Chapter 17

CORNER OF BROAD AND S. 10TH STREETS

 

Five days after we sold our house on North Eleventh Street, I bought a lot on the corner of Broad and South Tenth Streets. We had to hurry to be finished in four months and there were rumors of a possible ban on building because of the war. For that reason we planned to duplicate the house we had just sold. Since many building materials were getting scarce, I took the lists of scarce materials to my suppliers and had them delivered to my garage on North Eleventh. I bought the rook lath, plumbing supplies, electrical supplies, nails and hardware.

 

10th and Broad Sts., Akron, PA

This building lot was the first of thirteen that I bought from Mr. Henry Oberholtzer. He gave us immediate possession and I staked off the house the same day. I then hand dug the footers of the attached garage. I also arranged for the excavator to come the next morning. For that same morning I had ordered concrete for the garage footers. My aim was to have started building before a building ban was ordered.

Lo and behold, the next morning it was pouring rain. I went to Weitie's in Ephrata for a morning paper. The first thing I saw was a banner headline, “All Building Stopped.” I was stunned; we had sold our home; I had bought hundreds of dollars worth of supplies, and I didn't know if we could build now. I went for advice to some businessmen in Ephrata with whom I did business, namely I. Leonard Sprecher and Harry M. Gerhart. Mr. Sprecher sent me to his attorney in Lancaster. They all said that such a Presidential Directive would have to be interpreted by a test case to determine a cut-off point. I was advised to proceed and work out clearance later. I went ahead, built the house, and never had trouble. The test case ruling was that footers had to be in to be a legal start. I suppose I was illegal! I finished the house in time and we moved on August 1st, 1942.

 

There would be no more carpenter work for the duration; I had to look for a job. In November I started working in the knitting department of W. W. Moyer's in Ephrata. For a long time I worked at cleaning knitting machines. That job involved tearing down the knitting head, cleaning the cylinder, and installing all new needles, sinkers and pressers. I liked that job. Sometimes I ran sets of knitting machines as a substitute knitter.

 

For some years I had a draft deferment by being a father, but later had a deferment because of my employment. I worked at Moyer's for four years.

 

In June of 1942, while I was building this house on the corner, a small child of one of my first cousins, who lived near Morgantown, fell into a bucket of boiling water and died. Ada and I, with our three children, went to the funeral. While we were in Chester County, a terrible thunder and rainstorm broke over the headwaters of the Conestoga River in eastern Lancaster County. On the way home we found the road flooded at Hinkletown. We tried every road crossing between Terre Hill and Lancaster. We could not cross anywhere, so we went to the home of Ada's brother Walter, who lived south of New Holland. We stayed there overnight. For our children, it was a lark; they had a grand time with their cousins.

 

By the spring of 1943, Donna Lou was nine months old. She began walking and wanted to walk in the lawn. Our house was Close to the streets on two sides and the trolley tracks were on Tenth Street. Since her mother could not spend all her time playing in the lawn with the baby, we bought a leather harness and a leash for Donna. With the leash hooked to the wash line, Donna ran up and down the lawn for hours at a time. It seemed that the trolley motormen began to look for her. She was a cute little girl. That summer I spent my evenings after work sitting in the lawn holding her. Jay and Arvilla, when they were that age, wouldn't let me hold them.

 

While we lived in that house, I got awake one morning with severe pain in my back. We had no telephone, so Ada ran over to our neighbor, Elam Sensenig's, to call Dr. Reynolds. The doctor lived only a block from us and he was soon there. He said I had kidney stone colic. After a heavy dose of morphine, I slept for most of the day. When I woke the pain was gone but I was "high". I never felt so good before! Since then I have had two more kidney stone attacks; the last one was last summer at which time I had surgery.

 

At that period we had an old 1936 Knee-action Chevy sedan. Jay had an appointment at Philadelphia for refitting his leg brace, and so that I need not take off from work, my sister Mabel, using my old Chevy, took my family to Philadelphia. In the city she had the misfortune to be hit by a streetcar. The left front of the car was damaged and it was towed to a garage. They all came home by train. In the accident no one was hurt, but Jay had two broken front teeth. From then on, he had jackets for replacement. Since becoming a man he had porcelain covered gold caps installed. A week or two after the accident, Pete Rutt and I, with a borrowed wrecker, went to Philadelphia and brought the car to my garage. Pete repaired it with junk parts. It took a long time until he found a used knee-action. So for a few months I went to work by trolley car.

 

That old trolley car put on quite a display for us one winter night. In approaching our house, the track was on a steep grade. We had had an ice storm and the trolley wire and the tracks were coated with ice. That evening as one of the cars came up the grade, the wheels began to slip. Big flashing sparks came from the trolley-pole and the wheels.

 

The Lancaster County Crippled Children's Society held an annual party for crippled children. For the party of January 25th, 1944, Jay was invited. Since we had ho car, we put him on the trolley car and sent him in to North Duke Street alone. He came back without trouble.

  

Toward the end of 1944, because of the war and no new building, real estate became inflated. We decided to sell our house, clear a nice profit and look for an older house. Repairing and remodeling were permitted. So in September we sold to a Mr. McCoy. We gave possession on November 1st, 1944. We found a house on South State Street in Ephrata and signed a five months lease.