stream magazine, asking them who were subscribers, and they gave him the name and address of our minister's mother-in-law. Earlier, our minister, Stan Albanesius had got us copies of the Hymnal from the Stream publishers, with many of the hymns written by Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, and John Ingalls.

Some time prior to this, I had gotten and read a book by Watchman Nee entitled "The Normal Christian Life". I was very impressed with the book; having the strong impact that all believers are actually one. In one instance, Watchman was on a trolley in Shanghai, and met another believer who asked him: "Who are you affiliated with?" Watchman's response was: "I'm affiliated with you!" I was very impressed with this thought, and actually used it myself in a similar situation.

At that time the Stream magazine was written by Witness Lee in California, and covered the idea that basically all believers are one and should not be divided. Many of the hymns cover this same thought. Another thought accentuated was that the church is Christ's own body, and He lives in each believer. All this is of course fully covered in the Bible, but for some reason it hasn't been accentuated in Christianity as a whole. So the church really itself is the Christ in every believer, especially as we gather together (but I believe, even when we're apart).

In any event, we had been singing these hymns, and Stan had been preaching these things gleaned from the Stream magazine by the time Bill Barker and family joined us. He felt I think fairly well at home since he had been meeting with a similar group prior to moving to Connecticut. But it was all new to us, and sometimes Bill would use the term "church" that sounded like it had more significance than I knew.

Some time during the first part of December 1969, a friend of Bill Barker's invited Witness Lee to come and share with us. Witness Lee was to have, I believe, a conference in Boston after this. So Witness Lee arrived to share with us, accompanied by John Ingalls, Titus Chu, Dave Shields, and two other brothers. Basically he shared with us the gospel "in miniature" as it were, plus calling on the Lord, and taking the words of the Bible in prayer,i.e. "pray-reading" the word.

After three meetings, I thought I had heard it all, and brother Lee went on to Boston. But prior to them leaving, John Ingalls shared that there was to be a conference in Erie, PA during the Christmas holidays. And with a smile on his face, John Ingalls said "Down with Santa Claus!" I thought it was a rather strange time to have a conference, but I felt that someone from our group really ought to attend, but I said nothing at the time.

To be continued.

Little Known Fact

2009-04-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

My Dad (Tom Neill), my sister (Barbara Neill), and I lived in California for the better part of two years. My Dad in Santa Monica in the early part of the 20th century, my sister in Santa Barbara in the mid-20th century, and myself in San Marcos in the early part of the 21st century. As far as I know, my mother never went west of the Hudson river.

Hartland VI

2008-10-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a long hiatus and in the meantime, I've sold the place in Streamwood, IL and temporarily moved in with Tom & JaeHi in Goshen, IN.

Where was I? Oh yes. I got involved with the Congregational church in Hartland. Over the several years we had a number of ministers. One was rather bad, and after him it seemed to me that we needed an "antidote". I wound up as one member on a committee to find another minister. We got the Connecticut Congregational central office in Hartford to send us resumes of potential ministers. I have to say that some of them looked like THEY needed help. But we noticed one who, to another member and myself, looked somewhat promising. The other member pointed out one line on the recommendation: "Not very much happened during this mans term at this church except perhaps in the hearts of 5 or 6 members". She said: "Look, see what this says! This means that he brought them to the Lord!" I myself, though a dormant Christian, thought that sounded pretty good. So we took steps to hire the man.

The Congregational church system is very liberal. Their philosophy is that each church is run by the congregation, whatever the congregation wants, that's it. So one congregation can be Modernists, and another can be gospel preaching.

As we interviewed Stanley Albanesius, he shared with us that he had some reservations about infant baptism. But we wanted badly enough to have him as our pastor that we neglected to inform others about this reservation, and ultimately it came back to "bite" us, or rather bite him. (Sorry, Stan).

It was due to Stanley Albanesius that I was revived from my dormant Christian condition, and indirectly also due to him that our whole family ultimately accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior. For several, including Marjorie and some kids, it came about this way. Evelyn Hohloch was a strong believer in the church there, but never one to be "pushy", nor one who would ever do any "organizing", etc., but very quiet and reticent. Yet she had a strong burden from the Lord to rent a bus (which she did), for a round trip to Boston to a Billy Graham Crusade. Stan was thunderstruck, and thought the bus would never be filled, but it WAS! (Thank you Evy).

The gospel was preached faithfully by Stan every Sunday. But this was against the wishes of many of the congregation. Ultimately, it came to a head, and a vote would be taken. I confess that I am an optimist. Stan was a pessimist by nature, but he called himself a "realist". I thought he would win the vote, but Stan thought otherwise, and so together we made plans for that eventuality, if it should happen: On the occasion of Stan coming out on the short end of the vote, I, by pre-arrangement would get up in that very meeting and announce that next Sunday there would be a meeting in my garage with Stan preaching, plus all the Sunday School classes would continue to meet (I believe with the same teachers) in our house and office rooms over top of the garage. He lost the vote and I made the announcement.

The next Sunday there were more meeting at our house than at the Congregational church in the center of town. We continued to meet regularly in our garage and house from 1963 to 1970. My Dad and Uncle Dave came to one of those first meetings, but didn't return. On rare occasions the whole church would have a "love feast" at our house. Twice there were weddings, and at one of those weddings there were 99 people in attendance.

I heated the garage with electricity, having made a special deal with the power company so it would not be excessively expensive. I had had heating elements embedded in the concrete slab of the garage, and also a temperature sensor in there as well. This, combined with a timer to apply power at off-peak times did the trick. The thermal time constant of the slab was rather large, so we could get away with this arrangement.

During this time I continued to use the garage during the week for electronics production, having at peak, 6 employees plus our kids. Every Sunday we would move things over to make room for the church meeting. Also, on Wednesdays, Ethel Albanesius had an after-school children's bible study, and she led many of those kids to the Lord during those years in our garage.

Having a small business, there were "fat" years, and lean years. Both were rather memorable. I had started out consulting for Regent Controls of Stamford, CT, Wendell Caroll, Pres. Once I had obtained my Masters Degree in EE, in 1961, he wanted to have all 5 of my days, but I wanted to cut him down to no more than 3 days. So finally we parted ways, and I went out and in about 1 week had obtained about 4 or 5 new clients.

After a year or two of this I gradually drifted also into some electronics production, with the goal of making more money. My Dad tried a bit of the production work, but didn't like it. My Uncle Arnold was visiting, and tried it a bit also. Marjorie wanted no part of that kind of work. I have a photo of her and me on this subject wherein our facial expressions tell all. You will get a kick out of it if ever I get around to posting it.

Time to quit.

Hartland V

2008-07-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

It's hard to tell just what year things happened. I know more where things happened rather than when. One subject I can cover in relation to the kids is money. I wanted them all to be very appreciative of, and responsible for money. Thus I've always been totally against an "allowance", in other words, money received on a regular basis for no apparent reason. So rather than that, I simply gave all the kids the opportunity to work and earn money. I belive it was beneficial. (Not only that, a lot of work actually got done!) Of course, everything done wasn't paid for, but everything to do with the business was.

I got them all to start a savings account at a bank. But I also allowed them to withdraw it. My theory was that if they were not allowed to withdraw it, they would lose interest in it, and feel that it wasn't really theirs.

I also had fun with them with money. I might have already mentioned it, but in the back yard in East Hartland, we got the field plowed, and had a big vegetable garden. But there were always a lot of stones. So one day, I told all the kids, "I'll give you 2 cents for every small stone, and 5 cents for every big stone you pick up and put on the stone wall; you can use the express wagon. This deal is only good for the next 60 minutes." Man, you should have seen those stones fly off the land, onto the express wagon, and onto the stone wall! It was breathtaking! And a lot of fun!

One Christmas Marjorie gave me a change machine, to dispense quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. She gave me that to facilitate paying highway tolls. But I also put it to good use in another way. At times totally unpredictable by me or anyone else, out of the blue, I would announce to the kids: "Money time!" They would all gather round, and I would dispense to each kid an equal amount of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. It was fun for all concerned.

One Sunday afternoon I walked with the kids up to the north end of Old Town Road to the "Skyliner", an ice cream place, and got them all ice cream cones. Then I said to them: "I want you all to remember this day, because it will always be known as 'The Good Old Days'"

For one summer we traded Gifford Jr. for Marlene, one of Chuck & Ellie's daughters in Pittsburgh. Chuck Minster was Marjorie's brother.

I always thought our place in Hartland was a wonderful place to raise our kids. The air was pure, and every cloudless night you could look up and see the Milkey Way. Also, the moral environment was good, due to the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church, which was full of born-again believers. Their pastor called on us about 3 times to get us to come to their church, but for some reason, I didn't. Instead, I joined the Congregational Church in the center of town, and became active in it.

The government of the Congregational Church was indirectly by the congregation. It was governed by the Ecclesiastical Society, which consisted of most of the members, and was founded back in colonial times. In reading the constitution of the organizations, you could easily see that in those early times, they were all very strong believers. However, at the time we moved to Hartland, most were simply what are called "modernists", in other words, not what we would call born-again believers.

To be continued. (I want to continue where I left off next time).

Hartland IV

2008-07-06T19:42:00.000-07:00

Most years in Hartland we had a vegetable garden, sometimes a real big one. As I told everyone at the time, I did it not to save money, but to be agricultural. Since I grew up on the farm and had electronics as my hobby, the situation was now reversed; I now had electronics as my occupation, and "farming" as my hobby; whatever. Even later on I got my Uncle Fred to transport two of my dad's chicken coops over, and we had about 25 chickens.

One year I let each kid have a patch of the vegetable garden as their very own, and they grew whatever they wanted.

After a while I was able to raise fantastic vegetable crops. I used my pickup truck to go over to Austin's goat farm in the center of town, and haul in a good bit of goat manure. However, that effort was part of my semi-undoing as it put my back permanently out of whack. Foolishly, I strained it in two ways: over-doing it in loading the truck, and later when spreading it on the vegetable plot, I simply did it by twisting my back rather than my knees.

At some point in time my dad, with Uncle Dave, moved up to Hartland. Dad bought the place from Ted Aagre who moved back to Norway. My sister Barbara and her friend Tesha Lewia had both been living at my dad's place (the old homestead) in Vernon / Rockville, where I grew up. I could tell you a little bit about Barbara: She worked at a museum in Charlotte, NC for some years, and then for some years at another museum in Santa Barbara, CA. She finally wound up working at the Nature Science Center at the Museum of Natural History in NYC. There were always children's school classes going through there, and Barbara was always very much involved.

Once my dad moved to Hartland, things were different, and more fun. What had been Aagre's house came with ALL the land between his house and mine. So I immediately bought a slice of land from my dad, simply to move the property line a reasonable distance away from our place. And then we could take the fence down too, and made a pathway between our two houses. My dad would go for a walk past our house almost every day. The kids would drop in on him every so often too.

We did not have delivery mail service in Hartland. To get the mail, most every day I would hop on my bike and ride down to the Post Office to get our mail from Mrs. Emmons, the post mistress there. One memorabld day I walked. Maybe it was about 1959. I received a letter from the University of Connecticut, regretting to inform me that I had failed a course, thus failing to obtain that Masters degree in Electrical Engineering. It was then, or was it much later, that I identified with that saying, "beware of those two impostors, 'success' and 'failure'". I had failed the oral examination for the Masters degree. (I do not do well in trying to think on my feet; I do much better sitting down; in fact I get most of my best ideas about 4 AM while still in bed). Anyway, after another year or so, I was able to repeat the oral examination, this time passing it, and got my MSEE in June, 1961.

On a different note, I once caught a very strange insect in the garden and I was very curious about him, so I put the little critter in an envelope, still crawling around inside, with my return address on it, and mailed it to the Department of Etymology, The University of Connecticut, Storrs, Conn. About a week later I got a letter from them saying they received the letter, but the little fellow was all totally in pieces and they couldn't identify him

Some summer nights I'd be in my office with all the windows open, working away. With no screens on the windows there would be a zillion insects gathered around the florescent lights in the ceiling, and it seemed each one was different! I never put locks on the windows either.

Oh, sorry, I got ahead of myself. Once my dad moved to Hartland, he gave the old homestead to Barbara and me. We worked to fix it up a bit and tried to sell it without success. So finally I bought my sister's half, and rented it out. Eventually I sold it, and we added a dormer to our house in Hartland, making 6 rooms and a bath upstairs. There were two brand-new bedrooms, and in the front, Patricia had the southwest bedroom, and Yvonne had the northwest bedroom. In the winter, I think some of those bedrooms were rather cold, though all were heated.

Later, my dad gave me money to build an addition to the house, on the north side. There were bolders in the way, and it took some bulldozing to move them. Gladwin Parmalee built the addition, and he had Ron Cari pour the slab. Ron Cari was a contractor who made the news once. His wife was being "courted" by some guy in a convertible. One time he caught that convertible parked out front of their house, and he got one of his cement trucks and filled that convertible with cement!

I digress. But let me back up and digress a little more. Another one of my favorite stories: When my dad and Uncle Dave moved to Hartland, they registered to vote. For a good part of his life, my dad was a socialist. He used to vote for Jasper McLevy (the mayor of Bridgeport), for governor. He would quote him: "The Democrats were in power, and all corrupt. The Republicans hadn't been in power for quite a while, and oh how hungry they were!" My dad used to read the paper, and noting all the pages devoted to stock prices comment: "There must be an awful lot of people gambling in stock." Later, once he sold all the land of the farm for building lots and development, he put most of it into stock, and became a registered Republican.

With my Uncle Dave, it was different. He worked in the woolen mill all his life, and once they went on strike, but the business moved south, while they were still on strike. Anyway, as I said, once my dad and Uncle Dave moved to Hartland, they registered to vote. Out of curiosity, I went to the Town Clerk's office, where they, on request, gave you a list of the town's registered voters. I got two lists, one a long one of the registered Republicans, and the other one, a much shorter list of the registered Democrats. My dad was on the first one, and Uncle Dave on the second one. I mentioned this to Uncle Dave, and his eyes just twinkled.

Uncle Dave was a different kind of person. Very, very quiet. He read quite a bit, but my dad said that "Dave couldn't tell you what he read about." He did, however, give a very good speach upon his resignation from his lodge in Rockville, and it greatly surprised my dad.

Well, I must close now.

Hartland III

2008-06-25T19:22:00.000-07:00

Rarely in any of my previous posts do I recall relating much regarding our vacations, which were always memorable. It's difficult to pinpoint them in time, so I'll just relate some of them, somewhat in order. I believe I related some of the ones wherein there were just the two of us.

However, once we had a bunch of kids, vacations were different. I remember when we were still living at Lake Garda, I bought a big, fancy tent with steel ribbing and a waterproof floor. Also a chemical toilet. We were going to "rough it", and headed north to Maine. This was before the days of the Interstate system, and even before Boston's outer loop, Route 128. So we had to drive right through downtown Boston to get to Maine. We went to a Maine State Park and camped by a lake. In those days, at that park there were no prepared campsites, you had to do it yourself. So I cleared and leveled a spot on a gentle hillside near the lake and pitched the tent, and nearby established the chemical toilet. We went swimming every day and had a great time. One night there was really a torrential rain, with rivlets of water coming down the hillside, and you could feel the water flowing under the floor of our tent! But we kept dry.

Quite often we would make the 500 mile trip to Pittsburgh to visit Marjorie's folks. Once, just to be different, I took a ruler and drew a straight line from Unionville to Pittsburgh, and we followed it as close as existing roads would permit. It was fun, driving through the Pocano mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Took an extra half day, but it was worth it. In those days, often we didn't have much money, and we took care of eating by stopping at a grocery store for a few supplies, then cooking over a primus stove we took along.

Once my Dad rented a cottage down at the shore on Long Island Sound. So we were able to stay there for several days. The Sound stayed rather chilly until rather late in the season. But it was fun.

We regularly used to go to Rocky Neck State Park to go swimming in the Sound, but one day when we were there, the place was filled with people from New York, and I remember swimming past a floating hot dog. I decided the place was too crowded, and resolved to find a better place. So our next place to try was Hamonasset State Park, which also had campsites. So we camped there once, but it was also crowded. Shirley was not quite a toddler and had trouble sleeping when we camped there. We called her "All day, all night Shirley Ann".

The next place I think we tried was Misquamicut State Park in Rhode Island. I really don't remember that much about it, but it still was on the Sound, not the Atlantic Ocean.

Ultimately we found a really nice place to swim in the ocean. It was a little further, but the beech actually faced the ocean, rather than just on the sound, so the waves were bigger. This was Scarborough State Beach in Rhode Island. It wasn't as crowded, though a lot of people did come down from Boston to swim there. There are movies of the kids there.

Back to Hartland: Not long after moving to East Hartland, I put up a TV antenna. I was up at the peak of the roof putting up the antenna, complete with antenna rotor, so that we could aim it for Hartford, Springfield, Boston, or New York. While I was busy up there (even though I'm scared of heights), guess who came along: A life insurance salesman, who tried to sell me a policy right while I was up there on the roof!

When I was "prospecting" for a house in Hartland, I happened to stop in at the younger Parmalee's place, and asked about the typical weather. Mrs. Parmalee said "It's cooler here all year round". And so it was. One winter I had a large thermometer under the apple tree in the front yard, and early one morning in the dead of winter, the thermometer stood at -25 deg. F. Bu there was no wind, so it wasn't so bad. Typically each winter we would shovel snow as high as the car.

Slippery conditions made interesting driving in Hartland. In the winter, sometimes coming home from work could be a challenge. There was particularly one spot, rather steep, and curved. If you go too slow, you loose traction and will never make it up the hill. If you go too fast, you'll run off the road on the wrong side of the road.

Connecticut has a lot more fog than is typical for the Midwest. I remember one very foggy night coming home from work. I heard on the radio that a plane had landed at Bradley Field, but then got lost on the ground in the fog. They sent a vehicle out to guide the plane in, but it too got lost, so they had to send a man out on foot to guide the vehicle to guide the plane in. That same night, I drove right out from under the fog, and when I got to the center of East Hartland I could see the stars!

But on several other occasions, it was a different story. One night on the way home from work, the fog actually got thicker with higher altitude, and when I got to the top of the hill, I was simply following the yellow line at the edge of the road, because that was all I could see. However, at the intersection of Hartland Blvd (Rte 20) and Mountain Rd, the yellow line ran out, and I had to continue strictly by "dead reckoning" to get past it. You could see your hand in front of your face, but not much past it.

Winter was a fun time for the kids too. They used to take their sleds up to Pell Hill Road and slide down into Old Town Road. One kid would stay at the bottom of the hill on Old Town Road and be the lookout for any oncoming cars.

Which reminds me. At any time of the year they would have fun riding down the stairs in cardboard boxes.

Trips to Pittsburgh were always an adventure. And it would take forever to have everyone ready to start the trip. Neither were the trips without incidents. One classic case I'll never forget: We had gone 5 miles on the start of this 500 mile trip, just to the bottom of the hill, to Granby, and two juice jugs had crashed together and broke, and one kid was already "car sick"!

One tough trip in midsummer, we failed to find a motel with vacancy, and had to sleep in the car and it was terribly hot and muggy. Patricia was quite little yet, and was crying, and scratched her belly with her finger nails. Those marks were still there a month later!

After several years working at Kaman Aircraft Corp., I decided to change the direction of my life. I didn't like being an "employee", especially a "permanent" employee. I felt trapped. In the winter time the only time I saw my place in Hartland by daylight was on week ends.

There was a fellow working at Allen D. Cardwell Electronics in Plainville, Ct while I was working there. He was a consultant. I figured, if he can do it, so can I. So that was my goal. I contacted and had an interview with Wendell Carroll, the owner of Regent Controls in Stamford, CT. The result was a consulting contract whereby I worked for them 4 days per week: Monday and Tuesday in Stamford, Wednesday and Thursday in Hartland. I devoted the fifth day to pursuing that Master's degree in Electronics Engineering. It worked out beautifully, and I had much more time with the family.

Well, of course I have a whole lifetime to write about yet, but it's getting late, so must quit for now.

Hartland II

2008-06-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the birches in the swamp north of the house. In the winter sometimes there would be an ice storm and the birches would be coated with ice. I've seen them bent over so far that they would almost touch the ground.

We lived in East Hartland from 1956 to 1970. When we first moved up there, I had a regular engineering job with Kaman Aircraft Corporation in Bloomfield, and I was occasionally working towards a Master's degree at the University of Connecticut. At the time we moved up there, we had 5 children: Gifford Jr and Patricia, born in Hartford, Yvonne born in Maryland, and Tom and Shirley born in Bristol.

Shortly after moving to East Hartland, I joined the Congregational church there. And shortly thereafter, our neighbor across the street, who was the treasurer of the East Hartland Congregational church was found to have been embezzeling funds. For some reason, some of the Norwegeans in town pitched in to help solve our problem, including running the offender out of town within 24 hours. When questioned about it, the Norski's said "Oh, we're pretty good Swedes" Apparently that is a Norwegean saying for "tough guys". Note that Norway was under Sweden for a long time. This may explain a little Norwegean ditty: "Ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds, chased by one Norwegean".

We moved in the fall of 1956, at the time of the presidential election, and Eisenhower was running for a second term. Prior to moving, I had watched former President Hoover on TV putting in a good word for Eisenhower. I also remenber hearing an interview on the radio with Kerenski, the Russian Premier prior to the Communist revolution. They asked him, "would you consider returning to Russia?" He said "No, not as long as the Communists are runnng the governement".

Once we got to East Hartland, the election took place. On the eve of the election, England and France invaded Egypt without telling up first. I think we put pressure on them to get out of Egypt.

Not long after moving, a couple of my co-workers at Kaman Aircraft asked if they could come up and stay at our place for 24 hours, to take part in a big amateur radio contest. East Hartland being 1,192 feet altitude gave it an advantage for high frequency propagation. So we agreed, and as part of the deal, they agreed to leave their equipment behind for several weeks for my use, as I still had a Novice ticket, WN1WWO.

In preparation for the move, I had put the place at Lake Garda / Unionville up for sale, without results. So I temporarily gave up, and rented it.

That fall in Hartland, I remember for some reason there were a zillion and one crickets along the south side of our house there.

Our property line came fairly close to the house on the south side. Ted Aagre lived in the house to the south, and his original intention was to sell several building lots out of that land. He and his wife were originally from Norway, but he also was a retired boat buildier from Long Island. He had built our house and sold it to Arthur Aasland. Arthur Aasland was more recently from Norway. He didn't really have a last name, but took the name of Aasland, as that's the region he came from in Norway. I don't believe he attended the Norwegean church, nor the Congregational church either, for that matter. He's the one I got the Norwegean sayings from.

I got Ted Aagre to build for me a couple of bookshelves, which Yvonne has now. There is no back, as they lean against the wall. I was very particular as to the distance between the shelves, so that tall books could be accommodated.

Pretty much every year we had a vegetable garden, and Marjorie started to have flower gardens, especially around the west (front), and south side of the house. One of her main specialties was roses.

There were always a lot of rocks turned up once the garden was plowed. So I came up with a "limited time offer" for the kids to pick up rocks and add them to the stone wall. Let's say I offered 2 cents for a small rock and 5 cents for a large rock. This was a very limited time offer, like one hour maybe. Man, you should see those rocks move like lightening from the field to the stone wall! I belive I have a picture of all the kids sitting on the stone wall afterwards.

Thanks kids for giving me the "nudge" to continue with this history. It's better I do this than waste time watching TV.

Our move to Hartland

2008-05-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

So we moved to East Hartland in the fall of 1956. The air was a lot cleaner there, and any night when there were no clouds, the Milky Way stood out quite brightly as a wide band right across the sky. It seemed like the ideal place to raise children. The moral atmosphere seemed good perhaps due to the presence of the Bethany Lutheran Free Church, which was mostly Norwegean.

Gifford Jr, who had begun first grade in the town of Burlington, continued school in West Hartland by bus, and I think they still had "double sessions". It was tough on him, and for that reason, I don't think he did so well.

The three girls took the larger room upstairs, and the two boys the smaller room. For an office, I used the small room upstairs that had been an extra perhaps kitchen as it had a sink. We could not get a private telephone line as there were not enough phone lines running up to East Hartland. So we had to get a party line, and the only catch was that there was a lady in town there who seemed to spend all her time on our phone line. I was forced to build a little battery operated phone line detector, that monitored wheter the line was busy or not. If it was busy, a red light would remail lit; when the lady hung up, you could hear the relay "click", and the light would go out. I'd grab the phone quickly then, as that was my chance. This provoked the lady as she liked to make a series of long phone calls one after the other.

The pastor of the Bethany Lutheran Free Church called on us a number of times to get us to go there, but I always declined. Instead, we attended the First Congregatinal Church in the center of town, just a few doors away from our place. In this way we got acquainted with a lot of the people in the town. You know that prior to the Revolution, for some time, the Congragational churches were the official church of the state, and that is the reason that many of them are in the very center of the town, on what one would expect to be community property. They also are the direct descentants of the churches of the pilgrems.

To the north of our house, and still on our property, was a birch swamp, complete with ferns. The other side of the swamp was a stone wall, separating our property from the Stones, an elderly couple. He was legally blind, and when he drove his car, he drove very slowly, in the center of the road. I think he was a retired insurance executive, and he complained to me that he had to provide the finances for his grandchildren to go to college. To the northeast was the hand dug well, the source of our water. The far northeast corner of our lot was a very old dump, with ancient bottles, etc. Today's "collector" items. I had to get rid of it all. We had no trash service, but I got an old truck and hauled all our rubbish up to the town dump, the use of which is free.
The old truck was a 1936 International pickup. It had some unusual features, such as the gas tank was under the front seat. It also had a character all its own (and so does yours truly), and we didn't always hit it off so well. One day it wouldn't start. I tried every known remedy, including cleaning the carburetor. Finally I took the rather desperate step of pouring a little gasoline into the carburetor. I turned on the key, stepped on the starter, and there was a tremendous explosion. I remained sitting on the gas tank, astonished. I opened up the hood. I found the dip stick bent over double. The force of the explosion had driven the dip stick up against the inside of the hood, and bent it over double!

I had spent several hours in this endeavor, without positive results. Finally, it occurred to me. How about the gas? I took up the seat cushion, opened the gas tank cover, and lo and behold! Virtually out of gas.

Pretty little chipmonks lived in our stone wall.

I need to quit now.

East Hartland

2008-03-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

I was pretty well set on moving out of Lake Garda. For a while we considered moving to Simsbury, and there was a development there on a high hill we were attracted to. It had a back road down the hill from there called "The Garret Stairs", which I considered might be good in case of fire, as the place was mostly all woods. We had our eye on a building lot there, and we even bought and planted a mountain laural bush on it. But once we considered the overall cost, etc., we came to the conclusion that it was not for us.

So we considered East Hartland more seriously, in spite of the fact that it really wasn't that much closer to work. I had a realtor take me to see several places there. He drove very fast up Old Town Road to a place I think just past Pell Hill Road. I think he drove real fast hoping I wouldn't see the "For Sale by Owner" sign that Arthur Aasland had out in front of his place. The realtor also took me up the road past Fisher's place, to a very high place on the left (west) side of the road. But the place was terribly run down, and I visualized it would take a fortune to bring it into proper shape.

So later, by myself, I went back to Arthur Aasland's place, and we wound up purchasing it directly from him. At the same time I believe we tried unsuccessfully to sell our place at Lake Garda. After moving to our new place in East Hartland, we tried to rent out the place at Lake Garda. It was my first experience in renting. I tried to be careful, and asked for references. One lady originally from Tennessee with a large family wanted to rent, so I asked for references, and she gave one. I called the party up, I think it was a physician in Tennessee, and he was surprised that she had given him as reference. He said that she paid the rent regularly, and that was no problem, but that basically, she and her family just plain ruined the place!

So I didn't rent to her. There was another couple that was interested, and they sounded quite promising, but I don't remember anything about references. If there were, they apparently passed muster. So we rented to them. They asked and got permission from us to paint the place inside. (There went Marjorie's art work). But we did what we had to do. I may have gotten the fiirst month or two's rent, but after that it was amazing the stories I got over the phone from our tenants: "Oh, my mistake, I sent the check to East Hartland, Massachusetts by mistake. Don't worry, I'll correct it right away." Every month something, and often I had to personally go back down there to collect. With all the effort, I often felt that I personally earned the rent money just trying to collect it. But they kept the place neat as a pin.

Based on my expereience with the above two samples of renters, it seemed like there were two kinds: one kind pays rent right on the spot but wrecks the joint; the other kind keeps the place neat and clean, but it's like pulling teeth to collect the rent. Oh, well, that was just my experience at that point.

We moved to East Hartland just as Eisenhower was running for a second term against Adlai Stevenson. The air was much clearer in Hartland than it was at Lake Garda. East Hartland was 1,192 feet above sea level, compared to Simsbury, which I think was about 300 feet. They say that for every 1,000 feet of altitude is the weather equivalent of going 200 miles further North. In the process of checking out East Hartland, I knocked on a number of doors in town, asking a few questions. At the younger Parmalee's place they advised me that yes, it is cooler here, "all year round".

The place we bought from Arthur Aasland was actually built by Ted Aagre, who lived in the next place towards the center of town, on the same side of the road.

More of this later, I need to quit now.

Lake Garda 1952-55

2008-03-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

The house we bought was on Circle Drive at Lake Garda, Unionville, CT. It was just over the township line in Burlington, Ct, but that didn't reflect in the post office address. The house that we bought, I found out later, had been sitting half built for a number of years, but Battistoni apparently bought it and finished it, putting it on the market, and we bought. It had a full basement with a well and electric pump there. The main floor had a kitchen where we also ate, a living room, full bath, and two bedrooms. Upstairs were two bedrooms. The house was surrounded by sand, and in the back, birch trees. There were no neighbors on either side of us, just birch woods. There was no garage, and the driveway was mostly sand. But the kids had a lot of fun in the sand. And there were no more ticks and chiggers.

We were "welcomed" by a strange neighbor across the street. When I drove the truck into our new driveway, he came out and said "You turn around, bear right, and drive on up the hill." He thought I had come there by mistake. We heard that he occasionally beat his wife, and even for a time had her chained to the bed. But he never gave us any trouble. Another neighbor had a wife who was Hawaiian; they had several kids. Another neighbor right down the street on Circle Drive was Nelson, who had been on the USS Topeka with me, but we never found out until after moving away. Still another neighbor on Circle Drive, was a fellow who had been in the German army, and had fought the Russians on the eastern front.

There is a brief movie of our little family there in front of our house at Lake Garda. It was taken by my uncle Arnold Blankenburg, and is in the middle of a large reel of unknown Oakley Kansas people on 16 mm film presently stored at Tom Neill's place in Goshen, IN.

The job with the Allen D. Cardwell Co. turned out to be a little different than expected, in that just as I was beginning there, a bunch of top engineers there quit en masse to start another company in competition, a few towns to the south. The company had originally been a manufacturer of variable capacitors ("condensers" in th0se days), and located in Brooklyn, NY. But at the time I went to work there it was owned by Mr. Soby, and was primarily a miliitary contractor. Shortly after arriving, I was made project engineer of the development and manufacturing of a shipboard radiosonde receptor, to track and record weather balloons launched typically from aircraft carriers. The Navy provided us with an earlier model that had been developed by General Electric, and Cardwell had earlier been manufacturing radiosonde receptors for the Army. I have a picture somewhere of myself standing in front of a developmental large dish antenna on a little tower at Cardwell during that period.

Lake Garda was laid out in typical developmental fashion, somewhat like a maize. One day at work I got an urgent call from Marjorie that Patricia was missing! I lost not time in getting on up the road to Lake Garda. Surprise! At the very entrance to Lake Garda (distance of some blocks from home), there was Patricia. The story may have been that Patricia had wanted to stop there at that tree and gather some nuts, or something, but the answer had been "no".

The Lake Garda developoment was a little confusing to drive around. Once my sister Barbara visited us there, and I remember waiving to her again after she left, the second time she traversed Circle Drive, ha ha. My parents lived about 30 miles away, back at the old homestead in Vernon, and we would visit them every so often, and once in a while they would visit us. My dad had had a prostate operation at age 69, while we were in Maryland, but recovered completely in about a month.

Once in a great while we would make the 500 mile trip and visit Marjorie's folks in Pittsburgh. Once or twice they came up and visited us.

Gifford Jr. became friends with little Wendy Suizdak, who also lived on Circle Drive. One day they were in the woods playing with fire, but it got away, and the Fire Department had to come and put the fire out.

Sometimes there was quite a bit of "pressure" on me at work, and my nerves were not quite up to it, whether due to latent effect of the Chorea illness I had suffered years earlier, or due to lack of sufficient B vitamins, I don't know. Occasionally I had to take a day off from work just to settle down my nerves. Eventually it went away. Some time after this period, I applied a (probably wrong) philosophy of my own: I decided I could be either "fat and happy" or "thin and nervous". So later I opted for the former, and actually did put on a little too much weight. But I was no longer nervous at that point.

As time went on I started to join a number of organizations, including the Unionville Congregational Church, the Burlington Historical Society, the Burlington Republican Town Committee, etc. Before I realized it, I was committed to every evening. So I simply quit it all.

Marjorie had a "blast" in decorating our house, and I wish I had taken color photos of her work. She did a mural on Gifford Jr.'s bedroom wall, with a full wall of a "cowboy" scene, rather spectacular. And in the kitchen, the entire, at least one, wall was of hand painted autumn leaves. I thought it was great. It was our first real house, and it was our own.

On March 17, 1954, Tom was born. At work, they put on the blackboard, "Patrick Neill born", thinking it would be appropriate, but I said, "We already have a Pat." So that name didn't fly. He was a big baby. Eleven pounds something. Marjorie hadn't been too careful with her eating.

Some of us accompanied the final product for shock testing at the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington D.C. Other activities I was involved in: I took and passed a series of tests to be regestered as a Professional Engineer in Connecticut. Also, I started taking evening classes in advanced electronics towards the goal of a Masters Degree.

Towards the end of our time at Lake Garda, I began to acquire more land next to us, and behind us. (Remember the Monopoly syndrome).

Our main project was nearing completion, and the smart thing to do would be to look for a better job. This I found at the Kaman Aircraft Corporation, in Bloomfield, Ct. The commute was a bit far, but I was ready for a change, and I got nearly the pay I asked for. Near my first day on the job was August 19, 1955. This was the day of a hugh flood in Connecticut. That night we went to Unionville to get groceries. On the way back I noticed that the river was only one foot below the bridge. The next day the bridge was half submereged, and helicopters were hovering over the river looking for people who might have been floating away in portions of their houses.

The flood was spectacular in Unionville, which was a disaster area where no one was allowed. Later, we found that on the north side of the river, an entire line of houses were washed away. The most memorable view I have is one place where not only the house was washed away, but the building lot also: There was the front walk, there was the driveway, and instead of a house, there was the new river bank!

I rather enjoyed the change and the new work at Kaman Aircraft, though the commute was longer.

On Jan 14, 1956 Shirley was born also in Bristol Hospital. When I came in to see them after the fact, Marjorie was on oxygen. The doctor made light of it. Ha. But I took it pretty serious. But there were no problems fortunately.

I became somewhat dissatisfied with the environment at Lake Garda. Certainly it was better than southern Maryland where we had been, but I felt it could be greatly improved by a move.

I had remembered East Hartland, where my sister Barbara had been a Girl Scout Councellor while I was growing up. One time we went up there and visited her, and that evening we could see northern lights. But one of the main attractions there was that there was a church where the gospel was preached, and attended by many of the inhabitants. I didn't have the intention of attending there myself, but felt it would be a most positive influcence on the neiighborhood.

Well, it's getting late and I must quit for now.

1950-52 Maryland, NATC cont'd

2008-02-27T19:10:00.000-08:00

Another thing, prior to our getting electricity: I got an old ice box, and cut a hole in the side of the house for it. Every few days, I'd stop on the way home and buy a cake of ice. Worked real well too. But I had a little "interchange" with the seller of the ice. He would always give me a lot of coins for change, and he had a bunch of slot machines there, hoping I'd spend the change there, which I never did. Apparently it made him angry. His pricing of the ice was strange because he charged more per pound for a large block than a very small block. I called him on it, and he got even madder, saying "I don't want your business anyway!"

I may have mentioned that shortly after I began work at Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland, the Korean War started, and things there started humming. Besides receiving offers from firms in Connecticut, I received another offer from the government, for a GS-4 position. I showed it to my boss, who said, "I think we can beat this." And he did, and I got a decent raise, to a GS-5, which actually would be normal for a recent graduate.

Our property straddled the right-of-way for the defunct Washington to Cape Lookout Railway. It had been graded I guess all the way down to the cape, but no tracks were ever laid. Our shack bordered one side of the grade, and the outhouse was just a few feet beyond the grade on the other side. The sspring of 1951 I put in a vegetable garden, hauling chicken manure from a chicken farm willing to give it away for nothing.

In the beginning, we had no next door neighbors at all, but after a while, the previously mentioned "hill-billy" neighbors moved in, but they were friendly. It was a couple and their teen age daughter. One late evening we heard a lot of hollering next door, and a sound like someone in their kitchen trying to quickly rustle up a big kitchen knife. Next, their back door slammed, the car started with a lurch, and as it was "gunning" out of their driveway, there was a big explosion, and a sound of buckshot hitting the side of the car. (I was mindeful that there was only 1/2" or 1/4" of Gyplap on our house as a buckshot stopper). But the next morning, the lady next door was very nice about it and apologized for all the hub-bub. And a day or so later, I heard the man of the house singing "Never speak harsh words to your ever-loving husband; he may leave you never to return", - - a verse from one of my favorite songs entitled "The Wreck of the ole '97". (A railroad song, and as a matter of fact, I think he may have worked for the railroad, but I'm not sure; they didn't believe in "fast time" (daylight savings), and neither did the railroad, nor Virginia at that time).

At work I did testing of electronic armament control systems, in the division called "Armament Test". Occasionally my work would take me over to another hanger where there was another division called "Electronic Test". There there was an engineer by the name of Doganzis, and when he did a test, everyone called it a "Doganzis Special", and it would be somewhat spectacular, making use of oceans of oscilloscopes, oscillograph recorders and the like.

With my wife Marjorie, two little kids plus one on the way, I was very disinclined to participate in any test flights, and as a matter of fact I was successful in avoiding them all. Test flights crashed on occasion, and in fact, the test pilots were all military, but still somewhat nervous about it (though of course always trying not to show it). One test pilot, having to crash-land his plane, took 1/2 hour just to sign his name. My bosses boss and a bunch of others took a Grumman "Wigeon" plane for a trip out west on business, and flew into a mountan; all aboard were lost. In those days, even typically there would be several airline crashes per year, and often it would be flying into mountains.

But the pilots also would have fun. I was there when the first jets came out, and they got a kick out of putting them through their paces. I remember one guy flying a jet to St Louis in just a couple of hours; unheard of in those days. His comment: "Gotta hurry".

As time went on, I felt the need to get more land (maybe like Monopoly, you know). It was cheap, and now I was making more money, so I got the lot next door to the North, and the two lots behind our original one plus the new one. And I fenced them all in. The following year I planted a big potato field with no fertilizer. I planted a peck of seed potatoes, and in the fall harvested a peck of potatoes. So much for that.

In my spare time, I built a shortwave transmitter, put up a long antenna over the potato field, went up to Washington D.C., and took the amateur radio test for morse code and a license. I didn't make the required 13 words per minute for a full licence, but did make the five words, and so obtained a "novice" class licence, and was given the call letters WN3UBI. I went on the air and "worked" hams within a 200 or 300 mile radius.

For some reason the kitchen drain emptied into a large hole in the back yard, and became even more full due to heavy rain. Little Patricia was out there, slipped, and fell into the hole over her head! Marjorie, who was expecting our third at that time, saw what had happened, and rushed out to rescue, but instead she herself slipped and fell on the ground. It could have been a double tragidy. But fortunately, she was not injured, and immediately pulled Patricia out safely.

I was not happy with the mail service, and thought to do someting about it. So I wrote up a petition, and went door to door around the whole area collecting signatures, finally presenting it to the post office. But at the same time, so that it wouldn't simply get lost in the Post Office burocracy, I also sent a copy with covering letter to the local newspaper. It went on the front page, saying that "a group headed by Gifford Neill" got up the petition, etc. Ha! I was the "group". It did bear fruit, but not too long before we were to leave the area.

Later I got promoted to GS-7. With all this wonderful new money, we got a TV set, and were able to watch Jacky Gleason, among others. Also I watched General Eisenhower giving a speach relating to his deciding to run for President. We got an oil-burning stove also at some point. Also for a while I had a truck, and was able to put on a 6' x 8' addition to the back of our little house. To save money, I built it out of slabs I got for nothing from the lumber yard, and covered it with tar paper. At some fairly early point in time, I had decided not to build a regular house here, but rather keep my eyes and ears open for a better position in Connecticut. I didn't care for the environment, both physically and morally here. Physically, the place was full of ticks and mosquitos. Morally, there was lots of heavy drinking and gambling. Not a good place to raise children.

On June 27, 1952, Marjorie said it was time, because of the pains, so we all piled into the car quickly, even leaving all the doors and windows open (it had been hot), and buzzed up to the hospital in Leonardtown. According to the then standard operating procedure, I was sent home with the kids. We got hope just in time before the big storm broke, and shut all the doors and windows. Meanwhile, as I learned later, big things were happening in Leonardtown. The storm hit there too, and knocked out all electricity in the hospital! But it came on again just as Marjorie was about to deliver Yvonne. They kept her in the hospital a week to 10 days, and then we brought them home. The next day, as I came home from work, Marjorie came running out to open the gate as usual. However, the day after that, she was "flat out". Too soon a change.

Generally speaking, she always said that the times she was pregnant were the times that she felt the very best!

Shortly after Yvonne's arrival, while I was at work, Marjorie's mother appeared, with a basinet, baby clothes, and legal forms giving Mrs. Holzer the legal care of the newborn, if only Marjorie would sign! Marjorie "sent her mother packing" pretty fast!

I guess I had neglected to say that after Patricia was born in Connecticut, Mrs. Holzer also had appeared with the same sort of deal while Marjorie was still in the hospital, and my Dad did the same thing then, "sent her packing"!

Now with a wife and 3 kids, there was a big incentive to improve our lot. I thought I had something lined up in Connecticut, but it never did materialize. So we took a little vacation up to Connecticut, and searched the newspapers, finally landing a job with the Allen D. Cardwell Mfg. Co., in Plainville, Ct. Then the thing to do was to find a house. Driving around the source of employmnet in ever increasing concentric circles, I came to a wonderful spot atop a hill somewhere in Bristol. (I never could find that spot again). But I couldn't find any suitable places for sale there. Finally, I found a couple of houses in Unionville, though one was actually just over the line in Burlington. After all the bargaining, we bought the one just over the line in Burlington, at a development called "Lake Garda".

Going back to Maryland, I gave notice and put the place up for sale: "$1,680 or better offer". The "better offer" was so that if there were several buyers, they could bid it up. Turns out psychologically I don't think it works like that. People read it as "or best offer", and would offer less. But I did shortly get the $1,680, and we were on our way.

Well, this is enough for one sitting. Time to go.

1950-52, Maryland, NATC

2008-02-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

The other night I had written a large paragraph covering a little-known footnote in my life, and I accidentally hit an unknown key, and the paragraph disappeared forever! I hope it doesn't happen again soon.

The "footnote": I forgot to mention that while we were living at that lady's place in Scotland, MD, I needed to wash some clothes with no washing machine. We did, however, have a large wash tub. Wanting to get the most effective results with the least effort, I did what to me just came naturally, and with marvelous results, both from the standpoint of a clean wash, and minimal use of my personal energy. I simply TROD out the wash, i.e., I took off my shoes and stockings, rolled up my pant legs, and after putting in the laundry, water, and detergent, stepped into the tub and proceeded methodically to walk over the clothes. Of course the lady thought I was "nuts", and probably Marjorie might have been a little embarased for me, but also she was somewhat used to me by now.

I mention this also, because I did laundry the same way after we moved into our new house, (one-room shack, just built). The next door neighbors, the other side of the fence, were genuine hill-billies from Virginia, but they had also never seen the likes either. So I guess I was a side-show. Oh well.

It was not too effective, to walk 1/4 mile into the woods across the road to get water from a spring. Johnny Wise, the blacksmith across the road suggested a solution. He had an earth auger with pipe extensions whereby one could manually drill for water. But he had loaned it out to Mr. Kupcheck up the Three Notch Road a mile or so. So we waited some days, and some more days. Eventually, I stopped in on the Kupchecks on my way home one evening. He and his wife were from Slovokia. He grew poppies and smoked a pipe. He hadn't gotten around to drilling for water, but since I was waiting for the use of the mechanism, he may have just lent it to me, being very cordial.

I was all excited. First chance I got, I started drilling for water, and at the same time, sent to Montgomery Ward's for a $4.50 pitcher pump, on credit, along with a driving "point" that incorporated a check valve. After a few days of spare-time boring into the ground, I really did hit water-bearing sand. Success! I removed the drilling mechanism, and having gotten sufficient piping, borrowed Johnny Wise's sledge hammer, and drove the point well into that patch of water-bearing sand. Then I screwed on the pitcher pump. Then, as everyone with the experience knows, I got some water and primed the pump. Again, success! We had our own source of water, just 100 feet from the house. We were so happy.

I furnished the house with a lot of used furniture bought very cheaply. I got a little wood-burning stove (I think that was new), and all that winter we kept warm and cooked with wood scraps I obtained free from a local sawmill. On the way home from work one day I spotted a large steel barrel abandoned by a road crew who had been tarring the road. The barrel had been used to hold road tar, but was now empty. I took it home, and constructed an elevated holder for the barrel (wooden crosspieces for legs), and mounted it in the rear of our house. Then with hoses and things, I ran an outlet line through the wall into the house. I took a large handbasin, and pounded out a hole in the middle of it with a ball peen hammer. Then I took one of Gifford Jr.'s wooden blocks, and whittled it down on one side to form a plug for the hole. Under the house, I made a V-shaped drain with two boards. Every evening after work, I carried buckets of water from the pump to the barrel, and filled it. Thus we had running water in the house.

A few odds and ends before I continue, but forget them. Down at the end of the peninsula, where the Patomac joins the Chessapeake Bay, there is a marker with an enscription that follows..

(Please note, I'm making up some of the names & dates so they may not be accurate, but I've always wanted to go back and take a photo of the actual marker).

"Site of the First United Church of Christ, built 1723, burned by the British, 1783

Rebuilt 1793, burned by the British 1813.

Rebuilt 1825, burned by Federal troops 1863."

There were some charred timbers there.

One of the other things I wanted to mention was about Johnny Wise. Several things, in fact. One was he used to keep all sorts of "thing" in each corner of his blacksmith shop. When asked why, he repeated an old saying: "Everything comes into use in 7 years". (I like that saying; it justifys a pack-rat like me).

Another "snapshot" of his personality: He told me that one day he was eating some stewd tomatoes cold, out of the can, and a salesman stopped in on him, and "got after him" to buy a kerosene stove. I don't know that he bought it though.

Back to our situation across the street. Not long after we moved into the house, I wanted to have the kids to be able to roam free, so I fenced in the large lot using cheap 2 x 4's and chicken wire. I put in a driveway gate consisting of another 2 x 4 NOT put into the ground, but made a receptacle for it using another hole next to the terminating post on the other side. The receptacle hole was lined with stove piping. Often Marjorie would see me coming, run out and open the "gate" for me.

Note, I had told Oliver Wise (the carpenter), of my grandeouse plans to some day have an automatic gate opener. When he saw how I was greeted upon coming home, he commented: "Well Mr. Neill, I see that you have gotten your automatic gate-opener."

When growing up I used to read "Moon Mullins" in the funnies. I remembered one case where "Kayo" the mean little kid was so small that his bed was one of the drawers in a chest of drawers. Now we also were quite short of space, and that idea looked pretty good to me, so we put Gifford Jr. to bed in one of the drawers of the chest of drawers. Worked O.K. P.S., he was a little kid, but not mean.

Recall we now had "running water", but no electricity, telephone, nor mail service. But within the fiirst year, electric service came by, and we got it. Also a telphone. One of the first things I got was a used washing machine. It had a very small diameter separate spinner to wring the clothes dry. Open at the top, and dangerous too. Should you put your arm in there while it was spinning, it would twist off your arm in about 2 seconds flat. But it worked for us.

I wanted to get an electric pump and have real running water, but the flow from the driven point was to slow to support it. So I decided to bore down deeper. But in doing so, I broke off the pipe connection about 10 or 15 feet below ground. And temporarily we were again reduced to me going into the woods to get a little water.

At this point, I borrowed money from my Dad, and hired well diggers to dig a proper well, which they did. Then I sent to Sears or Wards and ordered a 1/2 horse jet pump, and started digging a trench from the house to the new well, with a gradual incline up from the well to the house. I bought a lot of piping, plus a check valve to put at the bottom, in the well. Then I started screwing piping together, going from the well to the house, to the corner of the house. I made a hole in the floor in the corner, screwing on a 90 degree elbow, and coming up into the kitchen portion of our humble abode.

At this point, laughing to myself, because I knew it wasn't the proper way to do it (and I didn't know the proper way, which would take too much time and money to find out), I then screwed the jet pump onto the end of the pipe. At the outlet of the jet pump I screwed on more piping to the next corner of the dwelling, where I put a "tee", and a large diameter pipe vertically up almost to the ceiling, and capped it. Continuing from the "tee", I ran piping over to the home-made basin, and connected it to the existing faucet that had been previously fed by the barrel outside. I wired up the jet pump. And we had running water for real, with a vengance! I say this last phrase because about the smallest thing we could fill when turning on the faucet was a pitcher. But we lived with it.

Well, I'd better quit for now.

Maryland 1950

2008-02-17T20:16:00.000-08:00

So I was off to Maryland, starting work there as a GS-3, hired by mistake at a low rate as a student-aide trainee, the government thinking they were hiring me just for the summer. I had to leave the family behind with my folks until I could secure a place for them to live.

New hires were put up on base (Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, MD) in what functioned also as Bachelor Officers Quarters barracks. I used all of my spare time to search out a suitable place for my family to live on what amounted to $3,000 per year. I found something way down the peninsula in Scotland, MD, where there was a lady willing to rent to us one bedroom with kitchen and out house priveledges for a small sum.

I hopped into that same trusty old 1936 Ford V-8 4-door, buzzed back to Connecticut, loaded up my family (we were now four), and went back to Maryland to settle in. It was a little rough living in that way. The lady turned out to be not all that friendly. It was a rather long commute miles-wise, and therefore cost-wise. So I joined a commuting group which helped some. But one day, driving down the Three Notch Road, not that many miles from the base, I saw a sign, "Building Lots for Sale, $200, terms if desired".

It looked like the solution to our problem: Close to work, and a place of our own. I sought out the owner and gave him a down payment to get a lot I had selected across from a blacksmith shop. To give you some numbers that are probably wrong, lets say the lot was 200' wide by 400' deep, or 1/4 acre. But there was no electricity going past the place. I was all excited. No electricity? Big deal! We could get along without that. Both of us had had the experience. Me while growing up, and Marjorie summers when her mother put her out on a farm.

I was on the way from work going back down to Scotland to pick up my family and drive the 400 miles back to Connecticut to put them in "storage" with my folks while I intended to build a small place on one corner of the lot that would later be our tool shed. I would do this little construction while living out of my car. I had gotten acquainted with Oliver Wise, a carpenter across the road from our building lot, and stopped in to share the news with him.

It turned out much different than I expected. The story is long, but I'll tell it. Oliver Wise and his wife lived in a nice place right next door to the blacksmith shop owned by Oliver's brother, Johnny Wise, an old bachelor in his 70's. Now the Wise's sister had years earlier moved to Alaska, to an island I think near Ketchican, and had married an original Russian by the name of Sobeloff. They had the only general store around on that island, and were quite wealthy. Then about the time of the above events, he had died, and Mrs. Sobeloff wanted to return to Maryland.

Now Mrs. Sobeloff was afraid of flying, and insisted on travelling on the surface. Furthermore she didn't want to travel alone, and also she had obviously a lot of business to "wind down" there. So she sent six $100 bills in the mail to her brother Olver Wise and his wife, and asked them to come up to Alaska to help her with the transition, which they agreed to do. So about that time they would be gone about one month.

Some years earlier, Oliver Wise had build a very nice tool shed on the edge of his property, and he and his wife lived in it while they were building their nice place. So Oliver very kindly offered to let me and my family live in his tool shed (it was a comfortable place, well built), while he and his wife went to Alaska to bring his sister back. And it worked out beautifully. So I didn't have to take the family back to Connecticut again, and I didn't have to live in the car.

I took all the time off from work that I could get without loosing any pay, and began to build as fast as I could. I put the place on cinderblocks, using pine lumber for framing, and Gyplap (US Gypsum Co.) for the walls. The roof was originally to be double pitched, but to same time and materials, I just made it single-pitched, and covered with tarpaper. It was 10' x 20', with a door and two windows in the front, and a door and one window in the back. I build an outhouse in the back, and attached an office to it where I could study. Johnny Wise showed me a spring in the woods behind his place where we could get good drinking water.

So we were all set! I hadn't QUITE finished when the Wises returned from Alaska, so Oliver helped me finish up especially hanging the doors. And so we were finally established in southern Maryland.

More later.

1950 & Maryland

2008-02-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

I wasn't in the dorm more than a few weeks at most when I got a call to come home! Marjorie had started getting pains, and went right ahead and took certain pills the doctor gave her to take just before delivery! It later turned out that she really wasn't ready to deliver, and they were just false labor pains. But it was too late. She had already taken those pills.

So I took her to Hartford Hospital (with my textbooks), and waited there. And waited. And waited. I don't know what I learned from my textbooks, but I suppose something. Finally they wheeled out both mother and daughter. The only thing wrong was, they were both "out", stone cold! Not a good way to start life. So much for "modern" medicine and all the drugs. The day was May 9, 1950, and I've never had a problem remembering it, but for a rather rediculous reason. I used to read the funny papers, and one comic strip was "The Gumps". One day he said "Today is May 9th, Min's (Minerva Gump's) birthday". It just stuck in my mind.

I was ready to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (EE major), with 15 extra credits, including several at the graduate level. They decided that I didn't need to take final examinations after all, and in fact was being considered for graduation "with distinction". I took a special test for that, but came up short. Oh well.

One of my graduate level courses was Microwave Techniques, and another was Pulse Circuits. I was particularly interested in Microwaves, and wanted to get a job in that field because it should be good in the future. But nobody was hiring. In fact on the engineering bulletain board was a clipping saying there were 20,000 (or some such number) surplus engineers. Furthermore, our wonderful president, old Harry Truman said right out "I think there's going to be a depression that will make your hair curl!"

Truman is the same president, while I was working for George Horning in Oregon, who got on the radio and said, "To relieve the meat shortage (there were still price controls left over from the war), I considered sending the Army out onto the range and commender the beef on the hoof, but ultimately, and very reluctantly decided to end price controls on beef."

Harry is the same one whose Secretary of State publicly said that "Korea is not within our sphere of vital importance", or something to that effect, implying to the Communists, "do whatever you want".

Another snapshot, and these are things people always forget: The Korean was was going full blast, and somewone asked him, what about using the atomic bomb? Our president's response? "Oh, I think that's up to the commander in the field if he wants to use it!!!!!!!!!!!" As soon as he said THAT, (I believe it was Clement Atlee), the British Prime Minister immediately hopped a transatlantic plane and came right to Washington to straighten him out. Then common sense prevailed. One of my coworkers later made the comment "Churchill has more brains in his cigar than Truman has in his head."

I have dirgressed. Pardon me. My mother wanted me to go to work on tobacco that summer, and wait until jobs opened up in the fall. But I couldn't stomach that idea. I also applied at a lot of places. In addition, I applied for positions as research assistant in combination with pursuing a Master's degree at The University of Illinois Champeign, plus other universities, including one in Tennessee. The later accepted me, but only after I had relocated to Maryland, working full time at the Naval Air Test Center, so it was too late.

I must go now.

1948-50 Cont'd

2008-02-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

For my Junior year at the University of Connecticut, we lived with my parents place in Vernon, and I commuted, as I have already mentioned. Marjorie was expecting our firstborn. Let me state one thing right here. She was always happy to be "expecting". Even she felt better during those times more than any other. Strange maybe, but true.

Somewhere I have a picture of her "expecting" Gifford Jr., taken in Providence during a visit to Great Aunt Louise Blankenburg's place. In the picture, Marjorie looks both proud and happy!
And that tells it all.

In those days, hospitals always sent the father-to-be home. We were NOT welcome at the hospital! So during that nail-biting time, I went home, and while waiting for the telephone call, a very long wait, I pulled one of the heads off the V-8 Ford, as it had blown a head gasket and I had to replace it.

Marjorie and I were both young and full of energy, ready for anything. It may have been that November Thanksgiving vacation from school that we decided to make a 1,000 mile round trip visit to Pittsburgh. I got an extra car heater to keep the baby warm during the trip. I pinned a thermometer to the back seat cushion to be sure we kept the temperature at 70 degrees. Everyone was worried, but WE weren't. We stopped in Elizabeth, NJ to visit Donald McCormick, a shipmate from the USS Topeka. We had a good visit with the new grandparents, and everyone was happy. It was an uneventful trip.

That following summer, we were still staying with my folks in Vernon. I remember one day in July 1949, on the lawn in the front yard, under the maple tree, we had the play pen set up, with Giff Jr. in it. It was the first time he stood alone, hanging onto two clothespins that were attached to nothing.

I didn't like the long commute from Vernon to Storrs and decided to do something about it. I recalled one of the students at Carnegie Tech found a rent-free apartment (former servants quarters over a garage), simply by going door-to-door and asking what might be available. So I decided to do the same. I started out walking from the Engineering building on campus, and went door-to-door at the first houses I encountered. After perhaps only about the 5th house, I hit a good deal!

It was a stone house on top of a hill, and the people were going to go to Florida for the season and needed someone to watch over the place while they were gone. They said they were coming back in the spring sometime, didn't know exactly when, but we'd have to vacate on their return. They would give us very low rent for the deal. So we made the deal and moved in, with our little boy. It had a fireplace.

Once we had a fire going in the fireplace in the livingroom. Giff Jr. was near it, and I was the other side of the living room. There was a little live coal, glowing, and Giff Jr. picked it up! Then of course he screamed! It was as though I saw it all in slow motion, and was to far away to prevent him from picking it up. He let go quick enough that there was no permanent damage done, but it sure was painful for him.

The entire place was furnished, and we had the use of a high chair. I especially remember watching Giff Jr. sitting in the high chair eating peas. He would push them around, talking to them, then mash them with his hand and then eat them.

During the (probably Thanksgiving 1949) break that year, Marjorie wanted to visit Pittsburgh again, but I didn't want to go, though she very much wanted me to come with her. But I didn't, so I took her and Giff Jr. to the train station in Hartford, and they did the round trip by train. Later she told me how scared to death she was to do that by herself. I retrospect, of course I feel pretty bad about it.

Spring of 1950 came, and everything happened all at once. The people returned from Florida, and we had to move out of the house. Final examinations were right around the corner. Marjorie was expecting our second child in May. I had not yet lined up a job. I was way behind in my laboratory write-ups. Things seemed almost impossible simultaneously. We had to take immediate action. We moved out of the house, Marjorie and Giff Jr. went back to stay with my folks in Vernon, and I moved into an on-campus student dorm to be able to do all the school work required.

I remember one late afternoon in the dorm, sitting at my desk with a stack of laboratory notebooks about 1 foot high. It was 4:30 PM as I looked out the window and saw a line of University maintenance employees lined up to punch out at their time clock. I though to my self "luck people". I worked through that night and saw the sun rise the next morning.

Next time: the early arrival of Patricia, my graduation with almost (but not quite) "honors", my search for a job, and finally getting one in Maryland with the government.

Univ. of Conn, 1948-50

2008-02-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

The old 1936 Ford V-8 held up very well for the daily commute from Vernon to Storrs and the University of Connecticut. At times I also had a car pool with Everett Gardner, Della Worcester's husband. However, due to schedules, mostly I was by myself. One winter trip is etched in my memory. I was going down hill in slush, about an inch of it, and suddenly it happened that the steering was not "answering the helm", i.e., NO RESPONSE to my steering! But that wasn't even the worst of it. Looking down the hill at the bottom, there was a car CROSSWISE across the highway. Now you must realize that going down hill in slush absolutely precludes the use of brakes, and you must steer your way out of any situation.

So what happened then? Well, amazingly enough, the car at the bottom of the hill straightened out, and somehow, steering was restored. End of story.

I have to go now, will return later.

Marjorie, 1947-48

2008-01-30T19:34:00.000-08:00

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.

Marjorie

2008-01-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

So I met Marjorie about May 1947, and I continued to see her basically on an ever increasing frequency, yet continuing with all my Engineering studies at Carnegie Institute of Technology. It kept me quite busy. At one point she wanted us to buy a car together. I couldn't believe it! We always rode the trolly everywhere we went.

Finally some dorm space opened up for me on campus, and I moved into what had been WWII temporary student housing. I moved there during the summer. It saved time with the commute from off campus. My roommate was a Dutchman who I believe was a bit peeved at the loss by the Dutch of the Dutch East Indies, including Java and Summatra (today's Idonesia).
His other observation was that the USA was terribly rich.

When Fall came, still another, better dorm opened up for me, and I moved into an old stone building dorm named "Englebrecht Hall". The dorm room I was in was rather hugh, with lots of windows, and a bunk in each of its four corners. It was comfortable, and a big improvement over the temporary quarters.

Marjorie and I would go to a dance with a big-name big band, we'd go to movies, go for long walks, spend time in the parks, ride the inclines, etc. Once we went for a walk in Panther Hollow on the edge of the Carnegie Tech campus, and got caught in a sudden cloudburst, getting totally drenching wet. So we caught a trolly and went straight home to Marjorie's place. Her mother didn't believe us and thought we had gone swimming with our clothes on!

As time went on, Marjorie began to get rather restless, and I couldn't figure out why. Finally, one evening as I was walking her home, it just popped out from her: "Who are you going to marry?" To me it was out of the blue. I had all along figured I'd get married once I got out of college, and maybe had worked for a year. To me all that was a long way off. But I believe now she was correct in her recollection of my response: "You, I guess." This was in November. So now I was committed. And on further reflection, since we are going to get married, why wait? So that's what we did, getting married at the next available time slot to allow time to get back to Connecticut as newlyweds during Christmas vacation, 1947.

More later.

Carnegie Tech

2008-01-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

I was able to do a reasonable amount of studying while living at McNeilly's. I made myself a study table using a 4' x 4' 1/2" plywood and four collapsable legs.

The McNeilly's were a Scotch-Irish elderly couple with some quirks. She described a taxi ride she had taken, and the need for tipping, the dialogue being thus: "Poor as I am, I'll give you a dime." "Aw, keep it lady, you need it more than I do." On another occasion she said to her husband, "For as long as you've been shaving, you ought to be able to shave in the dark. We might as well have it as Duquene Light." Mr. McNeilly once expressed concern about eating food canned in metal cans, and speculated on the possibility of metal dust. They lived at 6463 1/2 Aurelia St., East Liberty. There was a diner just down the street where I ate breakfast.

I ate lunch at the "Beanery", otherwise known as "Skibo", on campus. I commuted via trolly. On at least one or two occasions I had my laundry done at a Chinese Laundry.

While standing in line to register for all my classes, the fellow just ahead of me told me his plans: He was going to take a night watchman's job and spend that time to do all his homework. I wondered how it would work, and a year or so later, I asked him. He had a straight "A", but was always sleepy. Another fellow (then or later), told me that he lived with his wife rent-free, or nearly so. I asked how. He said that he went door-to-door near the campus looking for low-cost rent, and ran across one party with servants quarters over their garage that they were able to get. This method I took my cue from and applied it successfully in Connecticut.

I had some interesting professors. One was an elderly Gerald Patterson, originally from Tuscon, AZ, and he longed to be able to return, but felt trapped in Pittsburgh due to job and family. I took careful note of his situation, and determined it would not happen to me. One day he came and made the comment, "I got up late this morning and had time only to either eat breakfast or shave, so I flipped a coin. It said shave, so I ate breakfast." He taught EEE (Elements of Electrical Engineering". One of his comments: "I have my radio grounded to the garbage can."
One thing he taught us was the procedure for designing transformers, among other things.

Another professor was Claude Schwab, from France, who taught us Chemistry. One of his comments: "I came to Carnegie Tech IN SPITE of Pittsburgh" (which at that time was the Smokey City due to coal burning and open hearth furnaces). The air there was bad, very bad. He described a rig he had made using a play pen to keep the air clean for his little one. He was very much against hydrogenated oil for human consumption, saying it was totally unnatural, and produced by using nickel catalyst which was poisonous. Also he was dead set against Cocoa Cola, which he said was illegal in France. However, it was recommended for cleaning white sidewall tires.

Just about all my classmates were newly returned WWII servicemen like myself. One of my professors, this one in economics, was ultra left-wing. One of my classmates named VanBuzkirk was I believe probably upper class, with money. The Economics prof. insisted on calling VanBuzkirk "Buzkirk", thus there was friction between the two. Once this prof (whose name escapes me), took a poll of the class, asking "How many of you would be here anyway, without any G.I. Bill?" I had an English prof. who looked down on me after giving me a "C", indiicating that "probably that was all I was capable of doing." He was not my favorite prof.

One of my math instructors was named "V. A. Zora". He had us come up and do work at the blackboard. He always spoke in a smooth monotone. Strange. Believe he was a grad student.

Another instructor, also later for math, was from Czechoslovokia, and his accent was so bad you had to sit on the edge of your chair and concentrate just to understand his "English".

Our Chemistry instructor guaranteed us a "B" if we would do all our homework. But the homework was a "bear", and for me at least, sometimes impossible to do.

Regarding Drafting and Spacial Mechanics, the Carnegie Tech catalog said that homework for this course is NOT required. I faithfully adheered to this specification, but as a consequence, just barely passed. I note that I may have been nearly the only one NOT doing additional studying at home for this course.

A classmate, Miller, and I talked of making plans for the first summer we had off from school to travel down to Tennessee, and find totally unspoiled girls to be our wives. But we (I at least) never got that far. To handle the big influx of students, Carnegie Tech, as many other schools, ran full classes year round for the first year or two after the war.

For my part, I came up with another theory: If any girl had to take dancing lessons because she never learned to in high school, then she must be unspoiled and shy. Thus I enrolled at Griffith's Dance Studio in downtown Pittsburgh, and met several girls. One was a blond just out of high school, and she was going to attend Cornell Univ. in Ithica , NY. She wrote me about a nine page letter all in green ink. But at that time I had already met Marjorie, so wrote the other a short letter and that ended that. Marjorie was always beeing danced with by "the guy in the blue suit", but I think she liked me better.

So once I took her home, via the trolly, to 748 Warrington Ave., and down a dark alley, and up over a candy store. On the mailbox it said: Minster, Winrick, Holzer, Duckworth, Nudine. I didn't know what to make of all this, but we were very much attraced to each other. On another occasion she invited me for dinner with the family, and it helped us to get acquainted. Then I began seeing her quite regularly.

It may have been about May, 1947, and I had possibly a week off from school, and I went home. That may have been the time tha sticks in my memory. So what I'm about to describe may be the composite of more than one trip, as I made quite a few between Connecticut and Pgh while in school. Anyway, let's say this time I flew to New York, and then hitch-hiked home from there, which I did one time. Coming in for a landing during a thinderstorm, the pilot changed his mind at the last minute, gave it the gun, stood the plane on one wing in a tight bank and came around again and landed.

It was the first warm weather of early spring, and I was hitch-hiking through the night, getting finally, a ride as far as Talcotville. From there I had to walk home, about 3 miles. As I was walking along Thrall Road, it must have been getting towards dawn, and all the birds started singing beautifully. I continued home, letting myself in, and climbed up stairs and crawled into bed. Every day that week I received a 2 or 3 page perfumed letter from Marjorie.

Another time I was hitch-hiking between Connecticut and Pgh. I got a ride with a little old lady
who said she was on the way to visit her husband in an asylum (she didn't say what kind). Along the way she picked up a lot of us hitch hikers. One problem, she would notice and comment on various things along the 2-lane highway, but when she was commenting on something over to the left, the car would veer over to the left, into the other lane. Also, her passing of cars left an awful lot to be desired, especially when there was oncoming traffic. One by one, me included, we all came to the conclusion this ride wasn't worth the risk, and at various places, we all abandoned her.

Got to go. More later.

Back East Again

2008-01-10T16:49:00.000-08:00

Flying back in 1946 was not like today. Especially in the '40's. Every year there would be crashes, especiallin in the Rocky Mountains. I got a ticket on Capitol Airlines, which later was absorbed by United. The liner was a rather beat-up plane: its cabin heaters didn't work well, and a lot of the ceiling lights didn't work. The plane took off after numerous delays, about 11 PM. In the middle of the night we stopped in Billings. In the early morning hours we stopped in Minneapolis - St Paul. Over Lake Michigan we developed engine trouble, and landed near Detroit at the River Rouge plant. Presumed repairs were made and we took off for Pittsburgh. The repairs didn't work; one engine kept backfiring, but we kept going anyway, and finally made it to Pittsburgh OK.

I had arranged ahead of time to drop in for a short visit with an old Navy buddy, Al McBride. We were in boot camp together at Great Lakes Training Center, Illinois. He had started at Carnegie Tech to major in Engineering, but later thought better of it and transferred to University of Pittsburgh; eventually he got a Law degree. His dad had a politically appointed job. I spent a day or two in Pittsburgh to check things out in general, and Carnegie Tech in particular. Then I continued my journey East by plane, heading for Hartford via New York.

I spent the month of January at home on the farm with my parents, and joined the "52-20 club", which was an arrangement whereby returning veterans not gainfully employed could collect $20 per week for a whole year if necessary. But actually I wasn't strenuously looking for work at that time. Others needed it much more than I did, but I just dipped into the gravy train anyway during that January, sorry.

Finally, when the time came, I took the train to Pittsburgh, changing trains at Grand Central Station, NYC. I travelled rather heavy, with a big stack of 78 RMP phonograph records. Oh, I forgot to mention that I even took a few phonograph records along on the USS Topeka, including "Three O'Clock in the Morning", and "Prisonero del Mar". Anyway, changing trains at Grand Central Station quickly with several very heavy suitcases was more than I could manage, so a porter charged right in and relieved me. I had to tip him, and all I had was a $2 bill. I didn't mean to give him that much, but he took it and left quickly without giving me any change.

I found a room with a family on Squirrel Hill, not far from campus, and moved in. But for some reason I felt very out of place because they were Jewish, so I kept looking, and found another family in East Liberty, just a little further out, with Mr. & Mrs. D. R. McNeilly.

More about the McNeilly's later, I have to go.

Horning's Farm

2008-01-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

Each morning I would wake up to a country fiddle playing "Devil's Dream". It was the theme music of some radio program that started at 5:30AM. I had a wind-up alarm clock with a switch circuit that turned on the radio. (This was before you could buy such radios with that feaature). I can still hear that music, though I've never heard it since.

Mr. Horning originally came from Kansas where he said that occasionally it would "rain pitchforks". He was a very forceful chacter with plenty of opinions, very smart and competent. He would fly anywhere, and was in one forced landing in an airliner. He didn't know anything about federal income tax, neither did he want to know. He couldn't tolerate paying so much per hour, as he calculated it, for the priviledge of sleeping in a motel, and preferred to sleep in his truck on a long land trip. He ran his dairy farm, consisting of all pure-bred Jerseys, with the goal of making his money by selling the livestock to discerning buyers for high dollars. He once turned down an $5,000 offer for his bull. He would go long distances to buy and sell pure-bred Jerseys.

Mrs. Horning was a good homemaker, good cook, and they had two daughters, the eldist in High School, and the younger one maybe in 8th grade or so. The eldest daughter was named Patricia, and occasionally I would help her with her Latin homework. The younger one was named Priscilla. Mrs. Horning also had an elderly Uncle who lived with them. He maybe was in his 90's, and hard of hearing. He may have judged Mr. Horning somewhat harshly, regarding his farming practices. This is to be expected since Mr. Horning said that he used the milk simply to pay expenses, and his main effort was to make his money by producing very high-value pure-bred Jerseys. One day I opened the gate so Mrs. Horning's Uncle could drive his car out of the driveway (about 1/4 mile from the road). The Uncle raced the engine pretty badly, I guess because he couldn't hear the noise.

Mr. Horning had contacted the electric company for a separate meter for the barn, but they did nothing. So Mr. Horning climbed up the light pole and tapped in directly. This happened before I started there. I wondered why he left the light on in the shed all the time, until I found out that the electricity there cost him nothing. He toyed around with the idea of putting an underground cable from the shed to the barn, but nothing came of it.

George Horning and his wife got along fine, but once he showed me a very expensive microscope he kept hidden above the milkhouse, putting his finger to his mouth, indicating I shouldn't say anything to anyone (due to the objection of the cost his wife might make).

Once I came down with a terrible cold, and was sick in bed, in that little house of mine. I build a big hot fire in the wood-burning stove, wrapped myself in plenty of blankets, and "sweated it out", thus shaking it off.

Horning's had a monster cherry tree in their yard, and towards fall it was loaded. They asked me to pick cherries, with a ladder and bucket, which I did. Those cherries were dark and sweet. They were delicious! I certainly ate my fill during this chore. But then that evening, guess what we had for desert: cherry pie! I think I may have declined.

Mr. Horning had a good friend who had a light plane. He dropped in once for a visit, landing in the pasture near the house. On his first pass to land, he couldn't, because the land dropped away to fast (going downhill). So on the next pass he came in from the opposite direction, and it worked ouf fine.

Seeing Susan once every two weeks was not very often, and I became restless. I asked Mr. Horning for every week end rather than every other week end. He was rather upset, giving an inuendo about square shooting and our prior agreement. But he reluctantly agreed, and said "I'll take you to Twalatin" (so I could take the bus to Portland).

This bus business was not so satisfactory either. Hornings helped me to find a Ford Model A coupe for $300, and I bought it. I painted a little white lightening bolt on the door. It ran fairly well for quite a while, and helped me see Susan much more often, and we went a lot of places together.

After a while the car developed some transmission problem, and I located a used transmission for a replacement. I rigged up a block and tackle in the shed, pulled the rear end, and insserted the replacement transmission. This is the most extemsive car work I've ever done, but it was successful.

Sherwood was still quite a ways from Portland, so I wanted to move closer. Now that I had a car, I was able to get an appartment in Vanport. Vanport was made up of wartime quonsett huts on ground in Oregon halfway between Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR, but still much closer to Portland than Sherwood. So I moved. Mrs. Horning's comment was, "So the car we helped you get is taking you away from us." Yes it was.

I signed up for the University of Oregon / Oregon State College, Vanport Extension, and took three courses that summer, which may have been Rhetoric, Physics, and Math. In retrospect, they were exceedingly simple compared to similar courses at Carnegie Tech.

I believe it was after I completed these summer courses that I was able to get a grounds maintenance job in Vanport. The work I got was with a contractor who had a "closed shop", meaning that union membership was mandatory. So I became a member of the AF of L (American Federation of Labor), International Hod Carriers. My fellow workers were all kinds of people, the likes of whom I've never met before nor since. I would say we were way over-staffed for the work we did. One job I had was a pick-stick operator, going around the grounds with a sharp pick at the end of a long handle, and spearing cigarette buts, and other trash, and scraping it off into a bucket.

On another occasion, about a dozen of us had to dig somewhere, but there were only one or two shovels. So we formed a line and when it was one person's turn, he took the shovel. The supervison would come around occasionally on a little motor scooter. Some of thses characters I worked with didn't like him, and one called him a "Son of a bitch on wheels". Another worker, it could have been the same one, said, once in a while you have to give the b------ the shovel to let him know you're a human being! I wondered if he had been a jail bird in the past.

Susan and I went lots of places in my car. On one occasion we went up to Mt. Hood, and took the ski lift up as far as it would go. She had her girl friend along who took pictures of us, (which by the way, I kept until the very night before the wedding in Pittsburgh).

Time had a way of marching on. I wanted to get a degree in EE at a top school, not Oregon. So I arranged to take a universal entrance examination, supervised by a nearby high school principal. In filling out the forms, I put down (1) MIT, (2) California Insititue of Technology, (3) Rensaleer Institute of Technology, (4) Worcester Polytechnic Institute. But there was space for one more school. A fellow applicant was applying to Carnegie Tech, which I thought was somewhere in New Jersey, so I put that down.

Due to the hugh influx of college applicants just getting out of their WWII military service, the four above colleges were swamped, and I was turned down. But there was no reaponse from Carnegie Tech. It got to be not that long before fall term would start, yet still no word. I went back to work at Horning's, and planned to take a long bus trip to Pittsburgh. George Horning talked me into working longer, and getting a plane reservation. Still no word from Carnegie. So I sent the admissions office there a telegram: "Please wire me collect, accepted or rejected. I have plane reservation". I received a telegram from them (not collect), that said "Accepted for term beginning February 2. Letter follows"

I've often wondered if my sending that telegram caused my acceptance there.

So it got to be December 1946 and I sold my little car, worked more for George Horning, and prepared to head back East. In all the time I went with Susan I never told her that I loved her, simply because I was too bashful. I always think of the saying "Faint heart ne'er won fair maiden". I know she got fairly restless, yet we never talked of the future. I seem to recall that one time she said that her parents wanted her to ask me if my intentions were honorable. It was somewhat of a joke, because of course they were.

My own intentions were first to get an EE degree, then get married.

I remember one night the three of us went to a Youth For Christ meeting. Her girl friend was usually along. Another night we made penuchi in the bacement where she lived.

But the night finally came when I must say good-bye. But it wasn't what I was expecting at all. It seems Susan had given up on me, and had arranged a "closing of the door" type of good-bye like this: She had another fellow I'd never met or heard of there, her girl friend was there, and the four of us went someplace, I can't remember where. The implication was that her girl friend and I were pared (for whom I'd never had the slightest attraction). So that was the end of that, and it hurt terribly. In retrospect, of course, it was only too obvious what the trouble was, and I was the one to blame, not her.

So I caught a plane the next morning, and never heard from her again except one time 12 years later.

Time to quit. Next time, the plane trip on some junkey air liners with maintenance and engine problems.

USS Autauga

2008-01-07T20:44:00.000-08:00

So the 48 hours off and the 48 hours on continued until the ship was totally emptied of all ammunition. So I got a chance to see Susan a number of times every 4 days after a rather long bus trip. Meantime, plans were made by the Navy to sail the Autuga gh the Panama Canal to Brooklyn Navy Yard for de-commissioning. Again I said goodbye to Susan, not knowing when I'd ever see her again, and I was off with the USS Autuga, out from Puget Sound, and down the Pacific Coast, southbound.

Generally we stayed just within sight of land, heading down the coast. But the ship was totally empty and rode like a cork. It was the only time in my life that I got seasick, but after a while I got over it. A strange thing happened, somewhere off the coast of Oregon, I believe. The engine quit. The ship had been built by Kaiser shipyards, and had a very big diesel engine in it that got warm, and some of the crew used to rig a clothsline over it to dry their clothes. I don't know why the engine quit, but after a couple of hours wallowing in the sea, they got it going again.

On the way, I wrote my first letter to Susan that included the words. "To answer a question you may have: No, I don't have one in every port, just you." We continued south to San Francisco, putting in there, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. I did get liberty there, and walked up to the top of Telegraph Hill. While in San Francisco we got word that the Alaska Steamship Company wanted to buy our ship. So we headed back up the coast to Puget Sound again and tied up to a pier in Seattle.

Orders were to burn all the Navy navigational charts, and throw overboard all the bottled gasses. What a waste! Then the ship would be ready to turn over to the Alaska Steamship Company. So we did. I believe at this point that I got enogh liberty to catch a bus and go down to Portland and see Susan again, which I did. I turned up at her doorstep "out of the blue" so to speak, and she was so ssurprised and glad to see me. This is where I made such a big mistake that probably changed the course of my life. This is hard to believe, but I just stood there with a big smile on my face like a dummey, instead of giving her a big hug, because I was so bashful. Anyway, she must have overlooked it for the time, and we very much enjoyed one anothers company.

Returning back up to the ship which was ready for de-commissioning,, I still didn't have enough points to get out of the Navy, and so I was returned to Personnel Receiving Station, Bremerton, Washington. While there I continued to get regular shore leave, and of course almost always used it to go down to Portland. It might have been one sunday afternoon, I really can't say, but many of us were hanging around in the bunkhouse in Bremerton, some napping. All of a sudden everything started to shape, and someone yelled out "Earthquake!" We (all but one), ran down the stairs (which was shaking back and forth as we ran down), and out into clear ground. I looked up, and the power lines and poles were shaking. I stood there waiting for the earth to open up and swallow us, but it didn't. This was my first earthquake.

I have to tell you about the one guy who didn't immediately run down the stairs. He stopped first and put his shoes on, then ran down the stairs. We asked "Why?" He related his story. His battle station on the ship he was on was directly above the fire room, and the deck there was always very hot. Once they rang GQ, he was in bed, but ran down to his battle station barefooted, and was there for 24 hours. His motto was "Never again!".

It may have been in May that I received my Honorable Discharge, plus $300 separation pay. At that point I could have elected to go home to Connecticut, but instead went back down to Portland and took a cheap room at a hotel, and looked for a job. I found one almost immediately in Sherwood, Oregon, which is near Twalatin, and a litle ways past Oregon City. It was on a dairy farm owned by George Horning.

I was determined to make a good impression on him, and I believe I succeded. Parenthetically, when I first went aboard the USS Topeka, I'm pretty sure I made a terrible impression on Mr Wilmot, before I even realize he was the one I was to report to. I encountered him shortly after I had come aboard, and wanted to ask him where something was, but couldn't describe it.

I was so happy to get a job so soon, nearby to Portland, and the whole family was very friendly. I was their hired man. I asked to have every other week end off so that I could go to town to see Susan, and Mr. Horning readily agreed. He used Surge brand milking machines, just the same as we used at home. He also wanted a lot of wiring to be done, which I happily obliged. I helpled to re-shingle the roof on the barn, and salvaged a whole lot of used bricks by chopping off adhering cement with a hatchet.

At this point I made another mistake for which I still pay, involving one of my molars. It had a very bad cavety, and Mr. Horning was kind enough to let me use his car to go into Portland to a dentist to get it taken care of. The cavety was hugh, and I thought, "Oh well, it's way in the back, I'll just have it yanked out", and that's what I did, even though the dentist was reluctant.

I ate with the family, and used their shower, but had my own little house with a "living room" I guess you'd call it, with a wood-burning stove, and a bedroom.

More later. Time to go.

Portland, OR

2008-01-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

I came to the Pacific Northwest in October, 1945, and didn't leave until January 1947. I had a particular reason for staying so long. Her name was Susan Keys. But let me give you the whole scenario, including the biggist mistake I made with her. We tied up to the dock in Portland, the 500 Seabees got off and headed for discharge. The ship's management became very liberal with shore leaves, and it was great to be back stateside.

I had learned to roller skate while in Chicago, so one night I went roller skating. While waiting in line, I spotted her, a very pretty girl. At the same time, she spotted me. She was about seven or eight people ahead of me. But after a while that evening, I encountered her, and asked her to skate with me. That way we ititially got acquainted. She said she was temporarily living in Portland with a lady who provided room and board, but she was in Portland going to school and or getting training to work for the telephone company.

I told her that when I got out of the Navy I intended to travel around the country, and would want to look her up, so asked for her real home address, which she gave me. It was Fossil, Oregon. She was just 3 years younger than I was. I can't remember the details, but maybe it was later that same evening I got her Portland address and phone number.

So on another evening, I came to call on her. It went well for about 15 minutes, and then the lady came in and said that she had promised Susan's parents to look after her while she was in town, and that it would be best if I didn't see her, especially going out alone together. I asked if it would be OK if I stayed and we played checkers. The lady said OK, so that's what we did. I didn't care what we did; I just wanted to be with Susan. We may have had a number of "dates" like this. I saw her a good number of times in the course of the next year, and often her girl friend served as a "chaperone".

The USS Topeka was not all that long in port, so I had to say goodbye to Susan. We headed for drydock in San Pedro, CA. We got some liberty there also. I remember taking something like an interurban trolly and going to Hollywood and Vine, and attending a radio show in that viscinity. I also remember standing in line to go to a movie somewhere around San Pedro, and some old guy saying to us saylors. "Oh, I know you guys will all be coming back to California after you've been home a while in your cold climates." To myself I said "No way." It may have been December, and it was warm, the sun was shining, there was green grass around; it was late afternoon. I decided to call my dad, long distance. I talked with him and back in Connecticut it was cold, dark, and snow was on the ground.

We were in drydock, and the ship had little or no use for most of the crew. I, along with most, was given a 30 day leave. So I headed for the train station in Los Angeles, and bought a round trip ticket to Hartford, with a return via Portland, OR. Later that evening, looking out of the train window as we slowly climbed the mountain pass, I saw an older, scruffy-looking fellow walking next to a burrow that had a pick and some other gear tied to its back. A day or so later we passed through a desert in Utah, past acres and acres of "mothballed" military aircraft. We passed through Wyoming, where there was nothing in all directions. We finally got to Chicago and changed trains for New York.

In New York I got the train for Hartford, and in Hartford I got the bus for Rockville, getting off at Ogden's Corner, and walking home. Actually, I can't remember how I got from Hartford to home. Maybe my dad picked me up at the train station. Anyway, it was great to get home. My parents thought I had matured. I wanted to do some electrical wiring for them, and they did let me do some. But my main thoughts were elsewhere. After a couple of weeks, I headed for Hartford, and the train station, and after a few days arrived in Portland, Oregon. I got a room at a cheap downtown hotel, and called on Susan, who was very glad to see me. I continued to see her evenings until it was time to head back to San Pedro.

I took the sight-seeing train named "The San Juaquin Daylight", which was double-decker for the upper obserevation deck.

The USS Topeka was refitted and ready to go. This time she was headed to Shanghai, China. I didn't know how long she would be gone, but it didn't sound to great to me. I didn't have enough "points" to get a discharge yet, but I wanted to be available for it ASAP. So I didn't want to go to Shanghai. Another shipmate had enough points so he wouldn't have to go to Shanghai, but he wanted to go. So we traded places, Emmet Kendall and I, and the ship's management was kind enough to let us do it. Thus I stayed stateside, and Emmet went with the ship to Shanghai.

Now I'm unable to recall the exact situation, but I wound up with another 30 days leave or maybe delayed orders. Anyway, with very little money left, I hitch-hiked up to Portland, OR, to be with Susan again, only to find out that she had gone home to Fossil, 200 miles into the hinterlands. And I had no money.

I got a job with a contractor, and again stayed at a very cheap hotel downtown. The contractor and his family fed me in the evenings. He was excavating the dirt under a house to make a basement. I operated a horse-drawn shovel that I walked behind, holding onto its two handles. You raise the handles, he leads the horse forward, and the scoop digs in and takes a big bite of earth; then you pull down on the handles, and it slides along the surface carrying the load of dirt out from under the house. When we get to the dirt dumping area, I raise the handles way high, and it flips over, dumping the dirt. Thus I earned my money, and the contractor earned his.

Susan was not set to return unitl after I had to leave, this time for Seattle, Washington, so I didn't get to see her. At this point I may have reported to the Naval Personnel Receiveing Station in Seattle. And maybe it was during this time I took a few flying lessons on a Piper Cub fitted out as a float plane. I practiced landings and takeoffs on Lake Washington, taking off on one siide of the pontoon bridge and landing on the other side.

Shortly, I was assigned to the USS Autuga, an ammunition ship parked out near Port Townsand, WA. We ate well on that ship. The captain was a Naval Academy graduate, but was an old drunk. One night he had had too many and was singing songs to the gangway watch. There was almost nothing for an electronics technician to do on board that ship. Time was heavy on my hands. The radiomen on board wanted me to stand radio watch, but for this I had to know the morse code, and be able to type. They very gladly taught me how to type and it has stood me in good stead until the present.

After a while it got time to unload all the ammunition, and the crew was given 48 hours off and 48 hours on (for some strange reason, ha ha). I remember one time during this operation I was on gangway watch, and one of the amateur cargo boom operators had a big cargo net full of ammunition,, swung it rather hap hazardly over the side too far, lowered it, and the load went "Wham!" agains the side of the ship. I mentally held my hands over my ears. That ammunition must have been well built.

The 48 off and 48 on continued for a while, and it was a wonderful thing to me, and for the 2 days off, I took the bus down to Portland to see Susan.

Well, it's time to go now; more later.

Tokyo Yokahama

2008-01-04T17:45:00.000-08:00

One of the most memorable scenes was the wing of a B29 leaning up against the side of a building. On another occasion, I went into the half of a building that was still standing, and I may or may not have bought something, I can't remember. But the cash register they used was a US made National Cash Register.

Oh, I forgot to mention, as our ship entered Tokyo Bay, on the right, I saw a Japanese "baby flat top", one of those conversions of a cargo ship changed into an aircraft carrier. It was painted all an olive drab green, and had a list to port of about 10 degrees.

"Honey barges" would come and service all the ships in the harbor, taking off all their waste, to keep the harbor clean. I also saw a top hat floating on the water there.

To get back to events on shore: When our motor whaleboat first came up to the dock, we were next door to a US destroyer escort, tied up to a dock there. Someone aboard was playing a Japanese record rather loudly over the ship's P.A. system. Another thing of first impressions: Even before I got up to the main street, I could hear a very loud clatter of wooden shoes. It seems that all the civilians were wearing them. The automobile traffic was virtually nil. Once in a very great while we might see a car, but it was running as I was told, on fumes from charcoal.

I did get to see the moat behind which was the emperor's palace. But I didn't see anything there that was impressive. All the people I saw, and all those I met appeared universally healthy and for the most part quite friendly. I only made one mistake: as I started my walk on the sidewalk of perhaps the main street of Tokyo, from force of habit (and not thinking), I kept to the right, and started almost bumping into people. At this point, I do remember encountering one or two men of military age, who more or less "looked right through me".

I came back with a small Japanese battle flag (rising sun), some post cards showing Jap war ships, a miniature of the Empire State Building, and a very delicate and colorful rectangular glass container within which was a Japanese fisherman fishing from a pool surrounded by a rock garden, a bridge, a path and some trees. I managed to take it home, and we had it for many years (but no more).

So much for the two afternoons ashore. Eventually it was time to leave, and we went down to Okinawa and picked up 500 Seabees to bring them back to the US, as they had accumulated enough "points" to get immediate discharge. It was rather crouded with all them aboard, but still quite livable. We took the great circle route back to the US and passed within 200 miles of the Aleution Islands. I'd always wanted to get to Alaska, but the closest I've ever gotten was within 200 miles. On the way home, I checked the ship's library, and checked out a book on Alexander Botts, the World's Greatest Salesman (for the Earthworm Tractor Company, Earthworm, Illinois). It is a "screem", and I highly recommend it.

On the way home past Alaska the weather was cold, cloudy and rainy. The trip took two weeks and all on board could hardly wait 'til we got there. I stayed up the night before and waited until I picked up land on the PPI monitor hooked to the SK radar. We went up the Columbia River, and took a turn and continued up the Willammet River to Portland, Oregon, and arrived there in time for Navy Day, 1945.

The ship was open for civilian tours, and crowds came aboard. I got liberty.

To be continued.

Off Japan

2008-01-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

One day everyone showered in preparation, and that night we made an "anti-shipping" sweep at the entrance to Tokyo Bay. We encountered no ships at all, just one submarine, who fired a green flare and made a crash dive. The green flair indicated it was one of ours. So that we didn't do this exercise for nothing, we bombarded a Japanese radar station and took it out. Then we retired at high speed eastward for the open sea.

The next morning Japanese kamakazi's were after us, and they hit a destroyer escort picket ship about 50 miles out. They also came after us, but we shot them down with anti-aircraft fire. (The pictures are in the Topeka book).

That is the only action I "saw", and I didn't even see it as I was in the radar repair shop. On another night, we passed within a few yards of a floating Jap mine. But neither did I see it.

Finally, the first atomic bomb was dropped. Tokyo Rose said that they too had the atomic bomb, but were going to use it on the 6th fleet. We didn't believe her, and were not worried about it. Then the second atomic bomb was dropped. Shortly thereafter, the emperor got on the radio and said "It may be said that a country does not have the right to commit hari-kari." And then Japan surrendered unconditionally, on condition that they keep their emperor. It was a good deal, because the emperor was then de-mystified, and de-deified. The royal family was no longer an object of worship, but became instead more like the royal family of England, a good model.

So there we were, still off the coast of Japan, still blackout at night, still running zig-zag course, just in case any Jap submarines had not gotten the word.

Then it hit: A really high powered typhoon. And we were trapped between it and the coast. So we had to ride it out, and in fact the eye of the typhoon passed right over us. We headed into the waves at an angle of about 45 degrees. If you head directly into them, you can snap the bow off, just as another ship did. If you put the ship parallel with the waves, you'll flip over very quickly. The waves were about 50 feet high, and the wind got so high it broke the annemometer. At one point we were only a few degrees from flipping over. At another dime during this ordeal, the bow went under, the screws (propellers) were in the air, and the whole ship just shook. But we made it O.K.

For myself, I was in the radar repair shop. But it only had one exit, which was a big iron hatch, dogged down and opened just a few feet from the lifeline. During the port rolls of the ship, that lifeline was underwater. I didn't feel comfortable with the situation, so I decided to make a change. Timing it carefully, I quickly undogged the hatch, stepped out, re-dogged the hatch, ran quickly to the ladder leading up to the communication deck and grabbed onto the ladder as the ship rolled back again.

I hung onto the ladder which was now more or less tilted over the water. When the ship righted momentarily on the way to rolling in the opposite direction, I quickly climbed the rest of the way up to the communicaiton deck, which is considerably above the water line. There were a number of us up there, yet we could look up and incoming waves and wonder, "How are we going to make this one?" We all had on life preservers.

It became "chow time", and we all went below decks to the chow hall, which was an unusable spectacle. All the tables and chairs were loose, and crashed first to one side of the hall, and then to the other side, as the ship rolled. It made quite a racket. However, the cooks rose to the occasion, and in the hallway leading to the chow hall, they gave us sandwiches.

The next morning, I looked over at the aircraft carrier Wasp, and the forward part of its flight deck was draped over the bow like a blanket!

Some time later, maybe the following week, it was a beautiful day, and we slowly passed a destroyer "parked" in the water while the crew was firing at a floating Jap mine, trying to hit one of its "horns" to explode it. As we went by, we just stood there watching, until we were starting to get into the line of fire, and so most of us quickly went around to the other siide of the gun turret. Good thing we did, because then there was a hugh explosion because they had succeeded in exploding the mine.

It must have been maybe almost a month after the end of the war that we entered Tokyo Bay, and had some shore liberty. We remained at anchor in the bay, and went ashore in a motor whaleboat. I wanted to get a lot of souvenirs, and so on the advice of others who already had gone ashore, I purchased abouot 20 packs of cigarettes. I managed to put 15 of them around my middle, secured by a fairly tight belt, and the other 5 were under my hat.

The operation was mainly quite a success, and I was able to get quite abit of money to buy souveniers. I had not quite expended my whole supply; I was the only US sailor in sight, and surrounded by a croud of Japanese potential customers, when, I heard from the croud a "sigh", and then I got a tap on my shoulder from behind, to be confroned with the US Navy Shore Patrol, who gave me the choice of "Come with them to headquarters, or else surrender your (contraband) cigarettes. Obviously I chose the later, and that was the end of my blackmarketing, and I continued my tour of Tokyo, occasionally buying a souvenier or two.

I had one afternoon in Tokyo and one afternoon in Yokahama, and I can't tell you what happened in which place. Both scenes were very similar. Both cities were nearly flattened; most blocks were rubble with bad smells. Yet the trolly cars ran regularly, and the people were not unfriendly.

Well, I guess I'll close for now, but I still have more to tell of what I saw there.

At Sea, Cont'd

2007-12-29T21:42:00.000-08:00

One day we were in port, and the word came that Germany had surrendered. There was much rejoicing all the way around. But we still had a job to do, "unfinished business". Japan, in their entire history (which is much longer than ours), had never been defeated. And their philosophy was against it. "Death before dishonor". Their soldiers virtually never surrendered, but of course were sometimes physically captured. We all evisioned a fight to the very bitter end.

We did a lot of work on the ship to get it perfectly ready. One job I had was to paint the SK radar antenna. At that point I was the highest man on the ship, even over the Admiral, (Admiral Bill Holden, we were his flagship). Once we were in port, and several of us were way up there doing work on the SK antenna, and wouldn't you know it, they decided to get up a head of steam. Note that we were above the smokestacks in a not very environmentally friendly location. It got rather hot and thick up there. The Chief and I believe one other tech decided to sit it out. Not me. I took a deep breath, and climbed rapidly on Hot Rungs through a worse area of steam and smoke and then down into the clear and the deck. I asked the Chief later, and he said they just stayed there and "sucked it in".

Eventually it was time to head west to the "Western Sea Frontier", as the newspapers always termed it. On the way, we stopped at Mog Mog atol in the Marshall Islands, for not much more than over night. We went ashore and went swimming. Once we got under way again, we finally joined the Sixth Fleet as they were finishing their operations against Okinawa. They had earned a couple of weeks of rest and rehabilitation, and were now on the way down to Leyte in the recently recaptured Philippines.

I remember entering the Gulf of Leyte. There were a lot of very small uninhabited islands covered with trees. But the islands all had very high steep cliffs. Finally we got to Leyte itself. But far away from any city. We went ashore in what you could call an "enclave", just a beach, and a fence surrounding it. Through the fence the sailors traded with the native people, who appeared very intelligent, yet very poor but friendly.

After a while we put out to sea again. And on the Forth of July, I saw fireworks like I have never seen before or since. I was eye witness to the Sixth Fleet "flexing it's muscles". There were towed targets in the air and on the ocean. Both were attacked fiercely with lots of fire power. Most impressive were the rocket attacks on sea sleds used for targets.

We were on the way back up to operations, this time off the coast of Japan itself. I believe we cruised up and down about 200 miles off the coast. I do have a record of noontime positions of longitude and latitude for those months which I have kept in the "Topeka" book, but have never got around to plotting, but always wanted to some day. I remember seeing birds and sometimes even butterflys, off the coast of Japan. Also, I was able to pick up Mt Fujiyama on the SK radar.

Our task force included an aircraft carrier, our sister ship and maybe another cruiser or so, plus destroyers. Out about 50 miles there were destroyer escort "picket ships". The planes on the carrier would daily make bombing runs on the Japanese mainland. We had two seaplanes that were launched by steam catapult. The pilot would rev the engine up to the maximum, and the catapult, being angled some degrees off to the side, the ship heading into the wind, and then the catapult would fire. The plane would run down the catapult, get into the air, sag a bit, and then be on its way. Retrieval was a tricky business. We would head into the wind, then at just the right time, we would make a turn to smooth out the water for the plane to land on. It would land, taxi up to alongside the ship; a boom would lower a hook, and the pilot would reach out, grab the hook and thread it through a big steel "eye", and then the boom would hoist it back aboard.

The planes were supposed to be only for reconosance, but often they would come back and their guns had been fired. I think in at least one instance they were attacking a train.

The USS Topeka's main job was to protect the carrier.

Once one of the pilots of our seaplanes came in to land, but not quite right, and attempted to take off again but failed. He flipped over. When I saw him, he had only his shorts on, and was riding the pontoon of his plane like on horse back. The rest of the plane was under water. A motor whaleboat was launched, and he was rescued. The plane could not easily be retrieved, and was sunk by gunfire.

Well, I must go now. Next time I'll tell about our "anti-shipping sweep" into the entrace to Tokyo Bay.

At Sea

2007-12-28T19:31:00.000-08:00

Continuing my narative, we headed for Panama Canal. Now the ithsmus of Panama is twisted, so that the Pacific side is actually East of the Atlantic side! On one side of the ithsmus is Panama City, and on the other side is Balboa. I remember writing a letter describing perhaps Balboa. The airport is tucked in between a couple of mountains. I did get shore leave I think in Panama City. I remember going to a juice bar for a fruit drink, and trying out my Spanish. The people behind the counter were surprised and impressed.

I remember meeting a guy in U.S. uniform there. He was from Puerto Rico, and could not be sent to the war zone (because he was from Puerto Rico).

Calvin Larson and I were assigned Shore Patrol duty one night at a whore house. There was a live orchestra there, and sawdust on the floor, and I remember one of the orchestra members spitting on the floor. Our instructions were, "don't take anything to drink" I got exceedingly thirsty, and asked for a glass of water. Larson scolded me for this. There were no incidents.

We passed through the canal on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I looked up on a hillside and saw our sister ship, the USS Oklahoma City. She looked out of place up there. We also went past the original French effort at a canal, which was pointed out to us over the PA system. This really was like a tour at this point. At one end of the canal we passed the U.S.S. Franklin, on the way to the East Coast. She was a floating wreck, but still able to make good headway. She had taken a hit in one of the magazines, with just terrible damage. They never did fix her up, but she is now, still I believe, a floating museum somewhere.

Once we got into the Pacific, we headed for Pearl Harbor for final outfitting, refuling, etc. On the way, we squared off with our sister ship, the USS Oklahoma City, putting 10,000 yards between us, and shot at each other's wake using a 3 degree offset.

On the way, on shortwave we listened to the Free French Radio in Brazzaville, French Equatorial Africa. Also we listed to Tokyo Rose.

Eventually we reached Hawaii, and pulled into Pearl Harbor. As part of the "All Hands", I helped load big ammunition shells. We got final installation of some of our radar. At times we would put out to sea, and return. We were in Hawaiian waters for about a month. I seem to recall having a total of two afternoons ashore. On one of my excursions I bought a Swiss wrist watch with a date hand. I grew very accustomed to it; the date hand was red and made one revolution per month. I would glance at my watch, and mentally say to myself, "wow, it is half past May". I've never been able to find its equal since.

On my first liberty ashore in Hawaii, some of the old timers said that this was "heaven on earth". We took a narrow-gauge open-car railroad train from Pearl to Honolulu. On one of my excursions ashore, I rented a bicycle and went to the top of Diamond Head. At the top I looked out over the bay and saw a very formitable armada of warships. On the way up, there were orchids growing wild. And down in the valley I could hear roosters crowing. A most attractive place indeed.

On one or the other times, I went to Waikiki Beach and rented a surfboard. It was in May, and I lay on the surfboard with the water washing over me, not realizing how badly I was getting sunburned. The next morning at muster, while standing at attention, I had to squat down so as not to faint. I was put into the sickbay with very bad burns on the back of my legs, so bad I could not stand straight up as the skin would stretch too far. While in sick bay, another kid was brought in. He was OK, but only a little shook up I guess and very wet. We were at sea again, and he had been sitting on the top lifeline with his back to the ocean, and his heels hooked into the bottom lifeline. Pretty foolish. His heels unhooked and he had gone over. The scarry part for him was that he saw the ship almost disappearing in the distance, before it turned around. He was also worried about sharks. He did remember his training though, and took off his pants, tied knots at the end of each leg, and filled them with air to stay afloat.

Well, time to go again.

Navy Pier (Cont'd)

2007-12-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

One of the sailors in our class was Calvin Larson from Minnesota. He was a strong believer, and invited me one time to come to a gospel service. At the service, the fellow up front pleaded so strongly that I came forward and accepted Jesus as my Savior. I believe this was September 28, 1944. The very next Sunday, I went to downtown Chicago, and attended the biggest church I could find. I sat in the balcony. The minister preached something on politics. Thus it was that I became a "dormant" Christian for the next 19 years.

While in Chicago, I went to hear President Roosevelt give a speech. Everyone went wild (but not me; I wasn't in favor of him). I also attended the Democratic National Convention there in Chicago, and saw Harry Truman nominated to run for Vice President.

On another note, the only time I lost my wallet was at Navy Pier. I had put it in my pillowcase and went to sleep for the night. In the morning it was gone!

One evening they put on an electrical show for us at the theatre at the end of the pier. Some guy sat on a wooden stool, and received a very high d.c. electrical charge, and all his hair stood straight out from his head.

Eventually it was time to graduate. I was promoted to Radio Technician's Mate Second Class. They asked us what kind of duty would we like. Foolish people put things down like "Instructor at 190 North State Street, Chicago (another secondary school like Navy Pier). No one wanted duty on an LST Landing Craft (LST for us stood for "Large Slow Target"). I put down for something I thought I could reasonably hope to get: i.e., a light cruiser. So it happened that I was assigned to the light cruiser CL67, U.S.S. Topeka, which at that point happened to be on a shakedown cruise to I believe Trinidad. So I was sent to the Personnel Receiving Station in Norfolk, Virginia.

While in Virginia I had a chance to take another flying lesson, which I did, again with a Piper Cub out of a rather tiny field in the middle of a woods. While there I also learned a couple of facts. One, at Mail Call time, the letter "N" is just about in the middle of the alphabet. Two, I met a guy on a bus on the base who said he used to be an "A" student, but after suffering a rather severe blow to the head, became a "C" and "D" student.

Now I can't recall if I had delayed orders to Norfolk (I think I did). So I guess I went home first. And everything seemed smaller. And my parents thought I had matured more (but that could be debatable). I remember driving my Dad's car through Ellington with snow chains on it at 60 MPH. I also went over to Simsbury and took a flying lesson in another Piper Cub, but this time it was equipped with skis. Two things I remember about that one lesson. One was that if you come in for a landing and your altitude is too high, you can kill altitude by flying somewhat sideways, I think by banking to the left but holding a right rudder, or vice-versa. Later I learned that this technique can be a setup for you to be flipped over by a gust of wind. The second thing I recall at that time was that the end of the runway was a field full of tent tobacco posts and wires. Definitely not a place where you would want engine failure.

Now I had gone out with a couple of girls in Chicago, but it never amounted to anything. Same thing on my leave back home. I had a date with Joan Hyde of Ellington, a classmate of mine from High School. I was not attracted to her, but just fun on an intellectual plane (she was smart). So I was very relaxed. We had a good time horse back riding on a couple of their horses. Probably that was the very first time I ever had been horse back riding. The other girl was very pretty, a few years younger than I was. She was Marylin Wells, the daughter of Franklin Wells, a well-known farmer from Talcotville. I managed to get enough nerve to call her up and ask for a date to take her to a movie. We went to a movie in Rockville. I was scared to death. When I dropped her off at home that night, she very politely said "I had a nice time", and that was the end of that.

Finally it was time to go up to Boston Navy Yard and report for duty aboard the U.S.S. Topeka. While in Boston, I had the opportunity to look up another old classmate from High School, the top of his class, Alan Backofen. He was in a Doctor of Science degree program at M.I.T., Metallurgy. He told me they were working on Atomic Energy, but couldn't tell me more. Later I learned that both he and his wife became sterile due to radiation and could not have children.

When I first came up to the U.S.S. Topeka, tied up to the dock there in Boston, and looked up at it, I thought to myself: "Is this where I maybe am going to die?"

Finally it became time to ship out. I guess it was "ready or not", because the ship had about a 3 degree list to port. We left Boston at fairly high speed in a fog, using radar, and out at sea, followed a zig-zag course to avoid German submarines. We passed about 200 miles east of Cape Cod, and for years I had a favorite saying that the closest I ever go to Europe was 200 miles east of Cape Cod.

On the way down to the Carabean, we got word that President Roosevelt had died, and Harry Truman was President. What a long time he was President! And I never was for him. He was elected when I was in Third Grade, and here I was in the Navy on a cruiser heading for war.

We headed for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and stayed overnight there. Later we went to Culebra Island in the Virgin Islands for target practice. Ultimately we headed for the Panama Canal.

That was an experience, but it will be for another time. Time to go.

Navy Pier, Chicago

2007-12-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

After 3 months of Primary in Gulfport, MS, we went to Chicago, Navy Pier, for 7 months of Secondary. The food there was just wonderful. The contrast between it and Gulfport was just unbelievable. The people in Gulfport were almost outnumbered by us sailors. But in Chicago it was just the opposite and everyone was most cordial towards us. Even if one of us was standing by the roadside waiting to cross, sometimes a car would stop to offer a ride!

At Navy Pier we got into all types of Naval Electronics, including radio transmitters and receivers, underwater sound, but especially radar of all types including search (long distance), and fire control (gunnery aiming). But all this was towards the end of our training; in the beginning we were very heavy on strictly electronics theory.

We had a lot of classroom sessions, some labs, and tons of homework. The classrooms at Navy Pier were normal size, but the sleeping area was monster in size, comparable to an aircraft hangar building. There were 4,000 of us learning electronics there. There were some characters amongst us. There was Wincup, who was a died-in-the-wool communist. There was another fellow from Scotland (I believe he was a Scottish Nationalist), who would say "Hitler may yet prove to be a friend". Then there was Loudermilk, a straight "A" student, who always fell asleep in class, to the consternation of the instructor, who would have him get up and stand in the corner. Loudermilk always had a smile on his face. Sometimes while standing in the corner, his eyes would close, and the book he held would fall. But he still had a smile on his face.
Another character (I don't know his name), was an old Navy veteran with oceans of hash marks on his sleeve (each one represents 4 years). But he would usually be found curled up on his bunk. People said he was regularly drunk.

We would be marched to downtown Chicago sometimes for swimming and diving lessons at the pool in The Palmer House, a high end hotel that is still there to this day.

While at Navy Pier, I had more spare time than I ever had in my life before, even though it was a very intensive course. With a buddy, we took the "Hiawatha" train up to Milwaukee to his home, and went on a double date. Often I would go roller skating. And I also enrolled for a few dancing lessons at Arthur Murray.

And on most week-ends, I went to Harlem Airport and took flying lessons in a Piper Cub, with an instructor who was an American veteran of the Royal Air Force (he had volunteered early). I didn't accumulate quite enough hours to solo, but would have if I had remained in the area long enough. My log book got left behind in the move years later from Indianapolis to Chicago. After a number of accumulated hours aloft, I practiced speed turns, and once, climbed to higher altitude and did a tail spin, to experience how to get out of it (they don't do that anymore). To get out of it, you flip the aerolons in the same direction as the spin, but hold opposite rudder. We did, and I got out of it OK. But I scared the instructor, who kept saying "the wings! the wings!" I had kept the straght down (dive) position a little too long for comfort before pulling out. This brings me to one of my favorite stories. Once I was coming in for a landing, and at the very last minute, another student flyer taxied right in front of the spot where we were going to touch down! My instuctor grabbed the controls, dove the plane into the tarmac, and we bounced OVER the other plane then came to a landing.

Once or possibly twice, I went to Palwaukee airport (unlike Harlem airport, it is still there), and took a lesson or two in a Talorcraft, which has a yoke rather than a joy stick like the Piper Cub. I felt I had perfect control with the joy stick, but never got used to the yoke.

Time to quit.

USN Gulfport Cont'd

2007-12-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

They had a very good large swimming pool there, and we were taught proper ways to swim, etc. One place was 8 feet deep, so I did some experiments there at the deep end. I inhaled to the maximum, held my breath, and climbed down the ladder to the bottom and let go. Immediately I popped right up to the top. Then again I did the same thing but this time I exhaled to the maximum. I let go at the bottom, and just stayed there (and then climbed back up).

At night I went to bed on my cot in the Quonset hut. I felt pretty much at home at that point, and did just like I would regularly do at home. I used an upturned orange crate for a night stand, and put my stuff on it when I went to bed, including my wallet. A buddy from Brooklyn was totally shocked, and gave me some friendly advice. Put your wallet in your pillow case so it won't get stolen.

Another thing I did to avoid too much laundry work was to take my mattress bag and use all four surfaces before washing it. One week, normal, next week, turn it over, third week turn it inside-out, fourth week, turn the (already inside-out) over. Fifth week: Laundry. I though I was so clever with this. But looking back, childish.

Towards the end of our three-months crash course in Pre-Radio, I became rather sickly, I believe due mainly to very poor food, lack of fresh vegetables, etc. My friends urged me to check into sick bay, but I thought it would be a very bad idea, only delaying my leaving of this place with such poor food, so I stuck it out, though I had a hard time studying at night. So finally we graduated from there. Next stop was Navy Pier, Chicago.

That's all I have time for right now.

USN

2007-12-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

Life at NTS Gulfport was good and bad. The weather was generally good. I believe it was the springtime. My fellow ETM (Electronic Technician's Mate) students were generally very decent people, but most with backgrounds totally different from mine, though a few were from farms, most were from cities like NYC and Chicago, etc.

It was generally conclude by all that the supply officer there at Gulfport was a crook. It was based on our experience at chow hall, which was mostly "sea rations". So many of us would just go to the on-base store and buy sandwiches, etc. One time for breakfast the powdered eggs were green. The comment: "Pretty, ain't they!!??" Another time I experienced a cockroach fried into my eggs.

Well, I have to go for now. (I'm now in San Marcos, CA)

Jan. 28, 1944

2007-11-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

Jan. 28, 1944, I was sworn into the U.S. Navy. We draftees at that point were given the choice of Army or Navy. I had read the book "Red Badge of Courage", and wanted no part of the Army.

I had taken the precaution, probably by my parents advice, to take with me a written recommendation from my High School science teacher. This, combined with my electronics course at Hillyer Jr. College caused the Navy to give me the "Eddy Test", a test promoted by Capt. Eddy, an electrical engineer, to measure aptitude in electronics, "radio" in those days. I passed. Everyone else headed for Camp Drum, NY, but they gave me 30 days "delayed orders" plus railroad tickets to get me one month later to Great Lakes Naval Training Station, IL, just north of Chicago.

So I came home. I had 30 days that I wasn't expecting. I needed excitement. I'd never been away from home alone before anyway. I decided skiing would be fun. So I checked out Mt. Tremblant, in Quebec Province. Somehow it appeared that it wouldn't work out. Next choice, Lake Placid, NY. That looked OK. So I went to Hartford and bought a pair of skis, and bought a bus ticket to Lake Placid, and got a hotel reservation there.

It was the first time I'd ever been on a long bus ride. I remember one night passing through Watkins Glen. Finally I got there and checked in at the hotel. The ski tows were ruining, and they had various slopes. I started out on the beginners slopes, but after a while it was quite tame. So later I graduated myself to courses running downhill on winding trails through the woods. We went quite fast through the trees, but it seemed OK, you just lean in the direction you wanted to go and everything worked out OK. In conversations with others, people took me for a seasoned skier.

I didn't stay but a few days at Lake Placid, and I came home. Eventually it was time to head for Chicago. I travelled straight through the night. The next day I was in Chicago, following the directions to get to Great Lakes NTS, which I did. There they issued me a uniform, and gave me something to put all my clothes in to send them home. And I was in boot camp in the middle of Winter.

The weather was rather bad, but we still drilled outdoors. I actually don't remember being cold though. Everyone started to get mildly sick. I did also, but a little more than many. So while the rest of the company had target practice for one week, I was in sick bay with "cat fever" (catharral fever). The one memorable time there was one day while I was laying in bed there, two corpsmen came to me to get a blood sample. But unbeknownst to me, one was in training and the other was his trainer. Maybe I was his first guinea pig. He struggled to get a sample. Seven times in the left arm and three times in the right arm before he finally "struck oil". I got him to switch to the right arm as my left was starting to wear out. Actually, they both, towards the end, wanted to quit, but foolish me, I didn't let them!

So I got better, and rejoined the company, minus target practice. We did, however, learn stuff from the Bluejackets Manual. Those in charge made believe they were tough guys, but they didn't fool me. The rules were strict of course. We kept all our belingings in a "sea bag" that we kept tied up to a rail. Anytime you needed anything, you had to untie it and take it down. One of my "shipmates" was Al McBride from Pittsburgh. I talked to him a couple of months ago by phone when I was visiting Pittsburgh. Another one was Niswander. He seemed rather inept, and was always taking down and tieing up his sea bag. One night the comment was what iis Niswander doing? The response: "Oh, he's just Niswandering around".

After 4 weeks of boot camp we were shipped down to Chicago, to Hugh Manley High School for 1 month of intense pre-radio math. The photo at the left was taken at Hugh Manley. I'm in the middle of this segment of a group photo. For the whole month we were never allowed out of doors until the very end. The Navy had taken over the whole High School. There were tripple decker bunks in the gym where we slept. The local radio station owned by Balaban and Katz had donated to the Navy a TV camera, video amplifier, and cathode ray picture tube. Those in charge of it had pointed the camera out the window, and it was connected by a thick cable to the amplifer, which was connected by another thick cable to the picture tube. Closed circuit TV. My first observation of it. It was impressive, but there was occasional trouble due to an intermittant bad connection somewhere.

After this month, they put us on a troop train for Gulfport, Mississippi. On that train I saw winter turn into summer as we headed south. About half way there in the middle of nowhere, the train stopped for no discernable reason. It was way past "chow time". People were hungry, but we had not been given any food. There were complaints. Outside some people were selling sandwiches. Some would not buy any on general principles. But I guess I was unprincipled, and bought. In retrospect, the whole thing now looks suspicious, doesn't it? Oh well. Truthfully, I never thought of the obvious angle until just now.

Finally we got to Naval Training Station, Gulfport, Miss. for 3 months of Primay. We slept in Quonset huts, did our own laundry, and had intensive training in general radio theory. For one class we each built a superhetrodyne receiver. I remember once, doing my laundry, I saw somebody else's newspaper headlining the Allied invasion of France. One of my classmates was of religeous bent. He had several nicknames, as "the chevroned reverand", "the sneaking deacon", and "the sinister minister".

We did have week-ends off, finally. So every week end I liked to see how far I could get from Gulfport. I travelled by bus to Mobile, Alabama, Jackson Mississippi, New Orleans Louisiana, and once from there via steamboat up the river to Baton Rouge and LSU where I went to their museum and saw some Confederate money, saying they would pay up six months after the end of hostilities between the Confederate States of America and the United States of America.

Another time I went again to New Orleans and went swimming in Lake Ponchetrain. Again, another week end I went to a paper mill town, Bogalusa, Louisiana. I didn't always go by bus. Often I hitch hiked. It was easy in those days. Everyone was patriotic, and anxious to give servicemen a ride. Once in central Mississippi as I was hitch hiking through, I was walking along a road through the country, and happened to go past a farm where the chickens had gotten out of the fence, and I helped the farmer get them back in. It turned out I was headed for a town he had never been to. In fact he had never been over 20 miles from home!

Time to go.

High School, Cont'd

2007-11-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

In 1939 I started my Freshman year at Rockville High School. Just about that time, Germany attacked Poland, and then England and France declared war on Germany. I remember hopping on my bicycle and peddling all the way up to Farnam & Jesse Lane to tell them the news. They didn't have either a radio nor any electricity.

It was the beginning of about a year of what they called the "Phoney War" (fake war). We were neutral. We would receive newsreels from both sides. I remember one time I went on my bicycle down to South Manchester to a movie, and they showed a newsreel from Germany of a very stirring military march. At another time a large section of our class was taken to the Palace theater in Rockville to see newsreels of the war, which included German planes taking off to bomb England. At that point, half the class cheered!

There are so many things people forget, and are never put into history books. For example, the Polish government prior to the invasion had been leaning towards Germany! Another thing, in the 1930's, there was a popular U.S. radio commentator, exceedingly anti-Jewish, by the name of Father Caughlin. There were both pro-Nazi's and pro-Communists throughout the country. One pro-Nazi group was called the German-American Bund. They held a ralley in NYC and filled Madison Square Garden. Prior to hostilities, there were some "leanings" towards the Nazis in the British royal family, also amongst Scottish nationalists, and in the USA, Henry Ford, and Charles Lindberg.

Just at that time also, was the 1939 New York World's Fair. My sister Barbara and some others took a group of Girl Scouts down to New York to see the Fair, and I was given the opportunity to go along, which I did. We took the train down for a very long day of it, during a part of which my nerves gave me trouble (traces of the effect of Chorea from previous years), so I didn't get to enjoy it as I should have. The train went underground before reaching Manhattan, and while still underground, we changed to another train going to the fair. It wasn't until years later that I ever saw NYC above ground!

The Fair was in Flushing, N.Y. and to me it was utterly fantastic. One of the most memorable things that I saw for the first time was television. Another thing that impresed me was that at night, you could look up in the sky and see all the clouds totally lit up from escaped light from below. Crosley had a remote-controlled car. Both Germany and Poland had pavilions.

I remember once during study hall in the High School auditorium, one kid had a newspaper with headlines, "1,000 PLANE RAID ON LONDON". It really didn't look good for England and France. And then France was finally defeated. German bombers over England were so safe at that time that the Luftwaffe head, Reichmarshal Herman Goering went along once for the ride.

We had a short-wave set at that time, and I regularly used to listen to Radio Berlin to see what they had to say. In fact I listed so regularly that our hired man thought I was a Nazi sympathizer (but I wasn't). I just liked to hear everything from all sources. In fact, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, about 1938, we used to listen to short-wave station EAR, "The voice of Republican Spain", in Madrid. This was during the Spanish Civil War, when the Communists were supporting the Republican (Loyalist) side, and Hitler and Mussolini were supporting Generalissimo Franco's dictatorship. Franco won, and I fully expected he would come into the war on the Axis side, and he proabably would have except Spain was too worn out by the long civil war. At that time the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was against the Spanish Loyalists. My Dad, then a Socialist, was for them.

With regard to Japan, at that point it was of course neutral also. But the way Japan had treated China was common knowledge in the USA, and almost everyone was pro-China and anti-Japanese, including myself. I remember even in first grade, in the Weekly Reader, an account of Japanese soldiers roping together a crowd of Chinese civilians, pouring on gasoline, and setting them on fire. In the mid to late 1930's, I remember going with my Dad to "Storrs College" (forerunner of University of Connecticut), and hearing a speaker talking about our selling scrap metal to Japan, which he said "we will get back in the form of shells fired at us".

While in High School, I regularly read the Reader's Digest. They gave good reasons for being against excessively strong central government, and convinced me to be a Republican, which I have been ever since. But in wanting to hear all sides, for 6 months or so, I subscribed to a New York Communist newspaper, "The Daily Worker". After about 6 months, I had the feeling I could have written it myself, it was so predictable. There were a number of Communists around, including one of the local farmers, Mr. Grabowski. My Dad was against them, as they claimed to be Socialist, but were actually violent.

Just for excitement, one night my friend and I made a big firey hammer and sickle on a hillside, just to see what the reaction would be. Nobody saw it. Another night, we did the same thing, but this time with a swastika. Same thing, no excitement, nobody saw it.

All these shennanigans came to a screetching halt after December 7, 1941. "A day which will live in imfamy". We were at war! It was Sunday evening, and Dad and I were down in the barn milking cows, and had the radio on. It was unbelievably shocking news. Back up at the house, we continued to listen to Radio Berlin on short-wave. Our news wouldn't say what or how many ships were sunk at Pearl Harbor, but Radio Berlin listed them all, the names of all the battleships that went down that day. My dad's comment: that sounds more like the truth. It sounded quite grim.

On the local news we listed to broadcasts from Manila until sometime in January 1942 when it fell to the Japanese. In those days our country was totally unified. I never heard on one dissenting word. We were at war because we were attacked. Hitler had made the comment once that he would "take the US by telephone". Germany at that time was making so much progress in their war that probably Japan figured "now is the time". Plus they had had previoous experience. In the 1900's they did a sneak attack on the Russian Far East Fleet, and practically sunk the whole thing, and wound up victor in that conflict. So they had "learned their lesson". But of course it was the wrong lesson.

Now I have become convinced for some time that we really had no business entering the First World War, and believe a big factor was British propaganda. What a difference there would have been had we remained neutral during the First World War! But obviously WWII was totally different.

I was always facinated by geography. And in looking at the Western Hemisphere, it looked quite plane to me that the most reasonable thing for me to do language wise, was to learn Spanish. In High School I was having two years of Latin and two years of French, but Spanish was not offered. In earlier years they had dropped Greek, and in WWI they had dropped German to get even with the Germans. So my sister and I signed up for a night course in Spanish, while I was still in High School.

In my Junior year of High School, I took my first plane ride, a United flight from the field next to the river by downtown Hartford, up to Logan in Boston. On the flight, as we approaced Boston harbor, the stewardess pulled down the curtains by each window so that we couldn't see tahe ships in the harbor because it was a wartime secret, classified information. The reason Iwent to Boston was to apply for admission to MIT as an engineering student. To my great joy, I was accepted, and started receiving invitations from fraternities.

However, my Dad said something that I misunderstood, thinking he was forbidding me to go, and I held it against him for several years until the misunderstanding was cleared up. Later he explained that his position was that if I went, I would just be drafted into the Army, and not get to go at all. So I stayed home, for a while. But I was restless. I thought maybe I'd get into the Navy V-12 program, where they put you through college for officer training. So I went down to New Haven, and applied at Yale for the V-12. They gave me a bunch of examinations, including a thorough dental examination, and at that point, my old "bugabo", my nerves started acting up, (the Chorea resido from years before), and based on that I was rejected.

I then enrolled in Hillyer Junior College in Hartford, night school, to learn "Radio" as electronics was called in those days.

But I was still restless. So, even though I was an essential worker (our doctor said "you can get along without doctors, but you cannot get along without food) I went up to the local draft board and asked them to draft me (make me 1-A). They said, are you still working on the farm? I said, "Yes". They said, "You have to quit first". I went home and thought about it for a while. A week later I went back to the draft board, and said, "I quit". They said, "OK, in a few days you will get a postcard in the mail". Those few days came, and I showed the card to my Dad. He said, "Well, we'll take care of this!" I said "I asked them to." He said, "Oh, if that's the way it is, I gues there's nothing to be done about it". And a little while later, I was told to come to Rockville, to get on a bus there to take us to Hartford to be entered into the armed forces.

More details later. Time to quit.

Catchup with Photos

2007-11-16T07:46:00.001-08:00

Here is a picture of Brewster Skinner that I took when we were walking home from school

Here is a picture I took of Delia Partridge, our study hall teacher in High School. Some students called her "Birdie" Partridge. She was a Normal School classmate of my mother's.

I took this picture of her without her knowing it, with my little Univex camera. It was underexposed, and they wouldn't make a print of it, so I never saw this photo until 60 years later when I used the Hewlett-Packard scanner for negatives and could adjust the exposure level.

Here is another Univex picture, taken by me at arm's length, on the way home from school in the wintertime.

Here I am as a teenager, holding some electronics.

This photo was taken in the 1930's in front of the farmhouse in Vernon. The milkhouse is in the left background, and a portion of the barn is in the right background. Note the barn is before my Dad put an addition on the south side of the barn. The skis were left over from when the Blankenburgs had the farm.

We think this is Dick Niederwerfer with the catcher's mit. Probably taken over near the Tolland County Home.

Charlie Thrall at the back door of his house. He can date it by (a) his sweater, and (b), the light over the back door shows it is after they got electricity.

Bill Rizy standing in front of our hatchway, with our shop in the background.

Probably Talcotville Congregational Church Kindergarten about 1927. My sister Barbara Neill is in the back row, third from left. Wallace Thrall Jr is in the front row, second from right.

Barbara's Story

2007-11-15T19:57:00.000-08:00

This will be my attempt to put my sister Barbara's story into the blog. Bear with me. It will be without pictures which I may add later. Let's see what happens:

GROWING UP ON THE FARM
By Barbara Neill

When I was a little girl I lived on a farm in Connecticut. We raised cows and chickens and for extra cash we grew half an acre of strawberries, one acre of asparagus and lots of corn. My father said it was a good system because usually when the price of milk was low, eggs were high and when we were getting next to nothing for eggs, milk would go up. In the spring when both eggs and milk were low we had those other crops. Nevertheless we were poor.

I grew up in depression times; we had very little money. But nobody in New England spent very much then, even if they had it. There were old-time Yankee farmers in our neighborhood who had plenty of money but they bought as little as possible. We didn't have any choice. There were a couple of times in the 30's when I realized that my father was desperately worried about money. I remember him saying that if a bank held our mortgage we would probably lose the farm.

My grandfather held the mortgage. This was my mother's father and it had been his farm. My mother had grown up here. The place did not hold many happy memories for her; she had had to work very hard as a child and my grandfather was not easy to get along with. He and my grandmother now lived in an apartment in the city but every week he would come down to see how my father was doing. He didn't approve of very much. He saw waste everywhere. He would carefully pick up strands of hay in the barnyard until he had a handful, then angrily shake his head saying, "Waste, waste."

We had moved to the farm when I was just turning eight and my brother was about three. Terrible things happened right away. This was in 1927-28 when all cattle were being tested by the state for tuberculosis. We had twelve milk cows, all good ones that had been prized by my grandfather. Six re-acted positively to the tuberculin test. They looked just as healthy as the other six but they had to be slaughtered. The state paid low beef prices for them. My father had to replace them with high-priced cows which were not as good as the ones he had lost.

Then my little brother got sick. He kept putting his hands to his head and crying. We all thought he was just homesick but it turned out that he had a bone infection behind his ear called mastoiditis. The common antibiotics we have today had not yet been discovered; there were not even any sulfur drugs. The only cure was a painful and risky mastoid operation. The operation was a success. Only later did the doctor explain how dangerous it was. Since the jugular vein was right next to the bone, it took unusual skill to avoid cutting the vein. He told of a surgeon who cut seven jugular veins in a row before giving up the idea of becoming a specialist. Even after a successful operation great care was needed. The wound had to be kept sterile and the bandage changed daily. It was a painful business. The doctor came to the house several times the first week my brother returned home, then a visiting nurse took over. All this was expensive and there was no such thing as health insurance. Financially we were off to a bad start even before the depression.

But all this gloom and doom affected me only marginally. Life on the farm held great rewards, depression or not. Especially for me; I loved the out-of-doors and all living things. I had advantages. Space for instance. I had lots of space; a room of my own and about forty acres outside. Of course that's an exaggeration because most of the land was in crops or in hay or pasture. But I considered the fifteen acre pasture across from the house as sort of my playground. It had a brook running through it. A nice, clean, transparent stream, rushing furiously over stones in narrow places then making deep mysterious pools where it curved around trees, cutting under them and exposing the roots. It wore down through the land where the ground was soft or sandy, creating over-hanging embankments. It wasn't good to get too close to the edge of those sloping embankments; sometimes the whole edge fell in.

The brook was a great place to play. There were water striders, polliwogs, crawfish, snails and tiny, black salamanders hiding under stones. Most of the fish were dace. They were easy to catch with peanut-butter pails. Peanut-butter used to come in tins which held about two cups. (When you first opened the peanut-butter you had to spend a couple of minutes stirring because the peanut oil was all up at the top; nobody yet knew how to homogenize things. But it was wonderful tasting peanut-butter.)

My system of catching fish was to take a peanut-butter tin in each hand, carefully approach a school of fish swimming near the surface than make a sudden swoop, clapping the tins together just under the water. I usually got one or two. Surprisingly no fishes were ever squashed between the tins. The catch was put into a regular 12 qt. pail carried for the purpose. One afternoon I got seventeen. Most were let go but some were taken home for my fish bowl.

Sometimes I'd just sit on the bank of the brook and watch things. Dragonflies would fly past on regular routes up and down the stream. The same dragonfly would stop during each trip on a particular branch or leaf. Butterflies surprised me. I had thought they liked only flowers but I saw that most of them also liked mud; at least I saw swallowtails sitting in muddy places as well as flocks of little blues and some of the copper colored ones.

Once I was a little scared. I had never seen a snake at our brook but when I did it was a big one and it had just caught a frog. I made a feeble effort to frighten it into letting the frog go but it slithered away into the weeds to swallow the frog at leisure.

In the spring when the brook was very nearly a small river, larger fish would drift down from a distant pond which fed it. Bullheads, suckers, an occasional trout and sometimes a few pickerel were seen. The suckers were about six inches long and sluggish. I found that by moving extra carefully I could close my hand around one and lift it right out of the water. When I put it back just as cautiously, it just swam away with a lazy flip of the tail.

In midsummer the brook ran low. It even dried up completely in places. Tadpoles, which we always called polliwogs, were often trapped in small pools. Their survival depended upon becoming adults quickly. I noticed something rather miraculous. In the puddles which were drying up, the little tadpoles became tiny adult toads faster than those of the same size living in deeper pools.

Once each summer at this time there was a visit from the Great Blue Heron. I suppose he really came many times but I only saw him once each summer. The arrival of the heron was an event. It was such a magnificent bird, unlike anything I had ever seen. He swooped in on his great, gray wings, stalked solemnly about the shallow pools, stabbing here and there with his sword-like beak as he filled up on tadpoles and fish. He was something to watch. I thought of him as a royal bird from a faraway place. Once, after he had flown away, I found a feather that had been dropped. I could hardly believe the luck; it was one of the long, slender, tubular feathers from the dark crest on his head. I saved this treasure and it became the start of my feather collection.

None of the other children in the neighborhood were interested in live things the way I was. When I say, "neighborhood" I mean a large area with not many people in it. We could see one other farm-house from our place. Two girls about my age lived there and we often visited each other. In the other direction there was a cluster of farms and quite a few children, but they were too far away to play with very often. We all went to a one-room school with 27 pupils and 5 grades. There were 3 in my 4th grade. After the 5th grade we took the trolley to the city school.

Our teacher did more than teach school; she was also the janitor. No small job, since there was no running water and the heat was supplied by a wood-burning stove in the back of the room. It was the same school my mother had gone to and there hadn't been many changes.

Two of the oldest pupils were appointed water carriers. It was a ten-minute walk to the spring where the pail was dipped into the cold, clear water, so clear you could look straight down about four feet and usually see one or two frogs on the sandy bottom. The full pail was laboriously carried, water sloshing, between the two pupils back to the school. It was set down in the entry-way where we kept our coats, a dipper beside it. We all had our own drinking cups.

I didn't know where the wood came from but in the winter there was always a big pile of fire-wood stacked near the stove. Whoever sat nearest the stove usually had the job of keeping the fire going. I never thought about it but the teacher must have gotten to school very early to heat the place; then there was the sweeping, dusting, etc. For all this and teaching too, she was paid $600 a year. It was a low wage even for depression times.

Some of those one-room, country school teachers were known for their ingenuity and wisdom, teaching with a natural talent that made pupils remember them all their lives. My uncles used to smile warmly when they spoke of their first teacher, Mrs. Dart. Unfortunately neither I, nor later on my brother, were so lucky. Both of us had teachers who were short-tempered and actually incompetent. My brother's teacher was so ignorant that she once told the children that the moon was larger than the earth.

It wasn't considered necessary to have a college education to teach school. My mother had taught one year in a small back-country school directly after graduating from high school. With the money she earned there she went on to Normal School which specialized in preparing teachers. The best teaching jobs went to those with Normal School diplomas. Along with reading, writing, arithmetic and history; etiquette and elocution were important subjects.

Before marrying my mother had taught for seven years and had loved it. It must have been hard for her to go back to farm life. One compensation surely was her garden; her flowers were a source of joy for all of us.

Our house had a lawn shaded in front by two huge maple trees. There were flower beds between the lawn and the orchard to the east and alongside the unshaded side of the house. When I was about ten I had a garden of my own in a spot near the house. I raised annual flowers - zinnias, cosmos, California poppies, portulacca, nasturtiums and calendulas. My mother liked perennials better. Now I know why but I couldn't understand it then. It was fun to plant the seeds of annuals; they came up fast and soon you had lots of big, colorful flowers. It's true that they needed thinning and weeding and lasted only one season but next spring you could always plant more. Perennials needed less attention; that's why my mother liked them; she had no time for annual flowers. Her garden changed very little - mostly iris, lilies, phlox, peonies and oriental poppies. These plants lived over the winter and once you planted them you had them for years. Mother got her plants as gifts, a few at a time, from other farm women and when she herself had extras, she gave them some. Plant swapping was the way to have a garden without spending money. (I never heard of anybody buying a plant) Seeds were cheap and once in a while my mother would try a new variety but it took perennials two years to blossom. I couldn't imagine waiting that long for anything .

In New England the seasons are sharply defined. Winters are harsh with brilliant snow and sleet, spring is a long, slow awakening with lots of rain, summer is warm and lovely and fall has magic when leaves that were green turn red and gold. I thought all of it was beautiful. Maybe spring was best. Then as now seasons and holidays were celebrated in special ways. On the first of May we hung May baskets. It was more a custom for girls than for boys. If you could find a small woven basket you were in luck, especially if it had a handle. If not, you made your own out of colored paper. Baskets were filled with wild flowers and ferns. The idea was to tip-toe up to a neighbor's door without being seen, hang the basket on the door-knob, knock, then run and hide. Although it was often the lady of the house who came to the door it was a children's game. One May day coming home from school I was greatly surprised to see old man Henley with a may basket in his hand, stealthily approaching his own front door. Small and wiry, Mr. Henley was called "old man" not because of his age but because he was dour and unsmiling. I walked along the road slowly, wondering what would happen next. I heard the door open, then running footsteps, a silence, then peals of laughter I recognized as Mrs. Henley's. Astonishing - I would never understand adults. When I told my parents about it I was pleased to see that they were as surprised as I was, also highly amused.

The Fourth of July was a big day. Every year we had a huge picnic with lots of my mother's former high school friends. When it was our turn to be hosts the lawn looked like a festival. Each family brought a dish; there were pork and baked beans, cucumber salad, brown bread with raisins, scalloped corn, potato salad, chicken, corn muffins, fresh strawberries, watermelon and lots of pies and cakes.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were feast days too. Thanksgiving was with my father's relatives, Christmas was with my mother's, but our own Christmas was best. While we had a woodlot, we always cut our own Christmas tree. Having no spruces or fir trees, we used white pines. They were quite pretty with their long, blue-green needles, but young pines growing naturally in the woods don't have many branches. One year I persuaded my father to cut a hemlock. He said OK but it wouldn't last. It was cut the day before Christmas; my mother and I trimmed it right away. For two days it was like a Christmas tree in a fairy tale; thick, soft, feathery branches festooned with strings of pop-corn and cranberries, chains of colored paper, a tin-foil star on top and the nice old glass and tin ornaments we saved from year to year. Then the needles started to fall. In less than a week more than half the needles were on the floor and mother said it had to go. It was the last time we had a hemlock Christmas tree. I thought it had been worth it but I am sure my mother didn't think so. We found the little hemlock needles in cracks between the floor-boards for months afterward.

We didn't have the kind of farm I used to read about in storybooks. Those farms had geese, rabbits, ducks, goats, sheep, pigs and of course the child always had a pony. We had none of these extras; my parents thought there was enough to do taking care of the necessary animals - cows, chickens, cats and my one dog.

My first dog was a gift, arranged by friends of my mother. It was a small, black-and-tan terrier that needed a home. I loved it and so did my brother; my parents tolerated it and my grandparents disapproved of it entirely. My grandmother just didn't like dogs and my grandfather said you could always tell the real dirt-poor farmers - they usually had about six hound dogs hanging around the door-yard, a medium-poor man would have two or three, a well-to-do man might have one but a really rich man never had a single dog. "Take Old Man Brant", he said (the richest man we knew) "never saw a dog around his place, did you?" I was unimpressed. And in time Fido who was a feisty little dog, won my grandfather's affection. He was seen petting it when he thought no one was looking and finally he accepted it openly, even taking it with him on trips with the horse and wagon.

We generally had an abundance of cats. All were females since they were the best hunters and the cats' job was to keep down the rat and mouse population. Already on the farm when we came were two tortoise-shells, "Loungy", short for lounge-lizard because she loved the kitchen lounge and "Ougen", her big-eyed daughter whose name means "eyes" in German. These were the only two house-cats, that is they were sometimes allowed in the kitchen. There were a number of barn-cats too wild to approach; the few that would let themselves be stroked were given names, the rest were anonymous.

For awhile rats invaded the hen-house. Each night one of the cats was shut up with the hens; even if she didn't catch a rat her presence would keep them away. Ougen was always first choice since she was a superior rat-catcher. She was known to tackle anything, having even been seen bringing home such exotic fare as garter snakes and young rabbits for her kittens.

Kittens were a problem. The excitement of finding a litter of kittens in the hayloft was tempered by the knowledge that they would soon be drowned. My brother and I tried to keep their whereabouts a secret. It never worked for long. My father or the hired man would find them and they would be gone the next day. Once in a great while I was allowed to pick out one to keep. What joy! Would it be the gray and white one? The tiger? The biggest, or the smallest? It wasn't easy to make a decision; they were all cute. Replacements were seldom needed. Occasionally a cat would be struck by a car or just disappear; one cat had to be shot for catching and eating a baby chick. But far more kittens were born than we could ever keep. I understood this well but it was very hard when my father handed me a burlap bag of kittens one morning and told me to drop them off the bridge on my way to school. I shriveled inside at the thought. It never occurred to me to disobey and I did it. The bag didn't sink right away. No rock had been put in to weigh it down. The kittens mewed as the river current carried them downstream. I felt wretched for days.

The time came when we were actually short of cats. A disease which had always attacked the kittens, giving them sore eyes for a while, became much more virulent. They would seem to recover, then be struck down again, this time fatally. At last we were left with the two aging house-cats. It was decided that new blood was needed. A friend offered us two unusual kittens, just weaned. They were part Manx; the male had a stub of a tail, the female none. Both were jet black with extra toes on all four feet. I thought they were enchanting. I brought them into the kitchen to introduce them to Loungy. She couldn't have been more horrified if they had been bear cubs. Her hair stood on end, she spat and hissed, her eyes got huge and fierce and her face looked like a demon's. They were such little kittens and she had always been such a good mother, I couldn't understand her reaction. I continued to play with the kittens, hoping she would get used to them. She did not. After half an hour or so she went to sleep on the couch. Even in her sleep a deep throaty growl issued from her throat from time to time.

The black kitten, Sam, grew into a healthy, handsome cat. His sister met with disaster before she was grown. She was killed by a car while the two of them were walking along the roadside. It seemed that he understood what had happened because forever after he ran when he saw a moving car. He was afraid of little else. He never picked a fight but he allowed no other male cats on the place. He was an outstanding hunter, one of those unusual male cats who consider catching mice and rats a worthy vocation. With all this he was the friendliest cat we had ever had, even coming out to the vegetable garden to keep me company whenever I had weeding to do.

We hoped such sterling qualities would be passed on to his offspring. They were - at other farms. At least we had reports of bob-tailed kittens appearing in the litters of neighbor's cats. We never had any. Loungy and Ougen found mates elsewhere. A few of their kittens grew up so we never ran out of cats but none of our cats ever resembled Sam though he lived on the farm for nearly ten years.

Most farmers had automobiles by the early thirties but they weren't very reliable and the roads were generally poor. It is hard to describe a really bad road to someone who's never seen one. I don't mean a little-used road through the woods with boulders and overgrown bushes. Ordinary bad roads were the usual gravel roads seen everywhere in the twenties and thirties. Only major highways were paved. The road past our house was a typical dirt road. It was wide enough for two cars to pass anywhere; it was scraped with a road-scraper spring and fall and fresh gravel was put down in the worst places. The trouble was the mud in the spring and ruts in winter. Looking down the road you would see a driver in a Model T Ford churning through the mud, trying desperately to maintain his speed since to slow down would invite stalling. A large puddle posed a problem, especially if it covered most of the road. The driver had a choice of splashing right through it, hoping it had no hidden depths to bring the water over the running board, or steering way over to the side where the risk was plain to see since the shoulders were always muddy. We helped locate burlap bags, old boards and flat stones for those who had made the wrong decisions.

Winter was often worse because any ruts formed in late fall and not scraped in time, stayed frozen all winter. There was a joke about a road sign someone had seen. "Choose your rut carefully, you will be in it for the next mile." Snow actually improved the worst roads since all were ploughed even then and the snow filled the ruts.

We had a good time with snow just as children do now. We made snowmen, built snow-houses and forts, had snow fights and of course went sliding. Most of us had Flexible Flyers and we took them to school. The school-house sat on a hill so there was good sliding close by. The hill was not long but it was very steep and had a rise at the bottom which gave a roller-coaster effect. When one of the older boys brought his home-made bob-sled, half the school population could get on at once. We all clung to each other, little ones on the laps of big ones, then screaming wildly, the whole over-loaded bob-sled hurtled down the hill on its short run. We never had a single accident.

At home when conditions were slippery enough, we went sliding in the road. The road had just enough slope beyond the house so that, covered with ice, it gave a tremendously long ride. I would walk up to the next farm, meet friends there and we would continue on to the steepest place for a good start. If it was really slick we could coast for nearly a quarter of a mile, ending up in front of our house. Our parents took a dim view of this even though were almost no cars ; we were usually called in after one or two rides. In a few years it was all over; our town bought a sand truck. It was rare that the whole road remained slippery; they spread sand over the best sliding places. We hated that sand truck.

Dressing for winter was complicated. Cotton stockings had to be pulled over long winter underwear, a difficult task. I had "arctics" for my feet, each with four, hard-to-manage buckles. Usually I had a woolen skirt and a middy blouse with a kerchief which had to be tied. Then there was the heavy cloth coat, a woolen scarf around the neck, a knitted cap and mittens. We were often too warm but since nothing was waterproof except the soles of the arctics, we were also often wet and had to come in to dry out.

Boys outdoor winter clothing was much the same with the difference that they wore pants instead of skirts. And they had long, woolen stockings which came up to the knee since that is where their pants were buckled. Knee-length knickers were worn by all boys until they were in the seventh or eighth grade. The first pair of long pants marked the beginning of young manhood.

Clothing was more formal then. No woman would think of going to church without gloves. Everybody wore hats. My father had a good felt hat for best, a straw hat for summer and several caps for everyday wear. All the boys wore caps. Even though we had so little money, mother and I had spring hats and fall hats. Every spring I looked forward to the trip to Rockville to pick our a pretty new hat. There were two places to buy; a regular clothing store which had a hat section and the hat shop which sold nothing but ladies' hats. To have to wear last year's hat was a sure sign of dire poverty. Only once or twice were we reduced to that state.

On the other hand a coat was worn for years and years. Mother had a blue-green, woolen coat with a raccoon collar. The year I was nine she announced that she was going to get a new coat. I looked at her in amazement. "What is the matter with the one you've got?" She looked at me and said, "Barbara, do you ever remember seeing me in another coat?" I thought about it, then had to admit I hadn't.

I remember very well the coat my grandfather bought for me the next year. He simply announced one day that he and I were taking the trolley to Hartford to get me a new winter coat. What excitement! I had never been to Hartford or to a big department store. It was an hour's ride by trolley to Hartford. The size of the stores and their bewildering variety of goods overwhelmed me. The sharp, quick-talking salespeople seemed unfriendly.

The saleslady who sold us the coat was not only unfriendly but unhelpful. The coat was at least two sizes too big for me. True, it was a lovely material of a rich, brown color and the collar was genuine beaver. When she asked if I liked it, I nodded dumbly, too shy to point out that it was for someone much older than me.

My grandfather believed that buying children's clothes too large for them was the sensible thing to do - this way they could be worn for years without becoming too small. For clothing to be outgrown while still in a wearable condition was bad management and a sinful waste.

He was so enthusiastic about my new coat after we got home (Such wonderful material! Such a soft fur collar! Feel the thickness !) that I was convinced that I was lucky to have a coat like this. But by the time it fitted me it was an old, worn-out coat. My mother said hardly a word; undoubtedly this sort of thing happened to her many times while growing up.

Two of my grandfather's sons were mechanically inclined. One summer they bought an old Reo, got it in running condition and took a trip out west to Ohio. They also experimented with electricity. Several years before we moved to the farm they had rigged up a Model T Ford engine and a generator to produce thirty-two volt electricity. The engine was also used by itself to run a big rotary saw for cutting wood for the stove.

We had electric lights before anybody else in the area. But we had lights only in the kitchen and the dining room - and in the barn. My grandmother believed electricity was dangerous and hadn't let her sons wire the rest of the house. One of the chores on the farm was to run the Ford engine to generate electricity. It was housed in the "shop", a building adjacent to the woodshed. It had to be run about every other day and since it was an old engine it often broke down. When the engine hadn't been run a few days the lights would get dim. They got dimmer and dimmer as the electricity became weaker but I never remember them going completely out.

When I went to bed at night I carried a kerosene lamp upstairs with me. I was entrusted with this only after I had proved that I could hold the lamp steady and straight, then could set it down correctly, keeping it perfectly level. Everyone was careful with lamps; I simply never heard of anyone dropping one. Living beyond the range of fire engines, we knew that once a fire got going, it would burn everything to the ground.

Lamps needed daily care. We had three. The fragile glass chimneys got smoky and had to be washed, wicks needed trimming and shaping and new kerosene had to be added. We also had a gasoline-burning Aladdin lamp with two carbon mantles. It threw a brilliant light but was tricky and time consuming to start; it was only used on special occasions.

When we first moved to the farm and for several years afterward, there was no furnace and no running water. My grandmother raised seven children without these conveniences and so of course did and do thousands of other people all over the world. There was a well in the backyard and a pump above it.

When my grandmother first came to the farm she had had to carry water into the house by the pail-full, but in a few years she had raised enough chickens and sold enough eggs to buy herself a new pump which was installed inside the kitchen. The pump was not hard to work; you just pushed the handle up and down a few times and soon water would pour out of the spout.

There was no bathroom. There was an outhouse or privy; we didn't call them johns then. Although it was reasonably close to the house it was a cold trip in mid-winter.

Baths were taken in the kitchen in a large, round, galvanized iron tub. The tub was kept in a rear entry-way we called the "back kitchen". At bath time it was brought into the kitchen and filled with water dipped from the hot water tank. Kitchen ranges which were huge, flat-topped, cast-iron stoves, nearly all came with a twenty gallon metal tank along one side. If this was kept filled, hot water was usually available since the kitchen fire was always going except in the hottest part of the summer. Woe betide anyone who used hot water, then forgot to replace it with water from the pump. It took hours for a tank-full of cold water to heat up.

Connecticut winters are cold. With no furnace, only the kitchen and dining room of the house were kept warm. The big kitchen stove, polished every week with "stove blackening", burned off its polish quickly. The heavy, round, stove lids which covered the roaring fire inside sometimes glowed dull red. The pot-bellied stove in the dining room was less successful. It was not adequate on really cold days and it was not large enough to hold enough wood to last through the night. One of my parents would have to get up around three in the morning to add more wood to the fire. The bedrooms were icy. Country kids learned to undress under the covers. In the morning the thing to do was to grab your clothes, dash downstairs and dress in front of the dining room stove.

Even after we got the furnace (a Holland costing $300) we still burned wood for years. We owned a woodlot, a separate piece of land more than a mile from the house. Enough wood was cut each winter to last a full year. Trees were cut down when the sap was frozen and the ground was covered with snow. Branches were trimmed off so the logs could be loaded onto a sledge drawn by our two horses, Prince and Jerry. It was tough work; my father and his hired man chopping the trees and working the crosscut saw until they were sweating in the freezing weather. And it was hard for the horses struggling to pull a loaded sledge over uneven terrain where iron runners hit rocks or high spots, forcing the runners through the snow into the ground beneath.

Jerry was finally buried in those woods. He was a nervous, impatient horse, the opposite of Prince, an easy-going sort. My grandfather had bought them more than ten years before we came, the first young horses he had ever been able to afford. Though they were the same size and color, both bay, they were never a smooth team. Prince, ever one to take care of himself, always lagged two steps behind Jerry. The year that Jerry died it happened that our hired man, Armand, was a match for Jerry in temperament. He was a hard worker but he was an excitable man with a quick temper. It was never clear what happened but when my father went back to find out why Armand had not returned with the logs, he found the sledge stuck, the horses wet and steaming and Jerry staggering, barely able to stay on his feet. They quickly unharnessed the horse but he fell and died there in the snow. My father always believed that Armand had beaten the horses and that Jerry had broken a blood vessel trying to pull the immovable sledge.

It is hard to realize the importance horses used to have, especially on farms. Even after automobiles were common, nearly all farm machinery was still designed for horse power. Very few farmers I knew had tractors. Not only were they costly but those early machines had unpredictable habits. Many were unbalanced, being lighter in front than behind which caused them to flip over easily. To stabilize them, some farmers chained heavy rocks to the front end.

Horses were not much safer. Runaways were one of the excitement of the times. I was involved in only one runaway; Jerry was the culprit.

Every town had a blacksmith shop where horses were brought in to be shod. Jerry needed shoeing and there were errands to be done in town so the horse was harnessed to the spring wagon for the forty-five minute trip to Rockville. The spring wagon was an open delivery wagon, the fore-runner of the pick-up truck. It had a comfortable wooden seat on springs up front. I was pleased when my father asked me if I wanted to come along. All went well until after the shoeing, when we made a short stop at a lumber yard at the top of a hill near the railroad tracks. Just as my father got back into the wagon and turned the horse toward home, a loud train whistle sounded. Then Jerry saw the train. Down the hill he galloped.

"Hold on tight!", said my father. I saw him pulling on the reins as hard as he could, but incredibly I wasn't afraid. I had complete confidence he could stop the horse. As he told it later, he had no confidence at all. The horse was out of control; he had a fast decision to make. At the bottom of the hill the street came to an end; there was an intersection; directly in front was a wooden factory building; to the right was a bridge over a river and to the left the street angled so sharply that the wagon would surely tip over. Since we could also skid off the bridge into the river if we went right, he opted for straight ahead into the factory hoping the horse would make a big effort to put on the brakes. He certainly tried, but his downhill speed with the wagon behind him was too much. As we hit the sidewalk curb then slammed into the building, the spring seat flew up through the air with me still clinging on tightly. I landed right beside the horse's head. He had a skinned face and a bloody mouth. The ends of both shafts were broken off. My father was wedged between the horse and the wagon. Neither of us were hurt at all. When the seat was replaced and the horse calmed down, we climbed back in the wagon and had a sedate ride home.

Obviously runaways could be dangerous; people were often hurt. One driver-less team galloped past our house pulling a damaged wagon that had been hit by a car, the driver having been thrown from the wagon, picked up and taken to the hospital.

I had such a clear view of another runaway that I can still replay it in my mind; and no one was hurt. These horses were hitched to a wheel-harrow, easy to pull when the disks were turned parallel for road travel, which was where they were when they took off. They really flew. They went by the house at race horse speed. The driver, whom I had never seen before, looked scared to death. He was yelling, "Whoa! Whoa!" at the top of his lungs. It seemed to inspire the horses to greater speed. Apparently bored with the road, they veered off into a field. Not far ahead was a disintegrating stone wall. Instead of turning away from it, like steeple-chase horses, they made directly for it. Together they leaped the scattered pile of stones. The wheel-harrow hit the stones with an impact that threw it high in the air; not, however, as high as the driver. He rose as if fired from a cannon. Even more fascinating was that after his trip into space, he landed back in the seat. He must have been saved by his vise-like grip en the reins. But his luck didn't hold. The horses decided on a new maneuver; a hairpin turn in the middle of the second field. That did it. As one end of the harrow lifted, the driver foreseeing his fate, jumped to safety just before the whole thing turned over. That stopped the horses - they couldn't pull the upside-down harrow with the seat gouging into the ground. Since the driver was up and running toward the team, I could laugh with a clear conscience.

Runaways were a rare occurrence with us - we usually had old horses, over-worked most of the time. After a day of deep plowing Prince and Jerry barely had the energy to walk across the pasture to the brook for a drink of water. Jerry's panic at the train was the only true run-away we ever had - though I do remember a fast trip on the hay-rake when he was stung by a bee. Jerry was raw-boned and roman-nosed but our hired men always picked him when there was a one-horse job to do since he was the better worker. Prince was smoothly made with a pretty head but I had to admit he was lazy. The two did not operate well as a team. Prince always lagged behind. Any attempt to speed him up was also a signal to Jerry who immediately jumped ahead again. The problem would have been helped if they had regular bridles with blinders which prevent horses from seeing to the side or behind them. They had open bridles since my grandfather believed horses should be able to see all around - and Jerry could see the knotted reins coming down on Prince.

Good-natured Prince was practically my pet. On Sundays or when work was done I used to pile burlap bags on his bony back and ride him all over the fields and into the woods. Even my mother didn't worry... not only was he trustworthy but his energy level was so low that it took repeated blows with my heels just to put him into a jog - a jog so slow that my father said that he himself could walk faster than that.

I was always defending Prince. He had only one good quality upon which everybody agreed - he was intelligent; no one thought he was a stupid horse. Though many instances proved this, there was one episode which made me think he was almost noble. There is no way to tell how much the horse understood what he was doing, but it did seem at the time that he knew he was saving another horse's life - and maybe Jerry knew too.

It was a horse belonging to our neighbor, newly purchased for the early spring work. The horse was unfamiliar with the swamp in the pasture, unaware of the danger in becoming mired. When he was found he was on his side, half submerged in the mud, still struggling feebly. No one knew how long he had been there, maybe all night. The first we knew about it was when we saw Mr. Snellis and two other men carrying ropes and shovels into the swamp. My father went to help. Even with four men working it took a long time to get a rope down through the mud and around the body of the horse. Then all the men got out on firm ground, which unfortunately was uphill, and pulled as hard as they could. They couldn't move the horse at all. Then a piece of luck – another neighbor came down the road with his tractor. With shouts and waving of arms he was told of the predicament. He drove his tractor into the field - ropes were attached and the tractor started up the hill. We all expected the tractor to snake the horse right out of there. It didn't happen. The back wheels kept slipping on the half-frozen ground. When they did grab hold, the driver had to be very careful - too much gas and the front wheels lifted -the whole front rising off the ground. All the men had hold of the rope, trying to synchronize their efforts with the tractor with the tractor, but it was no use - it was too unpredictable.

That's when my father decided to go after our horses. They were harnessed in record time; a double whiffle-tree was located - the hired man carrying it alongside as the horses came trotting up the road and turned into the field. The traces were fastened, the long rope tied to the ring on the whiffle-tree, the horses started forward. I wondered if they could see the horse in the swamp - if they had any idea of what was happening.

The remarkable thing was the way they pulled. For once in their lives they pulled as a team - without encouragement or urging they strained every muscle. It was not surprising that Jerry pulled hard - but Prince pulled like one inspired. Both slipped to their knees several times but they never quit until drawn back by the reins so they could catch their breaths. Now with a steady pull they could count on, the men could time their efforts with the horses' pull. On the third big try, the horse in the swamp began to move. Slowly he was dragged across the hummocks to solid ground. He looked so pathetic - a fine big horse, helpless and trembling - covered with black slimy mud. He was unable to get up. Our horses were driven back to the farm for the stone-boat to move the horse down to his own barn where he could be cared for. (a stone-boat is a sort of giant skid handy for moving heavy things - every farm had one) I didn't go back with them to the Snellis's but I was told they had hot water and blankets ready for the horse and Mr. Snellis was going to call the vet.

Included in the talk that night at the supper table were remarks about the amazing way our horses had pulled, especially Prince; he had out-pulled Jerry.

"I never saw him pull like that", said my father. "I wonder if he knew?"

It would be good to report after all this that the mired horse recovered, that the efforts were not in vain. But the truth is that the horse did not recover. The vet who examined him said it was hopeless. So the day after being rescued from the swamp, the horse was destroyed. It upset everybody. Although it was conceded that the vet -might have been right, the general opinion was that he should have waited at least a couple of days before putting him down, just to make sure.

It was the next winter that we lost Jerry. Then for several months after we lost Jerry we had only one horse. The early spring plowing was started with Prince alone using an old, single-furrow plow. A replacement for Jerry was essential but with little money it wasn't easy. Finally a gray-roan mare called Gyp was found for fifteen dollars. She was a surprisingly good-looking draft type, heavier than Prince, not too old either - but she was totally blind and foundered in both front feet. Despite this she was a good worker although naturally rather slow, but then, so was Prince.

Before we bought her she had not been used for over a year. The first time I saw our new team working together I was astonished - they were a graphic lesson in what is meant by "condition." They were pulling a sulky plow, two furrows at a time through heavy, wet earth. Prince, over twenty now, ribs showing, had to pull harder than Gyp. But after fifteen minutes of work, the new mare was sweating profusely and her sides were heaving. Prince wasn't even breathing hard. I couldn't understand it.

"What's the matter with her?", I asked my father.

"Nothing" he said, "Just out of shape, that's all. She'll get better." And she did. Within a few weeks when she was in better condition, the work was easy for her.

I made friends with Gyp. By testing I learned that she could see nothing at all, not even a carrot held a foot from her muzzle - and she loved to eat.

That fall after the hay had been cut, Gyp was turned out in the seven acre lot in back of the barn. By herself in a new place, she panicked - neighing and running around wildly. She ran into the bushes in front of the stone wall along one side of the field and into the bushes and fence at the other end. I called to her, caught her and walked around with her until she was calm. I didn't have time to introduce her to all the barriers surrounding the field, but in the few weeks she was there she learned them by herself - indelibly, as I later learned.

The next spring the lot was again a hayfield. When it was time to cut it in June I used Gyp in the hay rake. It seemed to me that she was anticipating the turn-around at the fence-line but I knew this must be my imagination. To make certain I decided to drive right up to the fence then turn her at the last second. It was no use. I could not get her closer than four feet to that fence anywhere I tried. Though it seemed unbelievable she remembered the whole field. The map in her head was perfect.

In common with my grandfather, I had always found horses interesting. Years before, during visits to the farm he often let me lead Prince across the road to pasture. This was accomplished by grasping his long, silky foretop - the horse conveniently lowering his head so that I could reach it. I carefully walked to one side to avoid his feet while holding tightly to the fistful of hair lest he get away. Sometimes I got three cents for this, occasionally a nickel. No doubt the sight of a six-year-old girl firmly convinced she was in control of a 1400 lb. animal, leading him proudly to the pasture, afforded my grandfather great amusement, much more than five cents worth;

Later he taught me how to drive, setting me up on the high seat beside him holding the reins. By the time I was ten I could drive a horse by myself. My father had that in mind when he needed an extra hand during our second summer. There was a field of hay cut, ready to come into the barn. It looked like rain - only fast work could save it. It was the kind of emergency common on a farm. But this time to my amazement I was expected to help. With someone on the rake and two men pitching the hay on to the wagon, it could all be brought in before the rain ruined it. I was going to work the rake and drive the horse at the same time.

Our rake was so primitive it didn't even have a foot lever to dump the hay; I had to reach back for a handle which manually lifted the huge curved tines to release the hay. It was too hard - it was too heavy - the reins got tangled - I felt helpless. Through tears I cried, "I can't do it! I can't do it!"

"Yes, you can" said my father, "Keep trying, you can do it." Somehow I did manage. I dumped the hay in ragged piles, the horse wandered all over the fields but the hay did get raked.

Well, it worked! Later I'll maybe add the photos.

My 8th Grade & High School, etc.

2007-11-13T16:03:00.000-08:00

For 8th Grade, two smaller 7th grades came together but we had two teachers, Miss Modeste DuBay, and Miss Murphy. We would always begin the school day, with the teachers and the students repeating the Lord's prayer. Our teachers were both Catholic, so they didn't say the last part of the prayer that the Protestants did, but we said it all, and they remained with bowed heads until we finished. Our one Jewish student simply remained quiet. No one had a problem. We would sing vaarious songs and hymns, including "Come Thou Almighty King".

Maybe about this time or a little later, Dad bought an old, but quite fancy used car. Maybe it was a Studebaker, but I can't be certain. Here he is with the car, parked under the Norway spruce tree. In the background you can see our shop.

Crazy things we used to do: I remember one night we all went bowling in East Hartford. We rode in Dick Niederwerfer's car. We were driving along Main Street, and one of us (for fun, (not me)), pulled out the throttle. Dick was driving. His quick reaction was to push the hand throttle back into the dash, but he accidentally pushed in the headlight switch instead, so there we were, travelling at high speed down Main Street in East Hartford with our lights out at night! But not for long; it all came out O.K.

We would regularly go bowling in Rockville about once a week. One time afterwards we went to the "Diner" for some ice cream. On some kind of a dare, I think it was Dick Niederwerfer ate his ice cream with ketchup on it.

Once we saved up sparklers from 4th of July, and on Haloween night put a row of them in the tar across the state highway, and lit them, then hid to see what would happen. Nothing happened.

One 4th of July I bought a few rockets. I had in mind to tie a thread to one, send it over a very tall maple tree on Skinner Road, and use it, with increasing string sized to put up another antenna. The first rocket didn't do the job because the thread wouldn't unwind from the spool fast enough. So for the second attempt I laid out a large amount of thread in a zig zag patern on the ground (in the chicken yard). It worked well for the first second or so, but then the thread snagged on a weed, the rocket did a U-turn in mid flight and plowed down into the chicken coop roof. Dad wouldn't let me make a third attempt.

Summers we spent an awful lot of time hoing asparagus, cabbages, strawberries, everything. Once or twice a year, when we least expected it, and it was very hot, Dad would come out, and say, "It's too hot to work, lets go down to the shore and go swimming!" We would always go to Rocky Neck State Park. (Note that is where Barbara took my picture in knickers sitting on a monster size rock).

Many summer Sunday afternoons I would take our dog and go for a very long walk, straight south across the pasture, across Gunthers lot, and thence into Gunther's woods. Sometimes I'd be gone several hours.

In my first two years of high school, I was getting mostly C's, maybe a B, but also one or two D's. I failed Sophmore Geometry and second year Latin. My Geometry teacher was an old Normal School classmate of Mother's, and Mother made a deal with her for me to study through the summer and take a make-up test in the fall. I did it under Mother's control. I wouldn't have done it by myself. Sitting at a card table in the living room on a wonderful summer's day, studying Geometry? Of course not! But I was forced to, and in the fall, I passed it.

I remember once during the school year, Mother had me sitting in the evening at the dining room table to study Latin. I was so angry that I just sat there with the book open in front of me, and I just looked at it for 1/2 hour but didn't study. Then it came to me that since I had to sit there anyway, I might as well study, so I did.

My second year high school was not too good. I was abscent sick almost a month because I first had the flu, and when I recovered from that I came down with the mumps. But something happened to me, I don't know what, and for my last two years of high school, I had all A's and B's. One incident: There were two Algebra classes, that started out about even. As time went on during the school year, the class I was in, taught by Coach Chatterton, started to dwindle in size without my noticing it. Eventually there were only a few of us in it. About that time Mr. Chatterton laughed and said "well I guess no one here will be going to college". I piped up and said that I was intending to go. It seemed that all those who had left our class had transferred to the other Algebra class and were being prepped for college. So I spoke up just barely in time.

Speaking of college, Dad used to pay me in cash for the work I did, and I saved up $50 on the top shelf of my closet. When I got that much, I went out and bought an old 1931 chevrolet coupe. At this development Mother said "I thought you were going to go to college!"

Well, I guess that's enough for now.

Late Grammar Sch & Early HS

2007-11-13T08:44:00.000-08:00

One very rainy day Charlie Thrall and I were coming home on my bicycle (he was riding "side saddle"). We were heading south on the state road, and in a hurry to get out of the rain. So I got the bright idea to take a short cut through Skinner's lane that connects direct to Skinner Road. We followed the wheel tracks down hill going quite fast in blinding rain, going around a corner, and too late spotted a barbed wire right across the lane! We hit it broadside, and it gave way. We never stopped, but we both got gashes on our hands and arms that left scars to this day.

Almost all farm families around belonged to the Grange. But Dad wouldn't join because it had the element of a secret society, and he was against that. There was a secret password used.
He did however belong to the Ellington-Vernon Farmer's Exchange Co-op. This is how we got all our grain. At one point some time later he was President of the Co-op.

He would clean chickens at the kitchen table. Not a job he liked. He used to make a very disagreeable face especially when pulling the guts out of a chicken. But as a little boy, it was a facinating thing for me to watch. Much later during the war, he and I were in the manure pit loading the manure spreader. Neither of us liked the job but it had to be done. I asked him what he thought our time was worth, doing this job. He said "About two cents an hour". I asked him how long he thought the war would last. He thought about 10 years. That did it for me. I could not face shovelling manure for 10 years. So I started to think along other lines, such as the U.S. Navy.

When I was still quite young I was attracted to two things, fire and electricity. I started a little fire in the entryway to the wood shed. It attracted my parents attention. They were, one could say, "dumbfounded". So much so that I didn't get a spanking. But a serious talking to. This corrected my thinking that "it was just a little fire". So after that it was always my turn to burn garbage in the big steel drum.

I used to collect all the old flashlight batteries. I made a rig to put them all in series, and used it to light a flashlight bulb. It was fun that the more batteries, the brighter the light. Then I learned another lesson the hard way. I once got just too many batteries, and the light lit exceedingly bright, then went out.

While I was in High School, or maybe 8th grade, Dad built a big addition to the barn, doubling the capacity for milk cows. He worked on the building, so did the hired man, and he also hired others, including Emil Lee. He got the building material by tearing down a portion of the tobacco shed. By then we also had electricity, so we also got an electric pump and had running water. Not much later he also built a silo, so we had ensilage for the cows through the winter.

As I have mentioned, I had an antenna running from near the top of the tall Norway spruce tree down to the outside of my window. Well, one summer night during a thunder storm, lightening hit just under my window with a terrible crash, breaking a lot of vacuum tubes in a basket on the floor, and blasting bits of clapboard halfway to the barn. So I revised the set up, had the antenna terminate much lower, put in a lightening arrestor, etc.

I must go now.

More Odds & Ends

2007-11-13T02:48:00.000-08:00

Summers, say from age 7 through 12 was a wonderful time. I spent many hours over in the pasture, playing in the brook. There were fishes and water spiders. I built dams and canals and had boats and things of which I was very proud, and tried to get Mother & especially Dad to come over to the brook to see all my wonderful work, but it wasn't easy as they were always so busy.

There was even a cave that I used for experimenting with a corn-cob made pipe and corn silk. Yuck!! Then with tobacco from old cigarettes picked up from the road. Double Yuck!!! So I never developed a taste for such stuff.

Our farm consisted of different sections, all contiguous except for the wood lot. They had been acquired at different times by my grandparents, and later somewhat the same, us from him. There was the following:

The First Lot ------ consisting of the northwest corner of Skinner Road and Dart Hill Road, with the house, barn, shop-woodshed-outhouse combination, four attached chicken houses with grain room in middle, garage, milk house, one brooder coop, and sometimes 4 brooder coops (smaller chicken coops on skids that can change locations). Behind the big four attached chicken houses with grain room was our vegetable garden, and north of it was a permanent large field of asparagus, and a large strawberry bed that changed locations from year to year. All this was due north of the aforementioned large chicken coop string, and extended all the way to the second lot. But to the west of this complex was usually a hay lot, and it may have bordered Gunthers, if they owned that land. Later a southwest section of this lot was sold, somewhat reluctantly I believe, to Hincks, by their request, for a place for them to retire. Later Hincks sold it to an older couple, Nels Carlsen & his wife. He worked in a shoe store in Manchester that had an X-ray machine where you could see your feet inside the shoe. He thought it was wonderful, but my Dad wouldn't let me use it. Later Mr. Carlsen went blind.

The Second Lot ------ just north of the first lot was divided from the first lot by a fence and a barway. It was also a hay lot, and it may have bordered Newmarker's land to the west.

The Third Lot was north of the Second Lot, also divided from it by a fence and a barway. It may have bordered Natziski's to the west, and it bordered Luther Skinner's land to the north. All these lots were primarily haylots, with occasional use for pasture.

Then there were the Penny lots that Grandpa Blankenburg had purchased from the Penny's. I believe I have original copies of some of the deeds!

The Front Penny Lot ----- opposite the Third Lot, but on the east side of Skinner road. It bordered Luther Skinner's land to the north, and the Simpkins/Snellas/Kalady land to the south. It was prime tobacco land that grandpa leased to Mazon's on a share crop basis. We didn't obtain this land from Grandpa right away, but some years later. To the east of it was a gravel ridge with bushes. In the center, grandpa Blankenburg had build a large tobacco shed.

The Middle Penny lot was the next lot further east. It had probably been used also for tobacco, but I recall when we had it, we used it for corn for silage. When in high school, I plowed it with our home-built tractor powered by a Ford Model T engine.

Next further east was the Back Penny Lot, bordered on the east by the Hockanum River. It was always a rather poor pasture.

The south end of all three Penny lots had a long fenced lane, so that we could drive the cows to the back Penny lot for pasture, and also we could access the Middle Penny lot to cut corn and bring it down to grind up and fill the silo. The entry from Skinner Road was a low, shady place and always terribly muddy.

When it was Barbara's turn to get the cows from the Back Penny Lot, she used it as an excuse to ride horse back. When it was my turn, I preferred to use my bike. I figure I had more control over my bike than she did over the horse, plus it was quicker, no horse to saddle.

Here is a picture of cows coming out of the barn, about 1940. They are coming out of two sliding doors from the addition to the barn that my Dad built. To the left is the milk house, also built by him.

Whe I was younger, I used to ride with my Dad on a buckboard wagon going up to the Middle Penny Lot to get a load of corn. This was over a gravel road, and the wagon had no springs, and the tires were steel or iron. Incredible vibration!

Once when I was older, I went up by myself with the horse and wagon, cut a load of corn, and started back home. On the way back, once on Skinner Road, the horse apparently had "had enough" of this business and decided to run away. I had no more control! He ran down Skinner Road, galloping, turned right onto Dart Hill Road, and turned into our driveway and kept going. But I managed to steer him into a haystack and that's how we stopped. I got off the wagon, backed him up by hand, unhitched the wagon, and led him over to the harness room of the barn, to a hitching place. There I unharnessed him, and as I was done, he turned and gave me a bite in the arm! I don't know what for; I was never mean to the horses.

The Pasture ------ Across the road was the pasture. In Blankenburg days there was a pig pen and shed in the northeast corner of the lot. My Dad dismantled it. The only permanent building on our land south of Dart Hill Road was the Rooster House, with its own well. As I mentioned it was later sold to our former hired man, John Booth. The area of the Rooster House was a separate fenced-off area, and east of it, within the same fence, was a wonderful little woods loaded with wild grape vines from which we harvested in the fall for making grape juice and grape jelly. The Pasture was bounded on the west by Gunther's pasture, on the south by anothe of Gunther's lots, and on the east by the Hockanum River. The Brook came down from Gunther's and ran through the middle of the pasture, and emptied into the Hockanum River.

There was a big gravel hill the other side of the brook, and in the middle of the depression, a contractor to the town made an agreement with Dad. The contractor made a separate barway for entrance, put in a culvert to cross the brook, brought in a steamshovel, got trucks and dug into the gravel hill, hauling away gravel. He paid us 10 cents per truckload. Later, Uncle Bill came down with his rifle to do target practice, and he set up the target in the gravel bank, an ideal place because no stray bullet could go anywhere.

Just across Dart Hill Road, and west of the Rooster House, sometimes Dad would have a fenced area for the 4 brooder houses. Some other years they would be on high ground in the (former) "orchard", a low area at the very southeast corner of our house lot, right at the intersection of the two roads. This low area would sometimes fill with water, and then freeze, making on one or two occasions a wonderful skating pond. This was before my Dad got after the town to put in a culvert under Skinner Road to drain it.

On a number of occasions, on spring nights, the Thrall boys, Bill Rizy, and I would get strong flashlights, boots, and spears, and go suckering. That is, we would start at the downstream end of the brook, working our way upstream spearing suckers (a bottom-dwelling fish). They were delicous for breakfast. The pasture was also a good source of mushrooms which we had quite often.

Some years later our one-room schoolhouse was abandoned. It was located on a gravel hill owned by Rizys, and they also made a deal to sell gravel. Here is a photo of the school I attended, after it was boarded up, and after some of the gravel was "mined" from its hill.

We kids were all required to wear "knickers" in grammar school. Here is a picture of Charlie Thrall in knickers, and then also one of me in knickers sitting on a rock.

Well, I must quit for now.

"Up Street" to Rockville

2007-11-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

I had Miss Ruth Tyler at the Ogden's Corner School (1-room, 5 grades), for grades 2 through 5. then I took a bus from Ogden's Corner to East District School in the center of Rockville. At that time Miss Tyler transferred to East District School, and I again had her, this time in a class of maybe 25 kids for grade 6. This was when my nerves (due to Chorea) tormented me the most. I remember once I told the teacher I was sick, she referred me to the school nurse, Miss Dornheim. I told the nurse my nerves bothered me, but she said "You can put them in your pocket." Not much help there. At that time (or was it the next year), we had a weekly class in basket weaving taught by Mr. Clough, a retired principal.

The next year Charlie Thrall and I were "promoted" to grade 6A with Mrs. Alice Denson. Initially, in going to school in Rockville, we had a lot of time on our hands for the one-hour lunch time. So we formed a "gang" and went down Market street to the railroad tracks, and played amongst the freight cars. When I told my mother, she seemed a bit worried. So she arranged for Charlie and me to eat lunch with hot chocolate at Grandma Blankenburg's at 8 Ward St. (down the steep hill) in Rockville. We ate there during grades 6, 7, and 8.

Mrs. Denson was an anglophile, and during our time in grade 6A, there was a British coronation, probably George VI. Her son, Alfred Denson was heavy into television. This was in 1937. She came across to me as bragging about all of this.

The following year Charlie and I were in a smaller 7th grade with Mrs. Kibbee. Here is her picture. It was a much more home-like atmosphere, and she was a very relaxed person, not trying to prove anything. My nerves were also in much better shape by then. She would fix her lunch in the classroom by heating her soup on a hotplate.

She had a reputation apparently from earlier years of dispensing a "Kibbee special" to recacitrant pupils. It was apparently a cuff of the hand across the upper part of the back of your head. I never saw this happen or heard of it happening during my own time in her grade. She was of Welsh extraction, and jokingly, good-naturedly somewhat downgraded herself because of this. Remember the nursery rhyme (now probably forbidden) : "Tommy was a Welchman, Tommy was a thief". Or, did you ever hear of someone "Welching" on an agreement? Now you know. The Welch were brought under control by the English. So you know how that was.

In the summers we used to ride our bicycles over to the old swimming hole right by the state highway. Here are a few photos from that time.

The above 12 photos are from my 7th and 8th grade times in Rockville. Starting from the upper left, top row, we will number all the pictures as 1 thru 12. #1, Brewster Skinner, 2, Arthur Francis, 3, Bill Thrall at swimming hole. He was Charlie's older brother who got married but died very early. 4, Harry Osteen; he became an undertaker, 5, Clarence Koch from Talcotville (he was born prematurely), 6, Alfred Baxter, 7 Donald Neff my second cousin, with a hammer-lock on Donald Miller, son of my grandparents first apartment in Rockville after they retired, 8 Charlie Thrall looking skywards, 9 George Risley, who was the Sheriff's son, bright, but wouldn't study. They put him in the "Opportunity Room" for dumbells. He took it as a joke. Later during WWII he was in the merchant marine, and in this way made a fortune on the black market after the invasion of France. Still later, he was President of one of the banks in Rockville. 10 I can't tell you, 11 Eugene St. Louis at the ole swimmin hole, and 12 Charles Brendell, son of one of the co-owners of Tensted - Brendall Hardware on Market Street, Rockville.

One evening somewhere around this time, I went with my Dad to a Farm Bureau meeting. At that meeting the speaker said that farm families were 25 percent of the total population of the country, and had 9 per cent of the national income. That was the evening that I decided to go into "radio" for my living, rather than farming. Note that the term "electronics" had not yet been in the U.S. vocabulary as we know it now.

Time to quit.

Odds & Ends

2007-11-08T17:28:00.000-08:00

In the summer time on the farm, you could look out the dining room window to the hills of the pasture across the road. At least in the late spring it looked as though the hills were covered with a dusting of snow, but that was not the case. They were covered with "bluets", a little white and light blue flower. Very pretty.

In our barn was a Stanley Steamer. It belonged to Uncle Fred and Uncle Arnold, who, before my time, had it in operating condition. Instead of a steering wheel it had a "tiller" (a rod handle that you steered with). The seat had a little railing about 2 inches high. With a good head of steam it could go very fast, and according to my Dad, one could be in danger of falling off! Once the uncles entered it into an antique auto contest or parade in Manchester, and in the process they ran out of water for the boiler, ruining it by the fire underneath, and it never did get fixed, so I never had the pleasure of seeing it run.

Grandpa Blankenburg used to love to take me places when I was little. Once he took Barbara and me with the horses and wagon up to the back Penny lot. I was sitting with him up on the seat. The horses stopped, and I fell down off the seat to the ground right by the horses back hoofs. But they got me back up again without injury, and without me being stepped on by the horse. When Dad found out about it he was furious with Grandpa.

Once Grandpa was driving a team of horses back to the barn, passing in front of the house. I was there (at about age 4), so he gave me the rains to steer the team. Before I could get the hang of it, the horses walked into the bushes.

Another time, Grandpa had come down from Rockville and was getting out the "business wagon" from the barn. He asked me to help him push it out. I was still about 4 years old. He gave me a dime for helping push. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking "I didn't push 10 cents worth!"

Also when I was about age 4, Dad built a milk house to store the milk with ice. The hammer slipped when he was pulling out a nail (he was using used lumber), and got a bad bloody nose. I saw it happen and ran and told Mother.

Now the following happened when I was probably in grade 1, 2, or 3, I think. My sister Barbara had a goldfish bowl that she made into a "terrarium", with dirt, moss, little flowers and things. I found a little baby black snake, and we added that to it. He was my pet, and I used to twine him in and out of the fingers on one hand. Well, I was quite happy and proud of him. So what does a little fellow like me do when he has something he is so happy and proud of? Of course, show it off. It so happened that one day there was a "Neighborhood Club" meeting. Thus our living room was full of neighborhood ladies. I took my pet, wound him around the fingers of my left hand and brought him into the living room to show him off. But to my astonishment, the ladies pulled up their skirts and started screaming and running away. At the time I couldn't understand it, but I'll never forget it.

It was my job to mow the lawns, front, side and back lawns, with an old push reel type mower. Maybe I was about in grade 4, and it was in the depth of the depression. Dad said, I'll give you two cents for the work. I started to complain, but he said "It's two cents or nothing."

It must have been some years later, and there were thistles starting to spring up all over our pasture. My Dad said, "I'll give you two cents for every thistle plant you chop down with this hoe, and five cents for every one that has a bloom". Boy did I ever get to work! I came back a few hours later and said "You owe me $3.45." Dad said "What???!!!" "How many thistle plants did you chop down, and how many with blossoms?" I said "I don't know, I was just counting the money as I did it exactly as you said". He said "Okay," and he paid me.

Note I've added pictures

2007-11-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

Just a note to say I've added the following pictures:
1 to "Beginnings Cont'd A
3 to Beginnings Cont'd C
3 to Beginnings Cont'd D, and
5 to "Early Childhood"

Early 1930's etc.

2007-11-07T16:09:00.002-08:00

Dart Hill Road goes East to State Route 83, where it ends, and I believe is called something else the other side of the state road. That intersection is known as Ogden's Corner. Named after old lady Ogden, who used to keep cows. But later, as I was growing up, it had been bought by Kennith Gibson. He had been "dispossessed" by having his farm flooded over by the Barkhamsted Reservoir. You can see his former farm on a brass plaque map at the base of the dam. He farmed some at Ogden's corner, ran a gas station for a while. I once walked down there for my mother and bought a loaf of bread for ten cents. Later I encountered him working at the dairy at the University of Connecticut.

Rizy's lived at the northwest corner of Dart Hill Road and Route 83. I believe Mr. Rizy worked in Hartford at the State Capitol.

There was a trolly line on Route 83, and Mother would take my sister and me on it up to Rockville on Sunday mornings to the Union Congregational Church. We would also sometimes take it to visit my Blankenburg grandparents. It took "tokens", and the seats were rather hard. Once my Grandpa Blankenburg took me on the trolly to Hartford to see a movie, my first. It was "Trader Horn", and we sat in the balcony, "so the lions wouldn't get me".

Later the trolly was replaced with a bus, and the asphalt was replaced with cement. This happened maybe in 1934. I remember I was in the 5-grade one-room school house on the north side of Dart Hill Road, between Rizy's and the Hockanum River. I looked out the school window, and we all remarked, "Oh, look, there is a brand-new 1934 streamlined car!" It may have been the same year Route 83 was made cement. Construction was interesting to watch. The cement was poured between wooden forms, and then two workers, each one end of a 2 x 4, worked it back and forth to smooth the cement.

I remember the 1932 election. Mother was for Hoover, Dad was a Socialist at that time and was for Norman Thomas. Brewster Skinner came to school wearing a little rectangular button that said "Roosevelt".

I had a few piano lessons from Jesse Lane. Just a few. Later we couldn't afford it. But Jesse and Farnum Lane were a most unusual couple. I believe they had never left home. Their father had been a successful Dentist. After he died, they just remained. He tried to be a "gentleman farmer". But he made no money. His sister Jesse gave piano lessons. They had a magnificent old colonial house that became shabby for lack of paint, which they could not afford. They both were quite pleasant, but impractical. He had a nervous twitch in one eye.

When I was little, I was afraid of the dark, and would sit at the top of the stairs crying, because I was "seeing things" in the dark. Once I remember my dad saying to "Be quiet or I'll give you something to cry about!" When I was a little older, sometimes we would leave a kerosene lamp in the upstairs hallway, and left turned down quite low. My sister and I would have fun, pulling one hair out of our head, holding it over the lamp chimney, watch it schrivel up, and make an extremely strong smell as it roasted. What fun!

I was always facinated by electricity, and radios, since we didn't have either one. But one day my Great Aunt Louise Blankenburg in Providence, RI, gave me a crystal set. I got our hired man to climb the tall Norway spruce tree in the back yard, and fasten a wire for an antenna, which I terminated at my bedroom window, and lo, I had a radio, using one of our old pair of earphones. I could get WTIC and WDRC in Hartford. Later I took it apart to see how it was made, and I made more of them and sold them to the kids at school for 25 cents, calling it the "Neilliola". I bought the crystals from Allied Radio Corp, 833 W. Jackson Blvd, Chicago, IL for 6 cents each, plus postage.

I remember once listening to a speach by Hitler rebroadcast from Germany, with a running translation. It would make you shudder the way he said "Das Juden!" Later, I ran wires into my sisters bedroom, and got her another pair of earphones, so that after we both had retired for the night, we could listen to the radio. My favorite was Fred Allen at 9PM on Wednesday nights. One night I listed to Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas in 1936, running for President.
In the morning sometimes we listened to Ben Hawthorne.

In the beginning, the house was heated by the kitchen stove, and also a stove in the dining room that was assembled and set up for the winter months. It had an isenglass window in the door. Both burned wood. We had a wood lot way up past Raymond Skinners to the next corner, where you turn left, and go maybe 1/2 mile, and our woods was on the left side of the road. My dad and the hired man would hitch up the team of horses to a wagon, and go up and cut a wagon load of fire wood. Bringing it down to the back yard and put in a pile. There, after drying out a while, it would be cut up by a power saw set-up. It consisted of a big wheeled saw on the same shaft as a big flywheel and a pulley. The pulley had a belt on it connected to another pulley driven by the same Model T Ford engine that on occasion drove the generator for our sometimes 32 volt electrical system. So each long length of wood was cut into about 15 inch lengths and thrown through the vertical trap door into the adjoining wood shed, - an old building that also had hand-hewn beams. My job was to stack the wood in neat rows, and carry it in to fill the wood box in back of the kitchen stove as needed.

Winters were interesting. Sometimes Mother would heat up flat irons on the kitchen stove, and go upstairs as we were ready for bed, and run the iron over the sheets to take the chill off. Other times, we would have some wood placed in the kitchen oven, then wrap it in a towel or something, and take it to bed to keep our feet warm when first climbing into bed. Not many farms had indoor plumbing and neither did we. Sometimes there was a big drift between the back door and the outhouse!

We had lots of fun sliding on sleds. Once there had been a heavy snow that half melted, then froze, and then there was freezing rain. We took our sleds way up past Gunthers to the top of the hill where it levels off, took a run, and a "belly flopper", and away we went. Once I practically made it from way up there, past our house almost to Skinner Road. No cars in sight in those days.

When a little older, I took to using skiis. Once I went skiing up behind Luther Skinners, a real nice hill. Only trouble was at the foot of the hill was a barbed wire fence. Just as you got up to the fastest speed, you had to make a 90 degree turn, "or else!" At about that same age we neighborhood kids would go tobaggening. The best hill was somewhere around what became Gauzes place, just past Nick Mar's place, which was just East of Gibson's. It was interesting. We would go no matter what. One cloudy night in the dark of the moon (no street lights, no "light polution" that later developed), I accidentally walked into a parked car in front of Mars place when we were on the way to toboggen.

I was always fooling around with electricity. Once I climed a tree through which ran the phone wires. I took a pair of earphones with me and connected them to the wires. The operator said "number please". I shouted in one of the earphones "four five one ring one two". Charlie Thrall's grandfather answered the phone and I asked for him, but he wasn't home.

One year in the early 1930s we had a Holland brand hot air furnace installed. The furnace would burn either wood or coal. So we didn't freeze to death in the winter anymore when going to bed at night.

Thralls had an interesting place. Their farm was on the west side of Route 83 just at the end of Thrall Road. Their barn was on a hillside so that the stantions were on the lower level, and the loft and workshop were on the upper level, both accessable by wagon. The workshop was interesting. It had an old automatic cherry pitting machine, probably purchased years earlier by Charlies Grandpa Thrall, who lived with them at times. Charlie being my best friend, I was well acquainted with the family. I have a copy of a story by Barbara Thrall (Hambach) on growing up on the farm. Maybe some day I should OCR it and put it in the blog. (For the uneducated, OCR is Optical Character Recognition)

Wallace Thrall married Lillian Schwartz from Brooklyn, NY, and they took over the farm from his dad. They had Wallace Jr., Barbara, William Preston, Marjorie, Charles Mason, and Marion. Charlie was always over at my place, and vice-versa. In the wintertime, Thralls put the plug in a dam across a brook that ran through a low-lying meadow, and they had a beautiful pond, quite reasonable in size and perfect for skating. Even one night my dad, the hired man and I went skating. Usually it was just us kids. Thralls did use the pond for harvesting ice too.

Ed and Ethel Worcester had three daughters, Della, Irene, and Marion. Irene was my age. She, Charlie and I were all good friends. I remember once I was at Worcesters, and (being a little tyke and slow of speech), I said that "I needed a comb to part my head". Mr Worcester picked up on that mis-speaking, and said that I would "need an axe for that!" He later died in his early 60's of a heart attack, and his body was placed in their living room. Irene or Marion got me to touch him!

Ultimately, Mrs. Worcester, with a farm to run, married Mr. McGreagor originally from Canada I believe. He also later died, and she had several people come to run the farm for her, one being "Smitty", who had an Ausin miniature car. While Smitty was there in place, first the barn burned down, and then later the big tobacco shed of theirs burned down.

Della marrried Everit Gardner. But after they had one son, she later died quite young of cancer. I remember once walking past Worcesters on the way to Thralls, and Della was sitting next to Bill Thrall on the back steps of the path to Worcesters house. They made a joke saying "Don't tell on us". Which I didn't, until just now. I don't really think there was anything to tell anyway.

Here is a photo of Lila & Judith Blankenburg (Arnold & Edna Blankenburg's daughters, my cousins), and myself in the 1930's.

I must jump ahead a bit some years for a moment just to include this. I was an avid stamp collector until I once gave my entire collection to my cousin Judith or Lila Blankenburg, probably for Christmas. Anyway, I was walking home from school with Irene Worcester, and invited her to come home with me to see my stamp collection, which she did. I was engrossed in the stamps, and I don't remember the exact situation, but she said "What kind of a suitor are you anyway?" I don't remember what I answered, but I never was a suitor, just a friend!

In I believe the late 1930's, the meat man, Mr. Hinks and his wife bought a section of land from us on the west-most end of our property on the north side of Dart Hill Road. They had an older married son Harold, and a young daughter Dorothy, who was six years younger than me. I have to admit that I was exceedingly attracted to her from about the time I was in 8th grade and all through high school. But I was also exceedingly bashful. With such a combination I guess you could say it kept me out of trouble.

We got electricity about 1938, finally. We hired a cheap electrician, and bought cheap fixtures. The chain of one of the fixtures had broken off, so we took to screwing the bulb in and out instead. Only trouble was, the electrician had wired the outside threaded portion of the socket to the "hot" side! One evening after a bath, I was standing bare-foot on the metal hot air register to warm up and dry off, and with my left hand I attempted to screw in the bulb, but instead I had grabbed the electrically"hot" metal thread of the bulb! The electric current passd down my left arm through my heart and into my feet. I believe my heart temporarily went into ventricular fibrulation, and I had to lay down on the bed a few minutes.

One summer after we had electricity I went to work for Luther Skinner and earned over $12 working on tobacco. He came down to pay me, and said "Now don't spend it all in one place." I said "I'm going to buy a radio", and he said "Uh oh, there it goes!" And I did. A superhetrodyne, 5-tube radio from Allied Radio Corp. I got to experimenting with it, and found that I could modulate the audio with an earphone connected to the grid cap of the last audio stage. And I found out how to drive earphones with the output. So I built a switchboard, and made a switch to "send" and "receive" on the same wire, using a ground for return. In this way I could run a wire a long distance and talk back and forth on it. At one point and at various times, I had wires running over to Thralls, Kashady's, Rizy's, Worcesters, Hincks, and Natziski's. But of course not all at the same time. Thralls was the longest lasting. I had an old Victrola, and attached the workings of an earphone to the metal link of the mechanical pickup amd was able input the audio into the amplifier. In this way I played records to my friends, and we could talk back and forth.

People used to give me their old radios, and I would take them apart to see how they were made. I remeber one night I had to climb over nine radios I had taken apart just to get into bed. Some years later I believe that incident was a part of an experiment by my mother to see just how cluttered my bedroom would get before I straightened it out myself. Once someone had given me an old "cone" loudspeaker, where there was a powerful magnet, and a voice coil driving a rod attached to a cone. I disconnected the cone from the rod, and used the rod to "drive" the wall, so that the wall was used as a loudspeaker.

In high school physics I learned that white reflects radiation and black absorbs it. I came home and went over to a Holstein heiffer staked out to eat grass in the sunshine which was shining brightly. I felt of her white fir, and then of her black fir. There was quite a noticable difference. Another time, I learned that the North magnetic pole dips down quite some few degrees as observed in Connecticut, and that soft iron is easily temporarily made magnetized. I took a stove poker from the kitchen stove and alligned it with the North magnetic pole. When I did so, I could pick up a needle with it, which would drop off when I turned the poker away from North pole.

Later I found out how to modulate the local oscillator, and was able to broadcast illegally for about 1/2 mile on the broadcast band.

Well, I'd better go now, and maybe next time should be my high school years, etc.

Neighbors

2007-11-07T07:04:00.000-08:00

Neighbors change over the years, the decades. Since I grew up in the same house as my mother, I had a neighborhood source of history better than most. Also, remember that my parents were born in the century before last, (the 1800's). The area had been settled since Colonial times. In fact once digging in my sister's garden I found a continental penny. As I probably have mentioned, our farm at one time had previously had at least 3 houses on it plus a blacksmith shop. Anyway, the neighbors existant when my mother was growing up were, going west on Dart Hill Road, were Bert Dart and his wife, then further on, up the hill on the right was Fred Dart's place, where, as I mentioned, my dad had worked for a while.

Now going east on Dart Hill Road towards Ogden's Corner, on the left were the Simpkins, next to the Hocanum River. Now on Skinner road, a long ways up, on the right, were the Skinners. Most all these people reproduced, so that when I was growing up, Bert Dart was still there. He was a very old man and all his friends had died off. He wanted to be my friend. He had had a tough time in the famous Blizard of 1888, when it took 3 days to dig a tunnel through the drifts to reach the cows in the barn. Too late for the milk cows, they had to be destroyed.

Pardon my digression. Anyway, Bert Dart's daughter Eula married Henry Gunther. They lived upstairs and Bert lived downstairs. We took refuge upstairs there during the 1938 Hurricane because there was rumor that the Scnipsic Lake dam had let go, and we all would be innundated (it was false). But while we were up there, looking out the window at one of Gunther's sheds being blown down, Mother asked Mr. Dart, "Well, Mr. Dart, tell us of the worst storm you have seen in your long life." Bert Dart replied "This is it, right here!"

I knew of a young man by the name of George Dart with a Ford coupe. Everyone thought well of him. Maybe he was Fred Dart's son, I don't know.

The elder Skinner couple produced Raymond, Luther, Lewis, Ethel, and Ruth. Raymond Skinner married Olive, and they took over the original Skinner place. Lewis married Arlene Simpkins, and they made a farm on the west side of Skinner Road, south of the original Skinner farm. Luther Skinner married Edith Webster (a builder's daughter with money), and they built a modern house, and made a farm still further south of Lewis and Arlene's place. In fact, one summer I worked on tobacco for Luther Skinner.

Ethel Skinner married Ed Worcester, and they farmed the place at the southeast corner of Thrall Road and Dart Hill Road. Ruth Skinner never married. She had a little green coupe 2-door and we would see her once in a while driving up Skinner Road. She developed cancer of the kidney, I think, and one was removed. She seemed to make a good recovery, but eventually died. Mr Simpkins sold his place to Snellas', who I think were Polish, and maybe didn't speak much English, so we never got to know them. They later sold to Joe Kaladey, also Polish, though he did speak English.

At the far end of Dart Hill Road going west, there is an overlook called Howe's Hill, where you can look over and see Hartford. Philip Howe grew up there, and he was High School Principal when I was in High School. He had a clubbed foot, but he was a tough principal, but fair, I believe. Going left (south) at the Howe's Hill intesection, was where old Asa Brown had his cabin. Going along that road further, on the left, was a large area of wild blueberries, owned by nobody ever knew who, and we used to go there and pick oceans of blueberries when they were in season.

Just past Gunther's on the right, is a dead end road where old Dan Janes used to live. He was an old man when my mother was a little girl, and he used to come down the hill and tell stories from the old times. But when I was growing up, Newmarkers had that farm. Mrs. Newmarker was also a member of the women's "Neighborhood Club".

Gunthers had two daughters, Ruth and Alice. Ruth was in poor health and never married. Alice was quite pretty and married Frank Niederwerfer. The Gunther girls were the same age as my sister Barbara, and were all good friends together. Luther and Edith Skinner had two boys, Donald and Nelson. Donald was about my sister Barbara's age, and Nelson was a few years older than me. Lewis and Arlene Skinner had no children. Raymond and Edith Skinner had John, Raymond Jr., Faith, Robert, and Brewster. John had a 2-door coupe, and was a rather fast driver. Raymond Jr. was a bit on the simple side, and did odd jobs around the neighborhood. I think Faith became a Registered Nurse, and was the same age as my sister Barbara. At one time my sister Barbara was in the same 4-H clulb as Faith, Hope, and Charity. (Faith Skinner, Hope Lyman and Charity Egerton). Robert Skinner "Shiner" was a couple of years older than I was, and Brewster was the same age.

In the 1930's, though we didn't have running water, electricity, a radio or a paved highway, we did have a telephone. A party line, and our number was 6 3 ring 4. And there was a telephone operator on the other end who would manually do the rings. You could tell what kind of mood she was in by how she did the rings. The 6 3 line had rings of 2, 3, 4, and 1 2. To get 6 3 ring 1 2, you had to ask the operator for "six three ring one two", hang up for a moment so that she could ring it, and then pick up again. Arlene Skinner was 6 3 ring 3, and she was "always" on the phone. People did a lot of visiting on the phone then.

Got to go.

Early Childhood C

2007-11-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

When I was still a pre-schooler, I would of necessity go everywhere my mother went. It's hard to believe it, but she drove a Model T Ford without a license. Two things bothered me about this, (1) I was afrad the cops would catch her, and (2) I thought she was a dangerous driver. Especially driving down White's hill, which I thought rather steep. She would go weekly to the women's "Neighborhood Club" meeting, ususally a different home every week; sometimes it was our turn. She was not one to take risks by nature, but I believe her driving was just "inept". Once we got a car with standard controls, she quit driving. (Model T controls were totally different from what became the standard).

Once she and the other ladies went to the Vernon Center Methodist church and everyone built a prefab "service wagon", which was used by the family for years later, as we always ate in the dining room.

Every Forth of July there was a picnic made up of mother's classmates and their families. The Kingsburys, the Clapps, the Barlows (he was the weatherman on WTIC), Worcesters, probably a number of others, and us. Once or twice the picnic was at "Diamond Ledge" where there was an old quarry, exceedingly deep, filled with water. Sometimes it was at our place. Here is one picture of our yearly gathering, about 1927. In back row is Ethel and Ed Worcester and in front of them their oldest daughter Della. My dad is the highest white head in the back. In front, little kids row, from right is me and next is Irene Worcester. Front row, not counting little kids, second from right is Mother, and next is my sister Barbara.

All while I was growing up, we had a hired man to help with the farm work. The first one I remember was Ony Kajolla, who was of Finnish extraction. For first grade, my teacher was his sister, Lena Kajolla. After him, I believe, was Bill Hulse, who left after maybe a year or two to "go to Hollywood and make motion pictures". (Later he returned on a brief visit, and claimed he HAD made some movies). After him, for a while, was Armand Caron, a French - Canadian, who had a terrible temper, and was a chain smoker with athsma. Then finally we got John Booth from the County Home, for $15 per month plus room and board. Within about a month he bought an old Model A Ford on time, paying $15 per month! But he was a good worker, and stayed for many years. When my dad retired, John Booth ran a reduced version of the farm on shares for a while, then later went to work for Vernon Township, and bought a section of land from my parents (the old rooster house), and put up a very nice house there.

My dad's mother was a very strong believer, and as I have said, always had us over for Thanksgiving. She would offer a very strong prayer at every Thanksgiving meal. I remember once she asked my mother if I knew the Lord, and I think my mother responded that I was too young, or something. But in my pre-school days I went to Sunday School Kindergarten, taught by Constance Brooks, the minister's daughter. Although Dr. George Brooks would preach a modernist type of sermon, Constance Brooks taught us the gospel straight from the Bible, and I believed what she taught. Now you may remember that I mentioned my Grandma Neill was almost totally blind. Well, one day I asked my mother and father, "why don't we take Grandma over to the brook, make mud, put it on her eyes, and pray for her so that she can see?" I remember my mother looking at my dad, then saying "what is it they say, Tom, that the days of miracles are over?" Thus they pulled the rug out from under me.

My Dad was actually saved, having come forward at a Billy Sunday crusade. My mother was raised as a Lutheran, and her maternal grandfather was Sunday School Superintendant at the Rockville German Lutheran church. My dad thought my mother was saved, but only the Lord knows.

I had a pretty normal childhood up until about 5th or 6th grade, when I developed Chorea, also called "St. Vitas Dance". I had the flu, and the virus apparently settled in my brains, making me unbearably nervous. It was like torture. The worst part about it was that it lasted several years, from age 12 to 14, and left a behavioral" residue" lasting well into adulthood. Due to nerves, I had to take so many days off from school that I had to repeat 6th grade. My buddy, Charlie Thrall wanted to stay in the same grade with me, so he flunked 6th grade on purpose!
I remember one summer laying across the bed, and everything sounded ten times louder than the normal volume. It was scarey. I'm sure that (1) being dropped on my head at age 2, and (2) the infection of Chorea, had a detrimental effect on my mind. But I've always been thankful that for all you kids "aquired characteristics are not inheritable".

Times were good for a couple of years when we moved to the old Blankenburg farm. We had a battery powered radio. But after a couple of years, times went bad. To make matters worse, the State of Connecticut initiated a questionable tuburculosis test for all the cows, and about half the milking herd failed and had to be disposed of! As the "B" battery for the radio ran down, we had to switch from loudspeaker to headphones. Then finally that didn't work either, and there was no more money to be spent on such things, so the radio was removed to the attic, where it stayed many yearsl

But this reminds me of an utterly fantastic place: the store room. It was upstairs, just opposite the stairs, and had only one little dormer window, and was used for storage. Everything too good to store in the barn. There was a buffalo robe, a zither, a scimitar, and many odd and wonderful things. You could go up there and spend hours. There was an old trunk that had come over from Germany. There was a framed picture illustrating the city of Greiz, Saxonia, Germany, labeled in fancy letters "Greiz mit umbigung". There were of course lots of old clothes. There was a peach basket full of homemade soap that my mother had made, but she had used too much lye in making it, so it was too powerful to use, but too valuable to throw away.

Maybe another time I'll tell you about our neighbors and our "party-line" telephone. Time to go now.

Genes Correction & Travels Update

2007-11-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

I must correct a mis-statement in my last blog wherein I referred to certain couples having "equal weight" to our genes. This is incorrect. On the Neill side, Patrick Neill and Mary Forescythe have double the weight of the other two couples, and on the Blankenburg side, Christian Backmann and Wilhelmina Kranert have double the weight of the other two couples.

There! That mistake bothered me. Now I can only spend a very brief while to tell you that we have just returned from a week-end at the Crown Plaza Hotel in downtown St. Paul, MN, where Lydia and I attended a Marine Corps Ball celebrating the U.S. Marines 232 nd Birthday. We were invided by Col. Tom Rodgers, USMC(R), Lydia's son-in-law. It was a very impressive affair. It was a dinner - meeting and ball, presided over by Tom, and we sat at his table, with his wife and 2 children. We think about 200 were present. The guest of honor also sat at our table, and he was also the main speaker, Guy Rowe, who was born in 1924, and was a Marine veteran of the taking of Iwo Jima, plus Vietnam, for a total of over 22 years service

I got a chance to visit with him a little bit. Tom had all veterans of different wars stand up in their turn. Only Guy Rowe and I were representative of WWII. He had quite some stories to tell. Well, I've got to go, and hopefully next time I can continue with the regualr blog.

Thanks Patricia, Yvonne, Tom (Neill), John, JaeHi, and Neal for all your blogging encouragement! Love to all from Dad Grandpa, Your Friend, and "whatever".

Genes Composition

2007-11-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

Interesting thought:

I'm composed of equal parts of genes from 6 different couples, and you, my descendants are also, plus much more of course. So the next time you hear of any of these family names, remember, they could be your relatives:

Patrick Neil and Mary Forescythe,
Eduard Blankenburg and Wilhelmina Hoffman,
John Lisk and Sarah Ann Herron,
Franz Arnold and Louise Scharschmidt,
Francis Johnston and Catherine McKindrey,
Christian Backmann and Wilhelmina Kranert

Early Childhood B

2007-10-31T19:03:00.000-07:00

One day I was walking in the kitchen and banged my head. I had been in the habit of walking right under the kitchen table, but this time I banged my head! I was growing. But this small body could see things others couldn't. I asked my dad "How come the paint stops at the edge, and it's not painted underneath?" He said "Because no one can see it." But I could see it.

Grandpa Blankenburg once had come down to visit. He was standing by the front door. I walked up to him and noticed the veins on his hands were protruding slightly, and I felt of them and asked why. He and my dad just laughed and said, you just wait, and some day yours will be just like that. Well, the day has come, in fact quite some time ago.

Grandpa Blankenburg would often take the trolly from Rockville down to Ogden's Corner, then walk the better part of a mile to our house. One day I went with him up to his tobacco shed on the front Penny lot. (A tract he had bought from the Pennys, and before he sold it to my parents). There they were measuring out fertilizer, and Grandma was doing the calculations. They were bagging it as they were weighing it. The Mazon brothers were growing the tobacco on shares, and the Blankenburgs were providing all the capital. Well, on the way back, we went past a patch where Grandpa had planted watermellons. One looked ripe, so he picked it, and then got out his jack knife, opened it, and plunged in into the ground a few times. I asked why. He said, to clean it. It was the first I knew you could clean a knife by dirt.

Before the years of school began, I had just two friends on a regular basis, Irene Worcester, and Charlie Thrall. I had an extra "kiddy car", so when Charlie came over to play, we would ride up and down the front walk (those flagstones inhabited underneath by ants). The Thralls and the Worcesters both had "running water", i.e. with inside plumbing, but we didn't. Thrall's was obtained from an artesian well atop a hill the other side of the state highway, and it ran by itself with no pumping required. Worcesters, however, was pumped by a little gasoline powered pump. Neither family had electricity yet. Thralls were close to it, but couldn't afford it. Worcesters were quite far from the state highway power line, and we were much further away.

In the springtime our road would get tremendous ruts in it, being so muddy. In the early springtime we would tap all the maple trees and my mother would use the kerosene stove to boil it all down to get maple syrup. The depression came about the time I was old enough to start school.

Time's up for now.

Early Childhood A

2007-10-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

The Blankenburg children (now grown) left a lot behind on the farm, including children's ski's, snowshoes, and when older, trunks in the barn, even a one-horse open sleigh up there in the barn. The main section of the barn was also built with hand-hewn beams, and in one area of the barn, with bad flooring, were scycles to harvest wheat in a bygone era prior to International Harvesters products. Up there in the loft also was an old Edison wax cylinder phonograph with a bunch of cylinders to play. We never ever did take the sleigh down and hitch it up to a horse and go. Eithe too much bother, or maybe it needed repair. But I once did get to ride in a neighbor's sleigh. One cold week-day morning, Mr. Natziski and his son Joe stopped out front of our house, and gave me a ride to school in their one-horse open sleigh.

In my pre-school years one of my favorite occupations was to feed sugar to the ants that lived between the flagstones of the front walk that connected our front porch with the road out front. I would spent hours just watching them work. My buddies. Then horror of horrors, my mother would come with a broom and sweep them away with all their sand, sugar and all! To my mind this was cruel and unusual punnishment, but heartless people that they were, they just laughed, saying, oh, they will build it all up again (the sand piled up by the ants around each ant hole).

Another fun thing was roosters. In those days my dad bought baby chicks unsorted by sex, so for a while they were 50 - 50. Then later he would leave a few, but sell most as "broilers". The remaining ones always tried to out-do each other in crowing. I joined in to "egg them on".

Early Childhood

2007-10-31T07:54:00.000-07:00

Prior to the move from Tolland, one day my Uncle Bill Neill came over with his camera, set up a ladder, and got me to step up on it. Then he asked me to go up on a higher rung, and took my picture. I remember it distinctly, and here is the photo.

In those days, people liked to give names to their places. So our place in Tolland was called "Hollyhock Hill". In Tolland, we became good friends with our neighbors, various Clough families, all yankees (original English). One family was there only summers, as he was a teacher somewhere on Long Island. Their daughter Doris became great friends with my sister Barbara, and would often visit us long after we moved to Vernon.

Here are a couple of photos of us on the farm in Vernon during the haying season. Doris Clough and Barbara are up on the load of hay. Standing, left to right is our hired man Bill Hulse, then my Dad, then Grandpa Blankenburg holding my hand.

Here is a picture of the load of hay taken into the barn. On the left is Grandpa Blankenburg, then Doris Clough, me, and then Barbara.

One Clough family I remember visiting after we moved to Vernon were a couple probably in their 90's, and he had a white beard. They had a big grandfather clock, and the place was loaded with knick-knacks. He first heard of President Lincoln being shot by reading it in the newspaper. Other Cloughs, closer neighbors to us in Tolland had a typical yankee characteristic that slightly irritated my dad. They always wanted to know how much you paid for something, but would never tell you what they paid for something. Once my dad, who had always told them when asked, what he paid for something, asked point blank "How much did you pay for this?" Clough just laughed, and said "Oh, I'll tell you sometime, Tom."

Then there were the Emery Cloughs who lived on a hill, had a peach orchard, a son and a daughter. From Vernon, once we went over there and bought from them a peach basket full of peaches, which is 1/2 bushel. In high school the son was known as "Clutch Clough", and he died of a nose infection. The daughter, I think not quite out of high school, ran off with a man in his 40's.

The year 1927 when we moved to the old Blankenburg farm in Vernon, was during the height of a brief period of prosperity. My dad took over the farm, and my Blankenburg grandparents moved to an apartment in Rockville, where they enjoyed the modern comforts of indoor plumbing and electric lights. Some of the same animals my Uncle Arnold was familiar with, I was also, when we discussed it years later in Kansas. There was the old Holstein cow, "Crooked Face", who had been kicked by a horse when a calf.

There were the two horses, "Prince" and "Jerry", shown in the photo here, taken in Jan 1930 with me feeding them. There were the two cats, "Ougen" (German for "eyes"), and "Loungey" (short for lounge lizard).

My Dad had somwhat different ideas than my Grandpa Blankenburg. Blankenburgs had pigs. My dad wanted nothing to do with them. Grandpa Blankenburg once said, "Every fool has a dog, and every damn fool has two dogs." We got "Fido", a little terrier.

Here is a picture of our family, newly moved to the farmhouse in Vernon, all together, with my Dad holding "Fido". Then is my sister Barbara, and Mother, with me standing in front.

Did you know that dogs are liars? Fido was. There was a rocking chair he was NOT allowed to sit on. One winter morning, dad got up, came down stairs with the kerosene lamp, came into the dining room where the rocker was. It was rocking, but Fido was "sound asleep", curled up in a corner.

So I grew up the same place my mother did. She would tell me of things relating to the place when she was a little girl. There was "Old Dan Janes", who lived up the hill where the Newmarkers now lived. He would drop down and tell of bygone days when there was a terrible drought, and farmers would come from miles around to water their livestock from our well in the backyard of our house.

Here is a picture of our farm in the 1930's, with the camera facing east. Note the tall Norway spruce tree that I used for mounting my antenna. The little white building on the right is the milk house Dad built. The long building on the left is for chickens, with a grain room in the middle.

Our place was full of history. The farm apparently originally had been the location of at least 3 houses and a blacksmith shop. The blacksmith shop had been located about 1,000 feet north of Dart Hill Road, on the left side of Skinner Road. One house had been located on the same side of that road, about 1/4 mile further north. The cellar hole was still there, as was the well (but covered over with a large rock). We used to go up there and pick currents from the current bushes surrounding the cellar hole. Then my mother made current jam.

The other former house location was on the south side of Dart Hill Road, lining up directly with Skinner Road. It also had a cellar hole and a well. I believe the Blankenburgs built a "rooster house" on it, because that's how it was while I was growing up. We kept roosters there. Years later, our former hired man, John Booth and his wife build a nice house there.

We had a wood stove in the kitchen, and in the summer also used a kerosene range. It was my job to split wood, and bring it in to fill the wood box behind the stove. On the front of the stove were the words "Beacon Hub", and "Ebony Finish". Saturday night was bath night. You got out the big wash tub, took a dipper and from the hot water reservoir attached to the kitchen stove, you dipped out hot water to fill the tub. Maybe you also used auxiliary supplies of hot water from pots and pans on top of the stove. Then you would put a big container in the sink under the pump spout, and pump up sufficient cold water to add, if need be. One night per week was enough of that business.

Christmas would be with Grandpa and Grandma Blankenburg in Rockville, with all our aunts and uncles. Thanksgiving would be at Grandma Neill's, where also lived Uncle Bill, Uncle Dave, and Uncle Joe.

I must go and take care of other things now. But I have vast quanitites of things to tell.

Beginnings Cont'd D

2007-10-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

Continuing with my Dad, Thomas J. Neill (I). At least since the time Dad was at the Worlds Fair in St. Louis in 1902, their family lived at 51 Franklin Street, Rockville, Ct. The place is still there and has been restored to its original condition. I used to have a lot of envelopes of Dad's letters home from St. Louis.

While growing up, we used to have an atlas with a map of the United States, and on it in pen, my Dad had inked his 5-year (approximately) odyssy around the country, primarily as a commercial artist.

Here is a sample of his work at that period.

To back up a bit, just as an interesting asside, a classmate of his at the Lockwood Art Studio in Duluth, was Gifford Baker from Toronto. Now you know the rest of THAT particular story! I remember that the Bakers came down to Connecticut and visited us once. My Dad was in communication with them as late as when we all lived in East Hartland, CT. But they ultimately all died off with no descendants.

I believe Dad's travels began more or less in NYC. But times were not good. He told me that some places there, there were signs of help wanted, but along with that was the notation "No Irish need apply". Dad took a steamship from NYC down to Savannah, GA, and I think went from there to Atlanta. I believe he was a commercial artist in NYC, then in Atlanta. While in Georgia, he teamed up with another fellow from the North. (Remember, it was not that long after the Civil War, and Northerners were not always that welcome). But his buddy must have liked to live dangerously, and as they were walking through a certain section, he began to whistle the tune of the march called "Marching Through Georgia". But nothing happened. Maybe the local people were not familiar with the tune.

In another incident in Georgia, my dad was all alone in a semi-wilderness area going across a long railroad tressle (you could step off it if a train came). In the distance two black men were approaching from the other direction. When they came closer, in order to protect himself, Dad put his finger in his coat pocket to make like a gun, and kept walking forward. The two black men stepped to one side and he passed.

From Atlanta he may have gone to New Orleans, and from there (for sure), he was in Dallas for a while. He mentioned that in Dallas at night you would always hear a lot of gun shots.

Let me regress a bit. Back when Dad went out to the wheat fields in the Dakotas, his buddy Ed Siedel wanted to go with him, and they would hop a freight. Dad said "Nothing doing". He bought a train ticket, and never ever hopped a freight.

Times were usually pretty bad, like a continuous depression, and it was not easy to get work as a commercial artist. Also, he was not able to crank out the work as fast as they would like, so sometimes he had to take other jobs that might be available.

I guess from Dallas dad may have gone directly to Los Angeles. And from there to San Francisco, and from there to Seattle. He may have then gone back down to southern California, because in 1915 he had a night watchman job at a garage in Santa Monica, CA. I don't know his exact 5 or so year itinerary. Maybe he went from Seattle to Chicago, and from there to Kalamazoo, MI. At one time I had a calling card of his saying Thos. J. Neill, Commercial Artist, with a Kalamazoo address. I thought I gave it to my son Tom.

My mother I believe was the one who initiated things between them. Probably she was attracted to him when he worked on their farm years earlier. But I have no doubt Blankenburg family-wise there would have been two strikes against him. One: hired hands were to be looked down upon, and Two, he was Irish. He didn't come from a "successful" family for obvious reasons - his dad died 5 years after my dad was born, and his mom had to raise 4 boys all alone, but with help I'm sure from relatives.

I remember reading one letter she wrote to him, when he was out West, referring to a time when he was working on the Blankenburg farm. It was rather touching. I have a more subsequent letter from her to him when he must have still been "out west". I have a photo copy of it. It is about 4 pages long in which she finnaly says "I love you".

Here is a photo of the two of them prior to their marriage, sitting together on a flat stone wall.

Here is a picture of of Dad's home family in 1907: Back row, Left to Right, Alec Johnson (probably a cousin), then Uncle Joe, who looks quite young, and kind of a "hot sketch", ready for anything. Next is Dad who looks distinguished with his hat, then Bob Johnson (probablyanother cousin), and at the far right, rear is Uncle Dave. In the front row, Agnes Johnson (cousin?), then Mrs. Rock and then, third from left, front row is my Grandma Neill. The last at the lower right is Mrs. Johnson, maybe holding John Johnson. Uncle Bill is missing from the photo. Maybe that is when he was in NYC studying electricity.

Here is a photo of Dad as a young man sitting on a lawn with an Irish setter dog - maybe uncle Bills hunting dog, if he had one, I don't know.

Anyway, Dad was not able to make a living for two as a commercial artist. As my dad put it, "We couldn't afford to get married, so we got married anyway." They got an apartment in West Hartford, and my Dad went to work at the Royal Typewrter factory in Hartford. My sister Barbara was born when they lived there. He used to run to catch the trolly to get to work, and the trolly was jam full, and with stale air. When this happened he developed chest pains. Oh, I should have mentioned that Dad was a "health nut", and didn't believe much in doctors. Once in San Francisco he developed severe pains where he appendix was. He stopped eating for 3 days and cured it. On another time on a long train trip his head hurt. He believes this is what people call headache. It was his only experience of this. He was a follower of the well-known natural health man, Bernar McFadden, who made a parachute jump into the Hudson River in his 80's.

Pardon my digression. Chest pains of my Dad. He determined to do something about it. Did he rush to a doctor? Of course not. He searched and found a little house in Tolland, CT, out in the country, with almost no land with it, but just enough to raise laying hens. Mother stayed in the apartment, went back to work as a school teacher, and they hired a baby sitter for Barbara. Dad got a Model T Ford, and began an egg route, and at the same time worked as a janitor at the bank in Tolland. After about 6 months apart, mother was able to quit her job and join him in Tolland. When my dad had tahe egg route, one time a little dog ran out and bit him in the leg. The lady said "Don't be afraid, he doesn't bite much". My dad said, "She was right, he didn't bite much". But he did bite!

My Dad had a philosophy of his own. He had no use for big cities. Once I asked him, "Would you like to come along with us to NYC for the day? It's been many years since you were there." His response was in the negative. All big cities were alike, and he wouldn't give two cents for a look at any one of them. Another quote of his: "These big executives know how to make a lot of money, but they don't know how to live."

While Mother and Dad and Barbara were living in Tolland, I was born in 1924 at the Rockville Hospital. Some years prior, apparently there had been a mis-carriage, so they were taking no chances, and I was born in the hospital. That building, if it still stands, is no longer a hospital; it overlooked East Distirict School.

My Grandpa Blankenburg had done very well on their farm, and especially so during WWI, when prices went sky-high. So they were able to retire in 1927, and sold the farm, or the main part of it, to my mother and father. I remember our move there. Sometime around that time, my sister later confessed to me, she dropped me on my head, landing behind my right ear. I don't know if she ever confessed to our parents or not. Anyway, after some time it created a horrendus, and extremely painful infection for which pennecilin had not yet been discovered.

I was taken to Dr Dwire in Manchester, and they put me in the hospital there and operated, removing a section of bone to get at the mastoid. I still have a big scar there, and section of bone missing. I remember Dr. Dwire gave me a peppermint stick candy, and also on another visit put me under ether. (Remember, I was 3).

Now I must refer you to my sister Barbara's story (which I illustrated with photos) of her growing up on the farm in Connecticut.

Well, it's getting late now, so I guess I'll quit and get ready for bed.

Beginnings Cont'd C

2007-10-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

In the middle or late 1930's, aunt Esther Blankenburg took a freighter trip to Cuba. There she bought a box of guava paste. The box was of wood, about 2" x 3" x 12". In the middle, running the length of the paste was a section of guava jelly, about 12/" x 1/4". She sent it to me and it was delicious! On the box was the name & address of the source in Cuba, so I wrote them a letter of appreciation to which they responed "con mucho gusto".

My uncle Charlie Blankenburg was the next one born. In those days, boys were required by state law to work at home on the farm until they were 18. But I found out from uncle Arnold in Kansas that Charlie ran away from home prior to age 18, and went to work for a farmer in Maine. Arnold asked me why Charlie ran away from home, but I didn't even know that he had done that, it was the first I had heard of it. I think he laater went to business college. After he was established, he became Sales Manager of the woolen (?) mill in Talcotville. He married Mae McCallum and they and her brother Charlie McCallum lived in a nice house owned by the mill in Talcotville. Uncle Charlie used to come up to our house (the farm house at Skinner Rd & Dart Hill Rd in Vernon) and play checkers with my Dad.

Here is a photo presumably of uncle Charlie Blankenburg as a young man watering a team of horses. In the background you can see a two-story building that had been used to house the hired help. I also have a photo of him with Mae McCallum standing in the middle of Dart Hill Road (a dirt road), and in the background are cows in the pasture and a few chickens. I also have a short movie clip of him with his wife Mae, and later after she passed away, another clip of him with his second wife Eve, whom he met on Price Edward Island in Canada.

Next born was my aunt Florence. She died early from breast cancer. She went to business school and became an accountant. That is probably how she met her husband, my uncle Irving Dodge. He was the owner of C. N. Dodge grocery store on Main Street in Hartford, CT. It was a "high end" grocery. They lived in a fancy neighborhood in maybe Windsor, across from the Pratt's (proabably of Pratt & Whitney). when we visited with aunt Florence and Uncle Irving, I used to play with Aaron Pratt. Irving and Florence had a cottage down at the sea shore, and they had my sister and I come with them one week. We were very poor, but I didn't know it. Irving and Florence used to mail me the "Funnies" from the Sunday paper every week.

Aunt Florence had her own car, a 2-door coupe, and used to come over to visit us. I remember she used to call my mother "Em". Later, when Aunt Florence passed away, Uncle Irving used to come over on Sunday afternoons and take us all on very long rides through the country. He also was attracted to my Aunt Cora, but nothing came of it; I think he liked her better than she liked him. He later married a close friend of Cora and Florences, Louise Rau. When I was born, she sent us a congratulations card which I still have.

Next born was my aunt Cora Hattie Blankenburg. She hated her middle name and changed it to Harriet. She went to Port Chester, NY, and with training became a Registered Nurse. She was very pretty, and I should have pictures of her. I believe at one time she worked in the same hospital as Dr. Hepburn, father of the movie star Katherine Hepburn. Dr. Hepburn had a terrible temper, and was known to have thrown things at the nurses. After my parents got the Blankenburg farm, sometimes Aunt Cora used to come over, go up to the hayloft where her trunk was stored, read old letters, come back down and you could tell she had been crying. She married very very late in life. Her intention was to wait until my mother passed away and then marry my Dad, but it never happened. My Mother was still alive, and went to Cora's wedding to Jim Moraio, who was a widower, and I believe a commercial greenhouse flower grower. I visited them once, stayed for dinner and stayed over night, while working as a consultant for Regent Controls in Stamford, CT, not so terribly far from Rye, NY.

Next in 1901 came my Uncle Fred Blankenburg. He was quite ambitious and wanted to do everything for his Mom. I think I have a photo of him as a young boy with a long stick, fishing in Bolton Pond. My parents bought the Blankenburg farm in 1927. In the 1920's there was no electricity within nearly a mile of the place. But Uncle Fred got some second-hand Edison batteries, a D.C. generator, and an old Model T Ford engine, and created a 32 volt d.c. source for the place, wiring up the kitchen, dining room, and the barn. The lights were not so very bright, but they worked, except when the batteries were down and had to be re-charged. They even had a Hinnman milking machine for the barn. But it didn't work all that wonderfully either. while I was growing up, the batteries were about at the end of their life and we had no money to replace them, so we reverted to kerosine lamps.

Uncle Fred was very mechanically oriented, and was always working with his brother Arnold on cars and other things. They strung a big, long antenna from the Norway spruce tree way over to the top of the big maple tree on Skinner Road, and did short wave sending and receiving via Morse code. I have a photo of Fred sitting next to his Mom in an open Model T car. She is sitting behind the steering wheel (as a joke, because she never drove). Fred worked for Socony Vacuum in Hartford as a mechanic. Fred was always very frugal and never threw anything of any value away. He collected things. He once married a divorcee with children. But the marriage only lasted partway through the honeymoon to Florida. I never heard the details.

Last to be born was Uncle Arnold. Here is a photo of him as a little boy playing in the sand pile in the back yard just outside the kitchen window. In the background are posts where we put the milk pails, and you can see the pump on the well, and further in the background is the barn. It is nearly identical to where I used to play at the same age. Unlike Fred, Arnold liked to "dress up" and look real fine. I believe he was, as it were, a "lady's man". When I was little, Fred and / or Arnold used to go "out west" for fairly long periods. Eventually, Arnold settled in Herndon, Kansas and married my Aunt Edna. Later they moved to Oakley, and he established "Blankenburg Chevrolet", and was a very successful business man. He was able to sell the business and retire quite comfortably. They had two daughters, Judith and Lila. Both died before their parents. Judith never married, but died in Backsburg, VA, teaching at, I believe, the university there, and working on a Doctor's degree. Lila did marry, but they had no children except two adopted ones in Texas. Arnold and Edna, with kids, visited us after the 1938 hurricane, and helped up with the restorations.

Years later, on occasion we (my wife and our kids) would visit Arnold and Edna in Kansas. Also, once, Arnold took a trip around the world on a Dutch liner, by himself because Edna didn't want to go. They called at Tahiti, and many other exotic places. He got off the ship on the east coast of Australia, took the trans-continental railway, and caught the ship again on the west coast at Perth. My attic is full of 5,000 of his slides, covering maybe 15 or 20 years. What shall I do with them?

Well, let's move on to my Dad. As a boy, he and his family at least once rode trolly cars and went to Nantasket beach in Boston. He remembered seeing sailing vessel gradually disappear over the horizon there. He went through 8th grade, and then had to go to work to help support the family by working in the woolen mill. He told me once that the teacher wanted to teach them music, but none of the kids were interested. She said "You will be sorry". Later, yes, he was sorry. As a young man he first left home and went to upper New York state apple-picking. Then later still, he went to the wheat fields of North Dakota for work on the harvest. There he got a wheat chaff in his eye that caused him considerable trouble for some days until it finally came out. His biggest first main experience was when he went to St. Louis during the World's Fair in 1904, and worked as a bell hop at the Christian Endeavor Hotel there for 6 months. It gave him time to take in the whole fair in detail. One impressive exhibit was a full-sized locomotive going at full speed on an endless track. Another exhibit was a man in one room writing with an electrical instrument connected by wire to another instrument in another room, reproducing the same writing.

One story of his bell hop experience: A lady came with a complaint that her room light didn't work. She turned on the thing, but nothing happened. (It was a gas light). He told her, "You have to use a match!"

Some time later my Dad went to art school in NYC, and later also the Lockwood Art School in Duluth, MN.

Time to quit, I need to go somewhere with my wife Lydia.

Beginnings Cont'd, B

2007-10-29T15:05:00.000-07:00

Lets go to the Neill side of the family. James Lisk married somebody and they produced John Lisk, who married Sarah Ann Herron. They produced William Lisk, his brother John Henry, and sisters Ellen who married a Russel, Lanna who married a Beyans, Rachel who married a Cinnamon, Matilda who married a Rock, Eliza Ann who married a Russel, Sallie who married a Hall, Margaret who married a Johnson, and Isabel who married a McCabe.

The above William Lisk (my great grandpa), married Sarah Johnston in the Drum Kree church in 1848, in Portadown, Armagh County, northern Ireland. She had a brother named John Johnston. Wm & Sarah Lisk produced my grandma Neill in 1855 who died Feb. 2, 1937 in Rockville, CT. But they also populated Rockville, CT with vast quantities of Lisks (& others), as John Lisk who produced Benjamin & William, Frank who produced Wm, Jas, Jn, Sam'l, Fred, Lilly, Sarah, & Paul; Samuel who was a bachelor; James who produced Wm., Jas., Stewart; Matilda who married Thos. Lutton, and they produced "the Lutton Girls" Sarah & Annie (Lilly) plus Thos. & Wm.; Elizabeth who married Edw. Quinn, and they produced Julia, Edw. & Iola; Thomas who produced Pearl, Lorenzo, Eugene, and Warren; George who produced Linie, Charlie, Henry, Harold, Naomi, Florence, and Anita. My grandma Neill (Sarah Lisk Neill) came to the US with her large family at about age 16 in a sailing vessel. She had blue eyes and a very strong Irish accent. She was a very strong believer, but I think maybe the only one in her family.

One of "the Lutton Girls", Sarah or Lil, had gall bladder trouble and went to the hospital. The doctor wanted to remove the gall bladder. She asked "Why?" He said "Because it is not functioning." She said, "Well, if you remove it, it still won't function, will it. Get me my clothes, I'm going home!" Later in life only one of them had a drivers license, but she was virtually blind. So they always travelled together, and the one who could see told the driver where to steer. Don't believe the girls ever married. The Luttons had a bottling works, and also owned the Silver Dollar Tavern in Rockville. In Rockville High School, my English teacher, Natalie Ide was related to me, as were three of my classmates, Wilton Lisk, Eleanor Lisk, and Donald Neff.

Let's go back to the Neill side of the family (rather than the Lisk side of the Neill family). To the best of my knowledge, Patrick Niel married Mary Forscythe, and they produced my grandpa Neill and at least his brother. My grandpa Neill (Joseph Niel / Neil) was born in 1845, and died Sep 15, 1887, buried in Aspen Grove Cemetary, Ware, MA, now under Quabbin Reservoir (but the cemetary was removed to dry ground somewhere, I saw it once).

My grandpa Neill (Joseph Niel / Neil)and his brother came from County Kildare in what is now the Irish Republic, and went to Iowa and took up land. They both married and had a dairy farm together. But my grandpa's wife died having a baby, so he abandoned his half of the farm, and went east to Massachusetts, and married my grandma, Sarah A. Lisk. He never shaved in his life, and his beard was as soft as the hair on your head. There used to exist a nice photo of him. He died at an early age, after waisting away for about one year, believed by my Dad to be tuberculosis. They lived in Gilbertville, MA (now under the reservoir), and also in Manchester, CT. When he died my grandma had 4 boys and moved to Rockville, probably to be close to her parents and relatives. The census of 1880 shows: Joseph Neil, age 40, occupation Weaver, parents birthplace, Ireland. Wife Sally Neil, age 32, occupation housewife, parents birhplace, Ireland, Daughter Nellie Neil, age 1, parents birthplace, Ireland. It is probably them, though Joseph Neil's age isn't right. I believe their only daughter died shortly therefafter.

My grandparents, Joseph Neil and Sarah Lisk produced 4 boys: William (bachelor) b. 1880, d. Jun 9, 1952 in Rockville CT, Thomas James (my dad) b. Feb 15, 1882 in Manchester, CT, d. Mar 16, 1973 in Tenafly NJ, David Alexander(bachelor) b. April 10, 1885, d. Mar. 22, 1971 in NJ., and Joseph Samuel, b. 1888 in Gilbertville, MA, d. Mar 17, 1965 in St. Petersburg, FL. He had married Pearl Pease, but they married late in life and had no children.

When my uncle Bill (William Neill, above, who was the oldest) started school, he came home and told his dad that the teacher said we weren't spelling our family name correctly, and it should be with two L's, not one. His dad told him, "I don't care, spell it any way you want." When uncle Bill was grown, he went to New York and studied electricity, but never did much with it He stayed home and took care of his Mom, who became blind from cataracts; later after she died, he stayed home and did the housekeeping while his brother Dave worked in the mill. My uncle Joe was a sergant in WWI, and went to France, but was behind the lines training troops.

My dad, Thomas James Neill, hated working in the woolen mill, and got out of there as soon as he could, working instead on various farms, etc. He worked for Fred Dart, who used to have a farm as you go west on Dart Hill Road in Vernon, and up the hill to where it levels out. He was one of the "hired men". They ate with the family. Once Mrs. Dart made some green tomatoe pie. She asked how it was. My dad said "Fine", so as not to hurt her feelings. The hired hand next to him immediately said, "Here Tom, you can have mine." Fred Dart needed a bigger house, so he raised his house on jacks and built another story under it. This was before the days of gas engines and electricity being available there on the farm.

But my dad spent a lot more time working as a "hired hand" on the Blankenburg farm. He had lots of stories about what it was like. The Blankenburgs had 7 children, but only 3 were boys, who probably were still too young to do much work. So there were hired men. Here are some random stories. Once in a while my grandma Blankenburg would get help from a neighbor lady to help with the washing of clothes (a big deal in those days, all done by hand). Thus the noon meal (the biggest meal, "dinner" in those days), was late. Mr. Blankenburg would come in from work with the hired men, find out the situation, and say, in a provoked tone "The wash is on!"

Another time, Mr. Blankenburg was across the road in the pasture trying to coax a horse so he could catch and harness him to take a load of produce up to Rockville to sell. All the Bankenburg children were just looking out the window watching him and laughing at him. None offered to help.

When my uncle Arnold (the youngest) was a tiny tot, planing in the sand pile outside the kitchen window (right where I played 20 years later), his brother Fred had caught an earthworm, took it over to his little brother, held it up to him and said "Essen", which is "eat" in German. I told this story to my Uncle Arnold in Kansas when he was an old man. He asked "Did I eat it?", but their Mom rapped on the kitchen window and stopped the shennanigans.

Another story: A close friend of the family had graduated from Renssalier Polytechnic Institute, in New York State, majoring in electrical engineering. But he contracted tuberculosis, and was dying. Late in the stage, he got someone to take him by horse and buggy to visit the Blankenburg family, but when he got there, he was quite weak, and just stayed sitting in the buggy to visit a bit. My aunt Esther came out to visit with him, and she said "Oh, how well you look!" But then Mr. Blankenburg came along and said right there to Esther "What are you lying to the man for!"

Mrs. Blankenburg (my grandma) saved up money and had a lead pipe put in, running from the well to a hand pump at the kitchen sink. It is also what we used when I was growing up.

The Blankenburg children were all quite bright. They all loved their mom, but you could not say they were all that "close" to their dad, especially the boys. My mother Emma was the oldest. She graduated from New Britain Normal School, in the standard college training of that time for teachers. Then she taught school for quite a number of years prior to marrying at age 30. Later in life she resumed teaching during WWII while I was in the Navy.

My aunt Esther was rather unusual. She was always full of stories, but I can't vouch for the accuracy of them all. She claimed that we were related to Benedict Arnold. I'd like to check out his ancestry some time to see if it is true. She used to go on cheap vacations by getting a state room on a 'banana boat" fruit freighter, and go to countries in the Carribean. She once borrowed $4,000 from her dad and formed an opera company, and put on an opera in Waterbury, CT, hiring famous singers such as Rosa Ponsell, etc. But the venture went broke and she lost all the money. I believe she attended a well-known college in Ohio for a year or two before she ran out of money. Later, when she settled in Providence, she attended art classes at Brown. I had one excellent oil painting of hers, an ocean view. She lived with my great aunt Louise Blankenburg in Providence in the governers former mansion, while my great aunt's health was in decline. Later she had her own apartment in Providence, and corresponded with cousin Ellis Arnold in Los Angeles, and also was "buddies" with Esther Hinderlighter. The two Esthers considered themselves "family outcasts" . She became a Christian Science member, but I went to visit her once, she wasn't home (she had been taken to a nursing home with a stroke but I didn't know it). Her landlady said that aunt Esther and another lady used to go to synagoge on Saturdays. I asked the landlady, "Was the other lady Jewish?" She answered, "She was as Jewish as she could be!"

Well, it's after 10 PM, and time for bed. And I haven't gotten much into my Dad's life, let alone mine!

Beginnings Cont'd, A

2007-10-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

The vital statistics of my mother and her siblings:
Emma Louise Blankenburg b. Jan 21, 1887 in Rockville, CT, d. Aug 5, 1957, Rockville, CT
Esther Selma Blankenburg b. Sep 20, 1889 " , d. May 2, 1965, Providence, RI
Charles William " b. Mar 7, 1892 in Vernon, CT, d. Jan 4, 1973 in Newington, CT
Florence Carrie " b. Mar 31, 1897 " , d. Mar. 5, 1937, Hartford/Windsor,CT
Cora Hattie " b. Jul 18, 1899 " ,d. Mar. 26, 1961, Rye, NY
Frederick Richard " b. Jun 22, 1901 " , d. Oct 25, 1993, Vernon, CT
Arnold Edward " b. Apr 13, 1905 " , d. in Oakley, KS

Here is a photo of the house in Vernon where we all grew up, taken in 1892, with my grandma as a young woman, holding my aunt Esther as a baby, and my mother standing next to her as a little girl. My mother's grandpa Backmann is standing there under the small maple tree. The yard is surrounded by a picket fence, and the house has shutters. The house still stands, but is so remodeled it is unrecognizable. My mother could speak only German until she was 4 years old, as thats what they spoke at home. Her Backmann grandparents lived with them. In fact, the house was bought as a reposession from a bank, and Mr. Backmann proveded the ernest money to bind the bargain. The house itself had hand-hewn beams in the basement, and the floor in my bedroom upstairs was made of chestnut.

Let's look at the Backmann side of the family. We will go back to 1832 when Christian Wilhelm Backmann was born. He was also known as William C. Backmann. He died Mar. 15, 1894 in Vernon, CT. He married Wilhelmina Kranert who was born Aug 11, 1839, and died June 223, 1902 in Vernon / Rockville, Ct. she had one sister who married Mr. Young.

Christian Backmann and Willimina Kranert had 3 daughters and 2 sons as follows: Carolinn Albina, ("Aunt Carrie")b. Feb 22, 1868 or 1869; Albina (Bertha) Liberte (My Grandma), b. Triebes, Germany, June 22, 1864, d. Rockville, CT Jul 7, 1947; Wilhelm Franz, ("Uncle Frank") b. Apr 3, 1867, Married May 17, 1888, had a number of children, lived in Shelton, CT, then they moved to Ann Arbor, or Interlocken, MI in the 1930's; William C. Jr. ("Uncle William"), b. Jan 25, 1870, d. Dec. 11, 1934 probably in Springfield, MA. We inherited a butcher knife and an alarm clock from him, and the clock was given to me. But it made so much noise I had to keep it in the chest of drawers. Then there was finally, Selma Marion ("Aunt Selma"), b. Mar 30, 1874 in Rockville, d. April 27, 1923 in PA. She was the Blankenburg childrens favorite Aunt. She married a Gibson, and they had a daughter Esther Gibson who was in the Army for a while, and married a "ner-do-well" by the name of Hinderlighter, about which I can tell you a few stories later.

That's about all the vital statistics on the Blankenburg side, but there are plenty of stories to tell another time. I must go and take care of falling leaves.

Beginnings

2007-10-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

My earliest known ancestor: (I had an old German hymnbook inscribed "Corslin Sonfin Arnold", from Greiz, Germany, 1768). He was the father of Frank Arnold (or Franz Louis Arnold, whose name was inscribed in a Lutheran bible of 1829). He, in turn, was the father of Louise Arnold (Born 1835? in Greiz, Died 1882? in Norwich, Conn). She was the mother of Richard Blankenburg, my Grandpa, who was born Feb. 21 or 26, 1864 in Greiz, and died Jan. 27, 1935 in Rockville, Conn. I used to have a photograph of Louise Arnold (Blankenburg), holding a baby (my greaat aunt Louise), and a little boy (my grandpa Blankenburg).

The aforementioned Frank Arnold / Franz Louis Arnold married Louise C. Scharschmidt, born 1812 (I used to have her baptism certificate), and died about 1900 in Olnyville area of Providence, RI. I have a faded photocopy of a photo of her as an old lady. She raised Louise Blankenburg. She had one sister who stayed in Greiz, and married a Baumgartl, and they had a daughter who married Mr. Dubler.

Now Frank Arnold and Louise Scharschmidt I believe had four children: Willimina, Louise, Maurice, and Henry. Willimina married Frank Argus, and their son Albert settled in California. I used to have his photograph, and I believe he had brothers. Maurice Arnold married, and they had a son, Ellis Arnold, who with his wife lived at 6716 Miramonte Blvd, L.A., Calif. His wife preceeded him in death, and they had no children. Henry Arnold never married.

Now going back in time to another branch, (no dates available), Eduard Blankenburg married Wilhelmina Hoffman, and they apparently had two sons, Edward and Frank. Edward went to Nebraska and married, probably in North Platte. They had two daughters, Tillie and Jesse, plus two sons who were bachelors and settled in California. My mother used to correspond with Jesse. Frank Blankenburg was born in Greiz, Germany and died in Providence RI maybe about 1912. He was a travelling musician and never home. That's why my great aunt Louise was raised by her grandmother rather than her mother.

Frank Blankenburg and Louise Arnold had at least three sons and a daughter. The sons were Otto, Richard, and Werner. The daughter was my great aunt, Louise Emilie Blankenburg, born about 1874, and died about 1954 in Providence, RI. She was a housekeeper for the Governor of Rhode Island, and when he died he gave her the life-use of his mansion in Providence. We used to visit there. She never married. My grandfather was Richard Blankenburg, born in Greiz, Germany Feb. 21 or 26, 1864, and died Jan. 27, 1935 in Rockville, Conn. One of his brothers changed his name from Blankenburg to Blank, moved to NYC and was never heard from again.

My grandpa Richard Blankenburg came with his parents to USA when he was about 2or 4 years old. They came in a sailing vessel which took a long time to cross, and according to my Aunt Esther, they were headed for Argentina, but were blown off course, and wound up in Rhode Island.

My grandpa Blankenburg only had about 1/2 of first grade for schooling, and could only write his name. He did teach himself how to read, however, and was a hard-working man, although something of a character. I have plenty of stories about him, and will try to cover them in time. Anyway, he settled in Rockville, CT, met and married my grandma, Albina (Bertha) Liberte Backmann. They were both 21 when they got married, and I used to have a photo of them together at that age. In that photo you could see the likeness of all their 7 children.

Early on, my Grandpa and Grandma Blankenburg quit their work in Rockville, and took up farming at the NW corner of Dart Hill Road and Skinner Road, in Vernon, CT where their 7 children grew up (and later on, my sister and I also). He did a lot of "truck gardening", raising vegetables and selling them retail in Rockville. Also he had dairy cows, pigs, and some chickens, plus he raised broadleaf tobacco. As the farming succeeded, he added more land.

My grandparents, Richard Blankenburg and Bertha Backmann had four daughters: Emma Louise (my mother), Esther, Cora, and Florence. They had three sons: Charlie, Fred, and Arnold. Their vital statistics to be continued in next blog.