An Old Man Remembers the Depression, Sex and War

By Harvey W. Gladhill

This is the story of a boy born during the Depression.

He was ashamed of being raised by two different sets of aunts and uncles for twelve years. He moved from his hometown to Philadelphia just as he was starting school and was on welfare those six years. Then he returned to his hometown and worked for the last six years of school to earn money for his keep and future life.

After graduation, he moved to Detroit, where he went to Dodge trade school for four months. He was then transferred to Chrysler Highland Park plant, into the tool room. While there for two years, he went to Chrysler Institute of Engineering three nights a week for three hours.

In January of 1943, he went into the armed forces. After basic training, he then joined an all-voluntary unit during WWII and fought at twenty to one hundred miles behind the German lines in teams of four in eight armored cars (M-8s). Their missions were to blow up ammo and fuel depots and cut communication lines. Each team had a separate area to cover in front of the Third Army. They raised so much havoc that the Germans assigned eight squads of SS troops to hunt them down and kill them. He had sex with German girls to gain information. To complete his missions, he did not care if he lived or was killed.

It is a must to read this telling story of an abused child and a crazy soldier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524527464

Harvey W. Gladhill

The author was a Police Officer for 25 years. He worked 6 years in uniform. He worked as a plain clothes investigator for 13 years and the last 6 years on the Department as a Detective and a Detective Sergeant. The author has three other books published.

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Chapter 1

Growing up in My Hometown

I believe that I should start this novel when this person was a small child. This way, it may be easier for you to understand why he led the life he did from age four until he was discharged from the army after WW2. He eventually was not too proud of some of the parts of his early life. In fact there were periods when he was very ashamed of the life he lived. Even during those periods, he was too young to do anything about it. He was shunted between relatives during all of his school years. At times he wondered if it was the excitement of the danger, or if it was a hidden desire for death because of the shame he felt. The thrill of danger at times seemed to have a way of overriding shame and regret.

I was born in a small town in north central Pa. among the mountains and rolling hills. There were around Eighteen Hundred people living in my home town at that time. On the west side of town was the Susquehanna River. Most times a serene, calm river slowly ambling its way toward the Chesapeake Bay. On the north and east side of town was a babbling shallow creek lazily meandering its way to join the river. Just east of the center of town was a small run which ran through the town. Fortunately it was dry most of the time.

My home town was located in a valley that was about thirty miles long. There were also a couple other towns in the valley all of which were surrounded by rich farmland. These towns were about the same size as my town. The land around the towns was divided into family farms. The farmers used horses to plow, cultivate, fertilize and do all of their other chores.

For the hunter there were Deer, Bear and Squirrels that lived and thrived in the lush wooded mountains surrounding the towns and valley. For the trapper, there were Skunks, Beavers and Muskrats along and near the banks of the river and a creek.

I was born in a small clapboard house that had two floors. Downstairs, there were two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bath. My father, mother, sister and of course myself slept in one of the bedrooms on the first floor. The elderly lady who owned the house slept in the other bedroom. She gave us the use of the kitchen and living room. This made it more pleasant as my mother could cook for us and we could spread out into the living room.

There was a flight of old wooden, creaky steps that led upstairs. There was one bedroom up there which was rented to a man in his mid forties. Since there was no carpet on the steps, it was easy to tell when the man went up or down stairs. He carried warm water upstairs in an old Ceramic basin to wash and shave. When I was around two or three years old and was able to climb the steps, I used to go up and watch him perform these personal chores. When he was finished washing and shaving he would always urinate in the basin. After he finished, he would open the window and dump the basin out. For some reason this fascinated me as a young child.

Sometimes when Sis (her name was Sarah, but I always called her Sis) and I were outside playing, we would crawl between the hedges that separated our yard from the neighbor’s yard. They had a garden and at times we would sneak through the hedge and pull up a couple carrots and eat them. Whenever the man next door would see us doing this he chased us back to our yard. We would always sneak back when we had a chance. It seemed as if we always had to be doing something that would get someone to chase us. To us, this was fun. I guess we were little devils.

When I was about four, there was a new auto repair garage being built. It was down on the corner but across the street. I used to go down on our side of the street, sit on the sidewalk and watch them build it. I loved to hear the noises. There was the roar of the motors on the steam shovel, derrick and cement mixer. Then there was the banging and clanging as they hoisted the steel beams up and put them into place for the roof. It seemed as if I always loved to hear lots of noise because it seemed to excite me. That fall, when they were finished building, they had a celebration and gave out little toy tires. One of the men brought a tire over to me and told me it was for the interest I had shown throughout the building process.

This was a big deal to a little boy and I just cherished that little tire. I used to roll it down the sidewalk and chase after it. There was an old tree growing close to the sidewalk and the roots of the tree cracked and lifted up part of the sidewalk. One day as I was playing with the tire, it hit these cracked parts of the sidewalk and my little tire went sailing out into and across the street. I could see it roll down the gutter and disappear through the grate into the sewer. My heart was broken as this was the first toy I ever had that I liked to play with and I lost it. I cried several nights thinking of my little tire.

We lived on Main Street so there was some traffic, even for those Depresssion years, how ever most of it was trucks. What made it even more interesting was being on the south end of town where we lived on the bottom approach to a mountain. The uphill grade of the street started just about a block before our house. I liked to stand by the curb as the trucks went by because I could wave to them.

Most of the drivers would wave back just as they had to shift gears because of the grade in the street. I learned to recognize an unexperienced driver by the musical clanging and grinding of the gears as they were being shifted. Sometimes when a truck passed that made a loud roar and gave off a lot of smoke, as they were Diesel engines, I would pretend it was a train engine. How I loved that noise.

That summer, my father rented an apartment above a clothing store that was right down town. It was a much better place for us to live as it gave us a lot more room. Now we had two bedrooms. My Mom and Dad shared one and Sis and I shared the other. We had our own kitchen plus a large living room. The only room we had to share with other people was the bathroom, which was in the hallway between the two apartments. It was just a half bath, no shower or bath tube.

There was only one Doctor in our town so I can remember that if we got a bad cold or the Whooping Cough mother would make a syrup using onions for our medication. Some times if the cold were bad enough we would get our chest plastered with Vicks and a cloth put over it. There were many home made medicine for most things we would come down with in those days.

I guess most of them were good enough as we lived through it all. If we fell down and got a bad scrape or a cut, out would come the Iodine bottle and and a piece of cloth which was just a rag torn from an old shirt or what other old thing that was around.

There were plenty of places for Sis and me to play. In the back of the building was one large porche. This extended across behind the two apartments. The only demarcation of the porche was a small drop of about an inch in the floor. We could play on the whole porche. There was also the big roof of the clothing store to play on. There was one problem with this however, it was coated with tar and the hot sun in the summer would make the tar sticky and get on our shoes. We could only play on it during cloudy or cold days. There was a long flight of wooden stairs that led down to a parking lot and this gave us another place to play.

There were no screens on the windows and the door of the apartment. When it was warm, summer time, we had to leave the door open. Flies were terrible during the depression that was one thing there was plenty of. Dad would hang sticky tape down from the ceiling to catch the flies. It looked funny with eight to ten rolls of tape hanging down full of flies. We also had to lay 8X12 inch sheets of sticky paper on the radiators in order to catch as many flies as possible.

On Saturday nights I had a lot of fun sitting in the living room and looking down out of the window. There was always so much going on. Many farmers and their wives would come into town with their horse and buggies. They tied them up to posts just below where I sat. One of the farmers drove a Model T Ford.

The women would go into the stores and do the shopping and the men would sneak across the street to the hotel and have a couple fast drinks. They would then hurry back before their wives could catch them. The men would then stand around in small groups talking and spitting tobacco juice on the sidewalk and in the street. When their wives finished shopping they would load their buggies and car then head for home. By dark, the streets were almost empty except for a few townspeople.

Sis and I were playing on the back porch one day when the sky turned so dark it almost seemed as if it were night time. The wind started to howl and sing as it blew in stronger and stronger gusts. An old lady came running up the stairs from the parking lot just as the rain started pouring down. She started to run towards the next apartment but must have forgotten the drop between the two porches. She went sprawling on the floor of the porch. Her dress flew up around her waist. All Sis and I could see was a big fat butt and a pair of under pants full of holes. She got up and scurried into the apartment. Sis and I both laughed at this because it was the first time we had seen a woman’s under pants. I guess all of the holes made it look even funnier to us.

We kept on playing, as the rain poured down and the thunder went rolling across the sky sounding like a freight train. Bright flashes of lightning seemed to wink with each clap of thunder. All of a sudden there was a loud bang and a bright flash of lightning that for a second lit everything up as if it were the middle of a sunny day. At the same time, the large electric terminal box on the pole at the back of the clothing store exploded before our eyes. I thought that I had seen a lightning bolt hit it just as it exploded. Sis ran into the house crying but I thought it was so thrilling I stayed on the porch. I still seemed to love all loud noises. They were so exciting to me and the terminal box burning really sent thrills through my little body.

The loud bang so close, excited me. I was frozen in place and unable to move. I just stood there watching the Terminal box burn. I wasn’t afraid. It seemed as if I got an electrical charge from it too. The thunder kept rolling across the sky like a giant freight train. The rain pelted down on me until I was soaking wet. With each new blast of fury, the wind seemed to get stronger. I had the feeling that it wanted to suck me up into its breast. I just hung onto the railing of the porch as tight as my little hands could. I was oblivious to every thing until I realized that my mother had a hold of me with her hands and was dragging me into the house.

Finally one day, Sis and I started to go down the stairs to the parking lot behind the stores and play. Our Uncle Robert managed one of them, a grocery store. There was a large metal trash burner in the middle of the parking lot. It didn’t take long for us to discover that if we took some rocks and hit the burner, Uncle Robert would come running out of the store and chase us up the alley with a barrel stay. After a while he stopped chasing us, and it was no longer fun to throw rocks at the burner. The excitement was all gone.

Sometimes we would sneak into the back door of Uncle Roberts store and grab chunks of brown sugar out of a barrel and eat it. Some times we would stick our fingers in the molasses barrel and suck this off of our fingers. There were so many barrels full of pickles and different things. We would try to eat something from each barrel. We never got caught doing this. I guess we were lucky.

We now had to find some other fun. Be assured, it didn’t take us long because across the alley was a coal yard enclosed by a fence. Children are smart and soon we found a hole in the fence that we could crawl through. The trains would back several coal cars up a slight incline in order to dump the coal from the hoppers on the bottoms of the coal cars.

We loved to climb up the incline and jump into the coal piles. Of course this was a lot of dirty fun when we would be seen and chased by the men who operated the coal yard. After these adventures, we’d have to go home and get a good bath.

There was no bathtub in the apartment so we had to use a large round metal tub which mother would place in the middle of the kitchen floor. She would heat water in a bucket until it was warm and then pour it into the tub. Sis would take her bath first as she was the oldest, then I would climb in the same water and take my bath. On Wednesday and Saturday nights, my mother, then my father, would take their bath this way.

There were no boys around where we lived that I could play with. I had not started school yet so my chances of getting to know boys were slim at best. Uncle Robert had a son, John who was a couple years older than me and just lived across the street above a drugstore and doctors office. Once in a while he would come over and play with me. These days were few and far between because he had a couple older boys his age he preferred to play with. I didn’t care if he came over or not. I’d have to say he was a big pain in the rear and bossy.

Sis had girl friends that she could play with. These girls she met in school. On the lucky days they would let me play with them. There were usually three or four girls all of whom were older than I was. They always wanted to play doctor, as a lot of the children did around those times. They’d get a large cardboard box from behind Uncle Robert’s store. As I was always the Doctor and the box was my office, I had to stay in my office most of the time. The girls would come in one at a time and lie down. I had to pretend that I was giving them an examination. Doing so, I found out the physical difference between boys and girls. After a while I got tired of playing this game and I had to find other ways for enjoyment and fun.

There were no boys for me to play with, as I had not started school yet. I soon discovered another building across the alley. I would see horses going into it and hear a lot of banging. In the evening if I went on the back porch I would see a lot of shadows in the building and I always thought they were ghosts. Children’s minds played wonders on them. Being I liked a lot of noise, one day I went over to see what was going on and I discovered it was a Black Smith shop. I liked to hear the crackling and popping noise from the bellows as the blacksmith would make new shoes for the horses.

He would pump on the bellows until the coals got red. He would then stick strips of metal in the red coals. When the metal strips became red from the heat he would take them out with a set of tongs and carry them over to his anvil. There he would start pounding on them with a big hammer. This was the beautiful noise I heard from our porch.

The sparks would fly all over with each bang of the hammer as he shaped them to fit the horse. I would always jump back from the sparks because I thought they would land on me and catch me on fire. When the blacksmith thought they were the right size and shape, he would dunk them in a tub of water. This would make a bubbling and hissing sound and a whiff of steam seemed to slowly wiggle its way upwards, slowly finding its way to the ceiling. All of a sudden things would get so quiet. The bellows stopped cracking and popping, a small gray mouse scurried across the floor. Time seemed to stand still for a minute.

The blacksmith would then grab one of the legs of the horse, bend it back and hold it between his legs. He then took pinchers and pulled the nails out of the old shoe. He would trim the hoof with a knife and file, than nail the new shoe onto the horses hoof. At times, the horse kicked around, swished his tail and tried to nip the blacksmith. Sometimes the horse would emit the loudest noise I ever heard. I loved watching and listening to all the noise.

All the times that I went over to visit, he never once spoke to me. He would give me what I thought was the meanest look I’d ever seen. He seemed so huge, like a giant to me. He had big arms and his face was covered with hair. He wore a leather apron and was always spitting out tobacco juice. When he grabbed one of the legs of the horse he lifted it up with such ease. I thought sometimes he was going to pick up the whole horse. He looked so strong to me that I wouldn’t get too close to him because I was really afraid of him.

The noise and excitement kept drawing me back. One day, I wasn’t watching very close and he grabbed me and carried me over to the bellows and said he was going to make a horseshoe out of me. I started to kick, scream and plead for him not to do that. He then patted my head and now he seemed so gentle. He said he would never hurt his little friend. I then I knew I had finally found my own true friend.

I would go over and watch him as much as I could once I knew he was my friend. From that time on, when I was over there he would always talk to me. Sometimes he would lift me up and hold me so I could pet one of the horses. I don’t know which was the most exciting, being held so high in the air with his strong arms or petting a horse. Once in a while he would have a piece of candy for me. Sometimes, while he was eating his lunch I would sit on the bench beside him and he would give me a bite from his sandwich.

One day I went over to see him and the door was closed with a lock on it. I went over a couple more days but the door was always closed and locked. I asked my Dad why? He told me that a horse had kicked the blacksmith in the head and he had died. At the age of five, I knew that I had lost a good friend. This hurt me so bad I knew that I would never again get that close to another person. I cried many nights after that when I was in bed. My thoughts always seemed to turn to my friend, the Blacksmith. My Dad told me that the reason I felt this way was because the Blacksmith and I were such good friends. That is why he picked you up to pet the horses and gave you some things to eat. That is the way true friends are.

By now, my father had purchased a car. As I remember it was an old Nash. I remember that it had wooden spoke wheels and Isinglass curtains to snap on if it rained or was cold. We also used them in the winter but it was just as cold inside the car with the Isinglass on. There were no heaters in the cars in those days. There was a small round hole in the fire wall that let a little of the heat from the engine enter but you still had to bundle up in blankets.

To start the car, Dad had to pull two little handles down just below the steering wheel. One of these he called the Magneto and the other a Choke. I wasn’t sure what they were for but Dad always had to pull them down. He would then get out the crank and go to the front of the car. He put the crank into a hole and started turning it, hoping the car would soon start. Sometimes it took a lot of cranking before the car sputtered to life. Dad would end up full of sweat at these times.

Dad liked to take us on picnics in the summer on week ends. There was one town in the valley called Picture Rocks that had a nice picnic ground. Picture Rocks was about fifteen miles away. We liked it because it had a cable stretched between two trees. One tree was on the top of a hill and the other at the bottom of the hill. Hanging from the wire was one barrel cut in half, length wise. You had to pull this up the hill with a rope. Get in the barrel and away you would go down the hill. This was fun.

Another good picnic area was on top of a mountain just outside of our town. The people who owned it had built a lookout tower from which you could see for miles. It was fun to look down on the river. From there you could see the Railroad Bridge and the one for cars to cross the river. If you looked the other way from the river you could see large orchards of Apple and Peach trees. The people who owned the lookout also planted a large patch of strawberries. These were so you could pick and eat them. Dad got to know these people real well and we could go there anytime with out paying. On Sundays it would be very crowded.

It was now around l929 and the depression was in full swing. Dad had been laid off from work. It seemed as if most of the men were out of work. We could not pay our rent and were told that we would have to move. What a shameful feeling that was even for a small kid. Dad had a brother who lived in Philadelphia and was still working even during the depression. He said that he thought Dad could get a job in Philadelphia and we could live in his house with him, rent free. I had just started school and just gotten to know a couple boys. I didn’t want to go away as this was the first time that I had known boys who I could play with. This wasn’t important, as we had to go where Dad could get work. We got on the train and went to Philadelphia.

Chapter 2

Philadelphia

It was a cold day on December 22, l929. That afternoon, Uncle Peter met us at the train station in Philadelphia with his car, which had a rumble seat. Mother and Dad got inside the car with our Uncle. Sis and I had never seen a car with a rumble seat, so we were pretty excited when we found out that was where we were to ride. We wrapped ourselves in blankets, for the long ride to his house, which was in Sharon Hill, one of the suburbs of Philadelphia. Riding in the rumble seat was the most exciting thing we had ever done so we really didn’t mind the cold.

When we arrived at his home, we were amazed at the red brick row houses on both sides of the street. The houses were all joined together and all looked alike. In fact, the next street looked the same as this one. To us we wondered how the people know they were even on the right street, let alone find the right house. We had never seen anything like this before.

On the first floor, there was a living room, dining room and a kitchen. Upstairs, there were three bedrooms and a bath. There were stairs that went down into the basement where there were two doors, one led out to the alley and the other went into a one-car garage. The first floor of the row houses was like being on the second floor of a regular house. There were no other houses behind ours on our side of the street, just an alley and a vacant lot with some trees in it.

In the kitchen, there was a tin box in the window that was used as an icebox in the winter and there was a wooden ice box in the kitchen that was used in the summer. When ice was needed in the summer, a card was put in the front window with four numbers representing the pounds of ice you needed. When the iceman came along the street he would look at the card, saw the number that was on top, and brought that weight of ice into the house and put it in the wooden ice box.

In the window, next to the tin icebox, was a pulley with a rope that went to a tree in the lot behind the house. On this tree was the second pulley. In the summer time this is where the clothes were hung out to dry after being washed. In the winter you hung the washing on lines in the basement.

My Uncle, grandma and two cousins, Tim and Eleanor, slept in the largest bedroom. It was large enough for a double bed, single bed and two cots. My father and mother slept in the next largest and Sis and I slept in the third one.There was just room enough for a double bed in this room.This was the smallest room but it was fine with us. We were just glad that we had a place to sleep with no one else in the room. We felt sorry that there were four people in Uncle Peter’s room but that’s the way he planned it.

The next day Uncle Peter took Sis and me for a ride in his car. He showed us where the school was and the way we would walk to get there. He drove twice from home to the school to make sure that we would know the way and not get lost during the two and a half-mile walk. They did not have School Busses in those days. We could see that he was concerned that nothing would happen to us. This gave us a good feeling, knowing that our Dad and Uncle Peter both would take care of us. We had never been in a big city before and it seemed kind of scary to us as our home town was not nearly as large as Sharon Hill.

When we awoke on Christmas day we hurried down stairs and much to my surprise, there was a brand new American Flier electric train next to Tim’s Lionel train. My father had bought this for me as a Christmas present. My Sister had a new doll and a new dress. There were also some small wooden houses and a wooden train station that my father had built for the display under the Christmas tree. He must have worked hard and long at night to build these because we never knew that he was making them. For dinner we had turkey, sweet potatoes and all the trimmings plus pumpkin pie.

Best of all, Dad had gotten a job with General Electric. Everyone was so happy. I think this was the best Christmas we ever had.

Dad worked for G.E. for the next six months. He was then laid off. The Depression was now getting into full swing in 1930. It was kind of nice for me because school was out for the summer. Dad made a couple kites and at the one end of our street was a large field where we would go to fly them. The two of us would fly the kites almost every day. Dad also made a large wooden spool for the cord. It had a large point on it so we could stick it in the ground and didn’t have to hold the string for the kite once they were flying. We would lie on our backs and have long talks. I enjoyed our talks, as I didn’t have any friends yet, just my cousin Tim who was a year younger than me.

Sometimes, Dad and I would play mumble-the-peg. This game required a pocket knife. We would each take turns putting the point ofone blade on one finger. Then we had to put a finger of the other hand on the hilt end of the knife, gave it a flip and try to get the blade to stick in the ground. This was done with each finger. Whoever got through all ten fingers first was the winner.

When ever we played or talked, I thought of the blacksmith and remembered the promise I had made to myself. Don’t get too close to anyone because you might lose them some day. So I guess for that reason I stayed a little distant even from my father, even though we had those great kite flying days.

In this field there was a spring with cold water coming from it. Some one had taken brick and had put a pipe back of them. This is what the water flowed through. We could get a handful of water to drink when we needed one. There was a small pound in front of the bricks.

There were Tadpoles in the pound. Dad told me that they would turn into frogs after a while. This thought seemed strange to me. I had never thought of the relationship being so close to a frog and tadpole when I had seen a frog before. I guess maybe it was only certain frogs.

We now had to go on welfare when Dad lost his job. I didn’t like this because even at seven years old it was humiliating to me. Every other year I was to get a new coat that had some type of rubber on the outside and sheepskin on the inside. I would also get a pair of hightop boots that had a penknife in a little pocket on the rght foot boot. They were a big deal to me. The boys all wore knickers in those days and they looked good with the high top boots, as the hightops came almost up to my knees. The boots and coat were the only two things that I liked about being on welfare.

The welfare program also provided Sis and me with a free warm lunch at school every day. I was so ashamed of being on Welfare and getting this free hot meal for lunch that I wouldn’t sit and eat with the other children in the Cafeteria. I would find a vacant spot just to eat by myself. I swore one way or another I would never be on welfare when I became a man even if I had to work all day and night.

One day Dad met a man who made lead toy soldiers, cowboys and Indians. He offered my father a job, which he could do at home. My father made a table in the basement and we went to work. Dad would make the toys in molds. First he melted the lead then he would pour it into a mold, making one toy of each kind at a time. When he took them out of the mold and they cooled a little it was my job to take a Pen knife and trim off all the excess lead from them. When he had the table full mother, Sis and I would paint them. When the paint dried we would pack them, twelve in a box with tissue paper. Dad would take them back to the man, get his money and more lead to make more toys.

When mother wasn’t painting toys, she made candy. On those days I went door to door and tried to sell the candy. I went on the two streets that had row houses on them. Some days I had good luck and some days I couldn’t sell anything. At nine years old I was learning something about selling and making toys. Most of all I was learning about working.

In the summer I went up and down our street and the next street trying to get jobs cutting grass. I would charge five cents to cut the grass and trim the two bushes on the lawn. I also got a paper route from the Philadelphia Inquire but I only had six customers. The first customer and the last were four blocks apart. I didn’t mind as I was paid six cents a week for each customer. I was making thirty-six cents a week for the papers and some weeks when lucky, thirty cents for cutting grass and selling mothers candy.

Dad always wanted to pay me for helping him with the toy making. I would never take any as I told him I was having fun doing it. Uncle Peter never charged us for living with him as he had a good steady job. This gave my father a chance to save the money from the toys just in case something else would come up and he would need some money.

One good thing, I was learning good work ethics and also the value of money. I wanted to give the money to my father hoping that it would help us get off welfare. He told me that it wouldn’t and besides he wouldn’t take it anyway. Always save as much as you can, he used to tell to me, Because, if you do you will never be poor again. Take a certain part of your pay check, when your older and put it in the bank.

To me my Dad seemed like such a wise and smart man. I saved my money in a jar which I kept in my bedroom. By the end of the summer I had saved Six dollars and Forty cents. That was lot of money for a child in those days. I saved this money in the jar for close to 50 years so I would remember the poor days. I made sure that I always had some kind of work.

One day Dad took the toys back to the man to get his money and more lead. The man took them but told Dad he was changing the type of toys he was making and that Dad should come back in a week for his money and get the new molds and lead for the new toys. Dad went back in a week and the house was empty, the man had moved. He had cheated us out of the money for the last batch of toys we had made. That winter Dad worked for the city shoveling snow on the gutters so the melted snow could drain down the gutter and into the sewer.

The following summer was exceptionally hot, especially July and August. To help us keep cool, Dad hooked a water hose onto a pole in the alley and turned it on so it would give a fine spray. Most of the children in the neighborhood and a lot of the adults would come and play in the water to keep cool. Dad would run the water almost all day on the really hot days. Since this ran the water bill up high, Dad disconnected the water meter and turned it around and hooked it backwards so the water ran all night in the laundry tub. This would run the dials back on the meter as if there had not been any water used during the day.

Dad and I flew our kites again that summer. A boy came to the field riding his two wheeled bike. He asked if he could fly the kite for a while. Dad told him he could if he would let me take a ride on his bike. I had never had a chance to ride on a two wheel bike before so this gave me a chance to learn. The seat of the bike was too high for me to set on it so I had to set on the cross bar. The field was rough with clumps of weeds, making this a lesssion I would never forget.

There was a train track at the end of the field where we flew the kites. It was an electric train that took people into Philadelphia from Darby. The tracks were elevated on a hill of dirt, and under them was a tunnel to get to the other side. We used to call this the cow tunnel. On the other side of the tracks a hobo had dug a hole into the bank of dirt and lined it with cardboard boxes to live in. We got to know him, his name was Scotty and he said he used to be a baker. Dad would talk to him a lot while I flew the kite.

One day, Dad brought two other men with him to talk to Scotty. He had met both of them while working at G.E. One of them was the father of a girl who was