Let’s go back a ways to Fisher Avenue. I can’t remember much about school, except the following year. I took Rose to kindergarten, and while waiting for registration, she began to cry. I waited and waited and she kept it up. So, I said, “Come on, Rose, let’s go home.”
We went.
Arriving home, Mamma said, “What are you doing here?”
I explained.
And she said, “Go right back and finish registering.”
That was that.
Mamma was a graduate of Horner College, and qualified to teach in the New York State schools, and she did that after all of us five kids were in schools.
Another thing I remember about Fisher Avenue was that I fell down the stairs and cut my chin and that caused a loss of a lot of blood. And, finally the doctor came and sewed it up. That’s one thing.
And the other thing was, one of the youngsters was—I don’t know which one it was, I don’t remember now—but, she crawled out of the bedroom window, which was over the porch roof, and she climbed out of that, got on the roof, and she sat there looking around until somebody saw her and then sort of kind of got things organized and got her back into the house.
Now, we belonged to the Ridgeview Congregational Church, and on my seventh birthday the minister, William Danna Street, gave everyone on their seventh birthday, every child a Bible, which I still have today.
There was quite a few other things down there on Fisher Avenue: Both houses, both 120 and 122, were built sort of on a slight slope. And they could accommodate a cellar door, which opened straight out like a kitchen door or a front door. And one of the other things I remember, was the fact that the Aunties used to buy half a dozen—half a case—of eggs at one time, and put them in crack filled with water glass. That’s the first I’ve heard, and the last time I’ve heard of water glass in many years. But, that was evidentially very good preservative mixture.
Well, we left Fisher Avenue and moved to Rathmound Avenue and that was few years later. And, Rathmound Avenue had several events that were sort of not too happy.
Ruth got scrabbling around somewhere on the kitchen floor. And it wasn’t a very good floor, and she got big splinter in her leg and they had to get the doctor to get it out of there because it was a terrible thing. Well, the very next day, the owner of the house—it was two-family house, really, side-by-side—he immediately tore up the kitchen floor and put a new floor in, which was quite a help to us as well.
And it had a back yard, and we had a croquet set. And we were playing croquet, and I swung the mallet, and the head came off. And, instead of being careful of how I swung it, it happened to be right at Rose, my sister Rose. And it hit her in the mouth and broke one of the front teeth off, which was a bad thing as far as I was concerned, and I guess it was for her too.
But, I don’t remember anything else much about that.