MY LIFE and TIMES

MERL SCHIFFMAN

"Sometimes one must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been" - Sophocles
To our forefathers in gratitude,
To Mathilda, the best thing that ever happened to me,
and to our sons in hope.

Mine has been an amazing age. Starting with World War I, the crumbling of Kings and Empires, the rise of Soviet Russia under Lenin, the failure of the League of Nations, the ineptness of Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, the collapse of the Stock Market, the Great Depression, dictators Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, the Nazi oppression of the Jews, World War II, the first Atomic Bomb, China became Communist, the end of Colonialism, the Korean War, Senator McCarthy and Richard Nixon's witch hunts, the Supreme Court decision on "Brown vs. the Board of Education", emerging Third World Nations, Civil Rights demands and President Eisenhower's indifference, John XXIII, President Kennedy's assassination, the mindless Viet Nam War. Selma, Peace marches and Robert Kennedy's assassination, men walked on the Moon, Kent State, a vice-president and President resigned in disgrace, the Revised Church, changing Religion and the Altered Ministry.

Part I

  • I was born on Saturday, September 25, 1909 in a house at 435 Leopard Street in Dunkirk, New York. Dr. William Sullivan was the attending physician. My Mother and Father and sister Irene lived there in a rented house until 1910 when we moved to 733 Lion Street (later Main).

    Over the years I have said I was born at the end of the horse drawn era and am living now in the nuclear age. Or, to put it another way, I was born the month that Halley's comet was telescopically in sight and hope to see it in 1986. As a child I heard the comet mentioned by my parents and relatives - but in no memorable way.

    Dunkirk was a city of about 15,000 residents at that time and never grew beyond 17,000 to 19,000 through the years. It was a pleasant, residential community with modest homes, tree-lined streets, and a friendly, relaxed manner in which one knew many of the folks in town. The main industry was the Brooks Locomotive Works ("The Shop"), later merged with the American Locomotive Company of Schenectady (ALCO). There was also a small steel plant, an Ax factory at the end of our street, a Brewery, and a fishing industry in the summer.

    We lived in the midst of a grape growing area which extended from near the city of Buffalo on the east along the Lake Erie shore, to the Pennsylvania State line. In both Dunkirk and Fredonia (which adjoined Dunkirk inland), there were nine garden seed companies and a number of canning factories. Miles around us was a wide area of fruit and vegetable farms and orchards which supplied the canning factories and our households. Each Fall the odor of cooking tomatoes hung heavy over the community, followed by the smell of grape juice. In my early days five railroads went through the city, with heavy traffic, and one could see long lines of freight and cattle cars streaming through town leaving dust and odor.

    Nearby Fredonia was the first American city to use natural gas for lighting, there being wells nearby. Also, farmers in the area had their own private gas wells which supplied their homes. The excess gas not needed in their homes was burned. One could go along the roads at night and see the torch light flames of burning gas in almost every farmyard.

    I don't remember my sister Irene (5-25-06 to 10-14-10) and have only a dim recollection of hearing her mentioned by my folks when I was small. I was told later that she was injured at birth and died of complications from it. I remember it being said that she was carried about all her brief life on a pillow, "a frail, sweet little girl". (Picture of her in a baby buggy in file.)

    My brother Jack (John Ferdinand) was born February 14, 1912. Brother James Henry was born February 19, 1918. We grew up together.

    In my childhood, I thought the house on Lion Street was a huge place. In later years, it seemed so small. There was a verandah across the front and along one side (see file) with a wooden swing on chains hung from the ceiling (Dad made it). A large garden was at the rear with a rain barrel at a back corner of the house. Mother washed her hair with the rain water and there was always water in it for the plants and garden. The house had three bedrooms upstairs and one down. My folks slept in the front room upstairs and Jack and I in another. Though when the folks went our for an evening in the early days, I was put to bed in the downstairs bedroom and Jack put in a crib. My earliest childhood recollection is a night when they were going out. Jack was crying, Dad was impatient and Mother was trying to calm both of them; while a girl named Wanda, who helped often, stood by.

    The house had a wooden sidewalk as all neighbor's houses did. Once, helping Dad rip out the front sidewalk to replace it with concrete, he found Mother's long lost diamond ring under one of the boards. Its disappearance had been the subject of pondering in our house for several years. Apparently it had slipped off her finger as she removed her gloves on approaching the house.

    A streetcar went down the tracks at the center of the brick pavement of Lion Street, a big green one like a passenger train car, with mohair seats, a lumbering sound and a mournful whistle. It went from Buffalo, NY to Erie, PA through the enter of each city and village. There also was a local "dinky" which went across town clanging its bell and bouncing from front to back as it ran by. In Summer, there were several open cars (like the San Francisco cable cars) and we could stand on the side running board and hang on. We knew the motorman by name and even called out to him that we would board when he returned inbound. He would stop and wait for us ever if we were still closing up the house. Mother would, at other times, help us aboard. The motorman sat us behind him and he put us off at park and Fourth Streets, a few doors fro our grandparents. The fare was five cents and we talked with him on the whole ride.

    My Mother, Mary (Mame) Ann (Cecil) Joy was born October 6, 1880. We always thought of her as Mary Cecil, her obituary in the newspaper is Mary C. But records from the St. Mary's R.C. Church, Dunkirk, New York state Mary Ann on her birth record and Mary Ann on her Confirmation Record of June 15, 1893. Sometimes at Confirmation in an earlier day, a child was permitted, even encouraged to add another name and it may be that she chose and added Cecil. ( When I was studying for R.C. Confirmation, I recall it being suggested that I could add a name and Joseph was urged upon me. I never reached confirmation at St. Mary's.)

    There is also the matter of her birth date. This is a translation of the record in Latin of St. Mary's R.C. Church, Dunkirk, New York, baptism No. 50 in the year 1880: "On the 8th day of October I baptized Mary Ann, born on the 6th day of the same, of John Joy and Bridget Maroney, duly married, s/John B. Bandinelli (see file).

    I have one record from Jack and the obituary in the Dunkirk Evening OBSERVER of April 21, 1918 which gives her birth as October 5, 1881. I also have a note in Mathilda's handwriting of Mary Joy, Alexander Schiffman and Irene May Schiffman and the birth date of Mary Joy is October 5, 1980. She got this from Jack or Estella in 1969. I also recall "Aunt" Dorothy Schulenberg commenting to me once that my Mother was two years older than my Father. The records in Dunkirk City Hall and Albany, New York will have to be checked for further information about this birth date.

    My Mother died April 19, 1918, thirty-six years old.

    Mother was tall, frail, with dark hair, dark eyes, an attractive lady with a soft voice, a lilt of Irish brogue; a kind and gentle woman (see picture in file). I was told that she was very talkative. ( A friend of hers said to me in later years that I had the "gift of gab" like my Mother). She was married to Dad in St. Mary's Rectory in Dunkirk, New York. The record: "Alexander Shiffman and Mary Joy were lawfully married on the 30 day of August, 1904 . . . . . . Rev. Agatho Clifford officiating in the presence of Fred Dolan and Helen Murray." This marriage book, dated 1896-1924 is posted in English and gives this additional information: Mother and Father of Alexander Shiffman: Ferdinand Shiffman, Whil. Schulenberg. Mother and Father of Mary Joy: Juo Joy and Bridget Maroney (see file).

    Time may have dimmed it, but I have no recollection of severe punishment until after 1918. Scoldings, yes, and being sent to my room. Once Mother put on her coat and said she was leaving "such a boy", which brought me to frantic tears. (I don't recall what I had done). Sometimes she would wonder whether we should be sent to the Catholic Orphan Home on Bennet Road. It was her way of getting us to mind.

    At times she walked us up to the Home, bringing clothes or food and would sit out on a park bench in the yard having tea with the nuns. I was afraid of the place every time we visited it.

    Mother was Irish, Catholic and firm about it. We went to Mass every Sunday morning at St. Mary's Church (Irish) at 9:30 while Protestant Dad stayed home, read the paper and "put the meat on" for dinner. St. Mary's, with the monastery, gardens, school and a nearby Orphan's Home was an enormous, awesome place to me. Mother visited with friends each Sunday seeing relatives and her friends. After Mass we went to 312 Park Avenue, a block away, to visit Grandma Joy, have a snack and then walk home. Once in a while when we were late, or in bad weather, we went to Sacred Heart Church on Lion Street (German). When we did, the Joys always 'phoned our house by noon to see if we were well. Dunkirk also had two Polish Catholic churches and one Italian - five in all - but we were Irish.

    The Joy family lived at 312 Park Avenue (formerly Elk), across the street from the monastery gardens which were at the rear of St. Mary's. John Patrick Joy, my grandfather, was born June 24, 1847, in Port Colbourne, Ontario, Canada. Many Irish emigrated to Canada - an easy entry - worked on the railroads and in the grain mills and eventually crossed the border at Buffalo settling along the shores of Lake Erie. The potato famine of 1845-48 may have prompted his father William to leave Ireland with many others.

    John Joy was short, swarthy, thoroughly Irish with a strong brogue. He could speak Gaelic. He walked with a dignified bearing, appearing in later years at every funeral in town in his Prince Albert coat (we have), derby hat and huge watch fob and chain on his vest (Glenn has). He knew every old time resident in town.

    My father told me that John Joy was "well-to-do" in his early days. He had a saloon at the corner of Third and Fox Streets. My cousin Ruth Joy Kornprobst says he allowed a lot of credit, and along with his wife Bridget's drinking, he gave up the place, losing heavily. Before his losses, he owned the land on both sides of the 300 block of Park Avenue and on the west side of the 300 block of Fox Street.

    Dad also told me another story of losses concerning the next job John Joy had as a detective for the Erie Railroad. There was a block long Erie-New York Central freight house at Third and Park, a huge building with freight cars parked along the platforms. Dad said that John was part of a stake out one night to catch car thieves. He saw a man running, shouted to "Halt", and, when the man didn't, he shot him - in the back, and killed him. He was sued by the man's family. He turned over property to St. Mary's Church, lost other lots and ended up with only his residence at 312 Park Avenue.

    From that time on, he was a crossing watchman at Deer Street, in the tower at Main Street and lastly, at Roberts Road. The New York Central, and earlier the Lake Shore railroad also, ran many trains on four or five tracks along Third Street with eight crossings - a busy area and a busy job. When Grandpa Joy was in the tower, raising and lowering the gates at Main Street, I used to take his dinner pail to him. He would lower a rope with a hook on it and up went the dinner pail. Later I used to stop at the Roberts Road crossing and visit with him in his shanty.

    Jon as Catholic, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and a Democrat. In retirement, he sat in the AOH hall on North Main Street and visited with the men. I remember Dad taking me to a parade on a night before a November election and seeing the torch lights flaring, a band playing, marchers shuffling and Grandpa Joy in his frock coat, derby, a wide red ribbon across his chest. From childhood I thought Democrats were Catholic and Republicans were Protestants. In later years, I was surprised the first time I learned of a Protestant Roosevelt being a Democrat. All my early life I also associated red color with Democrats and blue color with Republicans.

    John Joy was a kind man to us kids and we loved to stay at 312 Park Avenue. I recall him telling me around 1930 that the trouble with our country was the fault of Herbert Hoover because he was an Englishman! Grandpa Joy died in October, 1932 leaving an estate of $700. I tried to find Joys in Southern Ireland but there were too many of them - and I had no place to start.

    In 1939 I visited Effie Halloway and her Mother, Mary Ball in Laona, New York, near Fredonia. Mary Ball was John Joy's sister. She showed me a prayer book which belonged to William Joy, my great-grandfather. He wrote in the front and back of it - dates of births, deaths and vows to stop drinking. (See file for typed information from it and see security file for the book).

    I was promised the book but could not get it until in the late '60s. I contacted the executor of Effie's estate, who found the book and give it to me.

    Back at the time of my visit to Effie and her mother, Mary told me that her father William and his wife Mary Clifford came from Ireland to Port Colbourne, Ontario, Canada, a city on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie which, on a clear day, one could see 26 miles across from Dunkirk. Later he worked in a grain elevator in Buffalo, moved to Brocton, New York, 18 miles from Dunkirk and died June 24, 1898. (I failed to ask Mary Ball of his birth and residence in Ireland.)

    Effie told me she recalled her grandfather as a very smart man though the diary doesn't indicate much brightness. She remembered her grandmother berating William for working as a laborer all his life when "with your education you could have a good office job". She also recalled him as a steady drinker until the day he died.

    My maternal grandmother Bridget Joy Moroney (or O'Moroney), daughter of Timothy Moroney and Abbie Sullivan came from Killorglin, County Kerry to the USA with her sister Abbie (Deborah) (Mrs. Patrick Clifford), Hannah (Mrs. George Rahn) and Mary (Higgins) before 1880, probably in her 20s. She married John Joy May 7, 1874.

    Old St. Mary's R.C. Church, Dunkirk, New York record book 1860-95 reads: JOHN JOY TO BRIDGET MARONEY Die onijois venuntiationibus in Matrimonio Johannem filum guilemis Joy and Mariae Sullivan - Testes fuere Patritius Clifford and Abbia Maroney. Rev Andre McGurgan, C.P.

    Translated: On the 7th day of May, having omitted two announcements of the banns of matrimony, John, son of William Joy and Mary Cliffford, and Bridget, daughter of Timothy Maroney and Abbia Sullivan. Witnesses were Patrick Clifford and Abbia Maroney.

    This record raises several questions. First, "guilemis" is not quite "William" but the closest we can come to it. Maroney is MA instead of MO. Later, on Mary Joy's baptism record it comes out "Marooney".

    (David Sullivan of Ireland and Ruth Joy Kornprobst both told me it was Maroney).

    To the union of John and Bridget besides my mother, were born Margaret, James (1879-1941) Timothy, all who I knew from childhood and John (10-6-89 to 11-17-11).

    I talked with Bridget Joy's sister (Aunt Abbie), my great aunt Deborah (Mrs. Patrick Clifford) in the late '30s. She said they all worked for a great landlord in Ireland. I was very new at questioning and failed to ask her many questions. How and why the sisters got to Dunkirk, I don't know.

    Robert E. Kennedy in his book, The Irish (Univ. of CA Press, 1973, pg. 22) says that the Irish had someone to go to when they arrived in the USA, often someone who had sent them help to make the trip.

    Lawrence J. McCaffrey in his book, The Irish Diaspora in America, (Indiana Univ. Press, 1976, pg. 56) writes, "Most often these people were part of landlord-sponsored emigration projects. Seriously concerned for the welfare of their tenants, some landlords hired ships and sent their people off well-provided . . . Others . . . transported their tenants without adequate food or clothing not to help them to but to reduce their own contributions to poor relief. Voyages were nightmares; they were sick from rolling seas, the stench below deck, hunger and fever; they were assaulted and cheated by brutal ship captains and crews. When they reached their destinations they were cheated out of scarce funds by sellers of counterfeit rail and river tickets".

    Bridget married John Joy; Abbie married Patrick Clifford of Dunkirk; Hannah married George Rahn of Dunkirk and Mary married a Higgins in nearby Brocton. Katherine married a Sullivan and remained on the old homestead in Ballykissane, Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland.

    Josephine Rahn Napper told me recently that all four sisters worked in the old Erie Railroad Hotel as chambermaids until they got married.

    Bridget was lame. (Ruth Joy Kornprobst, my cousin, says Bridget broke her hip while crossing the lots from the saloon to the house while drunk). She moved about with a cane, sending the chickens flying as she hobble about the yard. She was stooped, had a strong Irish brogue and when she said "Merl", as a child it sound to me as "Muddle". She poured Grandpa's boiling hot coffee into a large cup and he immediately poured it into a huge saucer and, with two hands held it to his lips and blew on it until cool. I don't think he ever drank out of a cup!

    Their house stood next to the Clifford's with a common sidewalk between. Patrick Clifford was dead in my time but "Aunt Abbie" lived there with her son William, his wife and two children. A daughter Kate Davis lived with her husband a few doors away. I can still see Abbie in black garb, a black shawl over her head and shoulders, shuffling over to St. Mary's every morning for prayers. I saw Irish women in Killorglin in '59 and '71 in black shawls looking as I remember Aunt Abbie.

    312 Park Avenue was two blocks from the 300 block of Central Avenue, the main business area of Dunkirk. My Mother used to wheel the baby carriage or walk us as far as Grandma Joy's and leave us there while she went shopping. At times she left us with Bill Wheeler and his wife, diagonally across the street from Joys. Bill was a Negro barber. We all went to Bill for haircuts. Dr. William Sullivan, our family doctor until Pre-World War I, lived across the street from the Joys.

    My aunt Margaret Joy worked her whole life as a clerk in the Boston "Department" Store on Main Street until she married in her late 50s. Uncle Timothy was a plumber pushing his two-wheeled cart and supplies along the streets of town. His son Gerald (dec,) and daughter Ruth (Kornprobst) I knew well. She is still living in nearby Silver Creek, New York and helped me with parts of the Joy side of this story. Uncle James worked in the shop, married Mary (Mame) Rider in my time - I was very fond of Jim and Mame. He had an amazing knowledge of everyone in town, their ancestors and descendants. Aunt Mame gave me his stickpin and two watches. She died 5-10-77, aged 96.

    I remember little things like going to Confession on Saturday afternoons, reciting the confession I had learned at first communion class, being given five Hail Mary's and ten Our Fathers to recite at the altar. Hurrying through them, I rushed out to meet my baseball-bound buddies at the church door. Once when very young, during Sunday morning Mass, sitting upfront with the first communion class, I took the notion to get up and stalk across the front of the sanctuary. I recall being snatched by a nun and settled down next to her. I can still hear my Mother laughingly telling everyone about it. Once I marched in a white suit in some kind of evening May festival parade from the nearby school to the Church climbing up a winding stairs around a statue of Mary to the top and placing a wreath of flowers on its head. I haven't the slightest idea why except perhaps the annual festival of the patron saint?

    My father, Alexander Gerhardt Heinrich Schiffmann was born April 15, 1882 in Diepholz, Provinz Hannover, Germany. (See file for baptismal certificate and picture of Diepholz church). Dad was of medium height, stocky, had blond hair and a slight stutter when he became excited in conversation. He rode to work and back on a bicycle. He made a small seat between the handle bars and Jack and I rode on it when we ran down the street to meet him coming home from work. (In Dunkirk, "down" was north toward the Lake and "up" was south away from the Lake). Dad was a Bicycle racer in his youth - at County Fairs, etc., - and he told me that he and Fred Zimmerman, a neighbor were racing partners. One raced and the other was the pacer and they alternated. Fred Zimmerman became a priest and served Springville, New York Parish south of Boston Valley.

    Dad was a quiet person with children. But I remember him waltzing about the room with Jack in his arms, singing Irish songs. Incidentally, though the time was 45 years after the Civil War, veterans were very much around and Civil War songs were also popular. I sang "Tenting Tonight" when I was a little boy.

    Dad didn't say much to us unless he was teaching us - gardening, painting or something. I remember having him call me to go to work mornings, sitting at the kitchen table, both of us eating and not saying a word the whole time. In later years, he related better to the grand children and neighbor kids.

    Sometime pre-WW I, I heard him talking with Mother about the house - they were buying or selling it - and particularly mentioning that he had dropped the second "n" from Schiffmann. I always regretted it, it seemed so chopped off.

    Dad worked at Brooks Works and moonlighted at Guay's Machine Shop to improve his skills. Eventually, he became chief boring mill machinist and worked there until he retired in 1948. We have said that if you saw a steam locomotive which came out of Brooks Works, Dad bored its cylinders. He was also skilled at making cabinets, tables, including the white sled we have which he made for Irene and the rest of us. He had a large garden each year, in fact was a hard working man all his life. Busy as anyone could be around the house in his retirement, he eventually suffered miserably with arthritis and was finally bed-ridden the last years before his death, December 27, 1963.

    My paternal grandfather, Franz Ferdinand Schiffmann was born in Oelde bei Beckum, Provinz Westphalen, Germany on July 21, 1848. He later was a station master for the railroad in Diepholz, Westphalen. He heard of the need for railroad men in America and emigrated in October, 1883. My Father was a year and a half old at that time.

    F. Ferdinand with wife, Richard, Jennie, and Dad (see photograph of them taken in Dunkirk) came to Westfield, NY (west of Dunkirk on Lake Erie) to a friend William Saxe and worked on a farm for him. He then worked in a winery in nearby Brocton and moved to Dunkirk to 111 Sisson Street on November 5, 1888. His naturalization papers (see file) indicate that he applied for US citizenship on December 8, 1883 about two months after he arrived in this country and received his citizenship October 10, 1891. He was skilled in penmanship and his signature on the citizenship papers so indicates. (His naturalization certificate can be viewed here. ) So does the slip of paper on which he wrote his obituary, dates to be filled in at his death (see file).

    F. Ferdinand worked at the Talcott street gate of Brooks Works all is life as a material and employee checker. He was widely known by everyone who worked there during his thirty year stint. He moved his family to 709 South Beaver Street (later Grant Avenue) when it was a pasture area and lived there the rest of his days. (They didn't pave the street until 1928). He died, suddenly, February 16, 1918 at closing time at work.

    Fr. Ferdinand's parents were August and Johanna (?) Schiffmann. He had a brother Fred. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and four sisters, Sophi Frevort (sp?), Louise Mast, Charlotte Landmann and Pauline Kaptuller, all of whom remained in Germany.

    There was a story in my youth that these German immigrants came to America via solicitation by Erie Railroad agents. They were supposed to get to its Dunkirk terminus (from New York City), take a steam boat and sail the lakes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The story also was that some arrived in Dunkirk in winter (as Ferdinand did); the lakes were closed and by Spring they decided to stay where they were.

    Frederick, "Fritz", my grandfather's brother was said to have come to the USA as a "missionary" and had a church for brief spell in Newark, New Jersey. He and his family got to Dunkirk and eventually to Milwaukee. I saw him briefly as a man at Ferdinand's funeral in Dunkirk. While Fritz lived in Dunkirk they had eight children, all of whom died in infancy or early childhood (cholera infantum?). They were buried in the old Protestant cemetery on Bennett Road. Later I could find no markers. They had three children in Milwaukee, two of whom died leaving a son Ferdinand. He was in the trucking business and I visited them while I was at Elmhurst College. Later, with his wife and son Ray and family, they bought a resort at St. Germaine, Wisconsin. Mathida and I visited them twice. Ferdinand died in 1972.

    My grandparents house on 709 Grant Avenue was "through the block" from our house on Lion Street and we visited there often. When they had electric lights installed, (1915?) we all went over one evening to see them "work". Ferdinand Schiffmann (see picture in file) was a pleasant, white bearded, short , stocky man who sat in his special chair after supper at night and smoked a long stemmed pipe which rested on the floor next to him. (Jack has it). In the summer at 11:45 noon, I used to take his big metal dinner pail, with the coffee container built into the top, to him - he watching for me over Talcott street from the gate. During the school season a boy who lived near the gate stopped at 709 and carried the pail to him - for a nickel.

    The Schiffman, Fitzer and Schulenberg Family, Christmas, 1915

    Every Sunday he dressed in his black suit, huge gold chain a across his vest and went to Church. He was financial Secretary of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church (later Evangelical and Reformed, still later United Church of Christ) for thirty-five years. After Sunday dinner, he piled the offering envelopes on the dining room table and checked them. He would ask us to go through the empty envelopes to be sure they were empty - leaving a penny in one or two for us to find and keep.

    Grandmother Wilhelmine Maria Magdelene Schulenberg married Fr. Ferdinand Schiffmann in Bassum bei Hoya, Prov. Hannover on October 24, 1874. They had a son, August Wilhelm, born in Bassum who died in five months (5-21-75 to 12-75) and was buried in Bassum; a son Richard born in Bassum 1877 and died 1890 and was buried in the Old Protestant cemetery on Bennett Road, Dunkirk, a daughter Johanna, born in Diepolz 1879 who lived and died in Dunkirk in 1942, and my father. A link to the Schulenberg genealogy page can be accessed here.

    Wilhelmine was born October 11, 1851 in Bassum bei Hoya, Hannover Provinz, Germany. Her father and mother were Heinrich, an inn-keeper, and Gretchen (Hildebrand). Her father's parents were Wilhelm and Katherine (Bruggemann) Schulenberg. Her mother's parents were Klaus Hildebrand and Ann (Jungblut). In writing to America Dad told me that Klaus Hildenbrand always added "wohl geboren" to his signature.

    Mathilda and I visited the Family Dreyer in Bramel bie Bremen in 1959. There was a Frau Herman (Frieda) Dreyer, a niece of Wilhemine Schiffmann living with Gretchen Schroeder, her daughter. We also met Ursula Bohlmann, a grandniece of Wilhemie via Dreyer and Willie Dreyer, a grandnephew (see file for addresses). We still exchange Christmas cards.

    Wilhemine was a pleasant, kind, heavy-set, hausfrau type, dressed in a long dress, with full apron and dustcap. We loved to visit her and Grandpa. Jack and I were left there when Dad and Mother went out for an evening (dancing or card club) and Grandma bundled us in bed under a huge featherbed. She made delicious cinnamon-sugar coffee cakes every Saturday morning, and one was for our house. In the Fall, she made fresh prune Kuchen which I still fondly remember. (Didn't have much of it through the years until I traveled in Germany in 1971 during the fresh prune season).

    Grandma Wilhemine (see four generation photograph ) sat down every morning at 9:30 at her kitchen table for Kaffee und Kuchen and, during the Summer, we boys often found our way to her back door to be invited in for a snack. Once, staying overnight, I had a toothache and she directed me to the contents of a small bottle on the cabinet shelf. I rubbed the gum well with it. Many years later I discovered it was whiskey. When we were small, she took us one night to her side, had us kneel and taught us a German prayer to recite at bedtime, "Ich bin klein, mein Herz ist rein, soll niemand drin wohnen, als Jesu allein". We took our socks to Grandma each week and she darned them, a skill of weaving I always admired. She helped me with my German in High School (not too successfully) and was so proud when I left to study for the ministry.

    She took on a major chore when Mother died and we moved over to live with her on Grant Avenue. Dad was depressed at times and we boys were not easy to handle. I am afraid we were rough on her and I recall her scolding us. She also reported us to Dad, he whipped us and sent us to bed without supper. In the evening, when he had gone out, she came up to our room with a tray of food.

    When Dad married again, Grandma moved to Aunt Jennie Fitzer's (Johanna) on 627 Main Street and we showed up there often, especially for potato pancakes. The last few months before her death, she again lived at Grant Avenue but things were not the same for her in the old house. She died February 14, 1942.

    Wilhemine had a brother Gerhardt who lived on King Street. Four of his sons were railroaders. A brother Heinrich (dec.) on Park Avenue I did not know though we visited his wife Tante Mimi. Her son Will was chief engineer at ALCO and his son Edgar, born a few minutes before me on September 25, 1909 was an architect who died in 1975.

    We were close to Aunt Jennie and Uncle George Fitzer. They had a son Arthur born march, 1911 who died of pneumonia in 1922. Though I had been aware of my Mother's death four years earlier, Arthur's death was a shocker to me. A son Richard (now dec.) and I were good friends in later years. (His son and daughter still run the family insurance agency in Dunkirk). They also had a daughter Erna whom I hardly knew though she was there. And Elsie, a school teacher who helped my with my first programs at church youth meetings and also with some details of this story. I always enjoyed her company. She married a policeman, Lester Kraiger. Incidentally, on the Dunkirk police force were Elsie's husband Lester, Robert Rahn (Hannah's son) lieutenant and later chief, and William Clifford, Abbie's son.

    The George Fitzer's were always very active at St. John's Church. After Dad's remarriage and our starting to St. John's, the Schiffmann's, Fitzer's and Schulenberg's were very much part of the church life, as they still are.

    We enjoyed the family life of the trio-grandparents, Fitzer's and our house. On Sunday afternoon, Schiffmann's, Fitzer's and Schulenberg's got together on Grant Avenue or King Street. The men played pinochle and Grandpa sent me to a saloon a block away with a pail and a nickel in it. I put the pail on the floor under the swinging door at the entry, it disappeared and returned again, full of beer and a pretzel on top of the lid. Years later, having a beer at the bar with Dad, I saw the bartender constantly glancing at the swinging door sill. Kids were still bringing pails to be filled.

    I used to take the German newspapers from Grandma's to King Street, take some from there to Park Avenue, and bring some back to Grant Avenue, snacking all the way. We always spent Christmas Eve at Fitzer's (see picture in file) and New Year's Eve at Schulenberg's, going out on the porch at midnight to bang dishpans. The four Schulenberg sons were railroaders on the DAV&P (Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh). Their freight trains had to stop at the end of our street for a signal to cross the mainline Nickel Plate Road. If we were there when the engineer got the signal to go, sometimes he would let us ride the engine cab across the other tracks and drop us off. If the son was a brakie, we rode the caboose a short distance and he set us down in the cinders. It was moving about 2 miles an hour, I imagine.

    The house on Lion Street was a big house to me - it had three or four rooms upstairs. Jack and I slept in one room and Mother and Dad in another. One room had attic things including books and I recall setting on the wood floor, on rainy days, leaning against the wall and reading. By the time I was nine years old I had read Ben Hur, skipping the first 150 pages, Pilgrim's Progress and East Lynne.

    Downstairs there was a huge kitchen across the rear of the house, a walk-in pantry, a distance between the sink and stove and cupboards which must have wearied my Mother; a dining room, bath next to it, living room and parlor, with a small bedroom next to the living room. The doorways were double wide and between the sitting room and parlor Dad had hung "portiers", hand-made by him rolling small triangles of wall paper, stringing them between beads and hanging the long strings about two inches apart. They "tinkled"" when we walked through. We never used the parlor except at Christmas time when the tree was set up in there. A Christmas I particularly remember in 1916 was when Dad's cousin Alex Kaptuller came from Chicago and brought us an electric train operated off two dry cell batteries.

    Most of our evenings and weekends were spent in the dining room where the heating stove was. All the rooms were gas-lit with fragile gas mantles which would break. I would then have to go to a nearby store with a nickel and carefully carry one home. Once, in deep snow, I lost the nickel, charged the item because I didn't want to tell my Mother, and then kept denying to the storekeeper that we owed him five cents.

    In the living room on a table was a phonograph and under the lid was the picture of the dog listening to a horn, "his master's voice". We had Sousa's marches and several numbers I'll never forget such as "Believe Me, If all Those Endearing Young Charms" and " Are you From Heaven?, After The Ball' and "Rings on Her Fingers". I could climb up on a chair, crank the thing and play these by the hour.

    We lived on a nice street and got along well with our neighbors. My buddies lived a few doors away, Paul Brown, Frank Carlson, Tommy Novelli and Mike Lindsey. There was a clay diamond at the end of Grant Avenue. ideal for baseball. The clay was spread out from a tunnel that was made under railroad tracks for the streetcar to go through. Nothing would grow on the diamond. Our street ended on a hill and one day, aged 6, I was coasting down the hill on my wagon when it got out of control. I grabbed a wheel to stop it and tore my left middle finger nail. I remember screaming all the way home (and some workmen mocking me). I lost half of my nail for life.

    Beyond the railroad tracks there was a small woods and beyond that a golf course. We picked wild strawberries near the edge of the woods. Near the golf clubhouse was a pond good for ice skating in the winter. Our winter snows were sometimes heavy and we had to wait in the morning until the sidewalk snowplow came through - it was a horse-drawn V plow with a man standing on it to give it weight.

    Lake Erie was frozen almost every winter to a mile outside the breakwall. Giant piles of ice and snow were outside the wall. We could skate out hauling our sleds and then sleigh down the huge piles of snow. Ice-boating was common inside the harbor. Ice was harvested from the harbor, up long chain belts from the shore to the nearby icehouses. One night Dad took me to a fire of an ice house on Front Street. The next day, when the fire was out, a pile of ice 3-4 stories high stood in the open sun. (See picture in file).

    Fishing tugs left the two docks at dawn every summer morning and, by ten in the morning one could see them returning. I often watched them pull the fish from the nets, throw them into boxes, discarding the small ones while dozens of gulls swarmed over the boats. Horse drawn wagons hauled the fish boxes to nearby fish houses while the fishermen strung their nets on giant spools to dry. By three o'clock in the afternoon the fish boxes were at the depot for east bound trains.

    The lake was always fascinating to me and I still love to see it. It could be violent with black clouds, huge waves and an occasional water spout. Dad told us kids of ships that sank off Dunkirk and nearby Barcelona. I have a dim recollection about 1913 of seeing torn flour bags along the shoreline and being told that a freighter loaded with flour went down off shore. Wild storms often occurred and sometimes freak ones such as, while walking along wide Third Street, east to west, in the sunshine and seeing a heavy downpour across the street. Dad and Mom always got us up when it stormed and we were awake.

    The fellows played games in the street, kick the stick, run sheep run and hide and seek with little interference from cars. There weren't many. We made a scooter by separating one skate, screwing one half to the front bottom of a board, one half to the back end, nailing a box across the front and a strip of wood for a guide across the top of the box. We made carts with boards and old buggy wheels and axles. Every Spring we would play marbles and had prize collections. Toys were iron and my very special was a hook and ladder with white horses.

    A rag man came by with his horse and wagon (Nick Shane-Schoen?) and his shout is still familiar (eeeeeeeee-rechs-mennnnnnnn). At least once a year we kids gathered old iron from wherever we could find it. He would dump the gunny sack out on the ground to see if we had stuck in any railroad iron (prohibited). We took the few cents and shared candy.

    On Fridays a fish man came by with his small cart and pony. Mother always bought, especially smoked white fish. Our milkman, Gilray, from nearby Sheridan came every day and one Saturday when I was six or seven, he took me on the rest of his route, then to his dairy farm and by evening brought me home on the streetcar, dropping me off in front of our house. We had a large card with 25, 50, 75, 100 numbers on four sides, which was in the front window with the amount up that we wanted, which our ice man delivered in a chunk to our wooden ice box. We hopped the back of his wagon the summertime to take chips of ice to suck on. Our ice box had a drain pan under it to be emptied every night. Sometimes we forgot and then had water running all over the floor.

    I had a severe sore throat during the 1917 flu epidemic and remember young Dr. Sullivan swabbing my throat while I screamed. When we had colds we got a poultice of moist fried onions tied around the neck and put to bed. Every Spring we had to take a tonic of Mother Gray's "Worm Medicine", the most gawd-awful stuff ever concocted. It was a dry gray powder moistened on a spoon, swallowed hurriedly and followed by some orange juice. Orange juice was rare in those days so the medicine had to be awful to warrant it. Dr. Harry Lyons was our dentist, drilling with a foot-propelled drill and filling our teeth. I had fillings by the time I was eight years old. I don't recall his "numbing the nerve", in fact, I wonder whether they did that back there. But I also don't recall any pain - only the pump, pump of his foot on the pedal to run the drill.

    When I was about age seven, I went after school for instruction to St. Mary's school, about six blocks away. I learned the Apostle's Creed, Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, a common confession to be used at Confession and answers to prepared questions. Then I took my first communion at St. Mary's, being given a white prayer book and a white rosary. After Mass, I went to a photographer on Central and Fourth Streets and had my picture taken (see file). From there to Joy's and Grandma Joy gave me 50 cents. It is interesting that, though a stern Catholic, Mother sent us to public school. Was this a compromise with Dad or was St. Mary's too far? (Ruth Joy said it was too far).

    During the Summer we went on a picnic almost every Sunday to Point Gratiot Park. It was along the west edge of the harbor, jutting out into the Lake with a lighthouse at the Point. To get there, we took a streetcar to a junction stop and the transferred to an "open" car to the park. The White Eagle Band, the only band in town, usually played in a gazebo-like band stand. There was also a band concert every Friday night in a park in the center of town and we would walk there, sit on the grass, listen and eat popcorn. We walked to Central Avenue business district shopping every Saturday night and, part way home, we stopped at Wingertzahn's Shoe Shop. (Wingertzahn lived across from the folks when Dad and Mother lived on Leopard Street and were good friends, even helping with my arrival on earth). Often we took the dinky car up to Rahn's in the second Ward (Dunkirk was divided into five fire wars).

    Once a Summer, Dad would walk Jack and me down Lion Street on a Sunday afternoon to a livery stable Uncle George Fitzer owned with Matt Hollander. Dad drive a team of horses and a surrey with a fringe on the top back up Lion Street to get Mother and go up Bennett Road to the cemetery. We visited the graves of the Joys and Irene's and walked over to the old Protestant cemetery. Didn't know why, but learned later that Dad's brother Richard and eight children of Fred Schiffmann were buried there.

    The first automobile I saw "close-up" was an open Studebaker with all the brass on it in Howie Bremer's driveway at Lion and 7th streets about 1914. Mr. Bremer, duster, cap and huge gloves on, took us kids for a ride up the street. Many delivery trucks were electric driven and some, like Railway Express, had hard rubber tires. In the winter time, since snow removal wasn't simple, many wagons were on bob-sleds. The fire trucks were horse drawn and on bobs in the winter. One time I was near 4th and Central Avenue when the horse drawn Hook and Ladder came over 4th, turned up Central, skidding and swinging around the corner. The driver fell off into a snowbank but the horses continued on and went directly to the fire. Whenever horse drawn bob-sled wagons went by, we usually jumped on the runners and hitched a ride for a ways.

    Mrs. Halsey, our neighbor and teacher stopped by the day after Labor Day, 1914, and took me to my first day of Kindergarten at No. 3 school. Olive Meister was the teacher. I went to No. 3 for six grades. In the fifth grade, I was a monitor in the hallway before classes started. We were glad when we got into sixth grade for then, when the fire drill bell rang, we left the second floor by a fire escape instead of down the stairs as the rest of the kids did.

    Once a month, I took insurance money and payment book to a house on park Avenue for the Macabees, a lodge insurance company Mother belonged to. Once a year, Mother took us on the streetcar to Brocton, nine miles away, where we were met by Irish relatives and taken by horse and buggy to their place. Mother's aunt and uncle Higgins, (Bridget's sister and husband) lived there and also James and Maggie Joy (John's brother and wife) were nearby. We also went at times to Portland and Brocton with Fitzer and our Schiffmann grandparents. While the ladies visited, we inspected a wine cellar, a giant warehouse and the men tasted several varieties. Since Grandpa Schiffmann and Grandpa Joy came to Brocton to work before they moved to Dunkirk, there were friends and relatives in the area.

    During World War I, 1917-18, troop trains moving across the Nickel Plate tracks from the West, going to embarkation points would stop on a siding up the street. When word got around, we took newspapers, magazines and cookies and passed them through the windows of the cars to the soldiers. We wrote our names and addresses on the papers and some people got postcards from the soldiers later from overseas. I heard later of the strong anti-German feeling throughout the country which Dunkirk Germans did not escape. Street names, family names were changed and German language in conversation or at Church was severely frowned upon. I am sure our family felt the pressure of the patriots. We kids sold Jello and Vicks Vapo-Rub to raise money to buy a flag for our fourth grade room.

    I also remember the 1916 election campaign slogan, "Vote for Wilson, to Hell with Hughes" which gave us kids a chance to used the word "hell" often.

    A picture of the house on Lion Street dated February 3, 1917 (see file) shows a "For Sale" sign on it. Dad must have considered the house too big for Mother to take care of and was planning a move before brother James was born. He arrived February 19, 1918, the day after Grandpa Schiffmann died. We were taken across the street to May Armstrong's, a neighbor, and returned the next morning to properly view him. A "practical" nurse took over the household chores and care of Mother, in bed in the parlor. I have a recollection of Dad showing the house soon thereafter to a party who later bought it. Week-ends, while Mother was ill, Dad and I loaded my wagon with cellar items and hauled them through the the lot down to 709 Grant Avenue. My guess is that after Grandpa Schiffmann died, Dad sold the house on Lion Street and bought 709 with Grandma planning to move in with Aunt Jennie.

    At suppertime on Saturday, April 19, 1918, Dad was in the parlor with Mother. He called Mrs. Pierce the nurse to come, called me to phone the doctor. I knew something was wrong, but not what. He had me call Fitzer's and Joy's. Mother was dead. Jack and I were taken to Fitzer's and brought back the next day to see Mother lying on a pink couch in the parlor. We were shielded from all the hours of those days and I cannot recall tears - only wondering and bewilderment. Brophy's horse-drawn hearse and cabs went by as we looked out Fitzer's front window on the day of the funeral. I was 8 1/2 years old and Jack was just past six.

    After Mother died, we moved in with Grandma Schiffman though I don't know how two households of goods were merged. I recall Dad crying in his bedroom. I would tell Grandma and she would go up to talk with him. Things went well, at least for Jack and me. James had been taken to Mrs. Pierce's home on Second Street and Roberts Road and we went across town to see him, play with him, and, as he grew, to wheel him in his buggy. When Dad took us to see him on weekends, we sometimes cut through the ALCO yards where the finished locomotives stood and once he boosted us up into the cab of a a giant-sized "mountain style" engine.

    Soon Dad bought his first car, a Dort. We drove to Erie, Pennsylvania to visit Weinings, old neighbors formerly of Lion Street. Sitting on their porch one time, I heard someone say, "Here she comes", and Estella walked by. Her home was on a farm in Detour, Maryland but she was visiting cousins by the name of Uglow in Weining's neighborhood.

    On November 11, 1918, I stayed home from school claiming to be ill. The whistles blew and Dad soon came home from work. He scolded me for "skipping" school, changed his clothes and went down to the next block where the car was garaged. As I sat on our porch steps, he turned and whistled for me and I ran to join him and we went downtown. The streets were jammed, informal parades everywhere and we rode around all day. I remember the car overheating because we couldn't move more than 5 miles an hour, people climbing in and out of the car all day. The newspaper came out with an enormous headline, WAR IS OVER.

    In our Lion Street days, Dad worked 6 AM to 6 PM as a machinist. When we lived on Grant Avenue, he worked 7 to 12 and 1 to 5. All men coming home or going to work made sort of a parade to and from the Shop. Women sat on their verandahs on Grant Avenue until they saw the first men turn up Grant at Talcott Street at noon and then went in the house to "put the dinner" on. Meals were like that all my boyhood days, 12:10 dinner and 5:10 supper and woe to us if we weren't there on time. One day in 1919, Dad got home from work, opened a package and admired a new Burlington "railroad" watch. Many years later, he gave it to me; we gave it to Joel and an Elmhurst jeweler who had it for repair lost it.

    We went to Laona, a village southwest of Dunkirk in the Arkwright Hills for chestnuts in the Fall. They were plentiful, on the ground, everywhere. Later a blight killed all the trees. We went farther back in the Hills to pick wild blackberries at Bear Lake and there we had to be careful of rattlesnakes in the area. One evening Dad took us to Will Schulenberg's on Park Avenue and we listened to our first radio program, KDKA, Pittsburgh. The set was a huge one with many dials and a loop antenna on top. Every couple years we rode with Fitzer's to the Seneca Indian reservation about 25 miles east, to get a one pound crock filled with salve made by an old Indian woman. It was divided among the relatives when we got home and we used it for everything. We still get it from her son and our medicine cabinet has a jar.

    Since the railroad ran by at the end of our street, we always had "tramps"" stopping at our house for something to eat. I'm sure they had it marked. Mother always made a sandwich and coffee for them.

    George Fitzer's brother Louis had a grocery store on Main Street with a delivery boy, horse and wagon. I used to "jump" the wagon with the boy and with cousin Arthur Fitzer, taking boxes of groceries into people's houses. Also went around with Strom's meat market delivery boy in a horse and wagon, getting orders in the afternoon for the next morning delivery.

    I remember Dad going to Maryland for Estella in April, 1919. When they returned, Grandma moved over to Fitzer's. The first weeks are dim for me, though I recall helping Dad fix a screen door and that he asked me if I would call Stella "Mother" and would I ask Jack to do so.

    Year old brother James was with us now. Stella put a dish on the china cabinet for small change and grace was started at meals. Meals were good - the food was always good in our home, and adequate.

    I can't recall Stella's appearance except from pictures of that time. I have a feeling she was not well accepted by the Fitzer's and the Schulenberg's and perhaps this was the cause of her illness-prone life style which started within a year after she came - and continued all her life.

    She was young, only 13 years older than I was. And no small task to take on three boys including a one year old, in a new community as a stranger. Within two years, there were two more children, Helen and Frank, which was both a physical and financial burden for both Dad and Stella.

    We were poor and had the feeling we were poor. We admired the "folks up on Central Avenue" in the big houses. Dad worked for them, moonlighting evenings and Saturdays. Once in a while, we got a barber haircut (25 cents) but most of the time Dad cut our hair not too successfully and to our embarrassment. My first suit of clothes was when I was confirmed at age 13, paid for out of my own earnings. Stella - let's say Mother from now on - sent us off to work at Day's farm picking currants. This was my first job. Soon I had a job with Arthur Fitzer peddling handbills for the local theater when something special came along. (Some relative of Arthur's worked in the box office). We delivered handbills to every house in town and got $1 and a free ticket to the event. Once it was a "Follies" and we had seats in the front row. Sold them to Dick Fitzer and a friend for $1 each. Another time, we had tickets to hear John Philip Sousa and his Band, the private one which he established after he left the Army.

    When the Circus came to town, we kids got up very early to watch the long train of cars move onto the siding near us and then unload the wagons and animals. And we got jobs handling seats and bleacher boards and got free tickets for the performance. In the Fall, we took orders for Larkin products, a Buffalo concern specializing in soaps and cleaners. Delivering the items, we made a dollar or two for Christmas.

    Our Christmas was always on Christmas morning until we were in our early teens. Dad and Mother spent a week of evenings in the kitchen before hand for he loved to make chocolate drops, divinity, and fudge. The tree was decorated after we went to bed and in the morning there were large paper plates with our names on them containing an orange, a candy cane, hard candy and some homemade candy. Usually we received items of clothing. Grandma Schiffmann knitted a ball for each of us ( and for our children) and always knitted our mittens and stocking caps.

    Our gifts were simple. An orange was rare - we got one for Christmas and some juice if we were sick. That was the extent of oranges. One year, I begged all Fall for a sled but was put off - and a sled was under the tree at Christmas. By our teens, we celebrated on Christmas morning. By then, we were not going to Fitzer's on Christmas Eve or to Schulenberg's on New Year's Eve.

    Grandma Schiffman had a hard time with us, or perhaps I should say we gave her a difficult time. We had our first severe spankings when she reported us to Dad. When Stella came, Dad devised a "cat-o-nine-tails", a handle with thin leather straps on it and we got this over the legs. I thought it was a cruel thing and I still do.

    We got a weekly allowance on Saturday of 5 cents and we usually bought an "all-day" sucker. I recall having a hard time on Valentine's Day because I had no money to buy cards - we distributed them in school throughout the class. I even scrounged around among the old ones to see if I could erase the names and use them over.

    I had a Saturday Evening Post route of about twenty five copies to be delivered on Thursday after school They cost me three cents and I got five cents from the customers. The Post ran excellent serial stories and many of my customers were watching down the street for my arrival. I got scolded when I was late.

    When I was about 11, I had my first paper route, The Buffalo INQUIRER, not a very popular paper, with customers all over the city. Got 35 cents a week for delivering it. Then a Buffalo NEWS route which was more concentrated and finally the Dunkirk OBSERVER which was almost every house in a few blocks. We turned in our earnings and received perhaps 25 cents a week allowance.

    About this time, Jack and I both had heavy coats of freckles. In fact, once a year one of the Buffalo papers ran a freckle contest in the Summer and we were often urged to enter. I was also plagued with a "cowlick" which caused me to comb my hair "pompadour" style to control it.

    I went to the Library often to get books. But also borrowed them from other kids and learned from Mother that Frank Merriwell and Jesse James books were prohibited. So I read them as I lay under the car in the garage to keep our of sight. Also reading under the covers at night in bed with a flashlight.

    As I said, 709 Grant Avenue was a time of frequent sickness and doctors visits for Mother. Once I came home from caddying to see a quarantine on the door for scarlet fever. Rode around for an hour or two before I went in the house. Once in, we were confined for thirty days. The medicine cabinet was filled with prescriptions and patent medicines. Helen was born in Detour, MD, March 7, 1920 while we quietly slept upstairs. I was told the next day that Mother's brother Charles had to get up in the night and go on horseback to the village to get the doctor. Frank was born in Dunkirk on September 14, 1921. Helen's name was chosen "so she wouldn't have a nickname" and she was "Toots" until she married. Frank, named after our grandfather, was "Bubby" until he died.

    One evening, soon after he remarried, Dad and I were walking to town and he asked me if I thought we kids would like to go to St. John's Church with him and Mother. I remembered the carnival there at Christmas, the summer picnic and the parties at that church - and readily agreed. Jack and I had been going to a class at St. Mary's each Sunday before Mass - I don't remember why. It was not meeting the next Sunday, (though we should have gone to Mass). So Dad took us to Sunday School at St. John's. By noon, several Joy's were at the house and back again in a few days with a priest. That was too much for Dad and he told them we were not going to St. Mary's anymore. The Joys never said anything to me about it and in later years were pleased that I was entering the ministry. (Though the comment was made that "if you hadn't changed, you'd be a priest"). Often they gave me money gifts.

    Late in 1919 ALCO was on strike, Mother was pregnant with Helen though I didn't know it, and we all left by train for Detour, MD and the Albaugh farm. We lived there until April, 1920 Helen being born on March 7. I remember holding her when she was only several days old. We walked 2 and a half miles one way to a one room school in Detour every day. Jack and I took a roughing from the local kids because we were "city" and "New York". Grandpa Albaugh suggested that I stay with a farmer near the school which I arranged to do. He was a cattle dealer and we drove cows in from Sales to his barns. I missed days of school They were to teach me how to milk cows, I cleaned the barns daily and the lady of the house told me to "drink lots of skim milk" so I would not eat so much. When I told Grandpa Albaugh, he was so disgusted he said I did not have to go back there. They were the only people I ever saw who licked their dinner plates when they finished eating.

    It was an interesting time. The Albaugh's came to America in 1734 from Bavaria and were active in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and settled in Frederick County, Maryland. John William Albaugh, (father of Estella) and Barbara (Stambaugh, mother) had a farm, 2 and a half miles out of Detour in Carroll County. It was later told us that an underground passage ran from the back of the laundry sheds to the Monacacy River - probably an escape route for Blacks on the "underground railroad" to the North?

    Young Charles, Mother's brother, trapped rabbits and we visited the traps every morning before school. After Christmas, we drove a four horse tram and bob-sled wagon to a Mill with loads of wheat. Grandpa Albaugh let me ride saddle and drive the teams home. In Winter, we rode to town in a one horse open sleigh; in the Summer in a two seated buggy. Grandpa had to take a ten gallon can of milk to Detour to the train every morning. We shelled corn, fed the pigs, cleaned stables, gathered eggs, and had a butchering day. Several times Grandma Albaugh made a meal of pie only - hot berry pie in a soup dish covered with cream. We went to a little Reformed Church in Rocky Ridge, Maryland occasionally. President Eisenhower later worshipped there when he was at Camp David. We prowled the banks of the Monocacy River which ran along one side of the farm. We could see the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia from the front porch. A beautiful shepherd dog called "Chief" was our constant companion and every afternoon he waited on the front porch until he could see us cutting across the distant fields from school, and ran to meet us.

    Dad worked in a bicycle factory in Waynesboro, Maryland, going every Monday and returning Friday night. One day I ran all the way to Detour to give him a message as he waited for the train, a message to return to Dunkirk to work. He did, with Jack, while I stayed another two weeks with Mother, Helen and Jim. I was to help them on the train ride home. I was 10 and a half years old. Soon after we got home, Helen was baptized at the house. It was decided (at the last minute) that we - Jack, Jim and I - were to be baptized again - Protestant! - and we were.

    Dad had bought the house at 709 Grant Avenue from Grandma Schiffman. In an earlier day, it had a kitchen added, in place of a rear shed. What was the outside cellar entrance became a door as part of the kitchen floor, which was raised up to duck down a stairway into a small basement. Down there canned goods, potatoes, apples and sauerkraut were stored. There was also a water-propelled washing machine, which, with a hose attacked to it and a hose outlet, thrust the paddles which washed the clothes in a wooden barrel-like container. Next to it was a hand wringer and two wash tubs on a stand.

    The house was heated by a huge, nickel decorated stove in the front end of the sitting room, with the parlor closed off by a curtain. The upstairs had no heat except from a small ceiling vent from above the stove. We kids would get out of bed upstairs in the winter time and dash down to the stove to dress in a warm place.

    Dad paid $2,500 for the house and lot. He gave Grandma $700 and owed her $1,800. He never paid anything on the principle (perhaps she didn't want it?) but paid the interest on the loan twice a year. When Grandma died in 1942, Dad paid Aunt Jennie $900 as her half of Grandma's "estate".

    Dad took out the partition in the hallway to open the parlor but then had to shut off the stairway so as not be lose heat up the stairs. He excavated another room in the basement by tediously digging bucket after bucket of dirt, carrying it outdoors and wheeling it up the street to a dump. It took him an entire Summer to do it. A hot water furnace was then installed in the basement room and radiators on the first floor only.

    In the fifth and sixth grades I had a garden, sponsored by the school system. It was a plot, along with others, up the street from our house. We go free seeds from our Congressman. We also went up to the Nickel Plate freight house where the Seed Companies loaded freight cars and found lots of packets of seeds around the loading dock. We didn't have insect sprays but I recall taking a small can with kerosene (coal oil, we called it) and a stick and flipping the potato bus and cabbage worms into the can.

    A garden teacher supervised us, checking the gardens throughout the system. We strived for good inspections and displayed our produce at a special area at the Chautauqua County Fair in September.

    In the seventh grade (1921) I was a Boy Scout and Patrol Leader. I got past the tenderfoot badge and all the second class tests except swimming. Though we lived on the shores of Lake Erie and we visited the beach often, we never learned to swim. Dad would not let us to into the water (other than wading) and I learned later that he was swimming with some friends one time and one of them drowned, He never went in the water again.

    By seventh grade, I never seemed to have enough clothes to wear. Dad must have been struggling to make ends meet and we were handing in our earnings but we just did not have adequate clothing, especially for dress occasions. My first overcoat, ordered by Mother from a catalogue, turned out to be an olive drab, Army surplus coat. I was kidded by other kids about wearing it and when I protested at home Dad simply said, "Wear it!". I remember crying and trying to go places without it - not easy in Western New York winters.

    Confirmation came in the seventh grade. We had to go to class every Saturday morning and learn the answers to 141 questions in the catechism. I was ahead. I had learned the Apostle's Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Commandments at St. Mary's. I earned all the money for clothes - the first total new outfit I ever had - short pants and all (see file).

    In Junior and Senior High School we walked 8 blocks (one mile) to school at 8 AM, returned home for lunch, back to school and home again (though I usually worked after school). But that was four miles walking each day.

    Starting in Junior High, our January and June exams were New York State Regents. The curriculum for all schools in the state was directed by a Regents Board in Albany. Everyone at each class level was supposedly learning the same lesson each day of the school year. And on a certain January and June day at a certain hour every student at each level was taking the same exam which even the teacher had not seen until it was opened at exam time. The idea of the strictness of it frightened us at every exam time.

    In the seventh grade, I had good teachers and a home room with Cecil Dwyer, a fine teacher and former neighbor on Lion Street. One old grouch was Ma Bush, a spinster who one afternoon ordered me out of the boys' room after school because I had no business going in there on the way home. (I wasn't going home, I was going to work). Another teacher recited "In Flander's Fields the poppies grow . . . ." at least once a week. As Sid Harris said in later years, I didn't know where Flanders was and had never seen a poppy grow. Another teacher read from "The Prince and the Pauper" every afternoon. I continued from early years to be an avid reader, newspapers, magazines and library books. I read all of James Fenimore Cooper (learning of New York State Mohawk country), "The Talisman", "Tale of Two Cities", the "other" Churchill's stories of post Civil War times. Mother said in later years she remembered me most as seated cross-legged in an overstuffed chair reading a book.

    About this time (1921) I went out to the Shorewood Country Club to caddie. I still remember my first day, getting a considerate golfer who knew it was my first day and who didn't mind. We got 40 cents for nine holes, then called a "round", and 75 cents for 18 holes. We carried 36 holes on Sundays and double - two bags on tournaments. The first $14 I earned went for a bicycle from Ward's. Until then, I hiked three miles each way every day, I carried lunch each day, and on Sunday had cold hamburger sandwiches in the pail. The only golf we got in was to practice with some cast off clubs.

    In the eighth grade (1922) school being overcrowded, we had "double" sessions. The first semester we went from 8 AM to 12:30 PM and the second semester was from 12:40 PM to 5 PM. Through Earl Kraiger, Elsie's brother-in-law, I got a job at the Atlas Steel plant office carrying a mail pouch from the post office at 7 AM to the plant, round trip at noon and back to the post office at 5 PM. Adjusting the trips to my school schedule, I received $14 twice a month, the most I had ever earned up to that time. After a year, they replaced me with a full time office boy,

    At this time, Aunt Margaret Joy sold us her piano for $100. We had it moved to our house for $2 and I paid her $10 down and $1 a week until it was paid for. The purpose of the purchase was to have me take piano lessons which I did for two years. To no avail. Baseball and games called often. Do wish I had practiced and learned to play.

    I do remember vividly the newspaper stories in late '22 about Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Amarna area of Egypt. I read every item I could on the story and was fascinated with the details of the discovery. I ever remember the "King TUT" society phase including a dance and ladies styled hats. In later years I picked up some books on the subject in order to get a full view of the event.

    In the first year of high school, 1923, I got a job at our nearby corner grocery store, working after school and Saturdays. I caddied on Sundays. The store was typical of the day. Crackers were in large boxes to be bagged and weighed, a stove stood in the middle of the floor for winter heat. Cheese came in large round boxes to be sliced. Butter was in a tub which we turned upside down on a slab and cut off orders. With both cheese and butter we seldom could be accurate and customers knew we could only come close to their request. Cookies were in boxes of 14 pounds each with a glass cover and arranged on display shelves. Candy was in trays in a glass cabinet, mostly penny stuff. Once a month, the candy salesman, Henry Fitzer, Uncle George's brother, came by and in time the manager let me place the order. Bananas came in a bunch wrapped in paper in a hamper. We hung the bunch on a hook near the vegetable window and cut off as ordered. I have a scar on my left thumb to this day where I cut too fast and nicked my hand.

    I went out for track - the 440 yard run - but didn't do well and it conflicted with working after school. Furthermore, I couldn't afford a pair of track shoes so Frank Carlson and I bought a used pair together. When he finished the 220 yard run, I stripped off his shoes and dashed for the 440 yard mark. We had a track coach who was also our scoutmaster - a man with a sadistic streak (typically coach style) and I didn't fare too well with him. Once I corrected his grammar and he never forgot. His departure I minded not.

    On December 31, 1923, I was sick with belly pains. The doctor came (doctors made house calls in those days - house calls in the morning, office hours in the afternoon and evening), left and brought back a surgeon who agreed with him that it was appendicitis. By evening, I was in the hospital and near 11 PM New Year's Eve they operated. I remember dozing off under the anesthetic and hearing the staff in surgery talking about the parties which they were missing. Recovery was slow in those days - 14 days in the hospital and another week at home. I still have a very large abdominal scar done by an apparently unskilled or careless surgeon. About this time also I was plagued with acne which got worse in late high school and early college and continued until my late 20s. I felt all kinds of embarrassment with it.

    In high school, I enjoyed Latin, German and English. Hildegard Foss, an English teacher, taught me to read, to speak and to enjoy good literature. She had me do Shylock in the "Merchant of Venice" at the auditorium assembly. The early 20s was a time of the "traveling" Chautauqua, a lecture series set up in a tent on Central Avenue near the fairgrounds for a week in August. Churches and civic organizations promoted it. I did not attend any of them except one ticket our Minister gave me. The speaker was William Jennings Bryan. I remember him in a frock coat, vest and string tie, handkerchief in the coat which he pulled out often to wipe his forehead. As he talked, he took off his coat, then his vest and turned up his sleeves. It was a warm night. I don't remember his speech but I remember his oratorical style.

    We lived in Chautauqua County and besides its grape and fruit fame, we also had Lily Dale about 15 miles from Dunkirk, the center of nation- wide Spiritualist activity. The cottage of the famous Fox sisters had been moved there and every Summer, large numbers of people interested in Spiritualism visited the grounds to participate in and hear mediums on the subject. (Mathilda and I attended several times and heard lectures on "spirit-writing").

    Niagara Falls was only sixty miles from home but I didn't get there until I was in college. Later, it became the usual trip to take when we had guests at Boston Valley or Gowanda.

    South of us, part way to Jamestown, was the famous Chautauqua Assembly grounds. In later years, we went there for special events. In 1936 we went early to hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The crowds were enormous and, though we were near the entrance two hours early, when they opened the gates, we were swept down the aisles and finally found seats nowhere near where we started in. Roosevelt entered the stage from the rear, helping himself with two canes until he reached the lectern. He gave his "I Hate War" speech. We watched him depart and saw the Secret Service almost lift him into his limousine.

    In the early 20s I was active in Sunday School with "Doc" Hudson as our teacher. He was a local chiropractor, a nice man, friendly. We didn't learn much "Sunday School" but he told us a lot of interesting stories.

    The manager at the grocery store changed and I lost my job so I was back to caddying in the Summer of '23. One Sunday, A. Weinberg, owner of the local "Safe" Department Store made a hole in one on the old 7th green at Shorewood. He danced and shouted when I told him what had happened, He invited me down to the store on Monday morning, gave me two shirts, a tie, socks and asked me to work at the store after school and Saturdays. I washed windows, ran errands, carried stock and marched daily through the entire store from his balcony office to the basement with a cuspidor in a hat box to be cleaned and returned. In good weather, I caddied for him on Wednesday afternoons and Sundays. I had that job until June, 1923.

    Sometimes we talked about my future. About going into the "Shop" with Dad, or going to a work-study Civil Engineering school in Philadelphia. I was not good at Mechanical Drawing or Chemistry. I liked algebra and geometry but never pursued it.

    My Father moonlighted Summers, getting home from work at 5 o'clock and off to some house "on the avenue" by six. When I could, I went along to help him, learning to paint houses and become handy with tools. We had a large garden behind the house and also went to the farmers market early Saturday mornings to get fruit and vegetables for canning. We went out to nearby orchards to pick cherries and peaches. We had two "German" prune trees at the rear of the yard. Our cellar shelves were well stocked with fruit, vegetables and pickles by late Fall. Each Fall, the Schiffmans and Fitzers gathered twice. Once to pick prunes. Another time, after I had stopped at a house on King Street on the way home from school to borrow a slicer, cabbage was sliced and put down in crocks for sauerkraut.

    Dad built a garage and I helped him. He gave me 50 cents for the day's work. He didn't build it big enough for later cars and never could close the doors. In 1924 he was made assistant foreman of the Machine Shop and wore a white shirt to work. He gave that job up after a year because he did not like it and made more money piecework at the boring machine.

    Dad always had a desperate story to tell about the future of shop work. He would walk through the Plant at his noon break to see the material under way and would come home and forecast that he would be out of work in a few months. It didn't happen until the Depression began. Dad took his weekly bath on Saturday Noon after dinner and called one of us boys to wash his back. The odor of bay rum was in the bathroom after he bathed and shaved. And in later years his false teeth were most often in a glass on a shelf instead of where they ought to be.

    1925 was the year of the Tennessee Scopes "Monkey Trial" and I followed it closely in the papers reading of Bryan's sad performance and Darrow's devastating examination of him. My interest in reading about Clarence Darrow continued through the years. 1925-26 was also the Senate hearings on the Teapot Dome scandals with Albert Fall and Doheny going to jail. I read every detail of these events even at that age.

    Next: Part II
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