Tales of Another Generation, Part I

My mother wrote some family history when she was alive. I thought I would share a little of the tales of another generation.

"It all started when my niece was born in 1931 in a small town in Ohio. I went to stay to help with the baby. There were a few houses on one side of the gravel road. Other children lived around, including a boy staying with his siblings and parents in his grandmother's house.

In the evening the kids would be out playing hide and seek, kick the bucket, etc. One evening we were playing hide and seek and I put ice down that boys neck.  He said that was the start of us getting together.

I wasn't helping with the baby very long but we would come back to visit and the kids in the neighborhood would all play together. When Daddy and Mother moved to a different house, that boy would visit me there.

He worked in a different town and would have to catch the trolley on a Friday night and catch it again to go back on Sunday night.One Sunday night he was leaving our house, ran down the alley, turned the corner and ran into a lady and knocked her down. He said he didn't even stop and help her. He would have missed the trolley if he had.

School was out and I was helping someone with some house cleaning. Well, D (that boy I used to play with) asked my brother if he could borrow his car. D wanted us to go the next state and get married. We talked to some friends and they told us where to go and where the minister lived who married them. My brother let him have the car, a little red convertible with donut tires. He came to where I was cleaning and got me and we were on our way. Nobody knew we were going but my brother.

We found the ministers house. His wife and some one else were the witnesses. We drove back to Ohio. I don't remember stopping to eat anywhere. He was 22 and I was 16.

When we got back we didn't get the best welcome.  Mother and Daddy didn't think much of some of his family, so that didn't go so well with me marrying into it.

My sister fixed a nice meal and gave me some dishes from her cupboard. D's dad told him not to bring me to his house to keep. Some of Mother and Daddy's friends gave us a shower.

D's aunt said he could bring me down there.  We fixed a kitchen on her enclosed back porch.  We bought a table, 4 chairs, a utility cupboard and a cabinet for a 2 burner hot plate. We used the bedroom D had slept in there. We lived there till October. The back porch wasn't heated so we had to move.  We walked and walked but didn't find anything suitable for the money we could afford. So my brother let us move in his 2 rooms upstairs. There was no water and no bathroom upstairs. They didn't have a bathroom downstairs either. It was a path out the back door."