Chapter 22
125 SOUTH TENTH STREET
I was building the house at
125 South Tenth St. for speculation, but when in August, we had a buyer for our
house on Main Street; we decided to sell and move to Tenth Street. I had the
house finished by the time we gave possession to Mr. and Mrs. D. W. Rook. We
moved to South Tenth on November 8th, 1950. This was a white stucco Cape-Cod
house with two dormer windows on the roof. We had two bedrooms downstairs and
two upstairs for the children. Here Ada got her first automatic washer. She
needed it with six children at home.
125 S. 10th St., Akron, PA
On Christmas Eve of 1950,
Jay had a misfortune. He had started driving the year before and this evening
while driving in a procession of Christmas Carolers of the young people of our
church, he ran into the rear of the car in front of him. Our "new"
Chevy was badly smashed. He felt terrible and I was "sick". It was
not a pleasant Christmas. We had a fifty-dollar deductible collision policy and
Jay agreed to pay that penalty. The car was repaired like new.
That winter, after New Year,
I started to build an attached frame garage for George Wolf. While I was
finishing the garage we got a buyer for our house. On March 2nd, 1951 we signed
an agreement with Mr. and Mrs. Warren Leatherman to give them possession in
August. The same day I bought a lot from Mr. Oberholtzer on the corner of South
Tenth and New Streets, diagonally across from our house, to build another house for us.
Then on March 7th, 1951, five days later, while carrying siding on my shoulder
at George's job, I slipped on a patch of ice and broke my ankle. I got into my
car and drove over to Dr. Ridgway's office. After declaring the ankle broken he
asked, "How did you get here?" I said I drove and walked. He
said, "Well if you walked this
far, go down to the hospital and I'll meet you there."
He put on a walking cast and
a few weeks later; I started building across the corner still wearing the cast.
In June of 1951 Ada had
major surgery at the Reading Hospital. After that her health improved, there
would be no more babies!
It was that same spring that
Jay graduated from the Ephrata High School.