grandpa

Written by grandpa, sometime in the mid '90s.

Family, Part 1

This is the Herbert chronicle, it is just about my life as I remember it, I hope Someone will read it and continue it into the next generation..

I was born in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania called Forty Fort. There is a long story about how the town got its name but that is history.

My father and mother were both immigrants. Mom from Canada and Pop from Wales.

Pop only went to the third grade in school but he could read well , write, and could do math well enough that later in his life he became a tool and dye maker for IBM. He left school as many boys from Wales did, to work in the coal mines. At age nine he was working twelve hour days and worked his way up to become a mule driver and when electricity came to the mine he was the driver of an electric train hauling coal from the mines to the breaker. Using this experience, he was able to get a job as driver on the local trolley car system.

Mom was never employed but stayed home and took care of the kids as most women did in those days. She did however, engrain in our heads that education was the most important thing for us to think about and made us read a lot. She only went to eighth grade in school but at age sixty-five got her high school diploma.

In 1929, soon after the stock market collapse Pop lost his job because the company laid-off much of the work force. By that time he and my mother had bought a nice little house, which the bank soon foreclosed on and we lost our home. For the next ten years Pop did odd jobs, and got a few days a month in the mines. We were the poorest family in town and ended up on relief and moved about once a year into whatever the poorboard got for us. We moved so often that one time my parents forgot to tell the children that we were moving. That day I came home from school with my younger brother, the house was empty. No furniture, no family. Bob and I just sat a waited until later in the day my older brother came and got us. They had only moved about two blocks from where we were. Today it is called welfare but in those days it was called the “poor board.” There were only about three families in town on poor-board so everyone knew who we were. What a stigma for us to deal with as young children. Prejudice against poor people was very high and the parents of my classmates passed it on to their children so I was somewhat of an outcast in the school. Most of my teachers were only high school graduates and children of the local “big-shots” who were politicians, and professionals in Wilkes Barre, the nearest city. The teachers had the same prejudices as my fellow students.

Realizing that I had more native intelligence than most of my classmates and also most of my teachers, I decided that if I was ever going to college, I had to enhance my chances with something additional so I began to participate in sports. This was not all my idea but the ideas of my mother and older brother. Football and wrestling were the two major sports in that area so I began to work at them. I played varsity football for three years and wrestled for four years. In football I was picked to play in the east-west game and in wrestling I became Pennsylvania state champion in my senior year.

I have to regress a little to talk about my younger days. There were four of us children, Bud, six years older than me, Ruth, eight years older than me, and Bob, six years younger than me. We all got along pretty well and stuck up for each other whenever an outsider threatened any of us. We were never told to, we just did it. Ruth became a nurse, Bud, a fighter pilot in WW2 and later owned his own sewing factory. And Bob, who became a school teacher and later a principal.

I vividly remember Thanksgiving in 1935. When it came time to eat, we all sat down at the table and Pop said grace, and then he began to cry and sob and we all just sat there and said nothing. This was a thanksgiving diner and we were having potato soup and bread. He must have suffered something awful and we suffered with him. We all got up and went to Pop and hugged him. It wasn’t his fault and we all knew that. How could anyone in the family forget that day?

When you have no income, this was before unemployment insurance, and you have no food, something must be done so this was my first time to become a selective volunteer. I was sent to live with my grandfather who had a small farm in New York state. Of course he also needed help on the farm. I was ten years old and spent the next year and a half living away from home. It was exciting to be around the animals and going to school where no one knew I was poor. The kids treated me just like one of them! During this period I realized I was a man-child with the responsibilities of a man and the interests of a child.

Among my other chores was taking care of the animals. Two draft horses, Peter and Paul were the big ones Left and Right , named because they could not remember which side of the yolk to get on were the smaller ones, only about 1500 pounds of muscle , four cows, pigs and chickens. The farm had cash crops, potatoes and cabbage. The cabbage was sold to Silver Floss sauerkraut packing company and the potatoes were sold to distributors in the area. I had very little to do with that part but enjoyed going to the markets with my grandfather. We also had a garden up close to the house, about an acre, where we raised our own food. Tomatoes, corn, peas, lettuce, and many other things we ate all summer and fall.

Forgot to mention something very important, we had cold running water in the kitchen but no bathroom. My introduction to an outhouse. It was about forty feet from the house and in the winter it seemed like a mile. Grandpa used to go out early and take a lantern and hang it inside so that when I went out it was almost warm. There was a Montgomery Ward Catalog out there, it was not as glossy as Sears but functional.

When I first arrived at the farm we had eighteen chickens and one rooster. Every day I collected eighteen eggs, then it went down to sixteen, then twelve. My grandfather asked me what I was doing to the chickens to make them stop laying. Then one day there were twenty and he said to me, you must of had a talk with that rooster. I had no idea what he was talking about and I realized later he was having fun with me.

That summer I became somewhat of a hero. I was a very strong swimmer and one day we were swimming in the stream by the grist mill. A young boy fell in the water and was being taken toward the big generating wheel. Without thinking I jumped in and pulled him to a wall where some people helped us out of the water. Some men who worked in the mill saw what happened and called the newspaper and told them. I had no idea why but they had an article in the paper on that Saturday. I was more embarrassed than anything. It did, however, help to get a me a job as a lifeguard a few years later.

At school I learned many lessons but two that stayed with me for the rest of my life. I thought I was pretty tough but had never run into a farm boy. He taught me a lesson. In the classroom I thought I was pretty bright but the same guy taught me another lesson. No matter how tough or bright you think you are, there is always someone brighter and tougher. That farm boy and I also became good friends, which was another good lesson.