This is an oral history report my niece, Nikki, did for an English class in 1994.

She interviewed my Dad, her Granddad, Howard Emery, and wrote the report.

Oral History Report

by

Nicole Hare

1/3/94

(Nikki received a grade of 90)

Childhood Questions

What jobs did you have when you were young? What did you have to do?

Describe your family, your home and your neighborhood.

What were your parents like?

Was your dad anything like you are? (jokester)

How big was your family?

What were they like?

What things did you and your peers do and play?

Did you do any rotten things?

Did you and your peers do mean things to people?

Howard Benson Emery

Sixty-nine year old (born August 15, 1924)

Maternal grandfather of Nicole R. Hare

Howard had many different jobs when he was young. At one point he sold Cloverine Salve, delivered magazines door-to-door and had a paper route of daily and Sunday papers which made over one hundred papers. First he started out walking with papers in a big bag, then he got a wagon and then he graduated to a bicycle with saddlebags. Howard had this paper route the whole time through grade school until he went to high school.

In high school Howard got a job at a men’s dry goods store where he worked after school from 4 p.m. – 9 p.m. and all day Saturday from 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. He made $18.00 all week and back then that was considered a lot of money. Howard would give his mother $10.00 for board and would have $8.00 to spend all week. He was rich!

Because of a big family, Howard lived in a two-story house. It was a white house made of wood. The house had quite a large basement. Connected to the house was a verandah porch. The basement went under it and the rest of the house. In the basement under the verandah was the laundry room.

The neighborhood was called Allendale. In Allendale a country road of dirt runs through. There were only eleven houses. Most of the families were of four or five.

In the summer time at home he and his five brothers and sisters and his mother and father would work a big garden. They raised everything they ate. Howard’s dad would butcher three pigs every fall. They had their own chickens but they didn’t have their own cow so they had to buy milk and butter. The family grew corn, beans, tomatoes and cucumbers. His mother would can some food for the winter.

In the summer when the berries grew ripe, the family would go into the woods and pick blackberries. Howard’s mother would make blackberry jelly and jam. She would can a hundred quarts of blackberries and make pies so the family could eat blackberries in the winter.

Howard and one of his brothers once worked for a farmer all day long digging and made 50 cents for a day’s work.

While still in high school, Howard was drafted into the Army during World War II and served in the Pacific. He received many medals such as Good Conduct, Sharpshooter, the Bronze Star and The Asiatic Combat Ribbon with Arrowhead representing the beachhead on the island of Cebu in the Philippines.

After returning home, he worked in a men’s haberdashery for nine years.

Howard’s parents were nice parents, but strict. They were fair in punishments and were also church going people.

Howard’s dad, like Howard, was a jokester. If Howard would bring a girl home for Sunday dinner, his father would push his chair back and look at the girl and say, “Young lady, don’t you go home and say what you did last time you were here.” And she would say, “What’s that”? He’d say “Don’t go home and say we didn’t feed you.” Of course, she wouldn’t know what to say since this was her first visit.

Howard had quite a big family. There were six children, two girls and four boys. The girls are named Belva and Pat. The boys are Harold, Allen, Jr., Howard and William.

Howard’s brothers and sisters would fight a lot with each other, but also would stick up for one another against other people.

Howard, his brothers and sisters and peers played many different games together. Some were baseball and street hockey using tin cans. They didn’t have hockey clubs so they would have to go to the woods and cut down a tree. They had to find a branch that was shaped like a hockey stick and shave it down into a hockey stick.

With the girls he and his peers would play Rover, Rover Won’t You Come Over and Hide and Seek. Howard would try to hide with a pretty girl.

The boys would play cowboys and indians. Once they took some barbed wire and tied one of the boys pretending to be an indian to a tree. Everyone then forgot about him being tied up and went home for dinner. Later on they remembered he was still tied up to the tree and went back to free him. He was mad as a hornet, swore at them and then stalked off home. The boys were scolded by their parents and never again tied anyone to a tree.

This is a glimpse of what life was like in the 1930’s and 1940’s for my grandfather growing up in the country.