MY MOTHER
Wtitten by Florence Ione Sturm Rice
My mother lived in Mexico until she was six years old and she spoke only Spanish. Her father had been in Mexico working in some way with the Mexicsn government in establishing the railroads. Later the family lived in Chihuahua where her father had a shoe store. Both her parents spoke Spanish as well as English. Her father's name was Edward Williams, but he preferred to use the Spanish form, Edward Guillermo. My favorite story is about the invitation her father received to attend a ball in the honor of the President, Porfirlo Diaz. The invitation which I still have is written on heavy Manila paper with the official red seal of the Mexican government bearing the emblem of the eagle standing on a nopal cactus with a serpent in its beak. The dance was held in Chihuahua and my grandmother wore her hair piled up high on top of her head which was the style back in 1888. She had little fireflies held in place by hairpins in her hair. Then when thy went out into the patio between dances for a breath of fresh air, the fireflies lit up like little lights on a Christmas tree. My grandfather loved Mexico and he never wanted to come back to the United States. He loved to hunt and fish. One fish that he caught was a huge sawfish, a kind of shark, that had an enormous bill about six feet long and seven inches wide with long sharp teeth on each side of the bill. We had that sawfish bill nailed up in our garage for years until my brother married and took it away. It was a museum piece. I never met any of my grandparents, but they became very real to me through my mother's stories. My mother was named Lolita Romero Guillermo. She and her mother returned to the U. S. After her father contracted yellow fever and died in Mazatlan where he had an interest in a silver mine. Then, living with relatives who didn't speak a word of Spanish, my mother had to learn English and she forgot every word of her first language. Later she changed her middle name, "Romero", she didn't appreciate, to a family name, "Overman." So Lolita Romero Guillermo became Lola Overman Williams. although she was of English descent, she was a brunette and when I took her to Mexico in 1937 everyone assumed that she was Mexican. When we were in a restaurant or a hotel, occasionally someone would address her with a fast blast of Spanish and she would stand there speechless, blushing up to her hairline! Finally she said, "Ione, please teach me how to say, 'I don't speak Spanish!' She learned to say, No hallo espanol" but she never learned another word of Soanish! I always thought it would be interesting to see, if she was hypnotized, if she would start speaking Spanish! You can see the impact her stories had on me! I decided when I was six years old that I was going to learn Spanish, become a Spanish teacher and travel in Mexico. One story that my mother told me was that there were so many scorpions and tarantulas in Chihuahua that she had to learn to crawl on top of a table, the floor being too dangerous for a baby. You always shook your shoes in the morning, too, before putting them on. Because it was hot in Chihuahua you had windows open to the air with no glass, and to keep out intruders there were iron bars covering the windows. Sometimes a robber would come sling when people were at church, and using a fish pole with a hook on the line, he would insert it between the bars and lift watches or jewelry from the dresser. It's the custom in Mexico to pierce the ears of little girls when they are tiny babies and give them gold earrings. The Mexicans couldn't stand to see my mother without earrings, so one day a Mexican woman took her with het, pierced her ears, and sent her home with gold earrings. My grand father was a real adventurer! He loved to hunt, and sometimes after hunting pheasants he would collect the feathers and sell them as they were very much in demand to decorate women's hats in the United States. My mother's great-grandfather was the first mayor of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and he and his family lived there in a large two-story brick building on top of a hill surrounded by a forest of cedar trees. My mother lived there after her father died in a Mexico, and her mother went to work. There were lots of relatives, sometimes thirty or forty would gather at the same time for holidays and they always greeted each other with hugs and kisses. My mother was very shy and she would hide under the bed and not come out until all the greetings were over. She was timid all her life, afraid of everything, especially the ocean, horses, and cars. She really suffered when she watched me swim out beyond the waves in the ocean! My father courted my mother in Iowa, taking her for a ride with his horse and buggy. One day after a hard rain and flooding, a bridge that they had to cross was under about a foot of water. My father drove across the flooded bridge, knowing exactly where the center of it was, but it was a traumatic experience for my mother and she never gorgon it. My father was not afraid of anything and he loved horses. In the little town of Finchford where he lived everyone had a horse and buggy and when you met someone going the same direction, it was quite naturally became a race. He had a fast horse and loved to race and I imagine that he really scared my timid mother. My father used to swim with a cousin in a river near their home. They were both excellent swimmers. Once when the river was very high, they swam with the current and down over a waterfall. When the water level was lower later, they saw to their horror, that there were iron girders sticking out of the water spaced close together right where they had been swimming. Miraculously they had passed right between the girders or they would have shredded! Both my parents had attended business college. My mother became a legal secretary, and after they were married, they moved to Washington D. C. Where my father had a government job. My brother was born in Washington, D. C., in 1906. Several years later my father transferred to Los Angeles as Deputy Collector of Customs. Practically no one had a car in those days, and my father rode the streetcar every day to work. He was the only one who had the key to a small cupboard where confiscated opium was kept locked up. Whenever he was late coming home, my mother would start to worry, imagining that someone had hit him over the head to get the key to the opium. In those days they just hit you over the head; they didn't shoot you.
My father loved to swim in the ocean at Long Beach. We used to tide the Red a Electric Car from Los Angeles to Long Beach over a trestle that crossed a slough full of thousands of cat tails. We stayed for a week in a little hotel right on the beach. My father would swim way out of sight in the ocean and of course my mother imagined that he was drowning.
One day he nearly did. There was a storm with Hugh waves and the friend he was swimming with did drown. The storm whipped the surface of the the ocean into a froth that was too light to swim in and too heavy to breathe. Somehow my father managed to make it back to shore. My mother did her best to instill fear of the ocean in my brother and me, with no luck, however.
My first memory of Long Beach was when I was still in a buggy, and I was crazy about the Merry-go-Round on the strand. Whenever I heard the calliope music I would howl unless I had a ride on one of the wooden horses. My parents would carefully walk blocks out of their way to make sure that I didn't hear the music.
When I was older I spent a lot of time picking up shells on the beach. Long Beach Harbor hadn't been built yet and I don't believe there wa even a breakwater. There were huge waves and a wide beach of white sand. Usually there was no one else on the beach early in the morning and there were lots of beautiful shells, all mine. From the minute I could walk I started a shell collection. No wonder bothe my boys are marine biologists. It's probably genetic!
Near the end of World War I, in 1918, a terrible influenza epidemic spread all over the world, killing twenty million people worldwide. Twenty million people in the United States came down with the flu and 850,000 of them died. A few months before Christmas my mother, my brother and I were in bed with the flu. So many people were sick it was impossible to get a doctor or a nurse, as most of them were serving in the Army in Europe.
My father wasn't sick but he was afraid that we were all going to die. Mt mother had bought our Christmas presents early, and just in case we weren't going to make it, we received our presents ahead of time. My present was a book, the Wizard of Oz, which I happily read and got well.
My mother had a severe case of pneumonia and nearly died. When she was finally starting to recover, my father decided that she needed fresh air, so he bought a car to take her out riding. After that bad bout of pneumonia, my mother was always afraid of drafts and getting pneumonia. When she died at the age of ninety, it was from double pneumonia.
Wtitten by Florence Ione Sturm Rice
My mother lived in Mexico until she was six years old and she spoke only Spanish. Her father had been in Mexico working in some way with the Mexicsn government in establishing the railroads. Later the family lived in Chihuahua where her father had a shoe store. Both her parents spoke Spanish as well as English. Her father's name was Edward Williams, but he preferred to use the Spanish form, Edward Guillermo. My favorite story is about the invitation her father received to attend a ball in the honor of the President, Porfirlo Diaz. The invitation which I still have is written on heavy Manila paper with the official red seal of the Mexican government bearing the emblem of the eagle standing on a nopal cactus with a serpent in its beak. The dance was held in Chihuahua and my grandmother wore her hair piled up high on top of her head which was the style back in 1888. She had little fireflies held in place by hairpins in her hair. Then when thy went out into the patio between dances for a breath of fresh air, the fireflies lit up like little lights on a Christmas tree. My grandfather loved Mexico and he never wanted to come back to the United States. He loved to hunt and fish. One fish that he caught was a huge sawfish, a kind of shark, that had an enormous bill about six feet long and seven inches wide with long sharp teeth on each side of the bill. We had that sawfish bill nailed up in our garage for years until my brother married and took it away. It was a museum piece. I never met any of my grandparents, but they became very real to me through my mother's stories. My mother was named Lolita Romero Guillermo. She and her mother returned to the U. S. After her father contracted yellow fever and died in Mazatlan where he had an interest in a silver mine. Then, living with relatives who didn't speak a word of Spanish, my mother had to learn English and she forgot every word of her first language. Later she changed her middle name, "Romero", she didn't appreciate, to a family name, "Overman." So Lolita Romero Guillermo became Lola Overman Williams. although she was of English descent, she was a brunette and when I took her to Mexico in 1937 everyone assumed that she was Mexican. When we were in a restaurant or a hotel, occasionally someone would address her with a fast blast of Spanish and she would stand there speechless, blushing up to her hairline! Finally she said, "Ione, please teach me how to say, 'I don't speak Spanish!' She learned to say, No hallo espanol" but she never learned another word of Soanish! I always thought it would be interesting to see, if she was hypnotized, if she would start speaking Spanish! You can see the impact her stories had on me! I decided when I was six years old that I was going to learn Spanish, become a Spanish teacher and travel in Mexico. One story that my mother told me was that there were so many scorpions and tarantulas in Chihuahua that she had to learn to crawl on top of a table, the floor being too dangerous for a baby. You always shook your shoes in the morning, too, before putting them on. Because it was hot in Chihuahua you had windows open to the air with no glass, and to keep out intruders there were iron bars covering the windows. Sometimes a robber would come sling when people were at church, and using a fish pole with a hook on the line, he would insert it between the bars and lift watches or jewelry from the dresser. It's the custom in Mexico to pierce the ears of little girls when they are tiny babies and give them gold earrings. The Mexicans couldn't stand to see my mother without earrings, so one day a Mexican woman took her with het, pierced her ears, and sent her home with gold earrings. My grand father was a real adventurer! He loved to hunt, and sometimes after hunting pheasants he would collect the feathers and sell them as they were very much in demand to decorate women's hats in the United States. My mother's great-grandfather was the first mayor of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and he and his family lived there in a large two-story brick building on top of a hill surrounded by a forest of cedar trees. My mother lived there after her father died in a Mexico, and her mother went to work. There were lots of relatives, sometimes thirty or forty would gather at the same time for holidays and they always greeted each other with hugs and kisses. My mother was very shy and she would hide under the bed and not come out until all the greetings were over. She was timid all her life, afraid of everything, especially the ocean, horses, and cars. She really suffered when she watched me swim out beyond the waves in the ocean! My father courted my mother in Iowa, taking her for a ride with his horse and buggy. One day after a hard rain and flooding, a bridge that they had to cross was under about a foot of water. My father drove across the flooded bridge, knowing exactly where the center of it was, but it was a traumatic experience for my mother and she never gorgon it. My father was not afraid of anything and he loved horses. In the little town of Finchford where he lived everyone had a horse and buggy and when you met someone going the same direction, it was quite naturally became a race. He had a fast horse and loved to race and I imagine that he really scared my timid mother. My father used to swim with a cousin in a river near their home. They were both excellent swimmers. Once when the river was very high, they swam with the current and down over a waterfall. When the water level was lower later, they saw to their horror, that there were iron girders sticking out of the water spaced close together right where they had been swimming. Miraculously they had passed right between the girders or they would have shredded! Both my parents had attended business college. My mother became a legal secretary, and after they were married, they moved to Washington D. C. Where my father had a government job. My brother was born in Washington, D. C., in 1906. Several years later my father transferred to Los Angeles as Deputy Collector of Customs. Practically no one had a car in those days, and my father rode the streetcar every day to work. He was the only one who had the key to a small cupboard where confiscated opium was kept locked up. Whenever he was late coming home, my mother would start to worry, imagining that someone had hit him over the head to get the key to the opium. In those days they just hit you over the head; they didn't shoot you.
My father loved to swim in the ocean at Long Beach. We used to tide the Red a Electric Car from Los Angeles to Long Beach over a trestle that crossed a slough full of thousands of cat tails. We stayed for a week in a little hotel right on the beach. My father would swim way out of sight in the ocean and of course my mother imagined that he was drowning.
One day he nearly did. There was a storm with Hugh waves and the friend he was swimming with did drown. The storm whipped the surface of the the ocean into a froth that was too light to swim in and too heavy to breathe. Somehow my father managed to make it back to shore. My mother did her best to instill fear of the ocean in my brother and me, with no luck, however.
My first memory of Long Beach was when I was still in a buggy, and I was crazy about the Merry-go-Round on the strand. Whenever I heard the calliope music I would howl unless I had a ride on one of the wooden horses. My parents would carefully walk blocks out of their way to make sure that I didn't hear the music.
When I was older I spent a lot of time picking up shells on the beach. Long Beach Harbor hadn't been built yet and I don't believe there wa even a breakwater. There were huge waves and a wide beach of white sand. Usually there was no one else on the beach early in the morning and there were lots of beautiful shells, all mine. From the minute I could walk I started a shell collection. No wonder bothe my boys are marine biologists. It's probably genetic!
Near the end of World War I, in 1918, a terrible influenza epidemic spread all over the world, killing twenty million people worldwide. Twenty million people in the United States came down with the flu and 850,000 of them died. A few months before Christmas my mother, my brother and I were in bed with the flu. So many people were sick it was impossible to get a doctor or a nurse, as most of them were serving in the Army in Europe.
My father wasn't sick but he was afraid that we were all going to die. Mt mother had bought our Christmas presents early, and just in case we weren't going to make it, we received our presents ahead of time. My present was a book, the Wizard of Oz, which I happily read and got well.
My mother had a severe case of pneumonia and nearly died. When she was finally starting to recover, my father decided that she needed fresh air, so he bought a car to take her out riding. After that bad bout of pneumonia, my mother was always afraid of drafts and getting pneumonia. When she died at the age of ninety, it was from double pneumonia.
MY MOTHER
Wtitten by Florence Ione Sturm Rice
My mother lived in Mexico until she was six years old and she spoke only Spanish. Her father had been in Mexico working in some way with the Mexicsn government in establishing the railroads. Later the family lived in Chihuahua where her father had a shoe store. Both her parents spoke Spanish as well as English. Her father's name was Edward Williams, but he preferred to use the Spanish form, Edward Guillermo. My favorite story is about the invitation her father received to attend a ball in the honor of the President, Porfirlo Diaz. The invitation which I still have is written on heavy Manila paper with the official red seal of the Mexican government bearing the emblem of the eagle standing on a nopal cactus with a serpent in its beak. The dance was held in Chihuahua and my grandmother wore her hair piled up high on top of her head which was the style back in 1888. She had little fireflies held in place by hairpins in her hair. Then when thy went out into the patio between dances for a breath of fresh air, the fireflies lit up like little lights on a Christmas tree. My grandfather loved Mexico and he never wanted to come back to the United States. He loved to hunt and fish. One fish that he caught was a huge sawfish, a kind of shark, that had an enormous bill about six feet long and seven inches wide with long sharp teeth on each side of the bill. We had that sawfish bill nailed up in our garage for years until my brother married and took it away. It was a museum piece. I never met any of my grandparents, but they became very real to me through my mother's stories. My mother was named Lolita Romero Guillermo. She and her mother returned to the U. S. After her father contracted yellow fever and died in Mazatlan where he had an interest in a silver mine. Then, living with relatives who didn't speak a word of Spanish, my mother had to learn English and she forgot every word of her first language. Later she changed her middle name, "Romero", she didn't appreciate, to a family name, "Overman." So Lolita Romero Guillermo became Lola Overman Williams. although she was of English descent, she was a brunette and when I took her to Mexico in 1937 everyone assumed that she was Mexican. When we were in a restaurant or a hotel, occasionally someone would address her with a fast blast of Spanish and she would stand there speechless, blushing up to her hairline! Finally she said, "Ione, please teach me how to say, 'I don't speak Spanish!' She learned to say, No hallo espanol" but she never learned another word of Soanish! I always thought it would be interesting to see, if she was hypnotized, if she would start speaking Spanish! You can see the impact her stories had on me! I decided when I was six years old that I was going to learn Spanish, become a Spanish teacher and travel in Mexico. One story that my mother told me was that there were so many scorpions and tarantulas in Chihuahua that she had to learn to crawl on top of a table, the floor being too dangerous for a baby. You always shook your shoes in the morning, too, before putting them on. Because it was hot in Chihuahua you had windows open to the air with no glass, and to keep out intruders there were iron bars covering the windows. Sometimes a robber would come sling when people were at church, and using a fish pole with a hook on the line, he would insert it between the bars and lift watches or jewelry from the dresser. It's the custom in Mexico to pierce the ears of little girls when they are tiny babies and give them gold earrings. The Mexicans couldn't stand to see my mother without earrings, so one day a Mexican woman took her with het, pierced her ears, and sent her home with gold earrings. My grand father was a real adventurer! He loved to hunt, and sometimes after hunting pheasants he would collect the feathers and sell them as they were very much in demand to decorate women's hats in the United States. My mother's great-grandfather was the first mayor of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and he and his family lived there in a large two-story brick building on top of a hill surrounded by a forest of cedar trees. My mother lived there after her father died in a Mexico, and her mother went to work. There were lots of relatives, sometimes thirty or forty would gather at the same time for holidays and they always greeted each other with hugs and kisses. My mother was very shy and she would hide under the bed and not come out until all the greetings were over. She was timid all her life, afraid of everything, especially the ocean, horses, and cars. She really suffered when she watched me swim out beyond the waves in the ocean! My father courted my mother in Iowa, taking her for a ride with his horse and buggy. One day after a hard rain and flooding, a bridge that they had to cross was under about a foot of water. My father drove across the flooded bridge, knowing exactly where the center of it was, but it was a traumatic experience for my mother and she never gorgon it. My father was not afraid of anything and he loved horses. In the little town of Finchford where he lived everyone had a horse and buggy and when you met someone going the same direction, it was quite naturally became a race. He had a fast horse and loved to race and I imagine that he really scared my timid mother. My father used to swim with a cousin in a river near their home. They were both excellent swimmers. Once when the river was very high, they swam with the current and down over a waterfall. When the water level was lower later, they saw to their horror, that there were iron girders sticking out of the water spaced close together right where they had been swimming. Miraculously they had passed right between the girders or they would have shredded! Both my parents had attended business college. My mother became a legal secretary, and after they were married, they moved to Washington D. C. Where my father had a government job. My brother was born in Washington, D. C., in 1906. Several years later my father transferred to Los Angeles as Deputy Collector of Customs. Practically no one had a car in those days, and my father rode the streetcar every day to work. He was the only one who had the key to a small cupboard where confiscated opium was kept locked up. Whenever he was late coming home, my mother would start to worry, imagining that someone had hit him over the head to get the key to the opium. In those days they just hit you over the head; they didn't shoot you.
My father loved to swim in the ocean at Long Beach. We used to tide the Red a Electric Car from Los Angeles to Long Beach over a trestle that crossed a slough full of thousands of cat tails. We stayed for a week in a little hotel right on the beach. My father would swim way out of sight in the ocean and of course my mother imagined that he was drowning.
One day he nearly did. There was a storm with Hugh waves and the friend he was swimming with did drown. The storm whipped the surface of the the ocean into a froth that was too light to swim in and too heavy to breathe. Somehow my father managed to make it back to shore. My mother did her best to instill fear of the ocean in my brother and me, with no luck, however.
My first memory of Long Beach was when I was still in a buggy, and I was crazy about the Merry-go-Round on the strand. Whenever I heard the calliope music I would howl unless I had a ride on one of the wooden horses. My parents would carefully walk blocks out of their way to make sure that I didn't hear the music.
When I was older I spent a lot of time picking up shells on the beach. Long Beach Harbor hadn't been built yet and I don't believe there wa even a breakwater. There were huge waves and a wide beach of white sand. Usually there was no one else on the beach early in the morning and there were lots of beautiful shells, all mine. From the minute I could walk I started a shell collection. No wonder bothe my boys are marine biologists. It's probably genetic!
Near the end of World War I, in 1918, a terrible influenza epidemic spread all over the world, killing twenty million people worldwide. Twenty million people in the United States came down with the flu and 850,000 of them died. A few months before Christmas my mother, my brother and I were in bed with the flu. So many people were sick it was impossible to get a doctor or a nurse, as most of them were serving in the Army in Europe.
My father wasn't sick but he was afraid that we were all going to die. Mt mother had bought our Christmas presents early, and just in case we weren't going to make it, we received our presents ahead of time. My present was a book, the Wizard of Oz, which I happily read and got well.
My mother had a severe case of pneumonia and nearly died. When she was finally starting to recover, my father decided that she needed fresh air, so he bought a car to take her out riding. After that bad bout of pneumonia, my mother was always afraid of drafts and getting pneumonia. When she died at the age of ninety, it was from double pneumonia.
Wtitten by Florence Ione Sturm Rice
My mother lived in Mexico until she was six years old and she spoke only Spanish. Her father had been in Mexico working in some way with the Mexicsn government in establishing the railroads. Later the family lived in Chihuahua where her father had a shoe store. Both her parents spoke Spanish as well as English. Her father's name was Edward Williams, but he preferred to use the Spanish form, Edward Guillermo. My favorite story is about the invitation her father received to attend a ball in the honor of the President, Porfirlo Diaz. The invitation which I still have is written on heavy Manila paper with the official red seal of the Mexican government bearing the emblem of the eagle standing on a nopal cactus with a serpent in its beak. The dance was held in Chihuahua and my grandmother wore her hair piled up high on top of her head which was the style back in 1888. She had little fireflies held in place by hairpins in her hair. Then when thy went out into the patio between dances for a breath of fresh air, the fireflies lit up like little lights on a Christmas tree. My grandfather loved Mexico and he never wanted to come back to the United States. He loved to hunt and fish. One fish that he caught was a huge sawfish, a kind of shark, that had an enormous bill about six feet long and seven inches wide with long sharp teeth on each side of the bill. We had that sawfish bill nailed up in our garage for years until my brother married and took it away. It was a museum piece. I never met any of my grandparents, but they became very real to me through my mother's stories. My mother was named Lolita Romero Guillermo. She and her mother returned to the U. S. After her father contracted yellow fever and died in Mazatlan where he had an interest in a silver mine. Then, living with relatives who didn't speak a word of Spanish, my mother had to learn English and she forgot every word of her first language. Later she changed her middle name, "Romero", she didn't appreciate, to a family name, "Overman." So Lolita Romero Guillermo became Lola Overman Williams. although she was of English descent, she was a brunette and when I took her to Mexico in 1937 everyone assumed that she was Mexican. When we were in a restaurant or a hotel, occasionally someone would address her with a fast blast of Spanish and she would stand there speechless, blushing up to her hairline! Finally she said, "Ione, please teach me how to say, 'I don't speak Spanish!' She learned to say, No hallo espanol" but she never learned another word of Soanish! I always thought it would be interesting to see, if she was hypnotized, if she would start speaking Spanish! You can see the impact her stories had on me! I decided when I was six years old that I was going to learn Spanish, become a Spanish teacher and travel in Mexico. One story that my mother told me was that there were so many scorpions and tarantulas in Chihuahua that she had to learn to crawl on top of a table, the floor being too dangerous for a baby. You always shook your shoes in the morning, too, before putting them on. Because it was hot in Chihuahua you had windows open to the air with no glass, and to keep out intruders there were iron bars covering the windows. Sometimes a robber would come sling when people were at church, and using a fish pole with a hook on the line, he would insert it between the bars and lift watches or jewelry from the dresser. It's the custom in Mexico to pierce the ears of little girls when they are tiny babies and give them gold earrings. The Mexicans couldn't stand to see my mother without earrings, so one day a Mexican woman took her with het, pierced her ears, and sent her home with gold earrings. My grand father was a real adventurer! He loved to hunt, and sometimes after hunting pheasants he would collect the feathers and sell them as they were very much in demand to decorate women's hats in the United States. My mother's great-grandfather was the first mayor of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and he and his family lived there in a large two-story brick building on top of a hill surrounded by a forest of cedar trees. My mother lived there after her father died in a Mexico, and her mother went to work. There were lots of relatives, sometimes thirty or forty would gather at the same time for holidays and they always greeted each other with hugs and kisses. My mother was very shy and she would hide under the bed and not come out until all the greetings were over. She was timid all her life, afraid of everything, especially the ocean, horses, and cars. She really suffered when she watched me swim out beyond the waves in the ocean! My father courted my mother in Iowa, taking her for a ride with his horse and buggy. One day after a hard rain and flooding, a bridge that they had to cross was under about a foot of water. My father drove across the flooded bridge, knowing exactly where the center of it was, but it was a traumatic experience for my mother and she never gorgon it. My father was not afraid of anything and he loved horses. In the little town of Finchford where he lived everyone had a horse and buggy and when you met someone going the same direction, it was quite naturally became a race. He had a fast horse and loved to race and I imagine that he really scared my timid mother. My father used to swim with a cousin in a river near their home. They were both excellent swimmers. Once when the river was very high, they swam with the current and down over a waterfall. When the water level was lower later, they saw to their horror, that there were iron girders sticking out of the water spaced close together right where they had been swimming. Miraculously they had passed right between the girders or they would have shredded! Both my parents had attended business college. My mother became a legal secretary, and after they were married, they moved to Washington D. C. Where my father had a government job. My brother was born in Washington, D. C., in 1906. Several years later my father transferred to Los Angeles as Deputy Collector of Customs. Practically no one had a car in those days, and my father rode the streetcar every day to work. He was the only one who had the key to a small cupboard where confiscated opium was kept locked up. Whenever he was late coming home, my mother would start to worry, imagining that someone had hit him over the head to get the key to the opium. In those days they just hit you over the head; they didn't shoot you.
My father loved to swim in the ocean at Long Beach. We used to tide the Red a Electric Car from Los Angeles to Long Beach over a trestle that crossed a slough full of thousands of cat tails. We stayed for a week in a little hotel right on the beach. My father would swim way out of sight in the ocean and of course my mother imagined that he was drowning.
One day he nearly did. There was a storm with Hugh waves and the friend he was swimming with did drown. The storm whipped the surface of the the ocean into a froth that was too light to swim in and too heavy to breathe. Somehow my father managed to make it back to shore. My mother did her best to instill fear of the ocean in my brother and me, with no luck, however.
My first memory of Long Beach was when I was still in a buggy, and I was crazy about the Merry-go-Round on the strand. Whenever I heard the calliope music I would howl unless I had a ride on one of the wooden horses. My parents would carefully walk blocks out of their way to make sure that I didn't hear the music.
When I was older I spent a lot of time picking up shells on the beach. Long Beach Harbor hadn't been built yet and I don't believe there wa even a breakwater. There were huge waves and a wide beach of white sand. Usually there was no one else on the beach early in the morning and there were lots of beautiful shells, all mine. From the minute I could walk I started a shell collection. No wonder bothe my boys are marine biologists. It's probably genetic!
Near the end of World War I, in 1918, a terrible influenza epidemic spread all over the world, killing twenty million people worldwide. Twenty million people in the United States came down with the flu and 850,000 of them died. A few months before Christmas my mother, my brother and I were in bed with the flu. So many people were sick it was impossible to get a doctor or a nurse, as most of them were serving in the Army in Europe.
My father wasn't sick but he was afraid that we were all going to die. Mt mother had bought our Christmas presents early, and just in case we weren't going to make it, we received our presents ahead of time. My present was a book, the Wizard of Oz, which I happily read and got well.
My mother had a severe case of pneumonia and nearly died. When she was finally starting to recover, my father decided that she needed fresh air, so he bought a car to take her out riding. After that bad bout of pneumonia, my mother was always afraid of drafts and getting pneumonia. When she died at the age of ninety, it was from double pneumonia.
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Advertisement
