Gene Roliff – Page 6

St. Joseph Parish

St. Joseph is a small village in Ohio between the towns of Randolph and Suffield. It was originally settled by German Catholics. The first church was built there by immigrants in 1813. The present church, a beautiful gothic structure, was built in 1905. The exterior of the building is basically unchanged from the original, but the interior has been “modernized” and redone to the point where the original plan is no longer recognizable. It first looked like a European cathedral with a beautiful back altar that contained statues of the saints and evangelists, but is now more plain and modernistic. Music is provided by an electric organ that sits in front of the congregation. The original pipe organ is still there in the choir loft but I don’t know if it is in working order. Nobody could play it like my cousin Frank Lang whose bass notes would shake the rafters and make you believe that the sounds were coming straight down from heaven. In the 1930’s and 40’s, community and social life for Catholics in the surrounding areas centered around the church.

When I was a child Father Bertram was the pastor. He ran the parish with authority and finality. His thundering voice demanded attention and strict obedience to church doctrine and tradition. This old German patriarch spoke from the pulpit as if God the Father was speaking from the clouds during a violent thunder storm. When his sermon during Sunday Mass addressed some type of transgression being committed, the effect was so compelling that it would make even the innocent feel guilty and cringe with remorse. The length of the sermon was directly proportional to the perceived seriousness of the offense. Often it would last for two hours or more. During these sermons I sometimes imagined I could see fire and brimstone raining down from the heavens, but it was probably only the plaster cracking from the church walls.

The parish school consisted of grades 1 through 8 and was said to be the oldest parochial school west of the Alleghenies. As a child I attended this school as did my mother and my children. During the time I attended the teachers were all nuns, Sisters of Notre Dame. Later when my children attended, nuns were in short supply so lay teachers were also employed.

The school had an extra unheated building with outdoor toilets. During the winter students lingering there was not a problem. Boys and girls used separate play areas during recess. The girls jumped rope and played hopscotch. The boys played baseball and marbles. When the bell rang to go back to class some marble player would yell “POTGRABS” and the quickest person grabbed the remaining marbles from the ring. This would sometimes result in fisticuffs.

When I was in first grade I rode 3 miles to school on a brand new 1938 Ford bus purchased from Jenior Ford and driven by Bob Horning. This was the highlight of my day. The local kids came to school in a horse-drawn hack. During winter they arrived on a large open horse-drawn sled with picnic table style seats.

Every school day began with students attending Mass. We marched into church two abreast and halted when the nun clicked her clicker. On the next click we would all genuflect – next click enter the pews -next click kneel, etc. After Mass we marched back to the classrooms to the sound of marching music played on a windup victrola.

We had a lunch room with picnic tables but no cafeteria, so each child brought a lunch from home. Some families were very poor and many times these kids brought no lunch except maybe an apple. Sometimes my mother and other parents packed an extra sandwich for them. This was a better lesson in Christianity than were some of the religion classes.

There were two grades in each room. When one grade received instruction the other would do seat work. It worked quite well most of the time. No one would get out of line for fear of being sent over to see Fr. Bertram – a fate worse than being skinned alive or boiled in oil, or so we thought. He never really abused anyone but was an imposing figure and quite noisy.

During reading instruction we were placed into groups according to ability. There were first, second, and third groups, the first group being most skilled. The individuals in each group were lined up according to reading ability, with best reader first, etc. As your reading improved your place changed. I was the second to last person in the first group and because of this I thought I was the dumbest kid on the planet. There was none of that cardinals and bluebirds stuff. Damage to our self-images was not considered to be of major importance.

When the priest visited the classroom we would all stand and say in unison:

“GOOD MORRRNING FATTTTTHHHERRR”.

We practiced this until we “got it right”. Upon being called to recite we were required to stand when giving a response. This was a hard habit to break and when we first attended Randolph High School we stood up when called upon by the teacher until we noticed the non-catholic students laughing at our quaint behavior.

On grade day Fr. Bertram sat in front of the classroom and individually handed out report cards along with praise and a “holy picture” for those students who received A’s, or a scowl and scolding for those dastardly wastrels who received F’s. A few times I remember him applying a yard stick to the rear end of some individuals whose grades had really hit the skids.

I was one of the boys chosen to became an altar boy and assist the priest at Mass. We had to go through training and learn when to ring the chimes, pour the wine, and answer the priest’s prayers in Latin.

“Ad Deum qui laetificat juven tutem meum”, etc, etc.

I can still recite those prayers, but to this day I have no idea what they mean!

I was in second grade during the presidential campaign of Franklin Roosevelt vs Wendell Wilkie in 1939. The memories of the slaughter in the first world war were still fresh in people’s minds and Roosevelt was trying to get the country ready for another war. Many people did not want another war no matter what, and the political battle cry of the Republicans at the time was, “Wilkie or War!”. My family was strictly Democrat and I was catching some heat from some students, so I asked my dad how I should respond. He said, “tell them we would rather have WAR than Wilkie”. I did this and some of my fellow students looked at me as if I had two heads, but that did stop the teasing about Wilkie.

We had two girls who were really caught up in the campaign. One day on the playground one girl played the part of Roosevelt, the other of Wilkie, with other students lining up to support their favorites. When the debate heated up “Roosevelt” got into a hair-pulling contest with “Wilkie” and they both got into trouble over the fracas. This was 1939 and these were second and third graders already having strong political opinions. I guess some things never change.

Sometimes in reading class we were required to read passages from the bible. I recall one time in particular when the word “ass” appeared in the script, but before the student could get to the forbidden word the nun loudly interjected, “DONKEY!”. That got the reader out of a rough situation but resulted in some suppressed giggling.

Years later our achievements at Randolph High School and other places demonstrated that we had obtained a first class education from the nuns at St. Joseph School, and were well-equipped to compete with anyone scholastically and socially.

See related pictures here .

Also see YouTube video on clickers here

The Grapefruit Incident

Randolph High School in the 40’s had a student population of about 100 students. My class of 1951 consisted of 29 members. Because of this small number almost anyone regardless of talent could join any program offered and we were all encouraged to do so. I was privileged to have been able to participate in a variety of programs including sports, plays, minstrel shows, etc. In some of the shows I played a guitar and sang with a harmonica around my neck the way Bob Dylan did years later.

One activity I remember in particular was a class play in which I was to appear in drag and wear a woman’s dress. Our director was Mrs. Lillian Franks, the English teacher. During performances she stood on the side of the stage behind a thin curtain to prompt those students having trouble with their lines. The curtain did not go all the way to the floor so all that appeared of Mrs. Franks Carlile were her shoes and ankles.

A dress rehearsal was performed in the afternoon for the entertainment of the student body. Before this event my classmate Mahlon Carlisle informed me that my figure didn’t appear womanly enough in the dress, so to help remedy this deficiency he handed me two large grapefruits. Without giving it much thought I slipped the grapefruits into my dress, the belt around my waist holding them in place. The effect was striking – those spheres did wonders for my figure. After all, this was only a dress rehearsal, so how could this departure from the plan possibly cause a problem – it might even add interest to the show.

One minor problem did occur when my belt became loose, and I had to keep my arms folded and do some major shoulder-shrugging to keep the grapefruits from moving out of their expected position.

Later in the play when my character’s true identity was discovered I had to remove the dress and “turn back into a man”. I hadn’t thought beforehand about what to do with the grapefruits and now had to improvise, so I reached in the dress, pulled out the grapefruits, and calmly placed them on a nearby table in full view of the audience.

The crowd went absolutely bonkers! It took several minutes for people to calm down and quit laughing so that we could finish the play. I happened to glance over at Mrs. Franks’ ankles and noticed they were turning a deep shade of purple. I didn’t know whether to bow or to run!

Since the grapefruit routine had been so well accepted by the audience during the dress rehearsal I asked Mrs. Franks if I could use it that evening when we presented the play to the townspeople. She told me I would have to obtain the permission of the school principal, and he would certainly refuse.

I went into Mr. Cutting’s office and made my request. He rubbed his chin for awhile trying to look serious and scholarly, and finally said I could use the grapefruits as long as I “didn’t move them around inside the dress so much”. At the evening performance I again did the routine with the grapefruits and the reaction from the audience was even more intense than it was for the rehearsal. I was now a town celebrity!

Usually the events in high school plays that caused the most interest and comments were the kissing scenes, but in this case the kissing was pre-empted by “the grapefruit incident”. For almost a week it was the most talked-about subject in Randolph.

The Fly-Paper Caper

When I was in high school I became interested in an unusual aeronautical project. As a result of weeks of research and scientific experimentation (actually it was goofing off and wasting time instead of studying for my classes) I learned that the common house fly had enough power in its wings to carry more than its own body aloft. As a matter of fact it could also carry a piece of white cigarette paper, the size of which was directly proportional to the size of the fly. After deducing this earth-shattering fact, all I needed to do was determine a method of attaching the cigarette paper to the fly. Upon further experimentation I found the ideal method. I could take the corner of a cigarette paper, twirl it between my thumb and forefinger to make a sharp point. The fly could then be gently “goosed” with the point and hopefully take off and fly around the room towing the paper along.

This was all very interesting but it was still just an unproven theory, so it needed to be tried and refined. A fly was obtained and the paper was prepared and attached in the afore-mentioned manner. After a few practice trials, a successful flight was achieved and the fly-paper system started floating around the room. The fly was quite small compared to the size of the paper so it was hardly noticeable. To the observer it looked as if the paper was levitating around the area by some magical means.

Several days later I was sitting in study hall with nothing to do, so I decided to try out my new discovery and present it to the unwashed masses. I caught a fly, attached the paper and launched the system. The fly and attached paper took off and flew around the study hall. Every so often the fly became tired and the paper would spin in a downward spiral like a maple seed. Before hitting the floor the fly would become invigorated and take off again. He finally ran out of gas and crashed into the wastebasket.The students in the room were awestruck and greatly amused.

Unfortunately the study hall monitor, Mrs. Lillian Franks, was not. For some unknown reason she picked me as the culprit behind this unusual apparition and instructed me to leave the room and report to her office after school.

At the designated time I approached the door to her room. I figured that Mr. Harry Cutting, our mean old principal, would be there with a paddle and I would get a good old-fashioned whooping.

Much to my relief Mrs. Franks was there alone seated behind her desk. I entered the room and she told me to take a seat. She then said, “Gene, if you show me how you did that I will let you go”.

I went through the whole ritual for her and after some hand-wringing and the mandatory scolding she did let me leave as promised.

Thinking about it recently I came up with the conclusion that If I had studied more in Mrs. Franks’s excellent English classes instead of goofing around I would be able to construct and compose much better stories for this website.

But then maybe I wouldn’t have anything to write about.

Memories of Living With The Langs

Lang Family picture taken on my mother’s wedding day

Seated L-R:Edith, Clem, Dolores, Jane, Trina, Irene

Standing L-R: Dorothy, Claude, Paul, Alice, Walter

Dec 26,1932

When my father lost his job with the Goodrich Company in Akron we moved in with Clem and Trina Lang, my maternal grandparents. We lived there from the time I was two years old until I was nine, 1935 to 1942. At this time Dolores and Jane Lang attended Randolph High School, Walter taught science at Randolph and later attended Western Reserve University. Paul was a mechanic at Jenior’s Ford Garage until he was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1938. Dorothy and Alice were married and did not live at home, Irene worked for a doctor in Akron and courted Leon May whom she later married. Claude ran the gas station and repaired electric motors, Edith (my mother) ran the post office which was in the front part of the store, and later taught 6th grade at Randolph School. The Lang family together with the Roliff family of four made for quite a large crowd under one roof.

The residence, general store and warehouse were in the same large building. The gas station was in a small building adjacent to the store. The living quarters consisted of a large kitchen, living room, and many large bedrooms and storage rooms upstairs.

The Kitchen

In the kitchen was a pantry, coal stove, gas stove, ice box, sink with counter, and a large table. There was no running water. A hand pump on the counter was piped to a cistern which was filled with run-off from the roof. This water was used for washing and cleaning. Drinking water was obtained from a well in the neighbor’s yard. A pail was filled from this well and placed on the kitchen counter where drinking and cooking water were dispensed with a long-handled dipper.

The icebox held the perishable food. The ice man would come with his horse-drawn cart, carry in a large block of ice on his leather-padded shoulder and drop it in the box. He would sometimes take his ice pick and make popsicles (icicles?) for the kids.

The coal stove had an open rectangular reservoir on one side which was filled with cistern water and heated for baths.

Baths were taken in a round galvanized tub filled with hot water from the stove reservoir. Clothes drying racks surrounded the tub with hanging clothes to provide some amount of privacy. This momentous event occurred maybe once a week.

The Living Room

In the living room (or sitting room) was the usual davenport and chairs along with a piano that played songs from a punched paper roll when pedals were pumped. There was a large steam radiator that went all the way around one corner. There were religious paintings hung on the walls. In those days when someone died, they were laid out in the living room. I remember both Uncle Paul and Grandpa in their caskets with neighbors coming in to pray and offer condolences.

Also this is where the Lang girls entertained boyfriends and did their “sparking”. With a crowd that large living under the same roof privacy was a rare commodity. I remember hiding in the doorway drapes during some of the sparking sessions to see if I could pick up any interesting conversation or useful techniques that I might be able to use at a later date.

The Outhouse

There was no indoor plumbing so we had an outhouse about 100 feet from the house. This was a deluxe version with 3 seats for grownups and a small seat for little people. It had plastered walls and curtains on the windows. There were newspapers and a Sears & Roebuck catalog for the paperwork or for reading, or both. I don’t know why there were so many seats. I can’t remember being in there with anyone but Mom. Slaked lime was used to cover up the “goodies” after every use. This also kept the flies and other critters away. There was hardly any offensive odor as in the port-a-potties one encounters nowadays at a ball game or rock concert.

I must say it was quite a thrill making the walk to the outhouse in the middle of the night during the winter.

The Cellar

The cellar was large and dark. It appeared to me that one could get lost down there forever. The joists overhead were logs, and the floor was dirt. In one corner was an old well that went out of service before I arrived on the scene. I was told that one of the pet dogs drowned in there.

There was a large black boiler taken from a steam locomotive that provided steam heat for the whole facility. It looked to me like a train had run into the house and got stuck in the cellar!

There was a separate room in the cellar with straw on the floor containing several cider barrels. I remember seeing old farmers sitting in there wearing knee boots, drinking cider while telling tall tales, jokes, and war stories.

In the fall all family members would gather in the cellar to make sauerkraut. Grandma Lang would shred the cabbage heads. The slaw was then put into 30 gallon crocks along with layers of salt. A round wooden float wrapped in cloth was then put on top with a gallon jug of water for a weight. Several months later sauerkraut was born.

Meals

There were 3 meals per day – breakfast, dinner and supper. If I recall correctly two of those meals nearly always had mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetable and some kind of meat.

Since the Langs were very strict Catholics, on Fridays the meat was replaced with something else. Fresh fish seemed almost impossible to obtain around Randolph before airlines and refrigeration. If you tried to cook the so-called “fresh fish” you had to leave the kitchen! On Friday salted cod that came in nice wooden boxes with dovetailed corners and sliding covers was used to make some kind of white gravy to serve with potatoes and green beans. I also remember having soup with canned oysters floating in white broth. It reminded me of mice floating around in milk. We ate this with little round soda crackers.

It was rough being a Catholic in those days!

Grandma Lang also made a sweet cake that she called “simmit kookel”. It was like a pizza, except it was rectangular and the topping was cinnamon, brown sugar and milk. She put dents in the dough with her fingers. Upon baking, these dents filled up with gooey sweet stuff. It was my favorite dessert.

Wash Day

Every Monday was wash day and every Tuesday was ironing day. There was a room off the kitchen called the wash room where the washing of clothes occurred. It contained an Easy Washer with a copper tub and a large agitator that was belt-driven from an electric motor. There was also a wringer with a crank that wrung the clothes which were then hung outside on a line or in the kitchen on drying racks. Grandma Lang spent most of the day every Monday washing clothes and the next day ironing them. She never had to worry about gaining weight.

The Warehouse Rats

Connected to the store was a large warehouse in which all kinds of parts, pulleys, belts, oil lamps, plow shares, animal feed, lard, grain, and other items of merchandise were stored. It was a treasure hunter’s dream. it was also the playground for huge rats. These were brown rats that were so large that the cats were afraid of them. They were also so smart that nobody could catch them in a trap – except for my dad.

Dad would take a plant flat, which is a wooden tray 3 feet square with 4 inch sides, fasten steel traps to the bottom, set and carefully cover the traps with chicken feed, making sure not to block the trigger mechanism. The rats would play in the feed at night and get caught, many times two or more at a time. Dad had to be careful when he killed the trapped rats not to get blood on anything or the wily rats would never come close to the box again.

Evidently Uncle Walter did not know anything about this trapping technique. One night he was absent-mindedly running his fingers through the chicken feed. Soon steel traps were hanging on both valuable hands of this future pediatrician.

At the time I was living there the store business was winding down but the gas station was still going strong. Later Mom told me that Grandpa Lang was very generous in handing out credit. He was used to dealing with the old farmers who always paid their bills on time. When the new and less honest element moved into town, they took advantage of Grandpa’s generosity and the business suffered. The store could no longer support the family the way it did in the old days.

In 1941 Dad bought the house next door. We didn’t have enough money to move there so he rented it out for a year. The following year we moved into our new house. I lived there until I was 22, at which time my friends and neighbors selected me to serve in the military.

I shall never forget the pleasant and exciting times I had living with the Lang family.

See related pictures here

The Randolph Brewing Company

One day my friend Kenny and I were sitting around having deep thoughts and philosophical discussions about what our community was lacking and what we could do to help. We decided that what the town of Randolph needed was a good brewery, and that we were just the ones to remedy this situation. I had a magazine article with directions and recipes for making home brew so we had all the information we needed.

We bought several gallons of Pabst beer-making syrup from Hap’s grocery store. We added sugar, hops and water, heated it up a bit over a camp fire, added some Red Star yeast, stirred it with a tree limb, and poured it into a 30 gallon crock. We hid this vile mixture in a patch of elderberry bushes somewhere along Johnnycake road and gave it time to ferment.

After waiting about two weeks we could hold out no longer- we just had to try this concoction. Since it was a hot summer we figured the little yeastie beasties had done their job by now, so we proceeded to the bottling stage.

The yeast along with other little goobers and snake-heads settled to the bottom of the crock. We didn’t want that stuff in our final product so we siphoned off the “good” liquid using a few feet of windshield wiper hose taped to a stick that kept the end of the hose about 4 inches from the bottom, thus preventing the yeast from entering the siphon. We didn’t have any bottles but we did have gallon jugs, so we filled up the jugs with the home-brew. The stuff was dark, warm, flat and skunky, but the price was right and it definitely did the job.

We didn’t have any place to hide the beer from our parents or other authorities so we dropped the jugs at intervals in the ditches and weeds along the roads around the township.

Kenny was a couple of years older than I and he had a car. He would sometimes be driving down the road with a car full of rowdy friends and someone would exclaim, “Gee, it sure is hot in here, I would give anything for a beer.” Kenny would immediately slam on the brakes, jump out of the car, pull a jug of home brew out of the weeds, and pass it around.

Everyone was surprised – and also very impressed.

But wait, there’s more!

If a town has a brewery, it also needs a distillery.

I found an old pressure cooker in our basement. With the cooker used as a boiler, a copper coil from an old water heater and a 1 gallon lard can used as a condenser, Kenny and I put together what we thought was a first class still.

Since I always had crocks with deer hides from my taxidermy business curing in our basement, another crock containing whiskey mash wouldn’t cause any suspicion. We mixed together a concoction of chicken feed, sugar, water and yeast, and let it do its thing for about a month. Then taking this mash and the still, we headed for the creek to start our careers as moonshiners.

We heated the pressure cooker with a gasoline weed burner and boiled the mash. When the steam came through the copper coil we cooled it with creek water which caused the steam to condense. Out of the end of the coil slowly dripped what we hoped was top quality first class hooch.

It didn’t quite work out that way. The final product was so bad that even our dog wouldn’t drink it. It tasted like the whole Russian army had used it to wash their socks, so we abandoned that endeavor and moved on to other interesting ways to improve our community.

In the likely case that the reader thinks all this stuff is only in the imagination of the author (I sometimes wonder myself), let me present the following untouched photo of the still, along with its proud owner.

c.1947

The Shitepoke

When I was in 6th grade I saw an advertisement in an outdoor magazine for a course in taxidermy. It was a mail order course and the company would send a new lesson when the previous lesson had been completed. The whole course cost ten dollars and consisted of maybe 25 lessons. I didn’t have the money so they allowed me to send one dollar per month until the tuition was paid. I had problems raising the money on a couple of occasions and was sometimes late with the payment. This would cause a letter to arrive threatening me with prison, excommunication, castration, and other dastardly consequences. I finally paid off the bill without damage to my body or loss of any organs.

My mother provided a room off of the kitchen for me to ply my trade. One nice thing about growing up in a small family with a large house and a liberal mother was having a room for each of my endeavors – one each for taxidermy, photography, telescope- making, etc.

As you can see from the photo, I became rather proficient and ended up with quite a menagerie over the years. Many of the animals were shot by hunters but some were killed by accident, perhaps hit by a car or by flying into the side of a building. People brought in hawks, owls, ducks, geese, large fish, foxes, deer heads, deer hides, as well as small birds and mammals. Mom was rather lenient about different kinds of animals coming into the house. The only time I remember having trouble is when my buddy Kenny showed up in the driveway with a skunk – Mom met him at the door!

40 lb Sturgeon mounted for Leon Sabin, a Randolph business man

I did mount many specimens for other people, mostly deer heads and pheasants. I could mount a pheasant in about 6 hours and I charged six dollars for each. The money from mounting pheasants helped put me through college. In 1951 tuition at Kent State was $40 per quarter. I lived at home and commuted to school, so my expenses were minimal.

On one occasion someone brought in a large heron that had been killed by a trigger-happy hunter. The locals called these birds “shitepokes “( German for shitbag) . I didn’t have time to mount it then but I wanted to save it since getting one of those strange-looking critters was quite unusual. I skinned, preserved, and dried it so I could soften it up later and finish it when I had more time.

Well, I never found the time. So here I was with a long-necked-large-billed strange medieval-looking animal on my hands. I asked my idea man Kenny what we could do with it. He thought we should take it to a movie. It was stiff enough that it could sit in a seat with its long neck and long bill sticking up above the seats and would be a rather unusual sight to the average theater-goer.

Thinking that was a good idea, I gently folded up the shitepoke, being careful not to damage the feathers. I put it into the large pocket of my trusty hunting jacket and we headed for Lowe’s theater in Akron.

The theater was almost empty since it was early afternoon. We set up the shitepoke on a seat in the middle of the theater and then sat in the back to watch the reaction of the movie fans. I must admit it looked rather cute just sitting there by its lonesome self with its long neck sticking up, intensely staring at the screen.

We watched for awhile as several people came into that row. After a scream or two they would back out very quickly and move to another location, every now and then glancing in the bird’s direction. After awhile we decided we’d had enough fun and didn’t want to stretch our luck any further, so we gathered up the shitepoke, took it into the men’s john, sat it on a toilet seat and quickly left the theater.

I have often wondered if the lady who cleans the toilets quit her job the next day.

The Great Mouse Roundup

A creek called Congress Lake Outlet crosses Waterloo Road about one-half mile west of Randolph and empties into Breakneck Creek. During heavy spring rains this creek overflows and floods the lowlands of Johnnycake Hollow, about 2 miles north of Waterloo Rd.

Kenny, my buddy and partner-in-crime, had a 12 foot fishing boat powered by a 3 horsepower outboard motor. On one of these flood occasions we decided to take the boat down the creek and do some exploring. We launched the boat at the Waterloo bridge and fired up the motor.

After some amount of effort getting around and over logs that had fallen across the stream we arrived at Johnnycake to find that the creek had flooded the fields of the Paulus farm. We saw that we could take the boat for a cruise through the flooded fields if we were careful not to run into the fences. The fields were not flat but rolling, and the rises caused small islands in the water. To our amazement we saw that these hummocks were black with field mice that had gathered there to keep from drowning. This sight caused our evil minds to go into high gear. We didn’t yet know how this would play out but we could see that the situation had interesting possibilities.

I was wearing a new canvas hunting jacket that had zip-up pockets, four in front and one very large one in the rear. Pulling up beside one of these little islands, we noticed that the mice were unable to escape, so we could just pick them up by their tails, one at a time, drop them into the jacket pockets and then close the zippers.

Now we had a coat full of mice just looking for a good place to cause panic!

Down the road from our access point was a gas station and small restaurant run by Frank Breyer, we called him “Pappy”. After our excursion we were hungry and decided to stop there and get a burger. I hung my jacket in an inconspicuous place in the rear of the restaurant and un-zipped the pockets. The mice were tired of being cooped up, so they poured out of the pockets like cold gravy, four abreast. We then went to the bar and ordered our burgers.

Soon there were mice running all around the floor, scaring the women and making Pappy Breyer rather uncomfortable. We tried our best to look surprised and to help catch some as they scampered around, but our hearts weren’t really in it and we missed more than we caught.

About a week later I was in Pappy’s, and saw one of the remaining field mice run under the cigarette machine. Pappy whacked it with a piece of pipe and held it up by the tail. “Look at that thing”, he exclaimed. “It’s tail is only one-inch long and it has a face like a bulldog. I have no idea what it is or where these things came from”.

I must admit that I didn’t offer much in the way of an explanation.

The Gas Station

The Gas Station (c.1938)

On the Clem Lang property there was a small building adjacent to the general store that was used as a Sunoco gas station. There one could buy oil, gas, tires, and minor auto repairs. The first gas pumps I remember were not electric, but had a glass tank with graduations in gallons on the glass so the attendant could hand-pump the amount of gas being sold into the glass container. When the nozzle was opened, the car’s tank was then filled by gravity. Sunoco gasoline was dyed blue so it looked very nice in those glass cylinders.

Inside the station was a short order restaurant where sandwiches and light meals were served along with coffee, soft drinks, and ice cream cones. There was a freezer with circular holes containing large 5-gallon paper containers of ice cream, also a “pop cooler” with a bottle-opener on the side containing Coke and Nehi pop in glass bottles partially submerged in water. In the center of the room were a half dozen small round tables with wire-backed chairs . Most of the Lang family took turns working there and at one time my father worked there as a short-order cook.

The Harness Shop

After the war the gas station closed and a harness shop moved in. There were horse harnesses for teams and singles, bridles, buggy whips, belts and other leather goods hanging everywhere along the walls. The smell of leather was very prominent.

Mr. Howard Hartman and his wife Ollie ran the harness shop. Along with selling and fixing harnesses they repaired shoes, made leather belts for men and machinery, fixed canvas tents and other items that needed heavy sewing.

Mr. Hartman was very methodical, deliberate, and spoke slowly and softly.

And then there was Ollie.

Ollie was a rather stocky lady with grey hair pulled into a bun. She would sit behind her sewing machine in her long dress and look up at the customers over the top of her small, oval glasses. She was almost the spitting image of Jonathan Winters character “Maudie Frickett”. She looked like someone’s saintly old grandmother, but when she spoke, her language would curdle milk, crack cement, and make a sailor blush.

One day I overheard her speaking to Dad about some girls standing in front of the store wearing shorts that she thought were too short. Click on the arrow to hear the conversation, but make sure your kids are out of the room.

See related pictures here

Uncle Bob

Uncle Bob Roliff and his wife Eleanor farmed their land on Stroup road in Atwater, Ohio. In the summer they raised hogs, in the spring they ran a maple sugar camp. During the summer and autumn Bob chopped and sawed wood – tons of it, to fire up the maple sap boilers. No chain saws were used, just axes and two man crosscut saws, so it was difficult and strenuous work. I guess it didn’t hurt him since he lived to 96 years of age. Part of the farm consisted of 100 acres of timber, mostly sugar maples. My dad often took me hunting there for squirrels, rabbits, and pheasants. I also spent time with Uncle Bob when he was gathering sap and making syrup, so I have many fond memories of this place.

Uncle Bob’s was the only place I remember that had no electricity. If I recall correctly, this was about 1940 and power lines had not yet been strung down Stroup road. In the evening they used kerosene (they called it coal oil) lamps and at night they just went to bed since it was too dark to read. The place seemed rather dingy in the evening because an oil lamp didn’t cast nearly as much light as an electric bulb.

Aunt Eleanor also taught math at Atwater High School. Her father was a former preacher and very strict. He had a farm about a mile down the road and also made maple syrup. It was said that he poured the sap out on the ground that ran on Sundays because “That sap belonged to The Lord”.

Uncle Bob had a team of horses that pulled the plow and the sap wagon in spring. One of the horses was blind so the other horse in the team had to furnish eyes for both. Bob was so used to having horses that when he finally bought his first John Deere tractor, he had some trouble getting accustomed to running it with pedals instead of voice commands. He recalled one time pulling the tractor into the barn and when he said “Whoa” the darned thing didn’t stop, so it ran right through the back of the barn.

Bob also had a hen house as most farmers did at the time. He often had trouble with raccoons stealing the eggs and foxes killing the chickens. Dad told the following story:

One night while in bed, Bob heard a commotion in the hen house. He got up to see what was causing the trouble. He didn’t sleep in pajamas so he was wearing his long johns. Slipping into his rubber knee boots, Bob picked up his shotgun, loaded it, slowly and quietly sneaked around the corner with the gun poked forward, loaded, cocked and ready.
About this time his trusty hound dog pussyfooted up behind him and stuck his cold nose in the trap door of his long johns.

After the smoke cleared there were 6 dead chickens. Dad laughed when he told this story and said that if it had happened to him there would also have been a dead dog.

Uncle Bob’s Maple Sugar House

World War ll

The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese occurred on Sunday, December 7th, 1941. I was 8 years old at the time. I remember hearing about it around 1:00 in the afternoon, and I was scared to death. I couldn’t believe that nobody else was panicking. That evening the radio shows went on as usual. I found it disturbing that Gene Autry and others sang songs and carried on as though everything was normal. Of course it wasn’t, as I’m sure everyone knew.

Unlike recent wars, this one really had an effect upon the civilian population. The speed limit was lowered to 50 mph, and later to 35 mph – everywhere. Gasoline was rationed. Each car owner had a gas coupon book and a windshield sticker printed with a large “A”, “B” or “C” which allowed the driver to buy certain amounts of gasoline depending on how important his job was to the war effort. If I remember correctly, an “A” sticker entitled the driver to buy 4 gallons per week, and a “B” sticker 8 gallons.

Gas Ration Windshield Stickers

Meat, canned foods, tires, and sugar were rationed. Ration books were issued by the Office of Price Administration (OPA). Each page was worth a certain number of points. Change was given in tokens, red for meat, blue for other food, each worth 1 point.

Ration Tokens – dime-sized

Building materials were unavailable. Tires were especially critical since the Japanese army had cut us off from our rubber supply in South East Asia. We were encouraged to save fat from bacon etc, and to put it in tin cans to be used to make explosives. Tin cans were flattened and saved. Everyone was encouraged to grow a “Victory Garden” and to buy “War Bonds” to pay for the war. A war bond stamp book could be picked up at the postoffice. War stamps were purchased starting at 10 cents apiece. When the book was full, $18.75 had been invested and the book was turned in for a bond worth $25 in ten years.

War Stamp and Stamp Book

War Morale Posters

New cars were no longer manufactured. The auto companies were making planes, tanks, and trucks. It wasn’t long before Model A Fords appeared to be the most numerous cars on the road. The last one of those was manufactured in 1931, but they were the cars that were tough enough to run without parts replacements, and of course no parts were available.

Everyone who wanted a job could now get one working in a defense plant. People had money, but now the problem was that there was a shortage of things to buy.

Uncle Claude and Aunt Jane Lang worked at Goodyear Aircraft. Claude was an electrician and wired B29 bombers, Jane worked in the production line and in the office. Uncle Walter Lang was sent to medical school and later drafted into the army as a doctor. Uncles Emmet and Bud Roliff were drafted into the infantry and saw action in Europe. Emmet was shot in the arm and Bud ended up with PTSD. They called it combat fatigue back then.

The government used imminent domain to obtain 23000 acres in northern Portage and eastern Trumbull counties to build the Ravenna Arsenal, a facility to make and test bombs and artillery shells. My father finally obtained a good-paying job working for the construction company that was building this plant. Even though he now had money, there was nothing much available to buy. That was a good thing because he saved enough to buy a house in Randolph. We moved there in 1943.

During the war Dad had several hives of bees. Since bees make honey, and honey was a substitute for sugar which was vital to the war effort, the OPA determined that it was important to keep those bees alive in the winter. Because of this our family was given the privilege of buying extra sugar for the bees. I believe it was 10 pounds for each hive per year.

I can assure you that the bees never saw any of that sugar.

In February 1942 the Japanese-Americans on the west coast were placed in internment camps surrounded by barbed-wire. Panic set in after the Pearl Harbor attack and the government was afraid our country was going to be over-run by the Japanese army from the coast and these citizens would help their relatives. At that time of panic it didn’t seem like an unreasonable move. Viewed in retrospect it looks like an uncivilized and unfair thing to do. (See recent article)