Elzie!

Mom was the typical housewife.  She learned to sew and would make us cute dresses from feed sacks.  She learned to cook from watching a TV show. 

She became a very good cook.  She worked hard to keep a clean house and provide good meals.  

She was a good swimmer and had very graceful hands.  it's hard to say much about mom because she was dad's partner.  He was the driving force and she was his mate.  She loved flowers and dad tried to help her flower beds one time by bringing home raw sewage, thinking it would enrich the soil.  He cleaned out septic tanks.  He poured it all over her flower beds and of course, it killed all the flowers.

If she got mad at dad she wouldn't yell, she would just say "ELZIE.!"

The Rock Lily

Dad would order rocks from some company and they would be just plain old looking rocks, but he would order "agate', jasper, bloodstone, and other gemstones.  He would slice them in thickness according to the "finding" (the silver or other setting) .

You never knew what you were going to see.  At first not much, but a rock that looked like one you might pick up from the ground.  But then he would begin to shape it, cutting it into an oval or sometimes a square.  The "lily" just appeared in one of the slices.  The next slice had no lily.  I think it's beautiful.

Aunt Bessie, Taffy and the Harley

Dad was impulsive.  He came home from school one day and his mom had baked fresh bread.  She had told Aunt Bessie to make sure no one got into it until supper time.  He came home and wanted some of that hot bread so he got a butcher knife to cut a slice and at the same time he took a whack at it Aunt Bessie put her hand on it and said "mama said no."  Whack.  He cut her finger off all but a little piece of skin.  They taped it back on and it grew back. It was crooked.  That's actually how I learned about it.  I said "Aunt Bessie, why is that finger crooked?"  Then she told me the tale.

He had a healthy appetite.  He came home from school another time and saw them cooking taffy up on the hill.  He knew the makings and the pot was the taffy pot.  I guess he thought it was cool enough because he dipped both hands in it and it was still boiling.  He lost the skin on both of his hands.  Don't know why there weren't terribly scarred but they weren't.

He loved his big Harley.  Some place I had a picture of him with it and he looked like a little kid.  He wanted to take his dad for a ride on it but his dad was a no nonsense kind of guy and didn't want to. But he finally talked him into it.  He sped off and came around a corner and discovered, too late, there was a train across the track.  It has these high boxcars and he turned it on its side and slid right under it.  Neither of them was hurt but it was the last ride his dad took.  He also had a wreck ...not sure of the details, but he said he slide half a block on his knees and ground the skin off including part of his knee caps.

The Boxcar House

He bought a "boxcar" and turned it into a home, mom had to wash clothes in cold water so he sold his car to buy her a water heater and walked to work.

This boxcar house was right close to a railroad track.  He bounced out of bed onto the floor one night when the train went by because he'd been in a tornado when he was a kid and thought that was what was happening.

I was about four when we lived by the tracks.  Mom would often take in hobos and feed them breakfast. I remember one man got up after breakfast and his hat stuck to his backside.

I remember Uncle Archie coming to fix something in the attic.  Mom and I were in the living room and I heard this crash.  We went and looked in the kitchen and there were two long boots sticking out of the ceiling.

Bloom Township High School

Bloom Township High School

Dad started out as a janitor. He worked his way up to superintendent of buildings and grounds (man in charge.)

I remember his boiler room being so clean and shiny.  He kept it immaculate.

He loved to play jokes on the teachers or co-workers.  I remember him telling about this "stink bomb" bottle he used to carry.  He'd walk past a group and open it and blow it toward them without their noticing.  He also suspected one of his night watchmen of being lazy so he got up at 3 am. and went to the school and found the guy with his chair propped against the wall sleeping soundly.  He just kicked the chair out from under him.  I don't know if he fired him or not. He probably gave him another chance, knowing dad.

He noticed my talent when I was young and hired a piano teacher.   I took a couple of lessons and the third time I would just play the tune without a hitch.  She told him she couldn't teach me because I was playing by ear.  I sure wish we'd found another teacher who would have given me a lot tougher pieces to learn.  But he used to like to have me play for people from church.  And he loved to hear me play Master, the Tempest is Raging and We shall shine like the stars of the morning.

Dad started polishing stones.  I'm not sure what got him started, but he built his own polishing machine with a steady drip of water over the stone so it would polish beautifully. 

He loved to pour concrete too and I helped mix many a load in a wheel barrow with a hoe.  He would make a patio, or walkway.  He also built sheet metal ducts for his furnace work.  He had a great big diamond blade that would cut I beams.  I bars are very strong, thick steel beams.  He had a long handle attached to the wheel and someone needed to pull the handle down while he held the I beam in place.  This blade had something like 4000 rpms.  It spun very fast..had to to cut I beams  I was always wanting to work with dad so I got the job of pulling the handle down.  We were in the garage in Steger.  All at once the diamond blade (this was about as big around as a barrel top) shattered.  I looked behind me and there were holes all through the garage around my head and body.  Not one hit me.  It would have gone straight thru like it did the metal garage.

Fishing

Dad LOVED to fish.  He bought a little cabin on Lake Shishebogama in Wisconsin.  He had it fixed up really nice and would invite folks (mainly from work) to come up and vacation with us.  One time he had this little scrawny guy come out while, dad, mom and I were out watching mom fish (she liked to fish even better than dad and I remember lots of times her standing out in the rain hoping to catch just one more before nighttime)  I remember it was damp and cold. This guy came out and said "I've built us a hell of a hot fire."  Dad looked back and said "oh my God,' and went running like mad to the cabin.  Fire was coming out the chimney.  They began pulling logs out of the fireplace and tossed them in a bucket and managed to save the cabin.  Close call. lol.  No fire department for about 30 miles and no fire hydrants anyway.  

(Lake Shishebogama)

Before he had his cabin he used to meet with a couple from church and they would share a cabin...don't remember where that was but it was also in Wisconsin.  He and Mr. Pfeiffer got up early and went out fishing.  About an hour later he came in drenched with ice on his clothes.  He'd fallen into the lake and it was freezing cold.  

He used to like to go fishing for minnows.  Bud Snow (his nephew) and he found this swampy place that was teeming with shiners.  They couldn't get into it with the boat because the seaweed was too thick, so he built "floating shoes" from desk tops to tie to their feet and they walked on water and went out and dipped all they wanted

Dad had a .big heart, especially when it came to kids.  He saw a little black kid walking down the street in Chicago Heights with no shoes.  He stopped and took him in Klein's store and bought him some shoes.  He bought shoes for three kids in my school too, after asking the father if it was okay.

(S.Klein stores)

I remember one time we were driving thru Chicago Heights and dad was stopping to let mom off at one of the stores and a cop came along and said "move it along".  Dad said.."you want me to break her leg?"  lol  He wasn't intimidated.  

Another thing I remember about his being a little impulsive was when we stopped at the "Greek's'

in Crete after church for some groceries.  We had this big Kaiser/Frazier car. Built like a tank.  mom went in and a lady pulled in and parked at an angle in front of dad, blocking his exit.  When mom came and got in the car dad just took off and rammed her out of the way. She came running out and said "are you crazy?'  He said, "you shouldn't have blocked me off."  

(Kaiser Frazier Car)

(Greektown in Chicago)

Pauline Lorraine Ritter, June 30, 1906

Mom's earliest memories were of her mom hitting her dad with her "big shoe" and he ran her off. 

Grandma became addicted to alcohol because of putting whiskey on an aching tooth. (or that was her excuse or reality).  Mom was 6 and she lived with her dad and granddad.  She had to be the little helper, peeling potatoes for supper.  She remember how little the potatoes were after she peeled them and lined them up on the window sill over the sink.   Her granddad was a mean and selfish old man who didn't like kids much.  They had a cherry tree in the yard and he would scold her for eating the cherries that fell to the ground.  The only ones she could reach, of course.  He was a classical violinist with one of the orchestras in Chicago.  

Her dad decided she really needed some girls to learn from and a woman to teach her more about girls so he asked aunt Nellie (in Chicago) to take her in.  She had two girls, Irma and Ora Ritter.  They were fun, giggly girls with these very heavy Yankee accents.  I remember them.  Fun ladies.

She met dad at a dance.  They used to have neighborhood dances.  She went with her friend, Grace (Auntie Grace) and some guy got a little too friendly with mom and dad either punched him or told him off, but I'm pretty sure she said he got in a fight with him.  

She married dad at Crown Point, Indiana.  

I remember her dad as a very sweet man.  When I was 3 or 4 he would stick his head in the door when he came home (this was after mom and dad were married, of course, and he lived with them).  He would let me take his hat off his head and go put it up.  I remember hanging it up on some kind of stand.  I didn't know him well because he was killed when he stepped out in front of a taxi and it hit him.

Mom had most of her babies at home except for me.  Aunt Bessie was there to help.  

We had this little house in Chicago Heights  Ill.  Last time I went to Chicago (about 10 years ago) that house was still there and looked just the same.  

She learned to sew from Aunt Nellie.  So she would make dolls for us.  I remember these two very long legged dolls. Barb and I were sitting in the back yard "painting' little rocking chairs with a brush and water.  She tossed them out of the window.  We had a nice back yard and Irene (Bob's wife) was a neighbor across the alley and we used to play together.  She liked to manage our play so if we didn't do it right she'd go home. 

I was in kindergarten when we moved to Beecher.  Dad bought a "feed room."  It was a little building that a big pile of feed was kept in and the geese and ducks would wander in and help themselves if we left the door open.

He cleaned it out and moved us in and began adding on.  After getting three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and large back porch added, he decided he wanted a basement.  So by hand and a bucket he began digging it out and handing the dirt to us.  

Mom learned to cook watching TV.  She was a good cook.  Dad raised chickens, hogs,a cow who had a calf each year that was butchered, as was a pig,  and a crop of corn.  He raised some tomatoes too but mainly he raised corn and stored it for the animals.

Mom started going to church when "Sister Witlock" came to invite her to a revival.  She took us kids faithfully to every service.  She made cute dresses from feed sacks.  

She kept a clean house with fels naptha soap and a scrub brush.