On the wagon

I cannot remember seeing our Mother drinking alcohol.  Never when dining out.  Never on vacation.  Certainly never at home.  Whe may have had a toast at our weddings, but I con't recall seeing that happen. 

I had heard stories, while easedropping on adult gettogethers, about drining corn whisky as a young girl and while at nurse's treaining.  But, why did she stop drinking?

It might have something to do with a message I gave miy father at a family wedding held at a secong floor catering hall.  I was probably 5 or 6, trantically looking for Dad.  When I found him, I said, "Mommy's sitting on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, and she laughing." 

The mail-order tree

Shortly after we moved into the house on Northgate Parkway, we received a long white tube in the mail.  When Dad got home from work, he called Greg and I to the front yard.  He had the tube and a new shovel.  From the tube he produced a Silver Mable sapling.  As I remember, it was about 3 feet tall, about 2 inches in diameter, with a small root ball, tied in twine.  He told us that we were going to plant our first tree.  We took turns digging the small hole, and our job was to hold the tree straight while Dad filled in the hole.  He told us it was a Silver Maple, and that the leaves would be green on the top and silver on the bottom.  He also said that it would grow very fast.  Not fast enough for us, bacause there were no leaves on it the next day. 
Dad cared for that tree all summer and cleared the snow from around its base all winter. 
He told us that one day we would all sit around under it and enjoy its shade.

Lois, R.N.

Our Mother grew up on a farm in Bucyrus, Ohio.  When she graduated from high school, the Women’s Auxilliary at the local hospital offered her a full scholarship for nurses’ training at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Toledo.  Three eventful things happened there; she became a Registered Nurse; she took up smoking; and she met our Father on a blind date.

Her first job as a nurse was at the Toledo State Hospital, where she worked in the “drunk tank” dealing with the inebriated who had been arrested over night.  This gave her the  invaluable skill she needed for dealing with her sons a number of years later.- Mike