This is the house my parents bought when we moved to Toledo. In mother's biography, she states:
"We had sold our Cedar Rapids home for $14,500.00 but I have forgotten how much we got for the Toledo house."
I had some wonderful memories when we lived in Toledo. The first year, when I was a freshman at the high school (which was just a few blocks up a hill from our house, so I walked to school every day), I was the 'new girl in town' and that makes everyone very aware of you as you walk to school. After school, when I was on my way home, I passed the football field, and as I went by all the young boys practicing there, they would call out to me and sometimes whistle (back then, it was not unusual to get 'wolf whistles,' but now they are considered harassment...times change...) Of course, that was a bit exciting for me, since in Cedar Rapids I had really been pretty much a 'nobody' at school. This was a whole new experience, and I can't say I didn't like it.
After school started, I began to date one of the football players from my class. His name was Sid Moore. He was very cute, but unfortunately, he knew it. Also, he was more affectionate in public than suited my mother's standards. Back then, PDA (public display of affection) was frowned on by our elders, and Sid Moore didn't let that bother him. He would walk me home from school with his arm around my waist, and sometimes would give me a kiss on the cheek when I got to my house. It was all very exciting to me, and he was very cute! We would go to the movies at the movie theater near the downtown area, and would sit near the back so we could hold hands and kiss without too much notice, although it was pretty well known that if you sat in the back, that was the reason... Our little romance lasted all of 3 months...or a bit less. In late October our class had a hay ride. Sid and I were going to attend, and I took a blanket to put over us because the Iowa air had a chill to it. Well, one of my classmates - Doris Sells - had broken her leg, and came to the hay ride in a leg cast. She happened to sit next to Sid on the other side, and Doris was a very cheerful, nice-looking girl (with an injury!) During the hay ride, I shared my blanket with Sid and Doris, since it was chilly. After awhile, I noticed that Sid was holding hands with Doris under my blanket! Well, the wind was not all that got chilly after that! In fact, that was the end of my short time going 'steady' with Sid Moore! He began to date Doris, and they were the ones who went to the back of the movie theater! Needless to say, my feelings were a bit hurt, but I had more fish to fry than just one boy who had a wandering eye...
I really loved going to a small school and got involved in several extra-curricular activities. I don't remember off the top of my head exactly what groups I was in during my freshman year, but I did join the marching band, and played the bell lyre. During concert band in the winter, I worked at playing the clarinet, but was never very good at it. I love music, but was a bit klutzy when it came to playing any instrument...piano, clarinet, etc. Plus, I was having way too much fun socially to practice enough to become good...
I don't think I dated many other boys in my freshman year, but Doris Sells and I became pretty close friends when Sid (after 3 months dating Doris) decided to move on. His main high school flame ended up being a girl who was a year younger than we were - Kathy Kensinger. Those two broke up and got back together several times, and Sid seemed the one who got the short end of the stick most of the time. (Doris and I would sing one of the popular songs from that era to each other...'So you found someone who set you back on your heels...Goody, Goody! So you found someone and now you know how it feels... Goodie, Goodie! So you gave her your heart too, just like I gave mine to you, and she broke it in little pieces, so now how do you do?'....etc. - a Franky Lyman song. We both were 'jilted' and we had something in common!)
I had a crush on one of the senior football players that year. He was dark and handsome, and his name was Lester Taylor. Since we all had the same auditorium for study hall, I often hoped that Lester might be in study hall the same time I was, and sometimes he was. Of course, he really didn't know that I existed, but I didn't care...he was someone I could 'dream' about. (Silly girl...)
Our freshman initiation (yes, they still allowed that back then...) was very fun, but also embarrassing. We freshmen were given a paper that told us what we were expected to do for that day. The boys were to wear make-up, a women's skirt upside down and tied with a rope at the waist, and nylon stockings and high heels. I can't remember if they were supposed to wear a woman's blouse as well, or not. The girls had to wear a gunny sack (we could wear shorts underneath it), with holes cut out for our head and arms. We had to paste our hair down with egg white and make 'spit curls.' We weren't to wear any make-up, and we had to wear five-buckle men's rubber boots. Everyone was supposed to wear a necklace with corn cobs and onions alternated around our necks. Needless to say, the intent was to make us feel very self-conscious and foolish. It worked! We were also to memorize a piece, and to sink immediately to our knees at the foot of any senior we came upon, and start reciting the piece. It went something like this: "Most sagacious, efficacious, ecclesiastical, pontifical Senior. Here am I, your most menial, subservient, imposed up Freshie, ready to obey your slightest command!" Then, I was given an extra-embarrassing chore...and it was all my own fault. I was told that Lester Taylor would fasten me to his belt loop on his jeans using a leather belt, and I was to follow him around as long as he wanted, and do everything he told me to do...sort of his servant! So, that was how our day went. We attended our regular classes, but every time we passed a senior in the hall, we had to drop to our knees and recite our saying. Then, at the end of the day, there was a program in the study hall for all the students to attend. The freshmen were told to obey the seniors, and one of them had me put one of the onions on my necklace into my mouth, and then push a penny up the senior aisle with my nose. I did that, and it wasn't easy! Some freshmen were given other chores, such as counting all the sheets in a roll of toilet paper, filling a cup with water which was sitting on the edge of the stage at the front of the auditorium, by carrying the water by the thimble-full from the back of the auditorium, etc. There was a program on the stage, and some of the freshmen had to walk in 'worms' (cooked spaghetti), others had to feel eyeballs (hard-boiled eggs in water), and other 'fun' and silly assignments. It was actually rather fun, and it is too bad it is no longer allowed, but the risk of someone going too far in some stunt or other was a possibility, so the practice of freshman initiation was stopped. I think we might have been the last class to have it, but I'm not sure of that.
Of course, to make it even more interesting, that night was a football game and dance. So, after school, all the freshmen rushed home, and tried to wash off all the make-up, egg white out of our hair, etc. and get cleaned up and back to the school in time for the big evening!
Every summer I would go back to Minnesota and spend the summer. I think at that time, I continued spending my summers with my aunt, uncle and cousin since my dad was still working. He did get about 3 weeks vacation each year by that time, so they would come up to the lake toward the end of the summer, and I would go back home with them. At that time, my mother still had not learned how to drive. My dad was always the driver when they went anywhere.
My sophomore year was filled with fun as well. I still enjoyed school and had made a good group of friends. We enjoyed slumber parties and hanging out together, often down at 'The Dairy Bar' on the corner across from the movie theater. You could dance at The Dairy Bar to our favorite rock and roll music on the jukebox. Cool! (I was lucky to be in my teens when the big rock bands and singers were popular - Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Elvis, and the unforgettable American Bandstand on television!
Back then, students were allowed to leave the school during the lunch hour, and a few of us decided we weren't all that fond of school lunch (my mother was not too pleased about that because she was one of the cooks...) Those of us who didn't want to eat hot lunch would walk down to The Dairy Bar to eat. My favorite lunch was a peanut butter, lettuce, mayonnaise and dill pickle sandwich (sounds a bit gross, but it is actually not bad...), a Coke, potato chips, and a 'moon' pie (I think those were made by the same company that produced Twinkies)...a lot of sweet, chocolate cake-like dough with whipped 'marshmallow?' filling. Not the best diet, but I was still quite thin, and had always wanted to gain a little more weight. (OMG! I sure can't say that anymore!)
That year I had a new boyfriend. He was Vernon Simmons, and he was a senior. We dated a few times over the winter, and then he sort of stopped asking me out. So, that spring, to see if I could 'rev up' some interest, I asked different guys if they would take me out every night in one week, and I went out on those dates with those guys. (Yep, I had about seven dates that week!) After they picked me up in their cars (most Toledo boys had cars since a lot of them lived on farms, and felt too 'old' to ride the school bus, so their parents gave them cars to take to school), I asked them to drive past Vernon's home which was on the way toward downtown, and since it was spring and nice weather, usually he was out on the little roof patio next to his room, so I would wave at him as we drove by. I think that tactic worked, because not long after that he asked me to go steady. (Re-reading this, I think that I was an awful 'schemer...') That summer Vernon went to an international boy scout jamboree in London in August, just before he left for college. He was gone for at least a week, and when he was to get home, his mother called me and invited me to go with her and his dad (Vernon's father was sort of an important man in town...he was a County Supervisor, I believe), down to Des Moines to meet the train on which Vernon would be returning. (Whew! Talk about serious stuff!) I did go, and Vernon had brought me some very nice gifts from various places in Europe...a lace stole from Venice, a gold watch from Germany, and a nice, leather-bound 'birthday book' from Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. (A birthday book is essentially a calendar book with room on the page of each day to write in the names of people you know who have a birthday on that date. I still have that book...) Vernon and I talked quietly in the back seat of his parents' car on the way home, and I remember a few kisses, too.
So, I wore Vernon's class ring and letter sweater that fall. He left to attend school at Oregon State University in Corvalis, Oregon on an Navy ROTC scholarship. We wrote some letters back and forth, but I was in Toledo and he was in Oregon...and I was just 16 years old, and not really ready to commit that seriously to any one person. So, I left his ring and sweater at home more and more, and started to flirt with a cute guy who was a senior. His name was Byron Roschke, and he was a student who lived at the State Juvenile Home. This home was a place for kids who had trouble at home and were no longer able to maintain good relationships with their parents, or who had been in some kind of legal trouble, but not yet serious enough to have them sent to the boys' training school at Eldora or to the girls' equivalent. The 'home' had classes up through 10th grade, but in their junior and senior years, those kids were sent to public school. They had quite a lot of rules they were supposed to follow, but of course, they did not all follow them. One was that they were not to ride in student's cars. Ha! Well, some of my friends also fell for boys from the 'home.' I remember getting into the car one of the girls had driven to school, and driving past the juvenile home to see if we could spot our boyfriends and wave to them, as they were going to dinner or to their dorm rooms.
My mother was not at all happy with my interest in Byron. He was a 'P.K' - Preacher's Kid - who had become so unmanageable at home that he was sent to Toledo. Byron was one of those guys who had 'smokey-sexy' eyes, and he liked me too. When we were able to arrange dates, we did go out, but it wasn't easy or often, since these kids were pretty much on a tight rope. In any case, I liked him. When Vernon Simmons came home for Christmas break, on Christmas Day he came and picked me up to take me to Cedar Rapids where my family was gathering for the day. My folks had already gone to my sister's house (Cedar Rapids is about 50 miles east of Toledo, so it was not a long drive). On the way, in the car, I noticed that Vernon had on a white shirt under his Navy uniform, and that shirt had 'lipstick on the collar!' So, neither of us was really ready to be seriously committed, and that bit of lipstick gave me the excuse I needed to break up with him. After we got back to Toledo that Christmas Day evening, I gave Vernon back his class ring and letter sweater. It was a good parting, and neither of us was very upset about it.
Sometime during winter weather, when I was dating Vernon in the winter of my sophomore year, we went riding in his blue and white Pontiac, and had an accident on some ice. I believe I spoke about this incident earlier in this blog, so if you are patiently reading it all, this tale may sound familiar. Anyway, we skidded on some ice on the highway between Toledo and Tama on a Sunday morning after church, and his back right tire slid off the pavement and sort of kept us skidding along the road at a slant, right into the front of a pickup truck coming the other way. We were all traveling very slowly, about 15 mph, so the collision was not serious, but there were no seat belts in cars in those days, and when we hit, I flew into the windshield, and got a small cut on the bridge of my nose, and a deeper one on my right eyebrow near the outer edge. I also had a little glass in my eye, but it was just like sand, came out easily, and didn't injure my eye. But, I did bleed quite a lot from the cuts, and brought some bad memories back to my father (as I had written earlier, when he worked for the elevator in Nemaha, he had a head-on collision with a car, and a little 4-year-old girl who had been standing on the front seat of the car, went flying through the front window, and was killed.) I was lucky that I was not seriously hurt, and I don't think either vehicle had much damage.
My father took early retirement when he was 62 because of his high blood pressure (no good medications for that condition back then...my mother baked special bread for him with no salt added, and she tried to regulate his blood pressure by fixing him a diet with little or no salt.) In about 1954, before we had moved to Toledo, I was at the cabin with my aunt, uncle and cousin, and we got a call from my mother. My dad had a very serious nosebleed which they couldn't get stopped. His nose bled on and off for four days. Finally, the bleeding was stopped, and the doctor told my mother that he would probably have had a stroke if his nose had not started bleeding. So, his health was beginning to cause problems for him.
I have not talked about my father's drinking episodes, but he was what I would call a 'binge drinker.' I think his male relatives enjoyed a drink now and then, and obviously, Uncle Mert (you will have to read the episodes about life in South Dakota to know this story....) was 'into his cups' now and then. In retrospect, I think my father was basically a shy man. I think he tried to loosen up by having a few beers to drink, as he did have friends who were only a part of his life at the bars he frequented. My dad would go to a bar and not come home until he was quite drunk. I am not sure when this all started, but it was going on when we lived in Chicago, and thinking back on some of the strange phone calls I mistakenly picked up when I was too little to understand the intent of the speaker, his drinking was happening back then. One call I remember my mother telling about was this one... the phone rings, Carol who is about 4 picks it up and says 'Hello.' The person on the other end of the line says, "Get your ass in the saddle and come on down here." Ooops...not meant for little me... Another caller said, "How would you like to come and sleep with me?" My answer?.... "But, I've already had my nap!" I imagine that after that my mother monitored the phone calls a bit more carefully... Anyway, many times at the cabin, my father would walk through the woods to the resort next to our land (the owner liked having a 'drinking buddy'), and would be gone all evening, coming back staggering and quite inebriated. My dad was not an angry drunk; he was a sad drunk. I can remember some times when he had been drinking, he would just sit at our kitchen table and cry. He never hit my mother, and most of the time when he was sober, which was most of the time, he was a kind and gentle soul. But, when he got drunk, he was a sneaky man. In Cedar Rapids, he had a few bars he frequented, and my mother knew where they were. Since she didn't drive, he would often take the car, and if he didn't come home at a reasonable hour, my mom would begin to worry. She would try to call the bar, but the bar tender had been told that 'my dad wasn't there.' I remember one time when that happened, and my mother just began to cry. I was about 12 years old, and I was quite upset at my father for making my mother sad. That night, my mother didn't let his misbehavior ruin the night for us. She called a cab, and we went out to eat dinner. (Let me tell you, that never happened!) It was an unforgettable evening for me, because for the first time in my life, I had real butter! Back in the days during and following the war, people had food coupons they could use for basic staples, and I think that was when oleomargarine came on the market, and one of the staples you could get with your coupons was oleo. It came in a bag with a little 'dye tablet' embedded in the white shortening (which is really what oleo is made of). You could squeeze and massage that bag, and the dye would eventually get thoroughly mixed with the white shortening, and would start to look like butter. But, folks, it is not butter! Not even close! (There was no 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' in those days...nope!) Just regular shortening that tasted like shortening, but looked a little like butter after you mixed in the dye. Anyway, I will never forget the wonder of tasting real, chilled butter for the very first time. I love butter!
I really didn't like my father's drinking, and those few episodes where it happened and was quite obvious to me, I actually hated him. It's hard to say that, because he was really a nice man, but alcohol (and probably any mind-altering drug) changes a person so that they are not themselves anymore. That is very frightening to a child, and I didn't take it well. But, I must say, that after my father spent six months in the Veterans' Hospital in Iowa City (when I was in high school), he came home a changed man. He had been told he must quit smoking (he had smoked for 50 years...) and quit drinking (probably for nearly as long...), or he would die. And, he did quit! I give him a whole lot of credit for doing that because I know it wasn't easy. But, he had the early stages of emphysema and his blood pressure problems were not improving with his drinking episodes. So...he...quit! Cold-turkey! It was not easy for him...several somewhat humorous incidents came about during this time, with all the stress he was under. But, after he got through the ordeal, he could laugh about them, and we all breathed a big sigh of relief, especially my ever-patient mother.
That said, when my father was gone for six months at the Veterans Hospital, and we lived in Toledo, my mom knew she needed to learn how to drive. She took drivers' training and got her license, and that was that! She was 55 years old...
I was pretty much Byron Roschke's 'girl' until his graduation in the spring of 1958. I got a visit from a man around the time of Byron's graduation. This man was his lawyer, and he wanted to warn me about Byron. He told me that he admired my compassion for a boy in that kind of 'trouble,' but he said that it was important that we maintain just a friendship until Byron could get himself straightened out. Well, after graduation, Byron went back to Shenandoah, where he had lived before he got into so much trouble, and I didn't hear from him after that. Just as well... (Well, I actually did hear from him one time, but I'll tall about that in a future post.)
I will tell more about my last year in Toledo on another post. My senior year was a very important year for me...and too much to cover in this post. Stay tuned...
I had a crush on one of the senior football players that year. He was dark and handsome, and his name was Lester Taylor. Since we all had the same auditorium for study hall, I often hoped that Lester might be in study hall the same time I was, and sometimes he was. Of course, he really didn't know that I existed, but I didn't care...he was someone I could 'dream' about. (Silly girl...)
Our freshman initiation (yes, they still allowed that back then...) was very fun, but also embarrassing. We freshmen were given a paper that told us what we were expected to do for that day. The boys were to wear make-up, a women's skirt upside down and tied with a rope at the waist, and nylon stockings and high heels. I can't remember if they were supposed to wear a woman's blouse as well, or not. The girls had to wear a gunny sack (we could wear shorts underneath it), with holes cut out for our head and arms. We had to paste our hair down with egg white and make 'spit curls.' We weren't to wear any make-up, and we had to wear five-buckle men's rubber boots. Everyone was supposed to wear a necklace with corn cobs and onions alternated around our necks. Needless to say, the intent was to make us feel very self-conscious and foolish. It worked! We were also to memorize a piece, and to sink immediately to our knees at the foot of any senior we came upon, and start reciting the piece. It went something like this: "Most sagacious, efficacious, ecclesiastical, pontifical Senior. Here am I, your most menial, subservient, imposed up Freshie, ready to obey your slightest command!" Then, I was given an extra-embarrassing chore...and it was all my own fault. I was told that Lester Taylor would fasten me to his belt loop on his jeans using a leather belt, and I was to follow him around as long as he wanted, and do everything he told me to do...sort of his servant! So, that was how our day went. We attended our regular classes, but every time we passed a senior in the hall, we had to drop to our knees and recite our saying. Then, at the end of the day, there was a program in the study hall for all the students to attend. The freshmen were told to obey the seniors, and one of them had me put one of the onions on my necklace into my mouth, and then push a penny up the senior aisle with my nose. I did that, and it wasn't easy! Some freshmen were given other chores, such as counting all the sheets in a roll of toilet paper, filling a cup with water which was sitting on the edge of the stage at the front of the auditorium, by carrying the water by the thimble-full from the back of the auditorium, etc. There was a program on the stage, and some of the freshmen had to walk in 'worms' (cooked spaghetti), others had to feel eyeballs (hard-boiled eggs in water), and other 'fun' and silly assignments. It was actually rather fun, and it is too bad it is no longer allowed, but the risk of someone going too far in some stunt or other was a possibility, so the practice of freshman initiation was stopped. I think we might have been the last class to have it, but I'm not sure of that.
Of course, to make it even more interesting, that night was a football game and dance. So, after school, all the freshmen rushed home, and tried to wash off all the make-up, egg white out of our hair, etc. and get cleaned up and back to the school in time for the big evening!
Every summer I would go back to Minnesota and spend the summer. I think at that time, I continued spending my summers with my aunt, uncle and cousin since my dad was still working. He did get about 3 weeks vacation each year by that time, so they would come up to the lake toward the end of the summer, and I would go back home with them. At that time, my mother still had not learned how to drive. My dad was always the driver when they went anywhere.
My sophomore year was filled with fun as well. I still enjoyed school and had made a good group of friends. We enjoyed slumber parties and hanging out together, often down at 'The Dairy Bar' on the corner across from the movie theater. You could dance at The Dairy Bar to our favorite rock and roll music on the jukebox. Cool! (I was lucky to be in my teens when the big rock bands and singers were popular - Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Elvis, and the unforgettable American Bandstand on television!
Back then, students were allowed to leave the school during the lunch hour, and a few of us decided we weren't all that fond of school lunch (my mother was not too pleased about that because she was one of the cooks...) Those of us who didn't want to eat hot lunch would walk down to The Dairy Bar to eat. My favorite lunch was a peanut butter, lettuce, mayonnaise and dill pickle sandwich (sounds a bit gross, but it is actually not bad...), a Coke, potato chips, and a 'moon' pie (I think those were made by the same company that produced Twinkies)...a lot of sweet, chocolate cake-like dough with whipped 'marshmallow?' filling. Not the best diet, but I was still quite thin, and had always wanted to gain a little more weight. (OMG! I sure can't say that anymore!)
That year I had a new boyfriend. He was Vernon Simmons, and he was a senior. We dated a few times over the winter, and then he sort of stopped asking me out. So, that spring, to see if I could 'rev up' some interest, I asked different guys if they would take me out every night in one week, and I went out on those dates with those guys. (Yep, I had about seven dates that week!) After they picked me up in their cars (most Toledo boys had cars since a lot of them lived on farms, and felt too 'old' to ride the school bus, so their parents gave them cars to take to school), I asked them to drive past Vernon's home which was on the way toward downtown, and since it was spring and nice weather, usually he was out on the little roof patio next to his room, so I would wave at him as we drove by. I think that tactic worked, because not long after that he asked me to go steady. (Re-reading this, I think that I was an awful 'schemer...') That summer Vernon went to an international boy scout jamboree in London in August, just before he left for college. He was gone for at least a week, and when he was to get home, his mother called me and invited me to go with her and his dad (Vernon's father was sort of an important man in town...he was a County Supervisor, I believe), down to Des Moines to meet the train on which Vernon would be returning. (Whew! Talk about serious stuff!) I did go, and Vernon had brought me some very nice gifts from various places in Europe...a lace stole from Venice, a gold watch from Germany, and a nice, leather-bound 'birthday book' from Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. (A birthday book is essentially a calendar book with room on the page of each day to write in the names of people you know who have a birthday on that date. I still have that book...) Vernon and I talked quietly in the back seat of his parents' car on the way home, and I remember a few kisses, too.
So, I wore Vernon's class ring and letter sweater that fall. He left to attend school at Oregon State University in Corvalis, Oregon on an Navy ROTC scholarship. We wrote some letters back and forth, but I was in Toledo and he was in Oregon...and I was just 16 years old, and not really ready to commit that seriously to any one person. So, I left his ring and sweater at home more and more, and started to flirt with a cute guy who was a senior. His name was Byron Roschke, and he was a student who lived at the State Juvenile Home. This home was a place for kids who had trouble at home and were no longer able to maintain good relationships with their parents, or who had been in some kind of legal trouble, but not yet serious enough to have them sent to the boys' training school at Eldora or to the girls' equivalent. The 'home' had classes up through 10th grade, but in their junior and senior years, those kids were sent to public school. They had quite a lot of rules they were supposed to follow, but of course, they did not all follow them. One was that they were not to ride in student's cars. Ha! Well, some of my friends also fell for boys from the 'home.' I remember getting into the car one of the girls had driven to school, and driving past the juvenile home to see if we could spot our boyfriends and wave to them, as they were going to dinner or to their dorm rooms.
My mother was not at all happy with my interest in Byron. He was a 'P.K' - Preacher's Kid - who had become so unmanageable at home that he was sent to Toledo. Byron was one of those guys who had 'smokey-sexy' eyes, and he liked me too. When we were able to arrange dates, we did go out, but it wasn't easy or often, since these kids were pretty much on a tight rope. In any case, I liked him. When Vernon Simmons came home for Christmas break, on Christmas Day he came and picked me up to take me to Cedar Rapids where my family was gathering for the day. My folks had already gone to my sister's house (Cedar Rapids is about 50 miles east of Toledo, so it was not a long drive). On the way, in the car, I noticed that Vernon had on a white shirt under his Navy uniform, and that shirt had 'lipstick on the collar!' So, neither of us was really ready to be seriously committed, and that bit of lipstick gave me the excuse I needed to break up with him. After we got back to Toledo that Christmas Day evening, I gave Vernon back his class ring and letter sweater. It was a good parting, and neither of us was very upset about it.
Sometime during winter weather, when I was dating Vernon in the winter of my sophomore year, we went riding in his blue and white Pontiac, and had an accident on some ice. I believe I spoke about this incident earlier in this blog, so if you are patiently reading it all, this tale may sound familiar. Anyway, we skidded on some ice on the highway between Toledo and Tama on a Sunday morning after church, and his back right tire slid off the pavement and sort of kept us skidding along the road at a slant, right into the front of a pickup truck coming the other way. We were all traveling very slowly, about 15 mph, so the collision was not serious, but there were no seat belts in cars in those days, and when we hit, I flew into the windshield, and got a small cut on the bridge of my nose, and a deeper one on my right eyebrow near the outer edge. I also had a little glass in my eye, but it was just like sand, came out easily, and didn't injure my eye. But, I did bleed quite a lot from the cuts, and brought some bad memories back to my father (as I had written earlier, when he worked for the elevator in Nemaha, he had a head-on collision with a car, and a little 4-year-old girl who had been standing on the front seat of the car, went flying through the front window, and was killed.) I was lucky that I was not seriously hurt, and I don't think either vehicle had much damage.
My father took early retirement when he was 62 because of his high blood pressure (no good medications for that condition back then...my mother baked special bread for him with no salt added, and she tried to regulate his blood pressure by fixing him a diet with little or no salt.) In about 1954, before we had moved to Toledo, I was at the cabin with my aunt, uncle and cousin, and we got a call from my mother. My dad had a very serious nosebleed which they couldn't get stopped. His nose bled on and off for four days. Finally, the bleeding was stopped, and the doctor told my mother that he would probably have had a stroke if his nose had not started bleeding. So, his health was beginning to cause problems for him.
I have not talked about my father's drinking episodes, but he was what I would call a 'binge drinker.' I think his male relatives enjoyed a drink now and then, and obviously, Uncle Mert (you will have to read the episodes about life in South Dakota to know this story....) was 'into his cups' now and then. In retrospect, I think my father was basically a shy man. I think he tried to loosen up by having a few beers to drink, as he did have friends who were only a part of his life at the bars he frequented. My dad would go to a bar and not come home until he was quite drunk. I am not sure when this all started, but it was going on when we lived in Chicago, and thinking back on some of the strange phone calls I mistakenly picked up when I was too little to understand the intent of the speaker, his drinking was happening back then. One call I remember my mother telling about was this one... the phone rings, Carol who is about 4 picks it up and says 'Hello.' The person on the other end of the line says, "Get your ass in the saddle and come on down here." Ooops...not meant for little me... Another caller said, "How would you like to come and sleep with me?" My answer?.... "But, I've already had my nap!" I imagine that after that my mother monitored the phone calls a bit more carefully... Anyway, many times at the cabin, my father would walk through the woods to the resort next to our land (the owner liked having a 'drinking buddy'), and would be gone all evening, coming back staggering and quite inebriated. My dad was not an angry drunk; he was a sad drunk. I can remember some times when he had been drinking, he would just sit at our kitchen table and cry. He never hit my mother, and most of the time when he was sober, which was most of the time, he was a kind and gentle soul. But, when he got drunk, he was a sneaky man. In Cedar Rapids, he had a few bars he frequented, and my mother knew where they were. Since she didn't drive, he would often take the car, and if he didn't come home at a reasonable hour, my mom would begin to worry. She would try to call the bar, but the bar tender had been told that 'my dad wasn't there.' I remember one time when that happened, and my mother just began to cry. I was about 12 years old, and I was quite upset at my father for making my mother sad. That night, my mother didn't let his misbehavior ruin the night for us. She called a cab, and we went out to eat dinner. (Let me tell you, that never happened!) It was an unforgettable evening for me, because for the first time in my life, I had real butter! Back in the days during and following the war, people had food coupons they could use for basic staples, and I think that was when oleomargarine came on the market, and one of the staples you could get with your coupons was oleo. It came in a bag with a little 'dye tablet' embedded in the white shortening (which is really what oleo is made of). You could squeeze and massage that bag, and the dye would eventually get thoroughly mixed with the white shortening, and would start to look like butter. But, folks, it is not butter! Not even close! (There was no 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' in those days...nope!) Just regular shortening that tasted like shortening, but looked a little like butter after you mixed in the dye. Anyway, I will never forget the wonder of tasting real, chilled butter for the very first time. I love butter!
I really didn't like my father's drinking, and those few episodes where it happened and was quite obvious to me, I actually hated him. It's hard to say that, because he was really a nice man, but alcohol (and probably any mind-altering drug) changes a person so that they are not themselves anymore. That is very frightening to a child, and I didn't take it well. But, I must say, that after my father spent six months in the Veterans' Hospital in Iowa City (when I was in high school), he came home a changed man. He had been told he must quit smoking (he had smoked for 50 years...) and quit drinking (probably for nearly as long...), or he would die. And, he did quit! I give him a whole lot of credit for doing that because I know it wasn't easy. But, he had the early stages of emphysema and his blood pressure problems were not improving with his drinking episodes. So...he...quit! Cold-turkey! It was not easy for him...several somewhat humorous incidents came about during this time, with all the stress he was under. But, after he got through the ordeal, he could laugh about them, and we all breathed a big sigh of relief, especially my ever-patient mother.
That said, when my father was gone for six months at the Veterans Hospital, and we lived in Toledo, my mom knew she needed to learn how to drive. She took drivers' training and got her license, and that was that! She was 55 years old...
I was pretty much Byron Roschke's 'girl' until his graduation in the spring of 1958. I got a visit from a man around the time of Byron's graduation. This man was his lawyer, and he wanted to warn me about Byron. He told me that he admired my compassion for a boy in that kind of 'trouble,' but he said that it was important that we maintain just a friendship until Byron could get himself straightened out. Well, after graduation, Byron went back to Shenandoah, where he had lived before he got into so much trouble, and I didn't hear from him after that. Just as well... (Well, I actually did hear from him one time, but I'll tall about that in a future post.)
This photo was taken on the front porch stoop of our house in Toledo. Apparently, three of my sisters and their kids had come to visit, and my Aunt Rachel was there too. Left to right - Merry with Bonnie, Aunt Rachel, Margaret, Susan, Dorothy Ann, with Julie sort of hiding next to her, and with Butchie in front (Susan has her arm around him...)
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