Uncle Wilson

(I "interviewed" my Uncle Wilson in Boardman, suburb of Youngstown, Ohio, during the summer of 1983. It was a sunny, pleasant day. It was where he and his wife Grace lived at the time, in the condo they owned directly across from one owned by the Youngstown-born prize fighter Ray "Boom-Boom" Mancini. Uncle Wilson walked me over to see the sign on "Boom-Boom's" window. It said, "Forget the Dog. Beware of Owner." We went inside Wilson and Grace's condo and I set my little cassette recorder on a table. The remarks at the beginning are Uncle Wilson noting that the recorder would pick him up from across the room.)

Wilson: Oh, I see. You don't have to talk into it. You don't have to be close to it even.

No, Uncle Ollie sat pretty far away.

(joking) Oh! Did he know anything?

Yeah, you know... he said he pulled the family through every time.

(joking) Oh, he's a big you know what... (laughs) ...

What do you know about the family in Scotland?

Well, about the only two things I know... The earliest thing I remember my father talking about was, they must have teased this fellow who ran a drawbridge. They must have been where a drawbridge is. And they would say to him, "Brig ahoy, Jock (he pronounced it like 'joke')!" And he'd say. "Hud your tongue! Hud your tongue!"

You mean they'd act like a boat was coming?

Yes, and he say, "Hud your tongue." It means "Hold your tongue." "Brig Ahoy" meant to lift the bridge. Then about the only other thing I remember, he (Pop) belonged to a Cycle Club. He had a picture of the members. It was quite a big Club. All over twenty, but young men, you know. And then he belonged on a soccer team. Everyone was in the same age group, and that must have been a big Club, because when he came here he brought soccer to Pittsburgh really. I think he played for Homestead when he came here first. And they had all those men lined up for a picture. There must have been, oh I don't know, twenty men in the picture--and only one man with a mustache. My father used to make a big thing about that. He (Wilson's father) would say, referring to whatever the man's name was, he would say, "That takes the eyes of the ladies, that mustache." And that's about the only two things I remember about over there (in Scotland).

So he grew one, too?

Well, he had one later on. But he didn't have one in the picture. My father's mustache was red. But I don't remember him having a red mustache-it changed colors by the time he got older. I know another thing. When they first came to this country, my father didn't smoke at all, and my mother would say, "Adam, why don't you do something? Take up smoking!" Anyhow, he started to smoke those stogies. They used to sell 'em two for a nickel. Pittsburgh Famous, they were called. Then they went three for a dime. But he would never go in to buy them unless it was downtown somewhere in a regular smoke shop. He wouldn't go in the grocery to the corner store. The kids had to go there to buy them.

He would sit at night and smoke those stogies and then he'd fall asleep, and the ashes would be all over the place. That was later on, though. That was more after we came to Youngstown.

Another thing in Pittsburgh: I don't understand how a man--he was at least twenty-five when he came to this country--got to be such a great baseball fan. He was the biggest fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates I ever saw. And I don't think he ever saw or heard of baseball before he came here. He never cared much for football, but baseball he really went for. He would sometimes come home for lunch when we lived in Pittsburgh--he worked for Jones and Laughlin there on Second Avenue. He could walk home. And he would say, "Lizzie, I don't feel so well. I don't think I'll go back to work." Then about an hour later he'd say, "I'm feeling a wee bit better now. I think I'll go take in the ballgame." He was great for the baseball.

Another thing, he was the world's worst farmer. We had a little front yard in Pittsburgh. It was about maybe fifteen feet by fifty, about the width of the house. And we had a real cute picket fence around it, and Pop was always trying to grow grass. He couldn't get grass to grow in that yard for anything. Every man who came along would tell him what to do. He would follow everybody's advice but we never got very good grass out of it.

In Pittsburgh he used to take me to work on Sundays--we'd go down through the mill. He was a foreman and had charge of that part of the plant. I wasn't quite six years old but I remember going down there on Sundays. (During the week) he'd go back to work in the evenings sometimes and go to work on Sunday. And the men, that's all they talked about--their work. If you had visitors at night, the men would sit in a room and talk about the work. And the women would talk about what they had to talk about. They were all Scotsmen--all this gang that got together.

Did they all speak with a burr?

Well, we didn't notice it. They had it, though. Outsiders would notice it. A Scot has a burr, and an Irishman has a "brogue."

Another thing in Pittsburgh I was going to tell you about: John McGraw was the manager of the New York Giants, and the Pittsburghers, my father included, couldn't stand him. He was an Irishman, of course. And they called him "Muggsy" McGraw. If "Muggsy" did half of what they said he did, why he would have been in jail. The Pittsburgh baseball fans hated the New York Giants. If they beat the Giants, that was good enough for anybody. They didn't have to win the pennant. If they won the season series from the Giants that was all right.

My father was going to give me a haircut one time. In the summertime we used to get it all cut off. And he had clippers. I was sitting on the back porch He ran the clippers up the back of my head and pulled them out, and he almost pulled the hair out. So I got off the chair and ran away. I said, "No more! That's enough!" So my mother gave me a quarter and I went down to the barber's the next day--Dome's Barber Shop. Old Dome said to me, "Who did this to your hair?" I said, "My father was going to give me a 'baldysours' but I couldn't stand it. Old Dome said, "You tell your father to take care of the mill and I'll take care of the haircutting!"

One time my father fixed the back porch. It was quite a construction job. The back porch was pretty high because (the house was built) on a slope. I used to love to help him. I was about six years old--maybe not even that. My mother came out and said, "Wilson! Go down to Muses (sp.) and get me a peck of potatoes!" Muses was a store, but it wasn't very far away. And I said, "I can't carry a peck of potatoes! They're too heavy!" My father never noticed or looked up, but then he said, "Wilson, go back to that fence and get that two-by-four for me..." So I ran back to the fence and got the two-by-four and brought it up. My father jumps up and shouts "That's a lot heavier than a peck of potatoes! Now get to the store for your mother!"

We moved from there and went to Josesphine up in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Indiana County. Pop, of course, was the Master Mechanic there. Corrigan & Kinney had two blast furnaces there. He was really second in line. The Superintendent was first, then the Master Mechanic. The Superindent's name was Smith, also. They called him "Big Smith." My father and he were very friendly in the beginning. It was the time that the World War was just breaking out. Big Smith used to come to our house, and he used to read the news about the War, about the battles. A man who lived next door to us was Wilhelm Dahr. He was a big Dutchman, and very, very much in favor of Germany in the War. Later, after we left there, we understand that they ran him out of town for being pro Kaiser.

But while we were there, we had this long front yard and the Dahrs lived next door. There was a long walk from the road back to the front porch. My father and Mr. Dahr would walk home from the mill together. My father would turn into our house, and the Dahrs lived one house further. My father would just about get to our front porch and Mr. Dahr would be about halfway down their walk, and Dahr would shout out, "Haicht (sp) der Kaiser!!!" That meant, "Hurrah for the Kaiser!" Pop and he were friendly, but they were friendly enemies, too.

That was a great place up there. My father, by virtue of being the Master Mechanic, was also the Fire Chief for the Volunteer Fire Department. The mill supplied the electricity for the whole village. There in the foothills with mountains all around was a Chestnut Ridge. We used to get some terrible storms there. One night we had a storm and lightning struck a house and caused a fire and put out all the lights. My father was supposed to go to the fire, but he couldn't find his socks. He said, (speaks in burr) "Whar ar' me soucks?!!! Lizzie! Whar ar' me soucks?!" By the time he found his "soucks" the fire was over and the lights were on. That was the only time he ever missed a fire.

Other times he went to fires?

We didn't have any other fires.

How big a man was Pop?

He was about five six, I'd say. He was short. But he could run. When I was about seventeen... but this is getting ahead of ourselves. I was going to try and keep this in a chronological order. I'll tell you about this running later on. When we first went up to Josephine, Adam and Ollie and I and my father went up there. We stayed with the people by the name of Dahr, and we were working on our house. It was a big house. It was Millionaire's Row, about twelve good houses up on top of this hill. Down in the valley were the cheaper houses where all the laborers lived. Up on top the houses were very nice. They were four bedroom houses. There were two bedrooms on the third floor and there were three rooms on the second floor and the kitchen, living room and dining room on the first floor. So they were pretty good-sized houses. When we first went up there, a man named Campbell had a grocery store across the road from us. It was a dirt road. It was a State Road, but they weren't paved at all. After we got done working around there, my father said, "Go over to Campbell's and get some cookies," and he gave us the money. Adam and I went over, and we got the cookies and we brought them back. Here this darn Campbell kept his lamp oil and his cookies in the same spot because the cookies tasted like lamp oil--like kerosene. So that spoiled that treat.

We moved there and my father had a garden. We also had chickens. We went over and planted potatoes but we never had any potatoes bigger than a few marbles. We always claimed that "Miker" who worked for "Big Smith" took our good potatoes. But I don't know whether there's any truth in that or not.

Did you eat the little ones?

We ate everything. We had four chicken coops. They were attached, and we had quite a few chickens. We got pretty good eggs. I can remember that the first thing Pop would do when he came home at night was put water out for those chickens because he was always making sure they had enough water. That was in Josephine.

Is that where Isabel was born?

Yes.

Was Jimmy Stewart (the actor) born there, too?

Jimmy Stewart was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania. That's where my brother Bill went to school. That was about twelve miles northeast of Josephine. Josephine was about midway between Blairsville and Indiana. They called that school Indiana State Normal then. That was a Teacher's College. Bill went to a sort of "model" school where teachers could practice teaching. He went there for a year or two. Then, of course, we came to (???) yelnostaf????

Did you remember going to Pirate games with your Dad?

I don't remember going to one, because I was only seven when we left Pittsburgh. After we got to Youngstown, we went down to Pittsburgh several times. We went to the World Series a couple times. In Youngstown, though, my father used to take me out me out to Idora Park to see the McElroys play on Sunday. My mother frowned on that, and he say, "Now don't tell your mother about going to the ballgame on Sunday." Oh, I forgot to tell you about in Pittsburgh--he was going to take us to a movie one night. It was just getting dark. I was too little to light the gas light. But Adam was big enough to light the light. So I went up ahead to get dressed. My drawer was the second drawer in the chest of drawers from the bottom. I was scratching around in there trying to get a clean shirt. Adam came up behind me and he lit the match, and he thought he heard a man. So he runs through the upper house hollering, "A man! A man!" We had a back stairway and he jumped down the back stairway. My mother had a basket of clothes at the bottom of the stairs and Adam landed in the basket. He didn't get hurt. But my father picked up an old cracked table board about three inches or so wide and goes up after the man. When he came down, he'd concluded it was me. So I remember him taking Adam up stairs and poking the board under the beds to show Adam there was no man up there. My father convinced Adam that when he lit the match, my shadow was thrown up big on the wall and that was the man he saw. So that put the kill boss around the movies. We didn't get to go to the movies that night.

All the people that lived around us, all our friends, were Scottish. On Saturday night they'd all get together. They'd come to our house one week, maybe, and to another one the next week. I was very young, of course. The only thing I remember of that was one time somebody left a little whiskey glass in our dining room. I remember us younger children looking at it wondering why anyone would want to drink out of a little glass like that.

My Uncle Bill and my Uncle Jim lived maybe a quarter of a mile from us on a different street. Uncle Bill's wife, Aunt Agnes, had a sister, Mrs. Nelson. We called her Aunt Jean. One Halloween I went over to Aunt Jean's, and there was another Scottish lady there that we knew well, Mrs. Hodge. I was dressed up, you know. I don't know how I was dressed up. We didn't call it "Trick or Treat" then. We just went around to the doors and yelled, (speaks with burr) "Nuts! Nuts!" So they took me in the house, and they weren't going to give me anything because they said they didn't know who I was because of my disguise. Very disappointed, I started out into the hall to go, and Mrs. Hodge exclaims, "OH! That's Wilson! He walks just like his fah-ther!" So then they brought me back and gave me a treat. Of course, now I know they were putting it on.

Did you know anything about your uncles (Bill and Jim)?

Oh, yeah. They lived near us all the time. My father was, well... If they said black, he said white. Now they were both Republicans, and I think my father voted Democratic most the time because they were Republicans. I know he was a great Woodrow Wilson man when Wilson ran. Both Uncles--my Uncle Bill especially--were businessmen. He was interested in investments and stuff. He was a big Republican. Because Uncle Bill was Republican, I think that's the reason that made my father a Democrat. Depending on the candidate, though, I think Pop in an election would go either way--Republican or Democrat. He voted every election. I don't think he ever missed. Of course, he became a citizen (of the U.S.) before I was born, so I don't remember that part of it. He always went to the elections. He was very fussy about that.

Another thing he was great about. He hated to have the paper touched at night before he got it. He hated anybody to tear that paper apart. He wanted to be the first one to get it. We used to get it and put it back together again. Another thing: if you did anything, my father would never scold or correct you himself. He'd say, "Lizzie, did you hear what that boy said?" One time I was looking out the window and Ollie got in front of me so I couldn't see and I said, "Your father wasn't a glass blower." And my father says, "Lizzie! Did you hear what he said?" Oh, up in Josephine, too... we slept on the third floor in this big bedroom--the four boys. Adam and Ollie slept together, and Bill and I. And we used to have quite a roughhouse up there every once in awhile. You know. When we got too noisy up there my mother would send my father up to take care of us. He'd come up with a razor strap. Now he never hit anybody, but he would hit the wall with the razor strap and say, "Now yell!" We'd go, "OoooHH!" My mother would holler up, "Adam! Don't you hurt those boys!" (laughs) He never did hurt us, of course.

Pop was great for kicking footballs. One of his expression was, "I'll kick you over the moon!" He said that many times, but of course he never really kicked anybody. Another thing he'd say, if one of the kids came to the table with a dirty nose, he'd say, "Go upstairs and blow your brains out!" (long laughter)

Did you see him play soccer ever?

No. He couldn't resist kicking a ball, though. If he came along and there were some kids playing, he would take a kick at the ball. But he hated the shape of the American football. He said you couldn't kick it properly; it would go all over. But he was quite a sports fan. He loved basketball. I took him to a couple of basketball games at South (High School) and he really loved that. One time he and the whole gang of men with my brother-in-law Ralph went down to Pittsburgh. This was during Prohibition. Pop knew his way around, cause he was from Pittsburgh and he told them he knew all the spots. So he was going to take them and give them a treat. So they went along, and they all thought they were going to a Speakeasy. He took them over and showed them the incline that goes up to Mount Washington. He thought that was a wonderful thing. But those guys could care less about that.

Is the incline a road or what?

Well, it's a car, on I guess the South side of Pittsburgh, I don't know. It goes from this level--there's a road down here (gestures). It's a passenger car. Goes right up the side of the hill. Takes the people up there, dumps them out, and then comes down. It's still there. Pop thought that was a marvel. Oh, they have a couple of them in Pittsburgh.

I remember one Sunday in Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh we used to take a walk on Sunday and go to Schenley Park. We lived less than a mile from Schenley Park. Ice cream cones had just been introduced. The first time we went, my father said, "Now don't eat that cup 'cause it's paper." We're walking along and we see other people, and they're eating the cone. So my father says he'll taste it. The he says, "Yeah, eat it! It's cake!"

Did he ever tell funny jokes?

Well, they weren't so funny, but he thought they were funny. He would start laughing before he hit the punchline so half the time we wouldn't catch it. But it was okay because he told the same ones over and over. I do remember one time, we had a friend who was a Scotsman, Billy Morris, and he had a son-in-law, Wiseman his name was. Wiseman was trying to get a job at the mill, and he talked to someone there and then came and said to my father, "The man said if it's impossible at all, I've got the job." My father told that a hundred times. He says, "If it's impossible at all, he going to get the job!" He told jokes, but I don't remember them.

I was going to tell you about the time my oldest brother Bill and Pop used to play two-handed Euchre. And they wouldn't let Adam and me play. Bill was older, and they just didn't want us in there. I guess I was about sixteen at the time. They would sit in the dining room playing this two-handed Euchre. I got so mad one time one time I grabbed up the cards and beat it out the front door and ran up Marion Avenue where we lived. I was sixteen and my father ran after me, and, boy, he caught me in no time. And I thought I was a pretty good runner. I had to give the cards up, of course. And he was great for playing catch with you at night. We played every night with Pop. We played catch or did something. We always had a game going in the house in the wintertime. He'd make up games, like bowling and stuff like that. But he always wanted to win.

You mean physical games?

Yeah. We would put up something for pins and get a ball and bowl them on the floor. He also like to play checkers. But he liked to beat you all the time. You know some fathers let their kids win once in awhile. But he wouldn't let you win unless you actually beat him.

Did you ever see him get in a fight with anybody?

Well, when we were up in Josephine, the laborers, they all drank beer, you know. And they used to cool their beer in the water that was supplied by the mill. In the summertime the water supply got real low, and my father and somebody else went around to see what was happening (to cause that). They came across this fellow who had the water running all the time to cool his beer. It's said my father grabbed him--now I don't know how I heard this--but my father grabbed him and pulled his head down onto my father's head, pulled his face down onto my father's head and gave him a bloody nose. This was right in the guy's own cellar. It wasn't in the mill, but the water was supplied by the mill. Pop was inspecting (homes) to see where the water was going. It was in the basement of this man's house. Somebody told us about that, and that's the way I remember it. Pop was quick. Physically quick, and he had a quick temper but he got over it in a hurry.

Was there ever any profanity in your house?

I never heard my father swear.

Lizzie would remember everything. Like, if Pop would start telling you something and he couldn't remember about the way it went, he would call Lizzie. 'Cause Lizzie had a terrific memory. At least we thought she did. Oh! One time up in Josephine, this itinerant eye doctor came around. This was out in the country. My mother always had an eye that kind of teared. And it bothered her. This fella stopped at the house, and he examined my mother's eye. I don't know what he told her to do, but when my father got home, she said to him, "The man said I had that eye for a long time." Pop says, "Sure! You've had it for a long time! You were born with it!"

When we ate dinner, if there was no salt in the potatoes that was a crime. Another thing was he had to have his tea on time. If he didn't have his tea on time, he'd put his sugar and milk in the bottom of the cup and stir it up, and say, "Keep me going! Keep me going!" Another thing, on the occasions when he went out dressed up, everybody in the family would help him get everything right. He couldn't do it himself. Somebody would tie his tie. He called his cufflinks his studs. Someone would have to put them in his shirt. Men used to wear garters around their sleeves to keep them the right length. You'd have to put those on. Of course, when he went out, he looked great, 'cause everybody helped him. In Pittsburgh, he always wore a derby hat. After we got to Youngstown he wore a soft felt.

Another thing in Youngstown, the Larsons lived on the corner of Granite and Edwards, and we lived on the corner of Mercer and Edwards. The houses were almost the same color and the same shape. One night when Pop came home, he was walking up from the Mahoning Avenue car, and it was a real blustery night. Rainy and the wind was blowing. And when he got there by Larson's house it looked like ours, and he turned into their house. He was still maybe a couple of hundred yards away from ours. So he goes in the front door, and Leonard Larson was about Adam's age. He tried to stop him, see? He saw this strange man coming in the house. But my father's glasses were all steamed up so he says, "Get out of me way, boy!" Then he realized he was in the wrong place. "Oh!' he said, and turned around and walked out. I saw Leonard the next day and he said, "What's the matter with your father? He came into our house the other night." I said, (laughing) "I don't know." But the houses looked exactly the same and it was a miserable, windy night. You couldn't see anything. Both houses had a bank in front and a couple of steps up and then a level and then you hit the porch.

What was your mother like?

Well, my mother was really pretty calm usually. But she always got after me. I got more lickings from my mother than I ever got from anywhere. I used to get under the bed and roll from one side to the other till she cooled off. She used to always say, "I'll tell your father." Well, that didn't scare me any. Mom was always looking out for Ollie when he was real young.

What was your brother Bill like?

Bill was not very tall. He was about an inch taller than my father. But real clever with his hands. Real good hands. In fact, in Pittsburgh, they used to call him "Clever Smith." Bill was a great singer like I was. We used to sing all the time around the house. So was my mother. My mother sang mostly hymns. And my father on Sunday would always sing hymns. He'd get a hold of whoever was the youngest baby and walk up and down singing to the baby. Then he'd hand the baby to one of the kids.

Did you ever hear how your mother and father met?

No. Never heard a word about it. I think she was about maybe seven or eight years younger than Pop. I'm not sure about that.

Did you ever hear about how young he was when he went to work in Scotland?

No. I know he went to Cowlairs. That was the name of the place. When I went to Scotland in the Army the train we were on went right past all the places my father used to talk about. Like the Locomotive Works, where he had worked when he was a boy. I think they went to work fairly early.

So when you were in Scotland, did you see any relatives over there?

No. Adam did, but I didn't. We didn't stop. We went right on through down to England. We stopped in Glasgow for a little while. They gave us some coffee or doughnuts or something. Then we got back on the train for England.

When your family moved from house to house, say to Youngstown, how did you move your stuff?

From Pittsburgh to Josephine we went by truck. I think it was the first big moving van really that I had seen. From Josephine to Youngstown by train, by freight. When we came from Josephine to Youngstown we stayed at my Aunt Flora's over in Greenfield. I remember six or seven of us slept in one bed. We slept lengthwise in the bed. When we lived in Pittsburgh, I think every Scotsman that came to Pittsburgh stayed at our house for awhile. We always had somebody there, staying there, it seemed to me. Sometimes we had two of them.

Do you know anything about your grandparents?

No. I know that my father's mother came to Pittsburgh for a visit and stayed I don't know how long. But I don't remember seeing her. I was just a baby. I was maybe not even born.

His middle name was Lillie, right?

That's right.

Which had nothing to do with Lillias?

No, that's right.

Was Lillie short for anything?

I think that was somebody's last name. That was one of his relatives. I think Lillie is a, uh... You've heard of Beatrice Lillie. That was her last name.

So your Uncle Jim and your Uncle Bill? You saw them?

Oh, we saw them plenty. Uncle Jim. In regards to CopperWeld steel, he invented most of the basic patterns that founded CopperWeld Steel. It was something to do with anchorless castings, whatever that meant. I think they could cast without having to hold it down. But my father was always inventing something, too. That was I think the reason my father and Uncle Bill were kind of at loggerheads, on account of my father invented eye sights for a blast furnace and Uncle Bill wanted to cut in on it and my father wouldn't go for it. And Uncle Bill and Jones and Laughlin, I think the man's name was... I can't remember the head man at Jones and Laughlin... They wanted to share it three ways. But my father wouldn't go for that. He wanted to keep it all to himself. The result was he never got any good out of it at all.

Did they take it from him?

Well, they used it, and I don't think he ever got any royalties or anything. That's when he left Jones and Laughlin and went up to Josephine, when they were having this trouble about the eye sights on the blast furnace.

So they installed one there? It's possible it was his own brother?

No, Uncle Bill left J&L the same time, too. I think Messler was the man's name. I don't think Uncle Bill had anything to do with that installation at J&L. They both left there at the same time, within a couple of weeks of each other.

So he invented some sort of weather-stripping, too?

Oh, that weather-stripping. When you wore out the sill of the door, you used this thing that would come down and close it off. Instead of putting in a felt or something, this was kind of a metal thing that had like a rod and a dog that when you shut the door, the doorjamb would operate and (gesturing) this would go down. The door strip was kind of a hard rubber and if the floor wasn't level it wouldn't do any good, it wouldn't go the contour of the floor. Pop had a good idea, but he would eventually have needed a soft, plush thing along the strip instead of hard rubber.

What did your mother ever say about her parents?

She knew more about her brothers and sisters. Aunt Flora Ambrose was my mother's sister. Her husband was Uncle Willie Ambrose. She talked about her brothers mostly. They were great for gardening. One brother was a Salvation Army worker. I think he had a picture of Weena (?) in uniform. Of course, Uncle Alec was the one who went on sprees. He would come to our house and stay a month or two and never drink a drop. Then he'd leave and go on a toot. Then he'd be gone maybe for or five months. If he came to our house--now he was a big man, close to six feet and he must have been a good fifty or sixty pounds heavier than my father--but when he came to our house if he had brought anything to drink my father would take it away from him and dump it down the toilet. He'd say, "Now, Alec, if you want to stay here, the first thing you do is you've got to take a bath!" I remember that. That happened more than one time. Alec would do it. When Alec came to the house he would usually give each kid a quarter. He was fond of saying, "Lads, the sun rises and sets on your mother."

Did he have any children?

He had a daughter.

Uncle Jim's wife was a real lady. Aunt Bella. She liked everything just so.

What sort of things did you and your brothers do when you were kids?

Ollie and I used to go fishing two or three times a week. It's Lake Newport now--we used to call it Arbuckle's. We used to fish practically all the time. We'd bring the fish back to eat. My father loved the little bluegills, mostly. Anything anywhere near five inches, we kept it. My father went with us sometimes, not really to fish himself, just to be with us. Or we boys would build clubs. When we lived down there on Edwards Street, we built a big wooden tunnel in Jack Reeble's back yard--they had a big back yard. We dug this trench and put boards on top of it and covered the boards with dirt to make a tunnel, so we'd have a secret way to get into our tent (laughs). The tunnel came out almost in the middle of the tent. The tent was on a lower level, about even with the bottom of the tunnel. This was in the chicken yard, and they had a big red rooster, a big Rhode Island Red, that used to chase you. When you went in there that darn rooster would run for you, and you had to get going. Oh, we had lots of fun when we were kids.

We had an old bicycle. Adam found a frame only in a dump or something and we put together a bicycle out of it. But it was hard to pump. We had a friend Nelson Pabst. He had everything. All his toys were just great. We'd be bike riding and we'd get on a kind of a slope, and Nelson could fly right up the slope on his store-bought bicycle and our old thing you couldn't even pump it on the level. And we'd run alongside whichever of us was pumping it, and we'd take turns and you'd be resting when you got off and ran alongside. 'Course, coasting down a hill, we'd all climb on it. So one time Nelson let me ride his bike and I remember thinking, "This kid's not stronger than I am, it's just this bike!"

I remember Flo and Helen, when they were still at home, when we lived up in Josephine, they used to have square dances in the house. They'd take up the rug in the parlor. We didn't have a piano, but a guy with a mouth organ would play. They had a great time up there. We were only up there for about two years, though. World War I broke out when we were up there.

Do you remember the first cars you saw?

Very few people had cars then. There was a fellow about three or four houses from us in Josephine--his name was Conrad--he was interested in automobiles. He took Adam and me up to Altoona once to see an auto race. They had a track up at Altoona. I'll never forget that. I think that track is still at Altoona.

Who had the first car in the family? Was it Bill?

No. Bill drove a truck for Vanis (?), and he used to take it on Sunday and use it like a pleasure car. I think Adam had the first car in the family. Oh--my father got that old Model T Ford when we lived up on Marion Avenue. I think that was the first car we had. He didn't drive himself. Once we went up to McDonald where Helen was living, and we were going to teach my father to drive because they had good streets. All concrete. I was too young to drive, but I drove anyway. Adam and I took my father up. He had an idea you had to keep moving the steering wheel. He never did learn to drive. But he could fix a car. He could fix it like crazy. Those Model T Ford always needed a lot of fixing. You needed your brakes relined all the time. It always needed something. Pop was a whiz with fixing them, but he didn't drive them.

What was it like at the house on Delason?

I wasn't there that long. In '26 my brother Bill got killed. In '27 my father died. I went to college. I can remember, when Pop came up the street on Delason Avenue, from Glenwood Avenue--he got off the streetcar--I could tell by the way he walked whether the Pittsburgh Pirates won or lost. Another thing: when we lived up in Josephine, on Sundays, my brother Bill had to go down to Blacklick. That was the next town where they put up the baseball scores. He would walk down there and walk back to get the scores on Sunday afternoons. He and my father had to know those scores. It was all of six or seven miles from where we lived down to Blacklick and back, so that would be a 10 or 12 miles hike just to get the ball scores every Sunday afternoon.

Who was the first in the family to start working at Ohio Bell Telephone?

Adam. He did very well with the Bell. He was the reason so many in the family worked for the Bell. He liked it so well. I went in and Betty, and of course your Dad (Robert), but that was quite a bit later. My niece, Little Helen worked for the Bell. But Adam got along great at the Bell, because when he first got there, there was a man there named Von DeRue, the plant Superintendent. He was a big man, and he lisped. But he thought Adam was pretty nice--a great kid, he thought. I worked with the Bell awhile when I first got out of high school. I worked on the main frame. I worked from February through about the end of the year for the telephone company. While I worked they were on the cutover and we got a lot of overtime. They had kids running all over. We called them frame monkeys. We were working all the time, but we got time and a half for overtime and double time for Sundays and Holidays. Working all the time we made a pretty good pay. But after the cut I think I made eighty dollars a month or something. That wasn't much money.

I didn't know who Von DeRue was, but one day I was working on the main frame and he came over to me and said, "How are you making out, Wilsthson?" He lisped. I said, "I'm doing all right." I didn't know who he was. So he went on about his business, and all these kids came over to me and said, "How do you know Von?! How do you know Von?!" I didn't, but he must have asked someone up at the switchboard, "Which one is Adam's brother?" Adam was real popular with Von. Most all those kids got laid off after the cut, but I didn't get laid off. It wasn't enough money after that. I just didn't want to stay there. I felt good about that job until pay day came along.

I went to Columbia. I was going to go into Law School, but the Depression came along. So I finished out in the School of Business, and I got this job at U.S. Gypsum. That was my undoing--getting a job. If you had a job during the Depression you were much better off than most people. So instead of going on and becoming a lawyer, I said, "I'll stick at this job." I got that job in '31 in New York City, and I was in New York City until I went in the Army. I was thirty-six when I went in. I came out of the Army in '45 and stayed in New York City again until '61. That's when I got tired of the city, and went up to Kingston, New York, for the same company.

Were you drafted into the Army?

Yes. I was an anti-tank platoon Sergeant. Most of the fellows had M-1 rifles. I had a carbine. We had 57 millimeter guns. 3-57s. Adam was in the Signal Corps. He got that Commission, because they were taking all the telephone people they could get. He first went into Camp Crowder. Turned out he was the Senior Officer when he got there. He was in charge of the camp. He was Company Commander. Then he went into the Construction Battalion, putting up telephone lines. As the Army moved up they brought the communication guy up behind them and they put lines up almost to the front lines.

What's the story of the photograph of you and him in Europe?

That was in Thiensville in France right on the German border. That was when we moved up to Germany itself. Our Division had a line around Saint Nazaire, and we had these Nazis cooped up there in a pocket. You know. (A World War II Allied tactic.) Saint Nazaire was a submarine base. They never cleaned those Nazis out. They just left them there. Then they decided they'd put a new division in where we were and send us to Germany. So our transportation went up the day ahead of us, and I went up in the Forty and Eights, the little box cars. I got to Kirsch, right near the border. This Lt. Middle, who was in charge of our transportation said to me, "Hey, your brother was here yesterday looking for you!" I said, "He was?" I didn't have any idea where he was. I knew he was in Europe, or in France. Lt. Middle says, "Yeah, he's coming up tomorrow." Adam was in Thiensville and that was maybe twenty-five miles away. That night our whole Battalion stayed in one barn. It was real cold. It was snowing. The next day, just after noon, I came out and I was standing on this road, and I see this jeep coming down the road. It's snowing, and the jeep's kind of skidding a little bit. Here it's Adam, with his driver. He stayed for a couple of hours and then went back.

Next my company took a little town called Nennig. We saw 8 or 9, 10 days of action, and then they brought us back. Then Adam came up (again). They had a habit of doing that--putting two Battalions up and one in reserve. When Adam came up, he said, "How about going over to Thiensville with me?" I said to Captain King, "How about if I go?" He said, "O.K., but keep in touch." So we went over to Thiensville. That was near Luxembourg City, the Third Army Headquarters. The next day we went to Luxembourg City, where Patton had his headquarters, and this Army photographer took this picture. When we got back to Thiensville, the First Sergeant in Adam's outfit told me. "Hey, Capt. King's been calling here all day! Your outfit's going to move out!" So I called Capt. King, and said, "How about if I stay overnight?" He said, "No! No! No! Come back! We've got to move out!" So Adam got his jeep driver and his First Sergeant who had hand grenades hanging to his belt and a Thompson Submachine gun. I said, "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm going up to the front with you!" I said, "What are you going to do with all that stuff?" (laughs) When I got back there we stayed there another week.

Adam and I were both in the Third Army, under Patton. In fact we were in the same Corps. It makes (laughs) Adam mad--our Division won the war. When we first joined the Third Army, Gen. Patton said we were the worst bunch of blankety-blanks he'd seen. Patton gave a speech and every other word was a profanity. He really gave it to us. He talked to all our Officers and non-coms. He said, "You're the biggest outfit I've got. You've had more training, and you're the worst soldiers!" He said, "You can do it my way, or forget about it!" He said, "I don't care! I can get more men. If you don't want to shoot the ammunition, that's your hard luck." That's the way he talked, but he swore all the time. But anyhow, but before we got out of the Third Army, he thought we were the best division in the Third Army. In fact, he said so several times. I think at the beginning, he chewed us out because we were new. He wanted to make us feel lousy and we'd say, "We'll show him!"

Do you remember where you were when you heard the war was over?

V-E Day? I don't know. I remember V-J day much better. V-E day we were in one of those little towns in Germany. We were making real good headway and taking German prisoners like crazy. They were just giving up. On V-J day I was in Czechoslovakia. Of course, the European war was over. We thought there was a good chance we'd go to Asia. We were in a little town, Vodnayni, in Czechoslovakia. I was talking to the First Sergeant. As soon as the war was over, they go back to "Army," you know. Standing retreat and all that stuff. While the war was on, they didn't care what you did. You could talk to an officer just like he was a regular man. As soon as the war was over-bing-they go back to their protocol. Anyhow--I'm not standing retreat, but the company is standing retreat down the road a ways-and all of a sudden they all start jumping around. All the kids. They were in ranks, but everybody starting jumping up and down. And I said to Pelly, the First Sergeant, "Let's go down and find out what happened." So we ran down there and found out that Japan had surrendered.

Did you see Babe Ruth play ball?

I saw Babe Ruth a couple times. At Yankee Stadium. The first year I went to New York, Gardener had an uncle who lived there who was a teacher in the High School of Commerce. The St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Yankees, and he took us to the World Series. The first game the Yankees won. The last game the Cardinals won. That was the year Grover Cleveland Alexander came in and struck out Lazzari for the last out. I didn't see that game. I saw the first couple. Babe Ruth was terrific. But he didn't look like a ball player. He looked like he was going to fall over fall over--he had real skinny legs and always reminded me of Humpty Dumpty. He had a big stomach and a big body and those skinny legs--but he could run fast. He could run and he could throw that ball. Oh, man, he could throw that ball.

Did you ever hear any Presidents speak in person?

The first President I ever saw was Taft. When we were in school in Pittsburgh, Taft came to visit Pittsburgh. We were lined up along the curb. When Taft passed us, instead of looking at the crowd, he was looking up at the sky. I thought to myself, "Why that big, dumb guy. He doesn't have sense enough to look where we are." I never did like Taft after that. He was a great big, fat guy. He filled up the car himself.

When I was living up in Poughkeepsie before the war, I lived in Hotel Campbell. This George Walsh who lived next door to me was President of the Northeastern Theatre Association. A bunch of us were out at the Poughkeepsie Policeman's Ball, and the next day, about noon, six or eight of us got to talking in the Hotel Campbell. That day (Franklin) Roosevelt was coming into the Dutton Lumber Yard with one of the Danish Princes. They were coming in a Yacht or something. And this George Walsh had a sixteen-cylinder Cadillac, so he said, "Let's go down and see Roosevelt come in. He's about due." So we got in this Cadillac, about six of us. Young Campbell was the manager of the Hotel. His father owned the hotel. We got down to Dutton Lumber Yard and they had a big high wooden fence and they had a sliding door to let trucks in and out. We pulled up in the Cadillac and a guy opens the door. Doesn't say a word to anybody, and we go in. We parked and the Yacht comes up. People weren't supposed to be there. Just special guests. Roosevelt comes in and gets into this open car. His son James had to help him. He almost had to fall into that car, he was so crippled. But I was so close, I could have reached out and smacked him on the rear. Suddenly one Secret Service guy yells," Who are these guys?!" Well, the Secret Service guys were all staying at the Campbell. We knew most of them. So one of them yells back, "They're OK. I know them!"

Hyde Park was just about six miles north of Poughkeepsie. I knew all the Secret Servicemen then. Starling was the Head of the Secret Service then. Mike Riley, who succeeded Starling, was a real nice guy and a good friend of mine. We were very friendly. But they didn't like being assigned to Eleanor. When they got a job guarding Eleanor, they had to go all over (the place).