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Transcript Recording - Edna (Pike) Kremmel - Feb 3 1997
Transcript Recording - Edna (Pike) Kremmel - Feb 3 1997
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I'm 15 in the afternoon of February the 3rd, 1997. And I sit here on my balcony in the warm sunshine, with a temperature in the high 70s. And by the way, they call the balcony here in Florida, Lanai.
And I'm going to try to answer all the questions that my nephew, Denny, had asked for at Christmas time. And by the way, hello, Denny and Kathy. I guess you know this is Aunt Edna.
I found your Christmas letter to be so enjoying. I just can't tell you that I wished when I was younger somebody had done this, so that my memory would be a lot clearer than it is today. The first part of your letter, which I will send back to you if you haven't kept, tells about my mother and father.
And I'm sure you found out much more about my father from Alice Hayes. But at the beginning there it states that Charles Augusta and Ida May returned from sandwich in Massachusetts. I'm Mary.
But I'll tell you the story as I have always heard it said. It seems that my grandparents, who were Coons, George Coons, and his wife, Mary, had gone to sandwich Massachusetts to the only glass factory there was in the United States. And my mother, being a teenage girl, of course, was along with them.
My father was at the age of 12, I always understood, when he started working in this glass factory in sandwich Massachusetts. But in his teens, their lives nipped because of the boarding house that my father's mother kept. And my mother did things like helping with the cleaning and the food.
And she remarked about hanging clothes outside for her. And even when, in those days, when it was raining and the saltwater mist was off of the ocean, there wasn't pollution. And they left the bedding there because it became whiter.
Also about serving meals to the border. My mother would mention the well-themed baked beans, Massachusetts or Boston baked beans. Told us about the trips that she and my dad would bicycle up over the hills that she felt were not even included as a hill because coming from Manaca with our mother and father, it was really relatively flat.
There was a long boardwalk over the cranberry bogs when they would go out to the shore. And she told about going out there and fishing for, catching mackerel and the different fish that they would catch. Even though my father never liked fish.
And after the, oh, at the time, the glass factory in Massachusetts did not cut glass. It only pressed glass. And my grandfather Koontz was a mold maker.
And he had gone there to make molds for the glass factory. And when that job was finished, he returned back to Manaca with my mother. My mother had not, had been raised a Lutheran.
My grandparents were Lutheran. But in anticipation of my father coming to Manaca to be married, my mother was working in the rectory at the Catholic church and possibly did stay with the people by the name of Konvalinka. K-O-N-V-O-L-I-N-K-A.
Nan Konvalinka was my mother's maid of honor when she was married. I don't know where along the line that we had lost our connection with Nan Konvalinka. But even well after I was married and we had different affairs, we would invite Nan Konvalinka over to our house to see my mother.
But anyway, mother was working in the Catholic church and thus became a Catholic. And my father came and they were married on June 28, 1906 by the Father Stinger that our mother spoke of many times and did not go back to Massachusetts after that. My father came to work in the Phoenix Glass Company.
But under my interpretation at the time, Phoenix Glass did not cut glass either. They could have. But I know they talked a lot about press glass and etching.
So my sister Margaret and Earl both worked in the Phoenix etching glass and painting glass. But anyway, they're in Manacca. They live on Manacca Heights.
And my father's working in the glass factory. And then they moved downtown when my sister Eunice was born. I believe that was when they had moved to Virginia Avenue.
Aunt Earl was in grade school. Aunt Earl and Aunt Margaret were in grade school when Aunt Eunice was born. That would have been 1925.
No, that would have been 1921 because Aunt Eunice was two years older than me. I was born in 1923. My mother tells a nice long story about when Aunt Eunice was born.
Aunt Earl had smallpox. And of course, not only was the house quarantined, the block was quarantined. And the neighbors didn't even allow them to have their windows open.
And it was July 11th that she was born. The policemen would come to the front porch. My father wasn't even allowed to go to work and take the grocery order.
He had to go to the store and get groceries and bring them back to sit on the porch. But anyway, when Mother had the baby, they brought the mattress down from upstairs in the bedroom. She gave birth to Eunice on the floor on January 11th.
And always told us how beautiful baby she was with blonde hair and blue eyes. And just a little gift from heaven and was like an angel. They struggled through those years and always, to my estimation, had a good life.
My older sister, Beryl, would tell me about... I had to pause there for a little bit. Garbage truck had gone by. Let's see, now where was I? They told me we were living a good life in Manaca.
And Beryl would tell me about my mother was very active. And she belonged to card clubs and she entertained and she would... Reflect as the one to call when any household had any trouble. Because neighbors in those days were all closely knit.
And my mother would nurse the sick and care for those that were young. And always called upon and always was doing things for the neighbors. Very talkative, very active person.
Was the first president of the Manaca Auxiliary, the fire department. I can remember when I was six years old. Before that I have just very faint memory about a child in Manaca.
At that time we lived on Atlantic Avenue right above the waterworks of Manaca. And the rivers were not polluted so there was a beach at the waterworks. And we lived directly above that hill on the road that's closest to Ohio River.
I remember my father made in our backyard a miniature golf course. You could buy it at the five and dime store, small clubs and balls. And he laid out the yard with the holes and had dug holes with a cup in it to shoot for.
And kids from all around that neighborhood would come and play golf. My grandparents, the Koontzes lived above the grocery store that was on the corner of several blocks back. And I recall visiting them, they lived in this apartment.
But anyway in the year of 1929 I was in first grade. And had developed a mastoid, a hip problem and had surgery. Which was into a very lengthy thing.
And that was the year there was a depression, there was no work. Pop-up wasn't working. Aunt Beryl had a job at the telephone company.
But we moved to Bridgewater then, on the lower end of Mulberry Street. And lived in a house that had no central heat, no central plumbing. We had an outside jawn.
Took our bath in a big tub on the kitchen floor. Get up in the cold morning with the coal fire in the stove in the kitchen to dress by to get off to school. But didn't stay there long.
It wasn't a very desirable place. Now that was when I then repeated first grade over again in 1930. My father still wasn't working.
Maybe just here and there but hardly any at all. Aunt Beryl was the one who brought home the money to pay the rent and the bills. So we stayed in that house a short time.
Mother and father were always trying to find a better place for us to live. We moved down along Riverside Drive. Just about where that new restaurant is, where the old Keystone Bakery was.
My father had a garden down over the hill with a riverbank. The ground was good. We ate lots of celery soup.
The bakery was behind us. They had a store for old bread and old rolls. I remember going there with a nickel to buy a package of maple rolls.
The A&P was very close by. We would have a dollar to go over and buy groceries for several days. We only had two bedrooms there, so it was not a very convenient place at all to live.
I really can't remember a whole lot of happy times there except the holidays. I remember Grandma always made the holidays. My mother, that is, made the holidays cheerful.
I guess we just had the beginning of always having a great holiday. Then we moved from there up to the place across from the school. That is where everything seems to have—of my childhood seems to— Aunt Beryl and Aunt Margaret were both married.
Of course, Aunt Margaret was married when she was 17 before they even moved out of Manaca. Aunt Beryl and she were both working at the Phoenix Glass Factory. Margaret didn't like it, so they sent Margaret to a business school, which was over in Rochester.
But you had to walk back and forth from over to Rochester. In fact, you didn't take a trolley or a bus or a taxi anywhere. You walked.
Okay, I have another pause there to get back to the story of Aunt Margaret and Aunt Beryl. As I said, Aunt Margaret was supposedly to go to a business school in Rochester. Although she was only 17, both she and Aunt Beryl didn't go to school any further than when they were 16.
But Aunt Margaret was meeting a fellow by the name of Sid Martin. They were soon to be married and moved to Bridgewater, which he had already had the house built. At that age, Margaret was 17.
Aunt Beryl was still at home. I know I was four years old when my brother, Charles Leland, was born. I guess that's 1927.
Aunt Margaret had her first son the same time. But now that I'm wandering, my mind's just wandering around, not being very direct or concrete about anything really. I'll get back to where you had said something to the effect that Dad's sister, Selina, came to visit for a year or two.
Now, Alice Hayes might have cleared this all up for you. But my recollection is that Daddy's niece, Beth, came to visit and married William St. Clair and stayed in our area. We always called her Aunt Beth, but her name was really—I believe it was Beth.
But Alice Hayes probably has that all straightened out. The story of the dance in school, that never was in my mind very clear. What I recall is that Mother and Dad did teach those to dance, but I never heard the story that they taught them at the Turners.
It was always just at home, and my mother played the piano. Then Aunt Margaret was only—wasn't that old. She probably did remember that much better than I did.
But Aunt Beth did marry Bill St. Clair. I hope Alice Hayes cleared that all up. Now, where was I? What year am I in about now? I'm probably in where we're living across from the school.
And I can remember being 12 years of age in 1936 when the flood came. My parents suffered an awful big loss at that time. Oh, I want to get back first.
I want to get back to my grandparents. Because there was something that you had stated that my father didn't get along with his in-laws. I hardly think that's true.
I can recall my mother talking about my grandmother's death at Christmastime. She died somewhere around Christmas, and then my grandfather came to live with us when we lived in the second place in Bridgewater. I remember him living with us even though we had a small house.
There was always room for families to take care of families. He never said, why, I don't have a bedroom for this and that. If you only had two bedrooms, why do the kids all sleep in one bedroom? But the grandparent was always given the most comfortable part.
And I know that my grandfather died while we were living in that house on Market Street, the first house that we moved to on Market Street. And I always felt that my father liked my mother's parents because I never heard him say anything but good things about them. I'm sure at the age anywhere over six, I probably would have remembered if there was very, very much of a dislike there.
My father then, around this time, was still not working very well. And Aunt Beryl was. Aunt Beryl started to work at the telephone company, I guess around the age of 18 and stayed there for all those years.
But they were not allowed to marry if they worked there. If they got married, they had to quit. Everybody wonders why Aunt Beryl had such a long engagement to Wayne Reed.
I know when I was six and had my surgery, she was going with Wayne Reed because he was the one who owned the car and would drive Beryl, taking me to the doctor that was in Beverly, although we lived in Manaca when I was six. But I know she stayed and worked to really to help the family. And she and Wayne did get married secretly and were married for quite a while secretly.
Then I can remember that my mother didn't go out very much. She didn't entertain. She didn't belong to clubs.
And I do believe it was because of her health, but no one ever gave her the sympathy that she should have had for the pain that she had lived with. Those days you took an aspirin if you had an ache or a pain. If you had rheumatism or arthritis, you were, well, no different than anybody else.
But she did become rather a recluse. My father was the outgoing person who walked every day and knew all the neighbors and was very active and liked to talk to people. He liked people, never had a car because they never wanted one, and they always used public transportation.
And my father would walk wherever he had to go. He did at one time take the train to Manaca, but also used to walk down Market Street to the Main Street, Bridge Street to get a bus and did work until I understood it was up until he was 74. But things were nice in the house across from the school until the flood came.
I have a lot of good memories about childhood there. The flood was devastating. They lost furniture and keepsakes and pictures and earrings that just could never be replaced.
Mother lost a lot of the antique things. And not realizing how valuable the cut grass was, she would give it away as gifts to people because she had it and it was beautiful. Of course, now we know how much money it brings today.
It didn't in those days. After the flood, we moved up on Poplar Street, and that must have been 1940 or so because Aunt Eunice graduated in 1939, and I went to high school the whole time we lived up on Poplar Street and Bridgewater up on the hill. And Daddy always worked hard to keep the house painted and neat and nice.
My mother cleaned the house faithfully and did the cooking. All the things mothers are usually associated with those days. My father did most of the heavy work, carrying the clothes basket to the basement for wash on Monday, stretching the clothesline before he went to work, having a garden, always a garden.
And those years passed quickly. We were also happy when Mother and Dad did buy the house up on Oak Hill in New Brighton after Dad retired in 1974. The house they bought wasn't very nice.
It's the way they had put the siding, and Dad did so much work in the yard. It really turned out to be a nice place. Going back now to the story of my grandparents, which would be my dad's mother and father, I only remember his name as being Jack, which probably was John, the George Albert I don't recall ever hearing.
And the story I heard, remember hearing about their coming to the United States, was that my grandfather, Jack or John, was in a boat ship and skipped off the ship into Canada, married a French-Canadian, and snuck into America somewhere along the Niagara, settled in Massachusetts. My father never talked much about where his parents came from or what they did. You're going to have to rely on Alice Hayes to give you all the information she can.
And I will be interested in hearing about it when you get this all put together. I remember my dad talking about having a brother who was an alcoholic and drank all the time. Now, I thought his name was Will Pike.
And my dad, being embarrassed by him, would cross the street so he wouldn't be on the same side of the street with him. My father had an awful lot of pride. He wanted you to walk with your head up and your shoulders back.
He also, I remember my mother saying that there was a brother, William, but William really belonged to one of the unmarried daughters who had a child out of wedlock. And so the parents raised him as theirs. I could be wrong about that story, but I remember being told it.
And Aunt Beth, which was Alice Hayes' mother, was always close to our family. She always visited, and our summer vacation was always to go over to Manaca Heights and stay with her for a week. It's so interesting to start reminiscing and thinking back now that I'm at the age of 73.
I feel so old. I hardly can believe that I would have felt like this five years ago, or even a little longer. We've lived in Florida now about eight years.
When I first moved to Florida, I felt so young and full of life. But when you get in the 70s, things all change. And you start to think about your past, and things mean more to you when you're older.
It's too bad I didn't write these things down. There'll probably be some more that I might think of that I might add onto this tape before I mail it to you. You did ask for all of Uncle Jim and mine, children's names and addresses.
And I will write that down and send it to you and not give it over the tape here. I know that my children will be interested in receiving any information you have for them. Janie, for Christmas, bought me such a nice gift.
She bought me a journal, but along with the journal came a book that was published to help people write the journal. So the book starts out with all the questions you should ask yourself about when you were as far back as you can remember. Anything you know about yourself as a baby or as a little child until you still have your own memories.
And everything from then on. So I've got to get busy and fill that in so that the book is called For Our Children's Children. So this will be what Janie can pass on to her children.
And probably I'll add to it not just everything about myself, but include my husband Jim. So that she'll have a good start. They'll have a good start, rather.
Her children will have a good start to know something about Janie's childhood and Janie's beginning. It seems a little strange to make a tape like this since I've never done it before. I'll have to rewind it and play it back and see what it sounds.
There may be a whole cancellation where I may start all over again. But then, maybe I'll just leave it the way it is and you'll understand how screwy old people get. Aunt Eunice would have been such a beautiful person to answer so many questions for you.
She had a much better memory than I have. She always got so much out of life. I'm sure she was one of God's favorites.
I, in turn, was just the opposite. If there were hand-me-down clothes, I didn't want them. Aunt Eunice said,
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