Daughter Of Abraham Thompson, Granddaughter Of Alexander Thompson
The only memory I have of my daddy was at age 4 ½. That year 1911, I cut my chin on the wooden tub. My daddy always let me wash his back when he knelt at the tub to start his bath after a day of work in the coal mine. Water would splash onto the linoleum, and I slipped and fell on the tub. I have had the scar all those years. It was a bad year for me, for the same summer 1 stepped on a piece of glass and I have a scar on the right foot. Summer was a wonderful time of the year, for we went barefoot and had picnics in the woods above the railroad. Mother would give us buttered bread and a few green onions to eat, then we picked huckleberries in the tin bucket. One day Grace sent me back down to the house for salt for the onions and I heard Mother crying in the middle room. My brother Lloyd had a weak heart, and my daddy was carrying him around. I was too young to know the agony they must be feeling and when we returned home again with the berries we picked, Lloyd was gone. We cried a lot, all of us, and did not have too many berry picking picnics after but Mother would take us on walks and let us help her in the garden patch. We picked beans from the vines and brushed potato bugs from the leaves of potato plants into a can with kerosene. The next year 1912 my daddy died, January 12th at 46 years of age. Always on Sunday evenings Mother made us popcorn. Alma and Grace and Verna and I sat around the table in the kitchen playing word games and parchesi. My daddy would read the paper until Mother had the popcorn ready, then we ate the popcorn from small bowls and the older sisters took turns reading stories until bedtime. It was late at night one Sunday that Daddy felt sick and because of the pain could not sleep. In the morning Doctor Phillips came to our house but the medicine he gave Daddy did not help him and in the afternoon two of my uncles helped Mother get him ready for the hospital. They carried him on a cot to the little station and put him on the six o’clock train to the Pottsville hospital. That night he died before the doctor could operate. Verna was waiting on the porch for the trolley car to take her to school in Reinerton when the doctor came to tell us that my daddy died. Poor Mother was left with Helen, Verna, Grace, Alma and me and the only income from my brother Mervin, who worked at the breaker at the mine. My two oldest sisters Millie and Essie did housework and lived with families in Tamaqua. My brother Bert was married and lived in Tower City. Mother was an excellent seamstress and started working for neighbors and friends, sewing until late at night. She also did crochet and quilting. There were few days in the year that there was no frame with a quilt in our dining room. She received only one dollar for every spool of thread she sewed. Verna graduated from high school that year, but Grace left school and went to work. Alma had only one year in high school for the trolley fares were higher and that year the school started home economics classes and there was always extra money needed for materials for that class. Mother made all our clothes besides sewing for others. Alma and I would help out in summer picking gooseberries at Aunt Sadie’s, doing errands for neighbors, carrying two pails of milk from Talman’s farm and yeast from old Mrs. Goodman. Nona Yeager would take me to deliver milk on the wagon. I would go into the house for the milk pail or pitcher and then deliver. Sometimes the customer would come to the wagon, and I got to measure the milk into the container. It took hours to deliver, and I really earned the milk she gave me if there was some left. One Christmas Millie sent me a pair of high top shoes with a patent band around the top and a tassel on the front. They were my best shoes for two winters. I got a doll one year and though I wanted a bought doll, the pleasure was lessened knowing it came with a pound of baking powder. But Mother dressed it beautifully, making clothes from patches of material left from her sewing for others. School was fun until the weather got bad in the winter and there was no recess. The snow would start in October and got deeper and deeper as winter months passed. Sometimes Mervin would carry me on his shoulders over to school so that my leggings would not be wet all morning. All through my eight grades I had only four teachers : Sally Devine, Cecelia Lyons, Robert Neidlinger, and Frank Henery. Everyone went home for lunch except in the winter when the snow was too deep. Then we had classes through lunchtime and let out early. Everyone was happy especially in the winter. We went on sleigh rides with two horses pulling the sleigh filled with kids huddled on straw and covered with blankets. Evenings Verna and Grace and the cousins and friends came to our house and Verna played the piano and everyone sang for hours. The taffy parties were the best. The older girls did the stirring at the stove, but everyone got to help with pulling and stretching the mess until it got white and strong as rope. One night that Mother was visiting a relative, she let us make taffy and in some way with stretching the stuff, the bracket lamp was knocked down. Verna just rolled it in the rug that was in front of the kitchen drain and rolled it out the door onto the grass. After that incident we only made taffy when Mother was home. When the pigs we raised and the pen at the end of our yard [ was ] cleaned and painted inside with lime whitewash, we played there. Cousin Clara and Shompers who lived across the street were at our house always to play for there was a bar on one side of their home and we were never allowed near. Only on Saturday morning when the place was empty we’d help clean the spittoons and wash the mirrors around the bar. I never knew my grandparents. Mother’s mother and father died before I was born, as was Grandpa Thompson, and Grandma Thompson died the same year as my daddy. But Aunt Becky, Daddy’s sister, let us play in her yard and summer kitchen. It was a real treat when she took me upstairs and let me look at all her treasures, books, and pictures, some made of bits and pieces of shells and stones, other scenes of Scotland. She made the best cookies, like taffy that looked like lace. Pumping the water from the well outside the kitchen seemed like fun till she scolded we were getting wet, but I think she wanted to save the water. There was a swing on the lawn with two seats and we played there with Clara, my cousin, who lived next door. When my uncle came from Wisconsin to visit Aunt Becky they always asked me to come play with Charles and his little sister. Summer there were chores and work to do for Mother but winter time after school we went sledding on Miller’s hill until we were nearly frozen. Albert and Mae Williams were good friends, and they would let me help with their chores, like filling the shelves in the Joe Reed store. Their mother was the housekeeper for Mrs. Reed. During the afternoon the long walk to church was an adventure , for Alma and I could go by ourselves, and the Epworth league was really more fun because we were with different kids than we had at school in Sheridan . Every Sunday morning in the summer , Mother would take us to the cemetery with flowers for my dad’s grave , then we would walk to church and walk home after Sunday school . Ruth Henery was the Sunday school teacher . She wrote programs for us to give , several times a year , for the congregation and in the hot summer we took hikes and went camping in Clarks Valley . We had a great time … and we never saw a snake.
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