Dear Family,

A statement in the last installment apparently raised an eyebrow or two, so let me elucidate. I said: "I don't remember ever seeing Dad or Mother or Grandma read a book." What I meant was I never saw them sit down with a novel or a biography or a history and read for sheer enjoyment. We had books. We had two glass-fronted bookcases in the front room filled with books: classics, standards, popular books like Zane Gray's western novels, children's books, boy's books such as the Tom Swift series, reference books on trapping and tracking and gunsmithing, and many were used. One of my brother's and my favorites was a large pictorial history of World War I. It was more than an historic event; Uncle Howard Foster had participated, as had our friend Carleton Lowe, and other men we knew and saw regularly, and who sometimes talked of their experiences in France. I read most of the books we had, and, from an early age, was a regular patron of our village library, but for the other members of our family, including my brother, reading for pleasure was not high on their lists of favorite diversions. We also had magazines: National Geographic, America Rifleman, Field & Stream, Boys Life and at times Better Homes & Gardens, Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers, that I remember. We received two daily newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cleveland News, and our weekly local paper, the Chagrin Falls Exponent. We had plenty of reading material but it was perused selectively and primarily for information. Our local paper, the Exponent, was another one-man operation, owned and published by a Mr. Bailey whose wife would have been my first grade teacher had I attended the first grade. Mr. Bailey was not only the owner and publisher, he was also editor and editorialist, advertising manager, typesetter, printer, and distributor. During World War II, he sent his paper, free of charge, to every village man and woman who was in the military service or otherwise away on war service. When I got home on leave, I made a point of going to his office to express my appreciation.

We had other amusements, too. We had games. We had board games like Monopoly, and my favorite, Buster Bumps Automobile Trip. We had jigsaw puzzles. We had checkers, and my brother and I taught ourselves to play chess. We had card games like Hearts, and Old Maid, and Double Solitaire. Grandma joined in with a will, and Mother, too. Dad would sit in when he had time. Sometimes there would be a big bowl of freshly popped pop corn, and apples or a pitcher of cider brought up from the basement.

And we had music. Mother played both piano and cello. My brother and I learned to play the piano from cousin Alfred Marion Wilbur. Usually, someone would sit down after supper and play for the enjoyment, and sometimes we would play piano-cello duets. There was large cabinet next to the piano filled with sheet music; classical, standards, popular, and we added to the collection regularly. My brother also studied the Hawaiian guitar - the kind that you lay in your lap and slide a bar up and down the strings. From time to time, he and I would join with some of our respective friends in organizing a dance band but nothing ever came of those efforts. Dad owned and played a small accordion and a large harmonica, and was really at his best around a camp fire playing the old sing-alongs. As I mentioned earlier, we had a phonograph, a wind-up Victorola in a handsome wooden cabinet, and we had a goodly collection of records: classics, standards, popular, music hall. Dad would often bring home new records from his store and we would all sit around and listen. You had better sit and listen or you would miss the whole thing; those old records played for only two or three minutes. First you would wind up the spring motor by cranking a handle on the side. Then you would place a record on the turntable, start the turntable turning, place the tone arm on the record, and sit back and listen. When the piece was through, you lifted the tone arm off the record, stopped the turntable, and repeated the procedure with the next record. The needles were soft steel and wore out after six or eight records were played. So there was a box of new needles next to the turntable and a can for storing the worn out ones, except that we boys found a good use for them. They were the essential ingredient in our home-made darts.

To make darts, you needed, besides the needles, used kitchen matches, bits of stiff paper, and a short length of string, and of course a jackknife but every boy had one of those in his pocket. You made a split in one end of the match stick about a half-inch deep, and in the other end two splits in the form of a cross. You inserted the phonograph needle in the single split and secured it with string, and the bits of paper in the double split to form fins The needles provided enough weight so that the darts flew true. We threw them at any and all reasonable targets and sometimes had a to get the stepladder to retrieve them from the ceiling. That's when we were banished to the basement. Another favorite way of recycling match sticks was in making tanks (like in military weapon). For a tank you needed a wooden thread spool, preferably empty, a rubber band, a button, and a wax washer carved from a bar of paraffin. The flanges on the spool were notched (for traction), the rubber band was threaded through the hole in the spool and one end secured with a button. The other end was threaded through the wax washer and around the match stick. You held the spool in one hand and wound the rubber band tightly, using the match sick as a windlass. Set down, those little rascals would crawl all over the room and even up a modest incline.

We boys made lots of things. A discarded automobile inner tube was a treasure, a truck tube was even better. A strip maybe an inch wide and fourteen inches long with a leather pocket attached to one end with stout string made a slingshot. We never bothered with traditional Y-shaped slingshots, ours were easier to make, easier to carry, and tucked away in a hip pocket never aroused adult suspicions. Bands cut from an inner tube became ammunition for rubber band guns. All you needed was a piece of wood shaped more or less like a pistol and a spring clothespin. We shot up every bad guy in the west and all the pesky redskins, and every pirate that sailed the Spanish Main. An old roller skate was the basis for scooter. Disassembled, the skate was nailed to the bottom of a length of two-by-four, an orange crate was nailed on top with maybe a cross stick for a handle bar, and you could scoot all over town.

I mentioned before that our village movie house was diagonally across the street from our home, and the program was changed every week or two, but, again, I don't remember Dad, or Mother, or Grandma ever patronizing it. Again, it was simply not high on their list of interests. We kids often went to the Saturday matinee to sit up front and cheer on our favorite cowboys: Tom Mix, or Hoot Gibson, or Ken Maynard. We never paid to get in, we used passes earned by passing out handbills of coming attractions.

Church was another institution attended by only the younger members of our household. I remember Mother taking us to Sunday school at the Federated Church on Bell Street, and I think she helped out there, until we were old enough to go by ourselves. Later, I transferred to the Methodist Church on Franklin Street because I liked the kids better there, and subsequently my brother did, too. As we grew, we progressed from one class and teacher to the next, up to a point. At about age 15 or 16 we were promoted to the class taught by Miss Florence Barrows. It was a large class that grew larger each year because Miss Barrows was far and away the most popular teacher and the older boys simply refused to move on. She was a middle-aged spinster lady who lived in a big house up on South Main Street where she cared for a mentally retarded brother and supported them both by teaching piano. She was deeply religious and a stern and strict disciplinarian, but she had a strong rapport with boys, all of us. Long after we were grown and married and had families of our own we would gather for picnics of Miss Barrows' class, and she never relaxed her discipline. In my teen years, I also attended Epworth League at our church on Sunday evenings but that was mostly because the girls did, too, and if you were lucky you could walk them home.

Going for a ride was a family recreational event on some Sunday afternoons and occasionally on a long summer evening. Our first car that I remember was an Oldsmobile touring car. It had four doors, a fabric top, and side curtains made of oilcloth and isinglass that could be snapped into place should the weather turn inclement. A rail across the back of the front seats held a lap robe or two. It was garaged in the carriage shed attached to the barn. Come winter, Dad would drain the radiator, put the car up on blocks, and store the tires and battery in the basement. Successive models boasted refinements such as heaters and antifreeze, and tire chains, but still you didn't do much driving in the winter. Getting stuck in snow or ice on a hill (and we had plenty of those) meant trying to jack up the rear wheels and mount those dadblamed chains, never an easy task in the best conditions. The county stockpiled cinders on most of the hills, so you carried a shovel and pail to spread them under your wheels, but driving was still pretty risky. Going for a ride was just that. We would all pile in the car and drive around the countryside looking at farms and crops and livestock, and enjoying the outing. The only other uses for our car were to go to the Little Farm or to visit relatives outside of town or go to a shooting match, and, when my brother and I reached high school and were active in athletics, to help transport our teams to away games. We never used our automobile for shopping, the stores in our town were all within easy walking distance, and the only other place to shop was in Cleveland. Mother and Grandma and sometimes a female relative or two would go in to Cleveland maybe once a year shopping. Dad went in several times a year to buy goods for his store. Transportation was by bus from Chagrin to Warrensville Center which was the eastern terminus of the Shaker Rapid Transit line, and then by electrically-powered trolleys all the way to downtown Cleveland. The trolleys consisted of one or two cars. A motorman sat in the front, collected tickets, drove the trolley, and in cold weather stoked the little pot-bellied stove that sat in the middle of each car. Those people who lived in Chagrin and worked in Cleveland commuted the same way. Cleveland at that time was the fifth largest city in the country, and downtown was vibrant and bustling. There were the great old department stores; Higbee's and The May Company, Bailey's and Taylors, Halle's and Sterling and Welch whose three-story-high Christmas tree was in itself worth the trip. In between were the fine specialty stores: men's clothing such as Baker's and Richmond's, jewelry stores like Webb C. Ball and Beatty's, Chandler and Rudd with imported delicacies from all over the world, and many more. Cleveland was an exiting place to visit in those days.

As I said earlier, we usually spent a week or two in the summer at our cottage on the Little Farm. Some summers we vacationed at Mentor-on-the-Lake in a cottage owned by Mr. Baldwin who also worked at the Brewster & Church Co. There was an amusement park there, also a dance hall, and of course a wide sandy beach where we all swam and played in the sand. After Uncle Ezra Teare died in 1926, Aunt Sadie and Cousin Robert came east and stayed for several months. Sometime in the summer, they, with Mother, my brother, and I went to Niagara Falls. Dad drove us into Cleveland and, at a pier down on the lake front, we boarded the lake steamer See and Bee for the overnight trip to Buffalo. We spent a day viewing the falls from both sides, and that night boarded the See and Bee for the overnight return trip to Cleveland. That was a pretty exciting event.

Another diversion was roller skating. The odd Sunday afternoon in the winter would find Mother, Dad, brother, and me at one of the nearby roller rinks. There was one at Bainbridge Center about three miles southeast of town, a large barn that doubled as a dance hall, and was sometimes a gambling hall (illegal) when the political climate was right. There was another at Bedford about ten miles south that was also a roller rink and dance hall. Later there was a rink built in our village at the far end of south Main Street. My brother and I, and most of the other kids also had street skates - steel frames with four steel wheels in a rectangular pattern, a C-shaped clamp that tightened with a key to grip the sole of your shoe near the front, and a leather strap at the heel that pulled tight over your instep. And we skated, yes we did, mostly in the evening and particularly when the village resurfaced the streets with macadam that made a lovely skating surface. We skated all over town and congregated under the streetlamps to organize games like Red Rover and Crack the Whip, and actually wore those skates out. We did, wore the steel wheels until they feel apart, and when that occurred on a dark street and you were going full speed it was a little wearing on the boy, too. Mr. Greed's hardware store did a steady business in replacement skate wheels, and the ball bearings when we could salvage them made potent slingshot ammunition. One thing I never did understand, my brother and I were forbidden by parents to have bicycles - Too many automobiles they said, too much traffic - but they never objected to our roller skating up and down the streets.

Dad was, as I said, active in the Masonic Lodge and the Kiwanis Club, and Mother was active in the Eastern Star and for awhile in the D.A.R. The Masonic Temple had pool tables and sometimes Dad would take us to shoot pool, under the disapproving eyes of the old custodian who didn't have much use for boys. Once a year the Kiwanis Club would stage some sort of entertainment, maybe a minstrel show or schooldays skits. And once a year our Fire Department would put on a dance which Dad and Mother faithfully attended. At our high school, the junior and senior classes would produce an operetta each spring. These were all community social events so we faithfully attended. Usually, during the winter, our police chief, Alvin Smith, who was a Navy veteran and an ex-boxer, would organize a boxing program with bouts for boys of all ages.

National holidays (Memorial Day (we called it Decoration Day), the Fourth of July, and Labor Day) were marked with parades, oratory, and ceremonies. The parades were led by our American Legion Drum & Bugle Corps, and a fine one it was. There were probably thirty members and they practiced conscientiously once a week at the high school football field. Our friend and neighbor Carleton Lowe played the base drum and the best bugler was Mr. Benny Miraglia who had a shoe repair shop at the north end of Main Street. We didn't have a school band, but there was a town band of sorts that usually got itself together for the major parades and occasionally played a Saturday night concert in the band stand on Triangle Park. Once I remember watching the Ku Klux Klan march soundlessly down Main Street. It was kind of eerie, knowing that under the robes and hoods were friends and neighbors. People said that they marched out south of town where some black folks were building a little settlement and there burned a cross, but I don't know if that was so.

In 1933, there was a super celebration on the occasion of our town's centennial. There were parades and pageants, games and races and speeches. The whole town was decorated and folks dressed up in old time clothes. My brother was, at the time, helping out at the Buick garage. The men from there went out into the surrounding countryside and from chicken coops and barns resurrected about a dozen antique automobiles. They hauled them back to the garage, cleaned them up, restored them to running condition, and drove them in the parades. There was one, a 1906 Brush as I recall, for which they could not find tires to fit the rims. Not to worry - the paper mill supplied some old ships hawser about as big around as your arm that was wired onto the rims and worked just fine. The oldest car was an 1890-something horseless carriage literally. It was a buggy with the shafts removed and a one-cylinder engine installed under the tail gate. A tiller sticking up through the floor boards was both steering and throttle. A tall cadaverous young man named Harvey Marks, all got up with chin whiskers, and stovepipe hat and a claw hammer coat drove the contrivance, accompanied by my brother in sunbonnet and hoopskirt. We still have pictures of them. After the party was over, they took all the cars and put them back in the barns and chicken coops. I don't think anyone considered their collectability. Everyone had such a good time, from the oldest citizens who gloried in reminiscing to the lads who dressed (or rather undressed ) like Indians and paddled canoes up and down the river, that they all decided to make it an annual event. They called it Blossom Time in the Valley and it is still carried on today.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years were low-key family affairs whose principal activity was hunting. These were about the only times that Dad and my brother and I could go hunting together. Dad was free on Wednesday afternoons but Austin and I had to go to school. We were free on Saturdays, but Dad had to work. Going hunting on these three holidays became a family tradition. Preparation began the evening before. After being assured that Mother and Grandma had everything needed for the feast that would follow our return, we laid out and inspected boots and hunting coats, wiped out our guns and checked that we had plenty of the right kind of ammunition, honed our knives, laid out flannel shirts and wool socks, and so on. We didn't start out real early. Dad usually held the store open the evening before for late shoppers, so he would be late getting home and deserving of a good night's sleep. Everyone had to have a good breakfast, and on Christmas the next order of business was opening our presents. Then, usually, Dad made a quick trip down to the store to check the furnaces and pick up a small gift for the farmer whose land we would be hunting on. He never lost sight of the fact that they were all customers as well as friends, and treated them with innate courtesy. Finally, we were ready to go.

Arriving at the selected farm (a conversation the last time the farmer was in Dad's store assured that we would not be unwelcome), we followed a set routine. Our car was carefully parked out of the way, and leaving our guns and hunting coats in the car, we went looking for the farmer usually down in the barn but sometimes up at the house. After exchanging greetings, we went to look at the livestock. Dad would offer his small gift, a pair of socks or maybe gloves, inexpensive but useful, and discuss in detail exactly where we might hunt and which parts of the farm to avoid. Then, and only then, we donned hunting coats, picked up our guns and went hunting. We never tried for bag limits or shot indiscriminately. We simply enjoyed being out in the open, in good company, and absorbing all there was to see. The pattern of chewing told which kind of squirrel had eaten the nuts. We never passed a wild apple tree without looking to see what had been eating the windfalls, and sampling the apples ourselves. Chewed cattail roots floating in a swamp meant that there were probably muskrats, useful information if you planned to trap. Is that a bee tree? We'll note its location and tell the farmer. Did you know that rabbits often hole up in hollow trees and climb several feet up the hollow interior? They do, and Dad taught us how to twitch them out into the open. We didn't pass up a fair shot at a rabbit, but two or three was enough. If we bagged more than one, we always offered one, bled and field dressed to the farmer and I don't think the offer was ever turned down. Of course we thanked the farmer for allowing us to hunt on his land. The courtesy paid off, too. We were welcome on farms where no one else was allowed.

Back home, we wiped out our guns, unfailingly, and put any wet boots or clothes to dry, washed up, and then sat down to dinner. On Thanksgiving there was a roast turkey with all the fixings and pumpkin or mince pie for dessert. On Christmas and New Years Day we might have turkey or a goose or a duck depending on what was available out in the barn. We had roast chicken, but that was mostly for Sunday dinner. After Christmas dinner, it was time for close examination of our Christmas presents which might include a game, a book, a toy automobile, or maybe an erector set. We had a Christmas tree, of course, a cut tree bought from one of the grocery stores and decorated with electric lights, ornaments, and tinsel. Our homemade tree holder had no provision for water so the tree dried out pretty fast. Dad had assembled outdoor lights from wire and sockets, and these festooned the front porch. We were one of the few families who displayed outdoor decorations. We never hung up stockings, partly at least because we had no fireplace or mantel or other appropriate place to hang them. We had plenty of Christmas cookies, however, all kinds, homebaked and delicious. And the fruitcakes, made last summer, wrapped, and stored in the attic to age, were brought down for eating. Christmas cards were exchanged with out-of-town friends and relatives, but that was about the extent of our celebration.

New Years was, compared to today, almost a non-event. The stores in our village remained open until maybe 10 PM, and then there was the usual hour-long cleaning and tidying, so the store people like Dad got home late and tired. I think some of the churches may have held a Watch Night, but is so it was poorly publicized. Otherwise there were no New Years Eve festivities, not even house parties, that I ever heard of, none at all. Hunting season closed after New Years Day so we made sure we got in one last safari. Following dinner it was time to disassemble and remove the Christmas tree, and take a nap, or maybe vice versa. There wasn't a football game within sight or hearing.

Football season ended on or before Thanksgiving, with the biggest game of the whole year held on Thanksgiving morning - the annual Case-Reserve tussle. The preeminent conference in northeastern Ohio was the Big Four: Case School of Applied Science, Western Reserve University, John Carroll University, and Baldwin-Wallace College. The rivalry was fierce and their games dominated the sports pages of the Cleveland papers. I remember attending games at both Case and Baldwin-Wallace when I was growing up. The Case-Reserve game was the biggest of all, bigger it seemed than the Ohio State - Michigan games today. It was played at League Park and later at Cleveland Municipal Stadium before the Mayor of Cleveland, sometimes the Governor, and all the prominent people in the area. There were avid Ohio State alumni around, even as now. One was Mr. Frank Stanton, Mayor of Chagrin Falls and Sunday School teacher at the Federated Church, who just about every year would take his Sunday School class, including my brother, to Columbus for an Ohio State game. All of which reminds me that high school football in those days was quite different than when you were growing up, and maybe I'll tell you about that next.

Love, Pops.

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