It is all about my parents.
They met as a blind date arranged by mutual friends, and spent the evening at one of the regular dances for young people out back of the local pharmacy. Three months later they were married and a year later they welcomed their first child, a son.
She was from the country. Her father had a farm that other people worked. It didn't go, and he went to the city and was employed in a coffin assembly workshop, but the mother used to tell her children that he went into John Wanamaker's and assembled toys for the Christmas season. He died of kidney disease when she was a teenager. She was the only girl in a family with four children. It was thought that the mother's cares would be lessened if the daughter was sent off to live with relatives. Although well-treated, she was sick to be home with her mother. They eventually reunited and the mother remarried, her sons joined the service, and my mother enjoyed her high-school years.
They were still poor and my mother was bright and outgoing and wanted further education. The only paths open to her were teaching and nursing. She got a scholarship to nursing school and graduated an R.N. She used to say that she didn't want to go into nursing because you had to wear white hosiery!
Father's people were wealthy. His father owned a thriving agribusiness and, some said, the town it was in. He was influential in the railroad, owned an island, and was the town bank's president. During the depression he would round up some trusted and eagle-eyed workers to ride shotgun and together they would make a five hour drive to the nearest Federal Reserve bank and back. He sent his sons to a boys' military school in Virginia. My father loved it. He was what they call a natural leader. He hoped to go on to VMI but his father sent him to the Wharton School.After he got out and married, he moved with his bride to the next town and got the only job he could find, working on the floor of a tomato canning factory.
Things were bad everywhere. Mother used to say "There was plenty of money, but there was nothing to spend it on. You'd cut up a dress to make a coat, or a relative would come by with a box of clothes that were immediately measured and cut to serve all the family." My father canned all the tomatoes he could stand until his pride flew away and he returned to work for his father, totilng feedbags and delivering coal.
When the war came all the able-bodied men in town, even an Amishman, signed up. It did not matter if they were married or had children, they went. One of the men from town was killed in the war, and they named a park after him. Everybody knew his name.
My mother was rented a house by her father-in-law, $25 a month. She kept busy with her (now) two sons and did nursing for the town doctor.The church became an important place, more than ever.
After the war father and some friends built themselves houses up on a ridge called Squirrel Hill. The houses are still there, solid and square. His father gave my mother and father a car, which their firstborn named the "Abraham Lincoln." The families visited often. Mother's mother lived with her awhile, then went north to be with her first grandchild, and died in Illinois. She is buried in a potter's field there. I never knew her, but the longer I lived knowing my parents the more I did, and the more I appreciate the mountains she crossed.
