Tales from the old-timer

School Days in the 1930’s

It was 1932, in the darkest days of the Great Depression. Still it had some valuable lessons for the better days ahead. My mother had died in 1932 of an infection (strept throat) that is easily cured today with modern antibiotics. Dad’s job had been reduced to a one-day week. His pay had gone down to $50 from $200 a month. Our mortgage payment for our house at 312 Harrison Ave. in Kingsford was $50 a month, and he stopped paying it, as we needed to eat, too.

Hundreds of families in Kingsford lost their homes through foreclosure, but the banks were in no hurry. Dad’s friends were standing in soup lines. There was no federal or state welfare system, only relief at the local level and Kingsford, could least afford to help in any way. People couldn’t pay their real estate taxes, either.

Dad loaded us three kids in his 1930 Model A Ford and took us to his hometown Peshtigo, where he was able to find a job at Badger Paper Mills as he was good at bookkeeping, accounting, and record keeping, and good in softball, which was a big thing in Peshtigo at the time and a kind of fringe benefit for the whole community. Hundreds of cars would congregate when the Badger Mills and the Silver Streaks had a game in later years.

We were 10, 7, and 3 years old at the time we came to town, Avis was 10, me at seven, and Donna, who was only three. On the way we stopped at Bob Taylor’s Gas Station on Hall Ave. in Marinette, later run by Don Adams, and Dad bought gas, which was about 5 gallons for a dollar back then, and we left. Dad stopped and pulled off the highway at the hill on US 41 about a mile out of Marinette, and counted the change he had gotten. The attendant had given him about $5 too much in change. So he turned around, this man who had lost his wife, his job, and his house, and he went back and repaid the money. The schools didn’t have to teach honesty, my dad did.

We moved in with Grandma and Grandpa on Cranberry Avenue, and Grandma “mothered” us kids, scrubbed our faces and helped us get dressed for school that fall at the East Side Elementary School on Pine Street, right by the log piles for the pulp mill.

I was in second grade then. Miss Clara Anderson, the 3rd grade teacher, had organized something called “The East Side Safety Club.” Membership was mandatory, not optional. The job of the girls was to “squeal” on any of the boys who were tempted to climb those near-irresistible log piles, maybe 40 feet high. Any risky behavior on the playground swings or teeter-totters was also watched over by the girls, who took their duties very seriously. Bullying was not considered a reportable offense, however, and Billy Dyer was my chief tormenter. You were strictly on your own to avoid the bullies.

Grandma was a stern, but kindly mother figure and one time my new friend Jack Dashner and I tarried after school to throw stones at the light poles on the way home. Jack lived right on Maple Street, about a block from Grandma’s house. Throwing the stones made me late by 10 or 15 minutes, and I got a stern lecture when I got home. Grandma told me we could have gotten electrocuted by the light poles. Jack was a good friend all through our school days in Peshtigo. He was a fine athlete in all sports in years to come.

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