The Biography of a Rabbit Part 2

Clarence bought me a cloth jacket and I wore it all four years of high school. By the time I graduated the cuffs and collar were almost worn off. These were the years following the Depression and there was little money for clothes. I remember getting my first suit for graduation. It was Oxford Grey and cost $26. I bought it myself and made the mistake of getting it too small and it was outgrown in about a year.

The boy next door and I would walk to school together and had one thing we loved to do. We would save firecrackers from the Fourth of July and in the winter time, going up Main Street, we would put a firecracker in a s...o...b..ll, light it, throw it up in the air over the kids walking on the other side of the street. We were real proud because we were the only ones with firecrackers. We also would build forts of snow in the lot behind our house and then put firecrackers in s...o...b..a.l.l.s and throw them into the front of the enemy's fort, trying to blow it down. We were just lucky that no one ever got hurt during these pranks.

I never had to much homework in school because I could remember everything I read. History dates and Chemistry formulas were easy for me although sometimes I didn't know what they meant. English, math and algebra were almost impossible for me and I barely pa.s.sed. I got only 52 in Latin and didn't know why anyone would take that subject anyway.

I had a small part in the Senior Play and the night before the performance the male lead came down with acute appendicitis and went to the hospital. They wanted someone else in the play to take his place and they would prompt him from side stage. I knew all his lines by heart and I could have played the part with no prompting at all.

But, to my utter dismay, the hero had to kiss the heroine!! She naturally was the prettiest little girl in the whole school. I realized that kissing her would be a whole lot different than playing baseball and I couldn't take the chance. Imagine turning down the chance of the lead in the Senior Play for a stupid reason like that!

Three or four years later I began to notice girls and wished that I had taken the lead part.

In 1936 I took a post graduate year just so I could play baseball another year. Ken Montanye was in his senior year so he would be playing too. I hadn't decided what kind of work I was going to do, so thought that I might as well go to school. I took just morning subjects, Physics and Chemistry because I liked the teacher so well. I had gotten 91 in Chemistry my Senior year and took it over again to try to raise my mark. When I took the Regents Exam at the end of the year, they gave you three hours to do the exam. The Chemistry and Physics exams were both the same afternoon. I completed both in 1 1/2 hours before anyone else had finished even one. I got 96 in Chemistry and 99 in Physics. This was about the only good thing I did in high school.

On St. Patrick's Day in 1936 we had a very bad ice storm and the big trees in our front yard were hit hard. Big limbs about one foot in diameter were coming down. They sounded just like cannon shots and kept us awake most of the night. One big limb was laying across the roof and we had to get up there and saw it in pieces and patch the hole in the ridge. Every time I go by the house I can still see the indentation in the ridge of the roof where the tree hit 50 years ago.

The winter pear tree in the side yard by the driveway is still there and bears fruit as it did in the 1920s. There was no traffic on the road during that storm as the roads were filled with trees. I started for school with my lunch bag in hand, and going up Main Street the only place to walk was about six feet wide in the center. I got almost to the Academy when I met kids coming back who were saying there was no school. I started for home and stopped at the bridge over Sucker Brook on Chapen Street. I went down under the bridge and ate my lunch.

My father and brother spent the next three days cutting up the trees in our front yard. We kept warm because of the coal furnace but had no electricity for days.

I still believe that we had more snow in those days than we do now.

One time we made a tunnel out from the back door about fifteen feet before we got into the open and used it that way until it melted.

Another time Jack VanBrooker's car was stuck up on Thad Chapin and the next day we went up to look for it digging holes in the snow until we found the roof. My lunch time during my Senior year was an hour long and I would run all the way from the high school to the west end of Chapin Street, get a sandwich and run back to school. I ran down Main Street and cut through Wilc.o.x Lane, near where the Palmers lived, across the railroad tracks and through the swamp where the Elementary School was eventually built, then over Pearl Street. It was almost two miles each way so if I had been on the track team I would have done well. That swampy area below the tracks had enough water in it in the winter time to make a hockey rink if you didn't mind a few bushes growing up here and there. I was on a hockey team and played there a couple of winters. Sometimes we would also play hockey on the lake by Kershaw Park.

Chapter 4 After School 1936-1940

After High School 1936-1940

During the summer of 1936 I tried working as a grocery clerk on Main Street. The people who traded there were mostly Italians and most spoke very little English, so I couldn't understand them. At that time you had to get each item for the customer and after two days of trying to figure out what they wanted I was so nervous that I had to quit.

Then I went to work for my father in the painting business. My first job was painting a wooden railing down to the lake at a cottage on the West Lake Road. I started out at fifty cents per hour. My father used to take all the jobs, arrange the work and do the collection. We had a very good line of customers and in all the years I worked with him, we only had one customer who refused to pay all of his bill.

About 1937 Dorothy was working for a state official as a secretary, in Hornell, New York and she had a 1929 Ford coupe that she wanted to sell. She and Barney had been married and they didn't need two cars.

They were living in an upstairs apartment and Barney had started working as a plumber for the man in the lower apartment who ran a plumbing business. My mother bought the car for me for $50.00 and I went to Hornell to get the car. I had just got my drivers license and driving alone for the first time I didn't dare stop the car on the way home. I just slowed down a little at intersections and I remember making a right turn in Dansville through a red light as I didn't dare stop. I soon got used to the car and admired the rumble seat in the back. Ray Smith and I used this car to go to all our baseball games and take our dates to all the square dances. I named the car "Little Eva".

We went to square dances every Sat.u.r.day night at Baptist Hill, Cheshire, Bristol Springs, Honeoye or Atlanta. I didn't know a thing about dancing so the first date I took to the dance, I had several drinks and they pushed me out on the floor keeping me there until I learned how. Ray Smith didn't drive and he was always getting me blind dates so he could have a ride. I went with a lot of girls-Althea Treble and Rosemary Schmuck from Honeoye, Barbara Sherman from Gainsville, Julie Jones from Bristol, and Earnestine Fairbrothers (get that name) from Atlanta, New York. For about six months I went with a beautiful girl, Ruth Richardson from Woodville. She was so pretty I guess I was lucky to have gone with her that long. These dances were all in the winter time and we had to ride four in the front seat of the car. We went to a lot of movies too, in Rochester and Geneva.

I played baseball for several years with Ken Montanye, Skip Dewey, Ray Smith and Len Pierce. I played for the Cheshire team and the Canandaigua town team. It was called semi-pro ball and we played teams from all around this area. The only one that got paid was the pitcher.

They had a try-out camp for the Red Wings for three days at Red Wing Stadium in Rochester. Ken and I signed up for it and we lasted two days before being eliminated. Some of the pitchers were so fast I could hardly see the ball go by. I wish that I had been six feet tall and weighed more because I really wanted to be a baseball player.

It was during these years that Len Pierce and I became good friends.

When we played for the Cheshire ball team we would hang out a lot at the barber shop in Cheshire. They had two pool tables and a coal stove at the back of the shop with chairs around it. We used to get warm in winter while waiting for a haircut or the chance to play pool. The barber was John Johnson, an older man with white hair. We got a haircut for $.25 and I went there for several years.

The gang used to hang out at Chase's Ice Cream Store on South Main Street several evenings a week. We ate a lot of ice cream and sundaes.

Sometimes around 1938 I sold "Little Eva" and bought a 1935 Ford coupe that used to belong to a dentist. The finish was so dull from sitting out in the sun behind his office that I polished it for about a month before I got it to shine well. There were about six of us who went to all the square dances together every Sat.u.r.day night. We would buy a half gallon of wine and at the dance we would set the jug on the hood of the car and keep running out to it for drinks. n.o.body ever touched our bottles--probably didn't care for our cheap wine.

One day in 1938 when we came home from work we found my mother standing on the back porch with her head jerking and she was unable to talk. We called the doctor and he said she was having a stroke. We had no idea how long she had been like this, unable to call for help. She was paralyzed in the right arm completely and partially in the right leg. Her speech was affected a little. In those days there was no kind of rehabilitation so she was unable to do any work. My father had to continue working so we hired a housekeeper to come in days to do the cooking and housekeeping. I can imagine what this did to my mother, having a stranger doing all the things she had done for so many years.

I am not sure as to how many months she lived before she had the second stroke, which was fatal. She never did go to the hospital because doctors made house calls in those days. We had a Dr. Stetson and he would walk right in the house without knocking and sit down at the dining room table and visit with everyone before he would see the one who was sick. I suppose with a family of nine children he made enough visits to feel like one of the family.

After having the stroke, my mother slept in a downstairs bedroom and my father would sit by the bed in a rocking chair and hold my mother's hand. He slept in the chair and still worked every day. In my memory this will always be the perfect definition of love. It must have been wonderful for them to have a relationship filled with such love. At this time, my mother, dad and I were the only ones living at home.

My mother's funeral was held at home in the front room which was called the parlor in those days. It was a common practice to hold funeral services in the home at that time. As I was 19 years old, playing baseball, working and in love with the girl next door, the full impact of my mother's death did not hit me until years later.

Like I suppose everyone else feels, I now regret not doing more for my mother to have made her life more enjoyable and easier for her.

When I was in high school I went to a Dr. Brockmayer who had an office on Chapin Street almost down to Main St. His office was in his house, in the front room. The charge was either a dollar or two. He had a large roll top desk with a bushel basket beside it. When anyone paid, he would throw the money into the basket. I can still see that basket about half full of $1 bills.

After my mother died, my father and I tried having a housekeeper but that didn't last long and we decided to keep house for ourselves. Dad did the cooking and as near as I can remember we ate pork chops and canned peaches most of the time. I did the washing and ironing and I could do the shirts quite well. My father had a big oak roll top desk he used for all his book-keeping. He saved dimes in a codfish box with a slot in the cover. He nailed the cover on so he wouldn't use them before it was full. He couldn't resist knowing how much he had so every few days he would pull the nails out and count it. I remember one day he was sitting at the desk with one of those little rubber bladed defroster fans that they used to put in the rear window of cars. He was trying to fix it and he plugged it into the outlet. It ran like h.e.l.l for a few minutes before it burned out the motor. It surprised him so he dropped it like a hot potato.

About 1937, a couple of years after high school, Skip Dewey, Ray Smith and I went to Florida for two weeks. We went in Skip's car which used a lot of oil so we carried a case of oil in the trunk and would stop a couple of times a day to add more. We rented a small cabin in Ft.

Lauderdale and stayed for a week. We didn't do much while there except lay on the beach and watch the girls. At that time there wasn't much else to do as it wasn't developed the way it is now. As I recall it only cost each of us $75 for the two week trip. On the way home I remember one morning on the road through Georgia when we pa.s.sed an old shack occupied by a black family. The fields were white with frost and a little boy in a white nightgown was running through the field to the outhouse way out in the back.

We stopped late one night in Pennsylvania to put more oil on the car and it would not pour out of the can. We had intended to spend the night in a nearby town with Skip's brother so we just drove the rest of the way. When we arrived we found out that it was 15 degrees below zero and that was why the oil would not pour!

My mother died in 1938 and the following winter my dad and I went to Florida for two weeks. We stayed in a tourist home in Orlando and drove around the state to places of interest. I was in love with the girl next door at the time and couldn't wait to get home. I probably made my father come back sooner than he would have liked for that reason. However, when I got home, she had become engaged to someone else and they eventually married. Oh--such is life! We drove all the way to Florida and back and only made one wrong turn. That was in Dansville, New York and so close to home that it didn't make any difference.

When Gordon returned from Nebraska, he started painting by himself. I never knew why, but he always worked alone and had his own line of customers. When work was hard to get just after the depression in the early 1930's, Leon got a job as a painter at Brigham Hall. He worked all his years there, for low wages, just for job security. He built a house on Chapin Street just across from our house. We dug the foundation with a scoop pulled by Clarence's panel bodied truck and a chain. We also used a wheelbarrow and shovels. He put up a ready-cut house from Sears and Roebuck that cost $4,500. All the pieces came cut and numbered, with instructions to tell you how to put it together. He hired one carpenter and all of us boys to help him. This must have been in the early thirties and the house is still a nice looking one.

Last year I noticed that they put on vinyl siding. Leon had to sell it years later for financial reasons and has had to rent since that time as he never made enough money to buy again.

Dad, Clarence and I painted together and my father arranged all the work and did the collecting. Clarence did most of the high work and Dad did the open places as he was a fast painter. I did the windows and became good at it. We worked together well by each doing what he could do best. That saved time and money. When my father was in his 70's he could spread more paint than the rest of us, although he began to miss spots when his eye sight was beginning to go. My uncles Jim and Ed were in the painting business also; Uncle Ed wore a tie and a celluloid collar all his life, even when painting in hot weather. His wife did all the book keeping for him.

In 1939 my father married my Aunt Constance and I guess he thought she was like my mother. She was just the opposite and I don't think my father enjoyed life as much after that. He worked right up until his death at age 75. He used to get up with the sun and work in the Garden or mow the lawn until it was time to go to work. He was a very good bowler and traveled to cities in the area to bowl for money. I recall one time when he won $100 in Auburn. One time he and Leon went with a team to bowl in the national tournament in Chicago. When he married again I moved out of the house and rented a room on South Main Street, staying there about a year before moving to another place just below Clark Street on Main. I also lived there about a year.

There was a diner next to where I was living--one of those diners made from an old trolley car--and I ate my meals there for two years. I got to know them so well that I would just walk in the diner, tell them I wanted dinner, and they would fix me a plate. I never did know what I would be getting until it was in front of me. On the nights I was going to square dances I would tell them to give me fried foods so the alcohol would not give me too much of a hangover. The food was good and they gave you a lot of it. In the winter I remember the windows being all frosted over and you couldn't see in or out.

I rented a garage just around the corner on Clark Street where I kept my car. One night after going to a Sat.u.r.day night dance, I put the car in the garage. The next morning when I went to get it I noticed it had a flat tire. The garage floor was dirt and the wheels were down in hollows. The snow had melted off the car and all four wheels were frozen in the ice in the hollows. It was such a narrow garage I had to back the car out to change the tire. It was frozen so solid I had to get the jack out and put it from the b.u.mper to the front of the garage and jack it backwards to get it loose. Not too easy when you have a hangover! Sundays I would get together with a couple of friends and we would ride to Bristol or around the lake and go to a movie in the evening. We were riding around the lake and parked somewhere up the East Lake Road on December 7, 1941 when we heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

Sometime during 1941 I went to Rochester to find another car and found a 1936 Pontiac that looked almost new for $450. My old car was using a lot of oil and I had it parked in front of the used car lot. When the dealer was checking out my car for trade in value, I was hoping he would not start it up because when you did so the smoke was so thick you'd hardly see the car! I was lucky and made a deal. I had to drive back to Canandaigua for the money and once again to Rochester to close the deal. Just on that one trip I had to add four quarts of oil. Good thing it lasted the trip as the Pontiac was a real nice car.

In the fall of 1941 we had very little work and it was time for me to find work somewhere else. I had been called by Uncle Sam, had my physical and reported to the draft board. I was cla.s.sified 4-F due to flat feet and a hernia (which I still have and was never bothered by).

I wanted to be in service somewhere and so I went to Rochester and tried to join the Marines or the Navy. I even tried to get into the ambulance corps. With my 4-F status I couldn't get into anything. I borrowed $10 from my father and applied at about ten places in Rochester. This was the only time in my life that I borrowed money except for when I bought a car or house.

During this time some of my friends were entering the service. This was between Pearl Harbor and April of 1942. Pete Lenzi decided to hitch-hike to California and, if he couldn't find work, to join the Marines. He took one suitcase and I gave him a ride as far as Avon, letting him out at the statue in the center of the village. I'll write more about Pete later. Ken Montanye entered the army and we had a big party for him at the camp in Berby Hollow. Len Pierce also joined up about a month before I did.

In December of 1941 I got a reply from my application at Kodak and went in for an interview. I got a job at Kodak Park and was one of the first three hired for a new product. Ray Smith was hired soon after I was. The whole building where we worked was empty except for the three of us and a boss. Kodacolor film was being put on the market and the building was being set up for developing and printing. The first few weeks I spent polishing the reclaiming tanks on the ground floor.

After the first month I had fourteen men working under me so it was a good opportunity for me. If I hadn't been drafted then, there is no telling how far I might have gone. When the film started coming in Ray Smith was working on the floor above me and I was in charge of the bas.e.m.e.nt. By March things were really busy, and then, even though I was 4-F, they called me for the draft. I was glad to go, but now realize what a great opportunity I missed.

When I started working at Kodak, Ray Smith and I with another friend, Kippy Oskamp, who also worked in Rochester, rented an apartment on Alexander Street across from the Genesee Hospital. During the week I parked my car in a large old building in the area and they took the cars up an elevator to the top floors. It used to be an old flour mill and every Friday night I would get the car to go home for the weekend. It would be almost totally white from the remains of the flour in the building so I had to wash the car every weekend. We rode the bus to and from Kodak daily. We had to go up a stairway inside the apartment and were to be very quiet. One night some of the boys from home had a party. When they left we carried out a large bag of bottles and cans, the bottom gave out at about the top step and the entire contents clattered down the stairwell at two a.m. Needless to say, we were asked to move soon there after.

Kip Oskamp went into the Air Force ( a bombardier, I believe and his plane went down in the j.a.panese war...he was missing in action) so Ray Smith and I rented a room in a house on a small street in Greece NY which was nearer to Kodak. The owners name was Riley and now they live in the same trailer park in Florida as Ray. We worked different shifts so when we worked the noon to 8 pm shift we couldn't go downtown after work as the buses didn't run after 10 pm so we couldn't see any movies. We spent a lot of time sleeping. My car was still over by Alexander Street and I only got it on weekends. I remember standing out on the corner during the winter in a blizzard waiting for a bus to go to work. It was snowing so hard you couldn't see the bus until it was 20 feet away. I ate at the cafeteria at work and on the way home I would stop at the White Tower to get a bowl of soup.

The houses on Shady Lane were all the same and one night after midnight Ray Smith came home and went in the side door.

The bathroom was just inside and there he was sitting on the john with the door open. You can imagine his embarra.s.sment when the stranger indicated he was in the wrong house. It was a wonder the owner didn't shoot him as a burglar. I guess they changed the lock after finding out that the keys fit both houses.

At this time I was making $26 a week, renting a room, making car payments, and had enough left to run around with on weekends. It was in March or April that I received my draft notice. The day I left Rochester it snowed two feet and I had to shovel snow for hours to get my car out. I drove to Canandaigua and left all of my things with my father. I left the car with a friend who worked at a gas station down by the lake and he stored it in his barn. I owed some on it but they couldn't collect from you while you were in the service.

After I was in the army about a year, I wrote to him and told him to let it go back to the finance company. I don't know why I didn't keep it or at least let someone in the family finish the payments. It was a very good Pontiac and I didn't owe more than a couple hundred dollars on it. In the service you soon got the feeling that your chances of living through the war were pretty slim.

Chapter 5 In Training

I entered the service on April 15, 1942. We left early in the morning from the railroad depot in Canandaigua for Rochester where we went through the induction center on State Street. From there we left for Ft. Niagara near Buffalo. It was still cold weather and they drilled us on the parade grounds in heavy army overcoats. One day I had a terrible headache and every step I took marching made it hurt more.

They asked for volunteers to take a test for the Air Corps so I volunteered just to got out of marching. I had such a headache that I didn't think I did very well on the test. If I hadn't had that headache my war years would have been entirely different.

The first three or four days I wondered what I had gotten myself into and would have given anything to have been able to have gotten out.

That soon pa.s.sed and the rest of the time I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. We were only at Ft. Niagara for about a week before being sent by train to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. This is where we were to take a 13 week training in field artillery. We trained for the 105 gun which was medium size, the sh.e.l.l being about five inches in diameter and about eighteen inches long. We would haul it around on a truck and set it up at a gun emplacement. The first time we shot it there were several officers there and the target was on a hillside about a quarter mile away. We fired the gun and watched for the hit. Nothing happened and we just stood waiting. We never did find out where it went. After the officers left we had a good laugh!