By Anita Messina
I was born April
8, 1915 in Athens, Pennsylvania. Now I live here near my daughter.
My two earliest
memories were playing house and baking a real cake in a toy cake pan.
Another memory I have is when my sister Marian was taken for a walk
in the wicker baby carriage. I was able to hold onto the lower part
of the handle and walk with her.
Most of all I
remember going with my mother to the Lehigh Valley Station in Sayre,
PA in 1917 or 1918 when the troop train came. The soldiers got off
the train to go to the canteen and walk around the park in front of
the station. One of them picked me up and put me on his knee. I often
wondered if he went to active duty and if he survived the fighting in
World War I. My brother and I used to sit on a hill overlooking the
train tracks, and when a troop train came through, the soldiers threw
us Hard-Tack and a deck of cards. We cherished those cards and kept
them for a long time.
My Papa was a
railroader and loved his job as brakeman. In years to come he became
a conductor on the Black Diamond, a crack passenger train of the
Lehigh Valley Railroad.
I started school
at age five. I remember a bench in the hallway of the school with a
pail of water and a dipper so we students could get a drink. One day
I saw my mother walking by the school so I hollered to her. The
teacher brought me up short but didn’t punish me for disturbing the
class.
One day at school when we were practicing for our Thanksgiving play,
one of the older girls tossed me up in the air miles high, and I
screamed. The teacher was mad because I screamed so I got my coat
and ran home. I kept looking back to see if someone or the teacher
was coming after me. I made it home and told Mama that the teacher
shook me all over the room. I refused to go back to school and no one
insisted I go. I don’t know how many days I missed but at the end
of that school year I was promoted to second grade.
We had an old ice
house nearby our house where cakes of ice were kept in deep sawdust
so they wouldn’t melt. One day my brothers Elden and Norman went
into the ice house. I went with them. They told me to turn around,
and they took off their clothes and buried themselves in the sawdust.
When I turned around to see them, a big black snake was coming out of
the sawdust. You never saw two boys get out of that ice house so
fast, leaving their clothes behind. Mama got them dressed, and,
needless to say, they never went back in there again. When Papa got
home, he returned their clothes and the snake to the outdoors.
When I was a
young girl I had a Larkins Route. I sold baking ingredients and other
household needs door-to-door. I would take orders and send them into
the company. When the product came in the mail, I delivered them and
collected the money. I don’t remember how much money I made, but
enough for Mama to buy yard goods and make dresses for my sister
Marian and me.
I also earned
money with punch cards. Papa would take me down to the boarding house
where farm workers lived. They would punch a spot on the card to see
how much they would have to pay for a box of candy. I’d send the
card and the money to the company, and the company would send the
candy.
After my high
school graduation in 1934 I moved to California and went to IBM
school to learn keypunch operation. I worked for the California State
Department in Sacramento for three years. When I found out that Mama
was going to have another baby, I quit my job and moved back home to
help her with the kids. There were 14 of us kids in all.
I married Percy
Dove in 1938. I became a Girl Scout leader and a camp counselor. I
was involved in Girl Scouts for more than 50 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment