The Things I Don't Remember, Part 2

Dad taught at Harrisburg High School that fall. He was a science teacher and basketball coach. He got a job teaching at Clay Township high school outside of Kokomo the following year. They left Connersville in August of 1937 and rented a house in the countryside near the school. My grandmother, Della Frank, came to live with us just before brother Don's birth. He was born the following year on the 4th of February. She lived with us until her death. Grandma had a stroke in 1958 and was paralyzed on her right side and could not talk. She lived that way for ten years, for a while at home, and several years back in Connersville at a rest home. She died in Kokomo while staying at the Good Samaritan Rest Home in 1968. Her sad ending always haunted me.

Dad lost his teaching position after two years. He was a Democrat and the newly elected trustee was a Republican. Politics is not always helpful to the betterment of some endeavors. The practice of political cleansing seemed like and odd way to select for good teachers. He did not return to teaching until nearly forty years later. After he was forced out of the profession Dad took a job with the Omar Bread Company. The “Omar Man” drove a panel truck through neighborhoods delivering bread, pies, and other pastries directly to the door. He, the ice man, and the milk man were not uncommon sights in those days. Later, when I was seven or eight we neighborhood kids use to chase after the ice truck on hot summer days, snatching chips from the bed and sticking them in our mouths or rubbing them over our hot faces. Dad was an Omar Man until the war started in 1941.

The family moved into town in October of 1939 and rented a little house on North street. I used to pass that house while walking to Riley elementary school, and many years later I took a photo of it only to learn that I had photographed the wrong house. There were two, side by side, and exactly alike, but ours had been torn down, so I have a photo of the house on North street that looks like the one in which I was born.

I made my appearance in late December, at 11:45pm. My grandmother Frank acted as midwife, assisting Dr. Schuler. It was mainly uneventful. There was no fanfare, no complications. I was the second and last addition to the family. I have no memory of the early years. I don't remember my birth. It ushered in a long period of sub-zero temperatures, one of the coldest according to many old-timers. I don't recall the two stoves that ran fully stoked. I don't remember our small house, or it being cold in spite of having two stoves. I had olive oil baths for the first six weeks of my life. I don't remember the baths or that the floor was so cold my brother could not be on it. Don spent the season on top a desk that was covered with a blanket. It sat at a front window and provided him a view of the wintry outdoors. He was two years older than I, but I don't remember knowing that either. The following spring we moved to a house on Phillips street, and a year after that my parents purchased their first house. It was the spring of 1941. The address was 1240 N. Lafountain; one that will always stick in my memory, for it was the first home I do remember.