On January 6, 1920, I was born at the Akron City Hospital. Aunt Brownie, who never (had any children, was given the honor of naming me - Barbara Ann after the heroine of a book she had read. We lived with them until I was six months old.
John lost his job in the postwar recession but got another as a fireman on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. The line's terminal was at Brownsville, PA so the family moved there. It was a small, dirty town situated mostly on hills on either side of the Monongahela River. John worked hard, stoking coal into the furnaces aboard the big trains, to make steam and run the steam engines. His shifts were 12 hours long. He was laid off when I was 1-1/2 years old.
My parents had no place to go so they went to live with his folks in Bruceton Mills. John D. had moved here in 1915 from Hazelton because it was a larger hamlet with more business. Next door to my grandparents there was a garage owned by Ted Dye, a mechanic married to my dad's stepsister, Mae. They lived in a four room apartment over the garage. Across the street was an old house recently vacated by old Mrs. Trowbridge who was dying. Ted offered John a job working in the garage. The young couple and child moved into the old house.
In January, 1922, my brother, Richard Morse - "Dick" - was born in the old house. Aunt Nell, Herm and Helen Yvonne, born in 1919, had moved back to Bruceton Mills from Akron in 1918 after Herm had lost his job at Goodrich. In West Virginia he operated a steam shovel and worked on road construction whenever there was a job. They bought a 25 acre farm a mile from town. Nell was a good gardener and homemaker so they were able to get along OK.
Bruceton Mills was a small town of less than 1,000 people situated in the north central area of West Virginia. Nearby one can stand on a rock and touch the soil of Pennsylvania and Maryland at the same time. The town was laid out like a T. one entered the upper part of the T from the main road across a bridge crossed the Old Sandy River. This street went a fourth to a half mile until the last building - the high school. The business section began with a general (dry goods) store, then "Pig's Place" -a store and garage - the town bank, some houses and the big general store, Sillballs. The post office was there as well as Dr. DaFoe's office. Next to Sillballs was my father's uncle Will Bowermaster's house. His wife Emma was very fat and jolly. Mary, the oldest daughter, was married later to Ed Thomas; they both taught at the grade school. The other children were Margaret, Bill and Joe. Joe was 6-8 years older than me, Margaret, 14 years older than me.
Getting back to the town's layout: the other part of town went on for a half mile to a mile, mostly single houses except for the hotel and almost near the end the grade school. At the top of the hill was the non-denominational church which most of the residents attended. Most of the residents were of English or Welsh descent. Halfway along this road was my grandparents' house and across from it was a short street going down to the river, ending at the flour mill where grandpa was the miller. Aunt Nell's house was a mile beyond the church and cemetery.
I was about three when Ted and Mae moved to Cleveland and my Dad took over the garage and we moved into the apartment over it. When I was four another boy joined our family, George D., just 23 months younger than Dick. The summer I was five, Aunt Mae took me back to Cleveland for a visit. I was there two weeks, recall that I really liked her. She would play with me and give me my favorite foods: baked beans and watermelon. She was never cross with me. I missed her a lot when she died about a year later, leaving a three-months old girl, Mary Ruth. A year later Ted married Edna Thomas, a widow with a boy about my age, Thomas Bray. He had been born with a scarcity of oil glands and hair follicles and had very dry skin and just a little white fuzz on top of his head.
The January I turned six I was sent to grade school of two rooms, one for first through fourth grades and the other for fifth through eight. There were probably 15 kids in my room. Each age group would take turns at recitation, going to the front of the room while the rest of the class stayed at their desks completing assigned tasks. I can still visualize five or six of us sitting on chairs in front, learning to read Dick and Jane.
The room was heated by a big pot belly stove in the back of the room. The teacher was Mary, a cousin of mine. I still recall some of the girls in that room: Kathryn Benson and Eleanor Darby. My cousin, Helen, whom I called "Honey", was my best friend and a year ahead of me. We took our lunch and I still recall those sandwiches -thick, unevenly sliced homemade bread, spread with peanut butter and jelly. A couple of bites and I would throw mine down the outside toilet. I could never eat peanut butter until I was an adult and never learned to like jelly. Now and then we had cookies or an apple. The only other thing I remember was trying to concentrate on my home work back at my desk when the others were reciting their lessons up front.
In September of that year I gained another baby brother. Ela, a neighbor and good friend of the family, named him after an old boy friend, Edmund Leon. My family hated the name and always called the boy Jimmy. Ela was the daughter of friends living next door to our grandparents, Sue and Poke Armstrong. Ela was 14 years older than me, used to babysit us and help my mother. At 16 she quit school, got married but came back home to live after eight months. She had a baby girl to whom she was devoted. At nine months the baby, Betty Sue, contracted meningitis and died. Ela finished high school, married Vernon Ady and they moved to Akron.
Vernon, "Bun", was a big man and he got a job at Goodrich in the "pit", making tires. It was the hardest and hottest job in the plant but favored because there was less chance of being laid off. When Jim was two months old we moved back to Akron. Ted had returned to Bruceton, taken back the garage, and my Dad couldn't find another job anywhere.
Ela and Bun met us at the station and had found rooms for us with Danny Bates. I later heard Bun say that when he saw my folks and three kids it made him mighty glad that he didn't have any children and all that responsibility. George was only about 21 months at the time and my grandparents had convinced my parents to allow him to remain with them until they got settled, after which they could return and get George. We settled in Kenmore which is a working class southern section of Akron. In a couple of weeks my Dad got a job driving a horse-drawn milk wagon, delivering milk to single family residences.
The folks bought an old house on Waterloo Road. There were four rooms downstairs, a big kitchen and bedroom; they turned the living room into another bedroom and the dining room into a living room. They rented out the two bedrooms upstairs to help make the monthly payments. I started school, in the first grade at Highland Park. I adored my teachers and liked school a lot. I made life-long friends with some of the girls in my class: Faye McCauslin, Marthanelle Porter and Kathleen Jones, whose father was principal.
That summer I visited Aunt Sade and Uncle Frank in Cambridge ! or a week. All I remember is trying to catch a bird in their back yard. Uncle t rank told me that ALL I had to do was put salt on a bird's tail and the bird would stop and let itself be caught. I ran around with a salt shaker but could never get close enough to pour salt on a bird's tail. I don't recall how I traveled to their home but remember going home on the train. Aunt Sade had made me a beautiful purple dress and packed me a wonderful lunch, including a ripe red plum. When I ate the plum some of it spilled on my new dress. I was broken-hearted because I thought my dress was ruined. I cried until a woman passenger took me to her seat and washed my dress off.
I knew that I was to get off at Akron but to be sure, Uncle Frank had made a big sign showing my destination and hung it around my neck. I was mortified that people would think I was dumb but Aunt Sade made me promise not to remove it until I got to Akron. A big change came with this trip: I was able to ride on a moving vehicle without vomiting, the first time this had happened. The first thing I said to my mother as I got off the train was "Mom, I didn't get sick!" I was so proud of myself. We went home from the station by streetcar and I was anxious to get home and tell all my friends about my big adventure.
I'll never forget the Easter when I was eight; the date was April 7, 1928. The day before my brothers and I had dyed eggs with my mother. We used beet juice and onion skins to make red and yellow colored eggs. My mother had to go to bed early she had a toothache. So as not to bother her, our father put Dick and me up stairs (the renters were gone for the weekend). The next morning my Dad came up and gave us our presents from the Easter bunny; we each got a soup bowl with our colored eggs and jelly beans. Then he told us to come downstairs and see what the Easter bunny had brought our mother. Mom was in bed and, as we entered the room, she said: "Come and see what the Easter bunny brought". We went over to the bed and there, lying beside her was a baby. "Is it a boy or girl?", I asked.
I was so disappointed when she said it was a boy as this one made four brothers for me. Then the doctor came and chased us out of the room. I stood by the door to see him when he came out, told him: "I know the Easter bunny didn't bring that baby; you did. Where did you get it?" He told me that he had found it out in the big ditch in front of our house. "Was there only one?" I asked. "Oh no, there were several but I just took this one," he replied. "Why didn't you pick a girl?" I asked. "I didn't bother looking: I just took the closest one." "Well, are they still there? Maybe we can exchange the boy for a girl."
"I don't believe so," he said, "they were floating away just as I left." Just to make sure, I put my coat on. ran out and checked the ditch - not a thing. Every day for weeks I would search the ditch for babies but none appeared. So much for the smarts of an eight-year old.
The baby was named John Thomas but we called him Tommy because there were now two Johns in the family. When Tommy was about three months old the family went back to West Virginia to visit our grandparents. One afternoon my mother had placed Tommy in a buggy which belonged to Mary Ruth, for his nap, then joined Grandma on the porch for a visit. Mary Ruth, her father and stepmother lived in the apartment above the garage next door. Mary Ruth spent a lot of time with my Grandma who had raised her after her own mother's death, and until Ted married again. We kids were playing in the side yard. My mother heard the baby crying and went in to get him up from his nap.
We heard our mother scream and went running into the house. Grandma yelled to me to go next door and get my Dad who was visiting Ted. Dad came running, took one look and ran to fetch Dr. Dafoe. Mary Ruth, who at the time was 2~ or 3 years old, had taken the butcher knife and cut off part of Tommy's nose. The Dr. sewed back the cut portion, which healed well, except that thereafter Tommy had a turned-up nose. The adults figured that Mary Ruth was jealous because the baby was using her buggy.
My folks had come back to get George, but Grandma and Grandpa said he was so contented and because his Mom was so busy, why not let him stay until the next summer. Mom did have her hands full with 19-months-old Jimmy and the new baby so we returned to Akron without George.
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