Jim and Emmy, 1 of --

Jim and Emmy’s Family History



JIM’S TIME IN THE SERVICE

Merchant Marine - S. S. Marine Cardinal, American President Lines, 2-15 to 4-19-46: Sailed from San Francisco to Manila, then to Singapore (where Jim had his 18th birthday on the ship anchored in the harbor, but was not allowed to go to town!), next to Calcutta, India, then back to San Francisco with thousands of US Army personnel on board. (More detail both elsewhere and elsewhere, and perhaps even more somewhere elsewhere.)

U. S Army 7-16-46 to 12-31-1947
U. S. Army 11-16-50 to 9-9-51

1950 HOW WE FIRST MET

Jim and Emmy met through a “blind date” with the help of Pat Owsley, who Emmy had known in High School. In 1950, Emmy and Pat worked together at CAA at what is now O'Hare Field (at that time it was mainly a grass field, with about one airplane landing per week). They usually ate lunch together with a group of other girls. The answer to a trivia question: Why does the luggage tags for the Chicago airport have the letters ORD on them? The answer, the original field was called Orchard Field, way back then. During WW II Douglas Aircraft had a plant here, and Emmy was an employee. No telling how long she was on the payroll, she says, “I worked there a little.” If you noticed, the US won WW II even with her help.

On about October 29th, Emmy mentioned to the gals at lunch that she needed help to find a date, since she had been “out of circulation” for so long, counting her marriage, and since her divorce. Pat said, “Oh, I should have thought about you!” She went on to tell Emmy about this fellow who took her and her friend Mary home from church the night before. He was her friend Mary's brother and had been called back into the Army a second time. (This was during the Korean War) He told Pat that at least Pat's husband had someone to come home to, but he didn't even have anyone to say good-by to. By mid-afternoon Pat had telephoned Jim's sister, Mary; and Mary said Jim would call Emmy that night.

About 7:00 PM the phone rang, and of course the timing couldn't have been worse. Emmy's former husband was there visiting Ronnie, so the conversation was not very private. Fortunately, he was just leaving, so after a few loud comments (realizing Emmy was talking to a male friend) he left.

Back to the telephone, and now Ronnie was crying. Emmy said to Jim, “That's Ronnie, he was just a year old.” Pat had not told Mary that little detail. He didn't know there was a baby!

OUR FIRST DATE
• We arranged a date to go bowling on Friday night, Nov. 3, 1950 (Jim's father's birthday). It was raining, as it so often does in Chicago, and the windshield wipers on his 1937 Plymouth did not work — scared Emmy. The bowling alley was too crowded, so we went to a movie instead.

After stopping for a bite to eat Jim discovered during our conversation why Kolze Avenue seemed so familiar to him. In July or early-August of 1950 Emmy had run an ad to rent her furnished apartment. Jim's sister, Mary, had telephoned Emmy's mother about her brother and her two brothers-in-law renting it. Emmy was getting a permanent at the time and was not home. Emmy's mother's reply sticks in her mind very clearly, “Me, a widow, and my divorced daughter live here and we don't want any men.”

When Emmy came home and her mother told her about the phone call, Emmy replied--“Three men on my new furniture, having wild parties — no thanks.” Jim and Mary's two brothers-in-law (Harold's brothers, Charles and Virgil) used to kid about whose turn it would have been to pay the rent this month, if they had rented the place in Schiller Park, instead of the one in River Forest. (Little did we know what fun it could have been!) It seemed destined that we were to meet!

4256 Kolze Ave.,
SCHILLER PARK, ILL

• This was the house where Emmy was raised. Her father had built and owned the house next door, north. Emmy's father also built this house; remodeling it in 1947, adding another bedroom both upstairs and down, also converting it to a two apartment complex. Emmy lived upstairs during her first marriage (for a while with Carl and Lee Westerlund living there also when apartments were hard to find).

TO THE ARMY
• Jim was called back into the Army in November 1950, two or three weeks after our first date, and was sent to Ft. Monmouth, NJ where he first had the chance to work with what were then called “IBM machines” -- long before computers, as we know them today, even existed!

Jim wanted to get into the IBM business, but didn't know what it was, really. At the Army induction center, he met a man who did know, who suggested that each time someone asked what he did, Jim was to say, “I'm an IBM man.” This man said that when Jim meets someone who knows what that means, tell him the truth. That is exactly what happened. Jim was sent to Fort Monmouth, NJ and told everyone who asked that he worked with IBM machines, and no one, including Jim, knew what that meant, but everyone knew it was important, and that they were not to assign an IBM man to any other job.

After a week or so, Jim was sent to interview with the man who ran the IBM room on the Fort. Jim admitted he knew nothing about IBM, and the man said that’s OK, because he wanted someone who could read “Morning Reports,” a special US Army report that Jim knew most everything about! He had typed some of them as an Army clerk the first time he was in the service, and as a Battalion clerk, had checked over many others.

They got along very well, and the man gave Jim a key to the building so Jim could spent nights and weekends learning to run the machines. Whenever the Army had the nerve to assign Jim some other job like KP or to march in a parade, Ted would sign any paper Jim prepared, telling the powers that be that Jim was too important for that, as he had to “IBM that day!” And it worked, too.


1951


• Jim decided that the U. S. Army should send him to a special school at Ft. Benj. Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana -- just close enough to Chicago to be a problem! Each Sat. noon, about an hour before he was supposed to leave camp, Jim would sneak off and catch a train to Chicago, and Emmy would be there to meet him. One time he met a high ranking officer from his outfit who was on the train. The Major said, “I see you got permission to leave early this morning, also.” Jim didn't tell him whose “permission” -- his own!

At about 11:00 PM Sunday he would then catch a bus to downtown Chicago, catch a train to Indianapolis, then run for 6 blocks or so and catch a bus that got him to the Army Base about 5 minutes before roll call about 6:00 AM Monday morning. Just barely, but made it each time.

GETTING TO CHICAGO TO GET MARRIED
• We planned to get married on June 2, a Saturday. His Army class was graduating Thursday morning, and if he could catch the train about noon, Emmy could meet him downtown and they could get the license and save a trip back downtown the next day.

He had permission from his Colonel, but the Captain was not happy about it and tried to delay his leaving. Jim had all his clothes already checked at the train station and his shaving kit hidden in the bushes near the Army Chapel. It would do no good to make the rush and not have Emmy there to meet him, so we arranged that if Jim got to the train station on time he would call Mary, and she would call Emmy, and on and on.

Jim just barely caught the bus to town, then ran the 6 blocks. As he entered the train station, gave the phone operator (they had operators and banks of phones then, not individual pay phones, and no way to dial a long distance number) a note with Mary's number and the right change, picked up the phone and told Mary “It's me,” and ran to the train before the operator knew she had even completed the call.

• Emmy was at the station. It was called the Grand Central Station. We got the license, and on the way home by bus, it started to rain, and boy did it pour! We were both soaked, but then who cared, we were in love and to be married Saturday!

Emmy can remember how Jim would be running to meet her each Saturday night, grinning from ear to ear, as if he hadn't seen her in years. It was such a joy to see him this way. Emmy's mother always baby-sat Ronnie, so Emmy could go to the train station downtown, that way we'd have a couple extra hours together.

WE WERE MARRIED
• Jim and Emmy were married in a very large fancy Lutheran Church (recommended by one of the gals Emmy knew at work) at about 2:00 PM in Oak Park, Ill. (This is the town where Emmy was born; she was delivered by a doctor from Franklin Park, Ill, who later was her father-in-law in her first marriage.)

The church was being decorated for a very expensive wedding. Flowers and plants were being placed everywhere, workers on ladders were decorating the high ceiling. The minister said that the flowers could be used more than once, so asked the workmen to keep quiet long enough for us to get married. Jim was in the Army at the time, and wore a (new and cheap! what else!) uniform. Lee and Carl Westerlund were our witnesses. After taking Lee and Carl to dinner at The Pantry Restaurant in Park Ridge, we checked into the Hotel Stevens (now the Conrad Hilton) into a very tiny room. That was not much of a honeymoon, maybe two nights at the hotel, but we’ve had dozens of honeymoons in the years that followed.

• In 1990 we visited a lady in a hospital in Park Ridge. Jim had decided (and told no one) that we would eat lunch or dinner at The Pantry, but found no one had told The Pantry to still be in business!

• A couple of days later, Jim drove our 1936 Chevy back to the Army base in Ft. Monmouth, NJ. Emmy brought Ronnie by plane (their first flight) to LaGuardia Airport in New York City about two weeks later.

• This is the same 1936 Chevy that brother Paul first bought for $398 in December 1939 and sold to Papa when Paul went into the Army in 1941. Later Mary and Harold owned it, then sold it to Jim in 1950, and finally we drove it to New Jersey, and back to Chicago. We later traded it for a 1947 or 48 Oldsmobile with 6 cylinders and a stick shift -- they didn't make many Oldsmobiles like that in those days, or any other days. Seem to remember, the cost was several hundred dollars plus the trade.

LIVING IN NEW JERSEY
• Jim had found a really small apartment, with a shared bath down the hall, in Asbury Park, NJ, a very nice coastal resort community near Fort Monmouth. In the kitchen was a sink, stove, refrig, table and two chairs, and Ronnie's crib (that we bought used, through a newspaper ad), and all could be touched from the only spot of the floor left to stand on.

In the living room was a small hide-a-bed, and a closet. You had to be finished with the closet before you opened the bed, as it filled the room except for a narrow space on one side. That's right, the closet door could not be opened after the bed was opened! The sofa bed was of such poor quality that it was very lumpy and uncomfortable (for sleeping). But it was home and we were thrilled to have found it.

Apartments were scarce, especially reasonable ones. We lived on the second floor of a three floor home. The lady had rented the large third floor apartment to a newly married couple just a day or two before Jim found our apartment. Since there were three of us, she wished we could have had that one instead. Emmy did washing by hand, including sheets, but so did the landlady. It amazed us that she had no washing machine. Now and then Emmy went to a laundromat.

Now remember, Jim, as a Private, or maybe a Private First Class, made an Army salary of not much more than a hundred dollars or so, a part-time job that paid a little, and he had no savings that we remember. Emmy had a few dollars, but very few. How did we manage? Really wonder how much it would take to live in that scale in 1998?

• The first evening together in our home Jim went to his part-time job as a popcorn seller at the local hot-rod race track to make a little extra money. After an hour or two he came home early when it dawned on him his new wife and son were “home” and why wasn't he there with them? Jim remembers there were no water fountains at the race track, only beer and soft drinks for sale. When the beer and soft drink salesmen went past the pop corn machine, they would holler at Jim, “More salt, more salt.” Some nights, people’s mouths would pucker with each bite of popcorn.

• A big evening in New Jersey was to walk on the boardwalk along the ocean, buy a double-dip 10¢ ice-cream cone, and share it three ways. Sometimes we went to nearby Ocean Grove and sat in the auction houses and listened and watched the rich people spend their money! Several times we were invited downstairs to the landlord's to watch TV.

A few times we also played in the surf. They had a large rope we could hold on to and jump with the waves. Ronnie seemed to like it, but at times was fearful.

• Carl and Lee Westerlund came to visit during the summer, and we all went to NYC, including a climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Jim had some dental work done a few days before going to NYC; poor guy, his face was so swollen, his lip came out as far as his nose. (Some dental work? He had all his teeth pulled!) Didn't seem to bother him at all as he carried Ronnie to the top of the Statue.

• All of Jim's teeth were pulled, and plates were to be supplied, in time. Since he didn't have enough time left on his enlistment, Jim was not supposed to have been inducted into the Army in the first place, and some other people with the same problem were going to court trying to get out. (He had only 15 months or so left to serve in the Reserves, and the Army had called him in for 22 months, and that didn't fit!)

GETTING OUT OF THE ARMY
Just as soon as anyone was being let out of the Army, Jim applied, and they were happy to let him go. But without teeth, we couldn't leave. Jim went to the Colonel at the Dental Clinic and told him that if he had teeth, Jim could get out of the Army in time to attend college that fall. Jim then told the Commanding Officer that if he could get out in time to attend college that fall, the Colonel in the Dental Clinic said he would rush the order for teeth. And since neither talked to the other, Jim got his teeth and his discharge, both earlier than planned!

• Among the things that disappeared along with the teeth, was the ability to play a band instrument. Up to now Jim had played the trumpet in grade school, a variety of “valve” instruments and drums in high school, and then had been a member of the Pennsylvania Railroad band (he doesn’t remember anything but the free bus ticket to practice and concerts), and the Ohio State Guard band. It’s not much of a shock to learn that the music industry didn’t really lose much of anything. He enjoyed it more than any member of the audience, anytime, anywhere.

• Before going into the Army, Jim had worked for International Harvester (The University of International Harvester!!) as a Diesel engine repairman, and now he told them he was an IBM man, and they were happy to give him a job on the night shift at the rate of $82.50 per week! Emmy remembers Jim's enthusiasm, running up the stairs at home, when he came back from the job interview.

• When Jim was discharged from the Army in September 1951 we tied Ronnie's crib on the back of the 1936 Chevy and took it to his brother Johnny and wife Betty's place in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania so they could soon use it for David, and who knows who else. As we got closer to Chicago, Emmy was really excited. It had been the first time she had been away from “home” for such a long time and she had been homesick.

OUR CHRISTMAS FABLE
• Do you remember the Christmas Fable, The Gift of the Magi, about the man who sold his heirloom watch so he could buy his wife a comb for her long, beautiful hair, then found she had sold her hair so she could buy a watch-fob for her husband’s wonderful watch. Well, this story isn’t a tear-jerker quite like that, but it’s the best we can do!

Our first Christmas, when money was in less supply than most times since, Emmy came home from Christmas shopping at what was called “Grand and Harlem” on Chicago’s West side, and discovered that a gift she had paid for, was missing. Just in case she had left on the counter at the store, Emmy asked Jim to go and see if he could find it.

Jim had the presence of mind to have her describe the gift in great detail, the color, the size, the location in the store, the cost (forgotten long ago), and anything else he could think of. Of course when he got to the store there was no sign of paid-for-gloves, but fortified with a detailed description, Jim was able to determine there was another pair, that seemed to fit Emmy’s description.

Now, now, don’t get ahead of the story teller! But you are right. After Emmy agreed they were the right gloves, Jim said “Thank you for my early Christmas present.” And it was several years before Jim let her in on the secret, that he had bought another pair, based on the detailed description. How he could spend that much money, and not blow the budget, we don’t remember. Jim still has the gloves, but they are not likely to be worn often enough to wear out in our weather!


1952


HE WORKED, AND SO DID SHE
• Jim worked part time for Statistical Tabulating Company in downtown Chicago, in addition to working nights at International Harvester Co. in Melrose Park, Ill. Emmy did home typing. Jim picked up and delivered her typing when he went downtown. After she got familiar with the work, and had some easy typing to do, she made about $l per hour, when she was lucky.

• That winter it snowed and snowed, and one morning it took Jim 3 or 4 hours to shovel the driveway, so he could get the car out. But that did no good, as no one had plowed the street. Jim always did like warmer weather, and convinced Emmy that anything is better than this. We subscribed to newspapers in Dallas and Phoenix, at least, and studied the want ads, for jobs and apartments, and cost of food in grocery ads.

Wish we had kept the letter we received from the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. They said that Phoenix did not have any jobs, did not have enough water for growth of jobs and people, and if we were not retired, or were not interested in being a bell-hop or waiter, please do not move to Phoenix. Of course, millions of people have moved there since then. In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, Jim went there dozens of times on business, and we have visited friends there many times.

TO DALLAS
• Moved to Texas on April 14th driving the Olds, pulling a one-wheel trailer. Emmy remembers the date. When she called Jim's sister Esther from Joliet to tell her we had left, there was no answer and we learned later that Esther had gone to the hospital to deliver Nancy that day. Jim seems to remember that the car was very overloaded, and when we got to Joliet, Ill, we stopped somewhere and unloaded and shipped the console TV (not a table model), to somewhere in Dallas. How we did this, and who did it, and where we shipped it, and how we found it again in Dallas, we have no idea, but it worked!

• We lived in a Dallas apartment for two weeks. It was a very nice two bedroom apartment, but some wallpaper was coming off the walls and seemed to be infested with roaches. Don't think we had ever seen roaches before. The other tenants weren't concerned at all. Emmy had a favorite pair of green suede platform shoes she must have left in that apartment when we moved, never saw them again.

TO FORT WORTH
• We then moved to a small brand new duplex on Dalford Drive in Fort Worth because Jim accepted a job with an insurance company in Fort Worth. This duplex did not have any built-in heating system, and we were afraid of the non-vented heaters. One morning when the thermometer registered 52° in the house, we thought it was time to move to an apartment with a furnace, another duplex on the north side of Fort Worth. We can't find the address anywhere, but it seems like it was on 29th street, or something like that. Years later coming through Fort Worth we tried unsuccessfully to locate this last duplex. They may have been demolished for other construction.

We had always told Ronnie not to write on the walls, since this was our home and we wanted it to look nice. After we had all the furniture out and were ready to leave, we looked for Ronnie and found him in the living room scrawling on the LR wall -- it wasn't our home any more!

• Melvin Victor was in the Air Force in Fort Worth at that time, and he and his wife, Jim's favorite cousin Maxine, visited many times. They, and another couple stayed with us at least a night or two before they found an apartment. They spent our 2nd Thanksgiving with us along with an under-cooked turkey, at the Dalford duplex.

• Emmy's mother came to visit us in this second duplex for a couple weeks shortly after her first and only return trip to Germany, where she was born and raised. (She brought us a cuckoo clock.) We spent our second Christmas together here. Emmy felt rather lonely. One of Ronnie's presents was a small car. Our bed was angled in the corner and we hid the car behind the head of the bed as best we could. Ronnie discovered it before Christmas. He really did enjoy driving it after his first disappointing moments of discovering it had no real head lights, and the doors didn't open, and there was no rear-view mirror.

• Jim worked for Houston Fire and Casualty Insurance Company in Fort Worth in the IBM Tabulating Department. ($250 per month) He worked with Sal Marco, and they had a boss who would get mad at the machines and throw things across the room. Emmy worked for the US Government at the Convair plant in Fort Worth, where they built the B-36 bomber. Ronnie stayed at a day care center each day. Emmy was always torn between working and staying home with him as it seemed he was sick a lot. It wasn't until we moved to California did a doctor ever diagnose his sickness as tonsillitis.

• When we moved to Fort Worth we bought a lovely limed-oak six-drawer chest of drawers, and eight-drawer dresser and desk for the living room (many years later Emmy antiqued them in a dark wood-tone finish). We still have them. The rest of the furniture we bought used, including our first Beautyrest mattress. We've been sold on them ever since. “Sold” is not the only thing we have done on them! We have slept also.

• Jim went to work for Chance Vought Aircraft near Dallas for $275 per month. For several months, Jim car-pooled the 25 miles or so to work, and there were no freeways to use in those days.

BUYING A HOUSE IN DALLAS
• We went house-hunting in Dallas each and every weekend, and finally bought a house at 3719 Dawes Drive from the owner, a two bedroom, one bath, large kitchen, nice backyard, for about $7,200. Monthly payment was $54 per month. Part of that was a second mortgage that would have been paid within a couple of years, and then the monthly payment would be $37! Can't buy dinner for that these days!

We borrowed a couple of hundred dollars from Jim's brother Paul, and another couple of hundred from Carl and Lee Westerlund for our down payment. All was repaid in a very short time. We later added a one-car garage, and enclosed the screened-in porch and made it into a 9’ by 12’ den/sewing room. The house had a beautiful tea rose trellis that Ronnie climbed one day and got onto the roof. Scared Emmy to death!

This house was just about as plain and simple as a house could be -- a rectangle with a roof. We had looked at a couple of others that Emmy was so in love with. One was near where we bought this one, and it would cost something over $9,000. The people had it furnished and decorated beautifully, and had a lot of nice landscaping.

The one that was really beautiful, was new and the price was over $10,000. It was near White Rock Lake on the east side of Dallas. We can still picture it, white with white rock roof and turquoise trim. The drive to work would have been long, and the monthly payments would have been almost impossible; it also had air conditioning, and the cost to operate that would have been prohibitive on our budget.

• We later did paint our Archwood Street house in Canoga Park turquoise and white trim, and had a turquoise Plymouth station wagon to match! As well as a couple of turquoise dresses for Emmy that she wore so often we called them her uniform.

• We joined Gallian Baptist Church in Dallas. Ronnie's Sunday School teacher said how observant he was.


1953


• Income -- Emmy. $734.28 from Air Force. Lone Star Gas and Chance Vought Aircraft for Jim, total, $6,282.59, taxable income, $3,512.51, Tax paid $779.76.

FRIENDS AND MORE FRIENDS
• Emmy's sister Hannah came to visit us one time while we lived in Dallas and bought Ronnie a swing set for the back yard. One August or September Emmy took Ronnie by train to Chicago for ten days, among other things to get some dental work done by the dentist she had used for years. The dollar savings on the dental work, almost paid for the train trip. What is that story about the man who tried to “pick her up” on the train? Often wondered about that.

• It was about this year that we met Dodie and Earnie Hillyard -- a couple of our dearest friends to this day. Dodie was terribly lonely for her family in Indiana and sisters near Washington, DC and Emmy was lonely for Chicago and Lee Westerlund, especially. One night they visited and Emmy fixed pizza for the three of them. There was some left, so Dodie took it home, pan and all and they both could hardly wait for the excuse to see one another again when Dodie returned the pan.

LIVING AND WORKING IN DALLAS
• Jim worked a lot of overtime for several years. At one time he worked four or five months with only 2 or 3 days off, and with overtime he was making $500 a month, and sometimes more. We traded the 1946 Olds for a 1951 Plymouth two door -- an excellent car. We sold it before we returned to LA from Arizona in 1962.

• We bought an Elna sewing machine. At first we bought a Necchi, but about a week later Emmy was so unhappy with the Necchi that she was crying when Jim came home. She felt so wonderful when he said we didn't need to keep it, we would return it for the Elna that she had wanted in the first place. The storekeeper had felt the Necchi was the best machine and the best buy, but he was happy to exchange it for her. She was so worried because she'd already sent in the warranty for the Necchi. The overtime and part-time job permitted this all to be owned free and clear in short time. We also bought a brown sectional living room set, and blonde Formica end tables. The Elna still works fine, Linda has it now.

• Dodie took care of Ronnie while we went out for our third anniversary at the Baker Hotel. We didn't realize “high society” didn't eat dinner until later. We arrived at the hotel at 6:00 PM for dinner and almost ate alone. Emmy remembers trying a pepper and it almost spoiled her dinner it burned so. Must have been a jalepeno.

• Somewhere in here we went to a locally “famous” used car dealer, to look for a replacement for the Oldsmobile we had purchased in Chicago a few years ago. This dealer was famous for his TV advertisements, but even more famous for his dealings with the public.

We were on our way home from somewhere, so got there in the evening, after dark. Ronnie was asleep in the back seat of our car, so we carefully parked near the office door. While we were looking at cars and talking to them, one man asked for our keys to move our car, because it was blocking some other cars. A few minutes later we determined we didn’t want to have anything to do with this dealer, and looked and couldn’t find out car. When we asked, they said we had already agreed to buy some other car, and the Oldsmobile had already been taken to another car lot to be refurbished for re-sale.

Jim picked up a large brick, pointed towards the very large plate glass window, and said he would count to ten, but the car and our son sleeping in the back seat had better be back by then. There was no doubt in their mind that Jim was serious, and believe it, they ran in all directions, found the car and it was brought back - tires screaming (well, at least they were turning rapidly) - and off we went. Ronnie still asleep, their window still in one piece.


1954


• Total income $5,929.52, taxable income $2,414.97, income tax paid, $221.46. Health insurance $149.44.

A TRIP TO CHICAGO
• We drove to Chicago and Indiana during early summer. It was so nice seeing everyone again. We ate meals at roadside picnic tables while we traveled. Funny how that works, when we had to do this to save the money we did not like it, but now when we don't have to be that careful, we hate to eat in a restaurant.

Emmy was pregnant with Linda and everyone was concerned about her when she was so upset when Ronnie fell down the basement stairs at Mary's house. Was a scare for us all. Emmy's mother was not feeling well at the time, and had sold or was about to sell the house in Schiller Park where Emmy lived all her life. While in Chicago, we went to the Brookfield Zoo.

MARTHA IN DALLAS
• Jim's sister Martha drove her car to Texas with us and stayed for a month. (According to Papa’s diary, she left Flora on May 28, 1954, returned, June 28.) We remember getting separated somewhere on the trip, and had a difficult time, including calling the police and all, before we found her again. Don't remember how it all happened.

JIM’S PARENTS VISIT
• Jim's parents visited us two different years while we lived in Dallas, arriving on March 3, 1953, and March 24, 1954, as noted in Mama’s diary. Emmy really had to laugh when Papa said as he entered the house, “Just put us in a room by ourselves.” Meaning out of our way, etc. With only two bedrooms in a tiny house, that wasn't too easy to do. We slept on our second-hand sofa bed when Jim's folks came, and later we really felt sorry for Lee and Carl, because they had slept on it, and they had never told us how terrible it was.

• Jim's sister Martha baby sat for Ronnie while Jim and Emmy went to a movie on our third anniversary. This is the only year we did not go to a restaurant to eat dinner in all the years of our marriage. We were broke after our trip to the midwest, and with the baby (Linda) coming. We remember taking coke bottles to the store to get our deposit back so we could buy a loaf of bread. Money was tight at times, but we don't really remember a time when we had to do without something that we really needed and we never really wanted something that we couldn't afford. We were smart enough not to “want” beyond our needs, at least in the early days!!!!

• Emmy's stepmother, Martha, became very ill about July. Received a post card from Aunt Emma (Emmy's mother's sister) telling Emmy that Martha was in the hospital. Emmy called Hannah. Hannah never forgave Emma for not letting her know their stepmother was so ill. Martha had moved into a small house which she bought a few miles southeast of Schiller Park, but was only there a few weeks when her headaches became unbearable. She had spinal meningitis. It came from not taking care of herself when she had ear infections she treated herself for years. Poor lady, she was only 62 when she died.

She was a very good step-mother to Emmy and loved Ronnie with a passion, she must have felt he was the baby she never raised herself, as she took care of Ronnie for a year or so while Emmy worked before marrying Jim. She had had a daughter out of wedlock in Germany around World War One, and had to leave her there when she moved to the United States.

Emmy discovered this through reading a letter Emmy's father had written, but Emmy never let her stepmother know that she knew. She's always regretted not telling her mother that it didn't matter, she loved her just as much and just the same. In 1985 Jim and Emmy tried to find this daughter in Heiligenhafen, Germany, just north of Lubeck, but found from court records that she had died in 1978.

LINDA WAS BORN
• Elsie Ladd and the ladies from church gave Emmy a lovely surprise baby shower, and Linda Kay was born, Sept 17, 1954 at the Methodist Hospital in Dallas. The morning she was born Dodie came over with her daughter Wendy, as Emmy took care of Wendy several hours a week so Dodie could sleep. Dodie was a nurse and worked nights at Methodist Hospital. Emmy usually fixed breakfast, and as Dodie said grace, she asked the Lord to please make this baby be a girl. They had to really laugh over that one, since it was rather late to pray for that. (Emmy was having some pains even before Jim left for work.)

Dodie drove Emmy to the doctor for her regular appointment at which time the doctor said that Emmy was ready to go into the hospital. Emmy phoned Jim at work and left a message that she was going to the hospital. He made it in record time, as he was concerned something else was the matter since Emmy had a cyst in her breast that was a concern to everyone. The Doctor waited to remove the cyst until after Linda was born.

All was OK, even walked in the hospital lobby for a while with Jim after he got there. Easy delivery. Linda was born about 5:50 PM. Dodie, who was a nurse at this hospital, came to rub Emmy's back later in the evening. Emmy still couldn't believe it was a girl. She talked to Dodie about how we would spell Allen, as in Richard Allen. Jim kept telling Emmy we had a beautiful baby girl. It all seemed unreal. We were so happy. We dedicated Linda to the Lord in a church service a few weeks later.

Jim's sister, Mary, came from Indiana by train and stayed with us for a couple of weeks when Emmy got out of the hospital. Jim never did forgive Mary for telling Emmy that if she wore more clothes in the morning, maybe Jim would not bother her so much. That not only was none of her business, but the years have proven that it wasn't true anyway. Jim says, “Thank goodness Emmy still does not take Mary's advice!” Years later, October 4, 1989, Mary E. visited our daughter Linda’s home and Mary Elizabeth met Christiana Elisabeth.

• When we brought Linda home, Ronnie made a bee line for the bedroom, looked in the crib and went out again, rather unimpressed we thought--just being sure the baby had arrived.

• Emmy went back into the hospital for removal of a cyst in her left breast which she discovered about 6 weeks before delivery. No real problem, but her sister Hannah had very bad problems and needed to have both breasts removed (no breast cancer though), so we were more than causally interested in what would be found. All okay.

The first month Linda was a good baby, and then for two more months she was a colic baby. Almost every night we had to give her an enema to give her relief so we all could sleep! We never thought she'd be normal after that, (who said she is normal!) but in spite of it all, she was fine and healthy.

• One time Linda asked Jim, “Since I was born in Dallas, does that make me a Texan?” Jim replied, “If you were born in a barn would that make you a cow?”

• Jim worked part time for the Gas Company in the evening, processing bill payments through IBM machines.


1955


• Income Chance Vought and RAND Corporation, $5,844.72, taxable income, $l,474.52, income tax, $294.90.

MOVE TO CALIFORNIA
• Sold our house for $9,250, and had about $2,500 in cash!! A fortune to us! We had tried to sell it for about $8,500 without any luck. We then got an FHA appraisal for $9,250. We advertised in the newspaper that we had a FHA appraisal that required very little money for the down payment, and sold it to a man who arrived before we even received our copy of the newspaper. He stood in the living room and said he would take it, and Emmy asked if he didn’t want to see the bedrooms. He did, but was not really too interested, he believed us that there were two of them.

He needed a little more cash to complete the deal, so Jim met him just outside the Escrow Office and gave him the $250 needed to close. The people in the Office asked him where he got the money, but we forget why they asked, and what he answered.

• Moved to LA in May, drove the 1951 Plymouth, pulling a two wheel trailer. Jim piled boxes even with the back seat of the car, making a play pen for the kids.

• Jim had been offered a job in San Diego to work for a man who he had known at Chance Vought. As we were (actually!) in the process of loading the trailer to move, the postman delivered a letter saying that his company had a big layoff, and there was no job for either of us. We had not been too happy about going to San Diego anyway, so no big loss. For several months we had subscribed to the Los Angeles Times and had communicated with many people about jobs, and were sure there would be no problem finding one.

• We stopped in Phoenix to visit and stayed overnight with Bill and Evelyn Coil, people that Emmy had known in Chicago. (At that time their home was beyond city-limits, but now Phoenix has grown many, many miles beyond their home.) We have visited them many times since.

In the past, Bill had told Emmy so many stories about how bad the roads were in the west, and how high the mountains were, etc., that Emmy was really afraid to go from Texas to California in a car. We considered having her take a plane, but then she decided that she would try it.

As we arrived at the Guadalupe Pass, near the border with New Mexico, the highest point in Texas, Jim saw the twisty narrow road that dropped thousands of feet, and thought “This is the time and place she will lose her ‘cookies.’” He watched Emmy, and talked to her, and the only response he got was about how beautiful and interesting it was.

At the bottom he told her that at no time on the rest of the trip, and almost any other trip, would she see anything that was even close to what we had just driven through. She couldn't imagine what she had expected to see. Years later, driving through France, Norway, and Italy, and other such places, she had reasons to be afraid of the drop off, almost always at her side of the road, and there were times that she would have rather walked.

• When we got to the Ariz.-Calif. border, the man at the fruit inspection station told Jim to unload the trailer. Jim said, “Where can we turn around and go back to Arizona?” The border man was surprised and said, “Aren't you coming into California?” Jim said, “Sure, but this is not the only border crossing and you don't work 24 hours a day, so we'll be back later. It took me three days to get this trailer loaded level enough so this car can pull it, and I am not going to unload.” The border man had a very shocked look on his face as he just looked under the “tarp” and waved us on.

GETTING A JOB IN CALIFORNIA
• In Los Angeles Jim had two job interviews each day, and had no problem getting a job at the RAND Corporation ($6,000 per year for 40 hours per week, and they paid to move our furniture and dog from Dallas to LA) before his two week vacation time from Chance Vought was used up.

• Jim had never in his life worked only 40 hours a week! It was almost impossible for him to get used to that schedule, and many Monday mornings he would be sick. Finally, trying to solve the problem, he would get up on Sat and Sun morning at the time he normally did, and would eat a sandwich at noon, just like during the week. It took several months to get over that. He still has that same problem — just can't bring himself to work 40 hours each week, or even 40 hours a year!!

• Rented a very nice small one bedroom furnished apartment over a garage near downtown LA, on 5th Avenue near Pico and Crenshaw. The price was $75 per month. We remember an exceptional heat wave that summer, and we had no air conditioning. We kept the bathtub filled with water at night, and we would just get in the tub, then back to bed. Amazing how little air conditioning there was anywhere in those days. We remember looking for restaurants we could afford, that were cool, and they were difficult to find. (Maybe it was that they wouldn't let us in because we were dripping wet from the bathtub!)

SPONTANEOUS PNEUMOTHORAX
• During the second week on the job, before our health insurance came into effect, Jim went to the hospital with a spontaneous pneumothorax, or collapsed lung. People at RAND Corp baby-sat for the kids, and others drove Emmy in a company car to visit him. Emmy could not drive, and if she did, she had no idea where Santa Monica was. Jim has a sneaking suspicion that last part may still be true! So, geography is not one of her strong points!

After two days, when Jim still had not been told why he was in the hospital, and he did not feel too badly, he got up and dressed to leave the hospital. The doctor was upset, and said “You aren't my only patient.” Jim replied, “But you are my only doctor and you haven't given me any information, or any reason to stay here.” The doctor was shocked, but thought that was a logical comment, so explained the problem, then let him go home.

It was many weeks before he was allowed to lift anything, or do anything that required much physical effort. (He has tried to follow that Doctor's orders ever since!) The lung came back to proper shape by itself, but he has still been able to keep away from strenuous work -- most of the time!

Never had a similar problem either before or since. They never found anything wrong, and said it was just one of those things that happen. Sure scared Emmy when the hospital called saying Jim was there. The nurse at RAND Corp, and others thought he had had a heart attack.

• Perhaps of some interest, as stated our medical insurance was not yet in effect, but Jim spent two night in the hospital, with doctors, tests, and all that, yet the cost was minimal. Just a couple of hundred dollars at most. Today, that wouldn’t get us in the door.

MOVED TO ENCINO
• On Sept 17, Linda's first birthday, we moved into a new house ($16,400) at 5618 Graves, Encino, Calif. (In 1988 it was worth $250,000+, or at least it would sell for that, but we have no idea if it would be more or less in 1998. Real Estate really changed prices, first up, then down, in these 10 years.)

There was about 1400 sq. feet, with three bedrooms, den, living-room with a dining area, kitchen with a small eating bar, a service porch for washer and dryer, two baths, and a double garage. One side of the double sink in the kitchen was quite deep. These houses were built on what had been part of the MGM studio (we were told they had just finished filming “Moby Dick”), and across the street from the large estate of Edward Everett Horton, a then famous movie star. When the Ventura Freeway was built, it went through his estate and wiped out all but the main house.

If you drive west on the Ventura Freeway today, just west of the Balboa Blvd. off ramp, on the right side of the freeway there is a concrete retaining-wall that appears to be there for no reason. Well, today’s piece of trivia says that was put there to brace the main house of Horton’s estate. Since that house has long since been torn down, the concrete retaining wall looks out of place.

• We put a cement block wall around the back yard, some paneling in Ronnie's bedroom and added an evaporative cooling system, and landscaped front and back. The huge tree in the front yard was a sycamore tree (cut down in 1987), originally about the size of a broom handle, and the palm tree at the left front corner of the house, didn't even extend above the top of the one gallon can it came in. It is an unusual species of palm, which can withstand cold climates very well as we saw this same palm in France quite often.

• Our house payment was $96 per month, and while we did have a problem meeting it sometimes, of course we always did. Some of the money we had left from the sale of our Texas house was kept in the bank and used as collateral for a loan for some furniture and living room drapes. Emmy liked rather modern things then and we purchased two rust colored couches, with straight 12” legs and bolsters on the backs, no arms. They were serviceable, as guest beds and our living room couch, for 18 years--incredible! Paul and Lelia slept on them in 1955. We slept on them when the folks visited us in this house, when we lived in Arizona, and later when we returned to the Los Angeles area.

Our neighbor across the street spent $400 for drapes for her whole house, and Emmy couldn't get over that! Seem to remember our living/dining room drapes were $100. We’re not sure. (In recent years we visited the street and found that our original neighbors, Bea and Sy, still lived there.)

• Jim was out of town one weekend and his friend Jerry stayed for the weekend. He was from Dallas too and was rather lonely in LA. Emmy and Jerry surprised Jim and planted the backyard grass and on Sunday took the children to Disneyland. It had just opened. We lost track of Jerry over the years. (Jim knew Jerry was a good worker, and recommended him to RAND Corp, who hired him and paid to move him from Dallas to LA.)

• The first year we were in Encino Jim remembers brother Paul and family coming in December. We loaned them our car to drive and see the sights of LA, including the then very new Disneyland.


1956


• Income from RAND Corp. and IBM Service Bureau, $6,942.81, taxable income $2,206.93, tax $441.38.

INFECTIOUS MONONUCLEOSIS
• Sometime in 1956, Jim went to the hospital with infectious mononucleosis. Came out of the hospital weighting 142 pounds, was given weekly shots of vitamin B-12, gained 5 pounds a week until he threw the medicine away, and hasn't been the same (shape) since.

Jim had been sick for several months and no one could find the problem. Finally when he was very sick, he was taken to an “specialist” in downtown LA who immediately said “diphtheria.” Jim was taken by ambulance to the County Hospital, where he received no attention until he proceeded to vomit all over the emergency room (he “got” about six beds, walls, and floor!), and was then placed in the contagious ward. (Don’t know the connection between “vomit” and “contagious!”) The real specialist said that his throat looked exactly like the text-book pictures of diphtheria, and since there was no bill from the hospital (he had no choice, the law says if someone says diphtheria, go to County Hospital), we didn't really have a reason to complain.

• Since Emmy still did not drive a car, she had to ask a neighbor, Dede Canon, to drive her downtown to visit Jim at the hospital. They communicated by telephone, with a plate glass window between them. Emmy now decided that she must learn to drive, and she did.

EMMY LEARNED TO DRIVE
She got her learner's permit, and one day while Jim's parents were visiting and Emmy was driving them to the May Co. in North Hollywood, she just stopped at the DMV, took the test and got her license. (She has rarely been home since! If the sun is shining, and there’s gas in the tank, … … … ! )

WORK AND MORE WORK
• Jim worked part time at night for the IBM Service Bureau in Santa Monica. For the next several years, Jim had a lot of problems with migraine headaches. Several times, right in the midst of a meeting at work, Jim would have to ask someone to drive him home, and someone else would bring the car. Later he was able to recognize when a migraine headache was coming (he would see bright sparkling lights), and he would leave and go to bed in a dark room for a couple of days.

He remembers one time when he thought he was about over a series of migraines, and was taking a walk across the lawn. Our dog was happy to see him and ran around him, jumping and barking. The problem was, each time the dog went past in front of him, Jim would lose his balance and fall to the ground. Jim also remembers, as a child (on the second farm outside Martinsburg) when he would bang his head against the wall, just because it felt different. Perhaps no one had heard of migraines at that time. I know, I know, there has been a lasting effect from the head banging.

Thank goodness he has had no migraines for maybe 30 years. He had a lot of other headaches for years, but the past 5 to 10 years, even they have almost disappeared. Now maybe he is such a dead-head he can feel nothing! Well, it’s possible.

• Sometime in here, Emmy became a Tupperware dealer. It seemed she was her own best customer, and we still have a number of the items she was stuck with when she quit a couple of months later. She didn't like the drive to Glendale, or wherever, at night and hated asking women to have parties for her.

• We bought a 1946 or ‘47 Plymouth 4 door, that we had for a few months. We still had the 1951 Plymouth we bought in Dallas.


1957


• Income from RAND Corp. and North American Aviation, $8,110.46, taxable income, $3,720.85, tax paid $744.17

MOVED TO WOODLAND HILLS
• Bought the house (half-acre lot) at 23141 Hatteras, Woodland Hills (about 10 miles away) for $21,200 from Bob and Estelle Hattem in May. Jim wanted the children to have a large yard to play in, instead of the street. Bob and Estelle have been our best friends since then. We got acquainted with them so well because they moved across the street into her brother's house until they could do what they wanted to do with their real estate investment goals.

• Sold the house on Graves Ave, Encino to Wayne Jones, a co-worker at RAND, for about $22,500. A tidy profit for l-l/2 years!

A TRIP BACK EAST
• We bought a 1955 Red Chevy station wagon with automatic transmission, power steering and brakes, and power windows, and took an 8,000 mile three-week trip to Dallas (Dodie and Earnie), Chicago (Emmy's sister and friends), Indiana (Jim's Parents and part of the family), Pennsylvania (Jim's brother Johnny), and Washington DC. On the way home we stopped to see Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone park (well, we did spend three or four hours there!). A number of nights we slept in the station wagon. Ronnie in the front seat, and Linda at our feet in back. The motel in Las Vegas cost $16, and Emmy was outraged at the cost!

We stopped at a gas station out in the desert between Las Vegas and Utah, and the man would let us drink water, but we could not fill our water jug, as water was too scarce and he had it hauled in. It was very, very hot in the middle of the summer, and we used wet wash rags to help cool us off. We had hooked up two of the old evaporative window coolers in the car, but that did not help much unless you worked the mechanism fast enough to let the water fly all over everyone.

THE HATTERAS ST HOUSE
• When Hattems originally had this house (Hatteras) built, it was a two-bedroom, one-bath house. They converted the garage into a cedar-paneled step-down den, and bath with shower off the master bedroom. They added a breezeway and garage.

The property was 1/2 acre with many wonderful fruit trees. Emmy who loves fruit so much, would stand out there and eat and eat. The apricots were so delicious, and nectarines which are completely different from the ones we see today. They were green color, white flesh and very sweet. The ones now are more like a peach. Emmy thinks the shelf life was poor on this green nectarine, so she never sees them in the markets any more. Estelle's mother planted a peach stone from a peach she liked very much. Emmy sees this type occasionally in the market very late in the season, it's an Indian peach, very red and has red flesh also and utterly delicious!

A DOGGY STORY
• Here is a real “Shaggy Dog Story. One time, soon after moving to this house, we came home after dark and could not find our dog, Lady. We looked, and looked, and called and called, and were very surprised she did not come. She was the best dog, never a problem, so now we were concerned. We always parked our Plymouth on the area just outside the fence, and Jim went to the car to drive around the block and see if he could find her.

He got in and as he reached to insert the key, he heard and “felt” something in the back seat. He turned his head to look, and looked right down the throat of Lady, who was yawning, just a few inches away. It scared Jim so much he froze in his seat, goose bumps a mile high. Lady jumped out of the car and went to the house, and soon Emmy came out looking for Jim; he still couldn’t move. That’s the most scared he has even been, he really was frozen in his seat. What had happened was, Lady got outside the fence, and the neighbor had just opened the car door, and Lady got in, hoping to get a ride. She must have been sleeping when Jim first got in the car.

The funny thing is, when we lived in Dallas, Lady would not get in the car for anything. We moved and left her with Dodie and Earnie for a couple of months, until RAND Corp had her flown to California in a big wooden crate. After that experience, at any chance she would jump in the car, and now we struggled to get her out, so it was no problem for the neighbor to get her into the car this time. A wonderful dog, for many, many years.


1958


• North American Aviation, $9,908.52, taxable income, $4,331.24, tax paid $872.87

A MAJOR REMODEL
• We did a rather major remodel on this house, converting the garage and breezeway into another two bedrooms and bath and built another garage, and installed central heating. We also installed a 15' X 30' (X 6' deep!) swimming pool with a heater. Even though the pool had a fence installed around it, it was important the children learned to swim. We hired a neighbor girl (Gail) to teach Linda, along with Valerie Velarde and a friend named Karen. It was thrilling seeing those little kids swimming so well.

• When Jim's folks came in February 1959, and Linda jumped into the pool to swim, nothing worked -- she had forgotten everything! That amazed us! Emmy and Ronnie learned to swim at a swim school on Ventura Blvd. He was older and didn't forget as Linda did.

Jim worked for the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aircraft, just a couple of miles from home.

• Over the years we lived here we raised a couple of baby goats (Nanny and Tilly) which were great fun. Our neighbors, the Graff's, let us raise the goats and when we tired of them, or they were large enough, they would slaughter them for meat. Tilly would walk on the brick ledge of the dining room and kitchen windows; one time she got on top of the station wagon. The kids and Emmy had great fun feeding them milk from a baby bottle. Another time, Emmy was kneeling down weeding a flower bed, and the goat just jumped up on her back.

• One bedroom which we added was Linda's and the other was ours. Ronnie had our former bedroom with his own bath. Both new bedrooms had access to the bathroom. We had a square green tub, with shower installed. Our one wallpapering job of our lives was that bathroom. What a time we had. We could do all sorts of things, but wallpaper--no. Patience is required for that.


1959


• Income from North American Aviation $11,391.29, taxable income, $5,659.84, tax paid, $1,165.l6.

ENOUGH OF THAT HOUSE
• Jim, and others who shall remain nameless, worked so hard, for so long, on the Hatteras Street house in Woodland Hills, Emmy says he (we) was tired of it. (See the “Family History, 1950s, earlier in the Chronicles.)

• We bought that two bedroom, two bath, plus den, house on a 1/2 acre corner lot (filled with plumb, apricot and peach trees) so the children would have more room to play. We (and that does mean “us”) then converted the garage and carport into an entry-way, two bedrooms, and a bathroom, added a two-car garage, put in a swimming pool, then added a second septic tank for that third bath. All of that was OK, after a fashion, but of course the added work to keep the large lot in good condition, was not considered play.

Jim remembers that Linda, only 5 years old, was the most help of anybody. After Jim measured something, Linda was there with a pencil, then the square, the hand saw, or what ever. Well that attitude didn’t last too long, but it was fun while it lasted.

• A story about that septic tank: We knew they were planning to put city sewers down our street within a year, and we planned to get the new bath installed before that happened. If we didn’t, we would need to hook the whole house to sewers, at the cost of several thousand dollars. Since we, and our neighbors, had absolutely no problems with existing septic tanks, we didn’t want to do that.

One day as Jim was on his way back to work after lunch (that lucky Emmy!), he noticed digging machines being placed in the street a couple of blocks away. Instead of going back to work, he went directly to City Hall to get a permit, then made arrangements to have the septic tank dug and completed within the next week.

When the plumbing inspector arrived, he said no way could we build a septic tank (which was by then completed), but Jim said, “Here’s the building permit.” The inspector tried to make a fuss, but we won! Jim found that had he been a few days later, we would have had to hook to sewers. This may be stretching the imagination a little too much, but Jim remembers that the Chief Plumbing Inspector was named Zinn, and of course Jim had told him about all the Zinns we know, and maybe that helped! Well, that’s what he remembers, but that was 38 years ago!

TO CANOGA PARK
• The Hatteras house was very nice, and there was plenty of room, the swimming pool was fine, but, but, … … so we sold it and moved to Archwood St. in Canoga Park, about 5 miles away. Ronnie wanted to be able to visit his friends near the Hatteras house, but maybe did it twice.

Seem to remember we paid about $20,800 for the Hatteras house, and sold it for about $28,000. We bought it from Bob and Estelle Hattem, and we have been close friends ever since. Who knows, maybe if we had offered $1,000 less, they might not have sold to us. You can’t hardly buy friends that good, for that long, for that price!

Twenty years later houses in that area were selling for over $300,000 and up, and up, but by 1995, prices had dropped and this house was for sale at $199,000. The family who bought from us, still owned it, but it looked run down, and they had junk galore in the former orchard. Who knows what will happen next.

• We have no idea what it cost to remodel the Hatteras house, but it seems the swimming pool cost about $2,300. (Just called a pool contractor. That pool would cost at least $15,000 today.) Emmy’s childhood friend (Betty Cooper) and neighbor from Chicago moved to Southern California before we did. If you read about Jim’s cane collection, item 25 tells about the antique dealer, the son-in-law of Mrs. Cooper. Years earlier Bob had been our pool contractor.

• We must have moved from Hatteras to Archwood in November. We remember that Emmy’s sister Hannah had come to visit, but said she felt she was being thrown out on her ear when we moved to the other house, so she left earlier than planned, to visit friends in San Francisco.

• We had a big problem in selling the Hatteras house. (It’s remarkable, Jim hasn’t thought of this problem for 30 years. We think a selective memory is a great thing, it’s the unselective loss of memory that troubles most of us, if we remember that right!) The man who bought the house, offered to buy it under a Land-Contract, a sometimes difficult document used in Real Estate in California. He would make monthly payments to us, we would make the monthly payment to the Savings and Loan company, and keep the rest.

We had agreed on the deal, and he was to bring the legal document as drawn by his lawyer, and the cash down-payment a few days before he moved in. After we had moved our furniture, on the day he was to move in, he finally showed up with the cash and with a hand-made non-legal document that made little sense.

Jim had already studied the legal requirements for a Land Contract, so got out the typewriter, typed a several page document that made a lot more sense, then went to a lawyer to make sure it was not only legal, but protected both parties. How he was able to do that, he doesn’t know. Jim says its a great feeling to pay a lawyer to say that what he wrote, was correct. Don’t remember that he made any changes.

Mr. Graves gave us the down payment, and signed Jim’s version of the document, and moved in. Can’t remember now just what his “problem” was, or what he did for a living. We both remember there was some kind of a special, or odd, thing that he did, but can’t remember it now.

• A few months later he quit making monthly payments, then moved out. It’s amazing how little time it took for a real experience to pay for Jim’s “legal degree” in Land Contracts. Luckily the Graves moved voluntarily, so we didn’t lose much, if any, in the way of monthly payments.

We then sold it again, to the people who still lived there in 1995.

• As years passed, that experience really paid off for us. We used that type of document for several other deals, including deals with lawyers who were buying and selling apartment buildings, and Jim never missed a beat. He knew enough about a Land Contract, to hold his own with the lawyers!

Sometime in the 1970s the laws controlling these contracts were changed when Savings and Loan companies were involved, but Jim was able to work with the updated contract, and that worked just fine for a couple of other real estate deal we were involved in, a few years later.

• Sold the Hatteras house for about $28,500. Twenty years later it would have sold for $200,000+. Paid $22,500 for the one at 22142 Archwood St. (We sold it for about $47,000, in early 1970s. Someone sold the Archwood house for $207,000 in June 1988)


1960 - 61


LINDA WENT TO SCHOOL
• This is the year that Linda started school. You hear all about kids being happy to start to school, but that was nothing compared to the joy that Emmy felt at the chance to be without Linda and her “motor-mouth” for most of each day. You can imagine how Emmy’s spirits fell when Linda came home the first day, with a note that said, “The school is crowded, she will attend only half days.” Well, half a loaf is better than none!

• Linda just told this story: At some time in her early years she was drawing pictures, and asked her Dad what she should draw. He said a vase of flowers, or something like that, but she said she wanted to draw something harder than that. She then followed his second suggestion, and worked for quite a while before it dawned on her that drawing a picture of a rock was not what she had in mind when she said she wanted to draw a picture of something hard!

• And yet another Linda story: She was about five, we had just moved to Archwood Street, and she wanted to go for a walk, and asked where she could go. It did take a little thinking on her part to try and determine how she was going to “… walk half-way around the block.”

Some of this is 1960, and some 1961, not sure which is which.

• Esther and Gus were having health and other problems in Chicago, so we helped them move to California. They lived with us for a few months until we were able to help them buy, and get settled in their own home. We put double-deck bunk beds in Linda’s room for Nancy and John, Gus and Esther slept in Ronnie’s room, and Ronnie slept on the living room couch. They lived with us until July or August, we think.

It became a nightly “tribulation” to see how long any of us could sit and watch the TV, without making a move. You see, the first one to move very much, was then requested by the others, “While you’re up, just get me a glass of water, or a … … … !”

MOVE TO ARIZONA
• Jim went to work for CEIR in Ariz., starting in May 1961. Can’t remember what those letters stood for, if anything, but their slogan was something like “Intellect, Plus the Amplifiers of Intellect,” and the amplifier was a computer.

They had ordered one of IBM’s still nonexistent, but planned-to-be-huge computers, called the STRETCH Computer. (Stretch your imagination, etc. Only a couple of them were ever built.) It would fill a building, but was only a fraction as powerful as today’s desk-top computers.

Jim remembers that when he worked at The RA