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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781481714723 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 154 |
| File size: | 163 KB |
Read an Excerpt
My Battle FROM WITHIN
By H A Poff
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2013 H A PoffAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-1469-3
Chapter One
My journey on this earth started Saturday morning at 10:45 am, on July 13, 1930 in Warren, Ohio. I instantly became the sixth child of Harry Andrew and Sarah Isabel Becker Poff. My siblings were Evelyn Louise 9, Rutheda Irene 7, David Jacob 5, Dale Andrew 3, and Gerald Arthur 1. It was obvious from the beginning that family planning wasn't a priority. If it had been, this memoir would be like "It's a Wonderful Life," nonexistent.I haven't met the above named people formally yet, so what we find out about them, we will do together. All I know about this being born business is I was naked, wet, and cold. I was hoping someone would throw a coat over me, or at least a tiny blanket would have helped.
I was not a healthy child at birth. Mother was not able to breast feed me because of a medical condition. To make matters worse, I was allergic to almost everything put into my mouth, including cow's milk. Mom experimented with everything available to find something that would stay in my stomach, even goat's milk for a short period. When I couldn't tolerate that, she put me on a diet of beef broth and evaporated milk. By the time I was eighteen months old I weighed about fifteen pounds, not quite three times the six pounds I weighed at birth. After a complex trial and error period my stomach could tolerate some foods like mashed potatoes and gravy, which I dearly love until this day.
I would like to think that I was a normal kid and that everything in my life was because of the circumstances of the times. We all know that outside influences play a big part and have a direct bearing on how life develops. I believe that if someone plans their future and it turns out the way it was planned, it was more of a coincidence than good planning.
The great depression entered upon the scene after the stock market crash in 1929. Everyone has their own family history to show how they were affected during that period in history.
Work was scarce and life was hard. The depression wasn't quite as bad for people who were well positioned. Well positioned was a term used to identify people of means, or those favored by the affluent.
Grandpa Becker, Mother's father, owned and operated a successful dairy just outside the city of Warren, Ohio. He processed milk products and delivered them to homes, stores, and restaurants. At four am each morning Mother delivered a home route with a horse and wagon before she went to school. The home delivery was the first to go immediately after the depression started. The stores and restaurants used enough milk to keep the dairy operating for a short while. Within a few months it was impossible to continue operations any longer.
Grandpa Poff, Dad's father, owned a ditch digging business. The city of Warren, Ohio was installing a sewer system to eliminate septic tank use. His company was the largest in the area and had the contract to dig most of the sewer lines. My father worked for Empire Steel, Republic Steel, when work was available and for his father on his off days. Our family appeared to be well positioned because both Dad and Mom were technically in line to inherit a successful business.
Disastrous events in 1933 changed our family's position in the depression. The dairy could no longer support itself and was forced to close. The Cattle and equipment were sold but didn't bring enough revenue to satisfy the debt, and the dairy had to be sacrificed.
A few years earlier my father had built a house on an acre of the farm's land, but because of procrastination or whatever, a separate deed was never recorded. Unfortunately when the farm was seized the house was still part of the dairy property and couldn't be separated after the fore closer papers were filed.
During that same time period my father's mother had unexpectedly passed away. After her death Grandpa Poff learned she had been the last of the big spenders. Unbeknown to him she had large charge accounts in just about every business in town. Apparently his reputation as a successful businessman was such that all his wife had to do was say, charge it and it was done without question. He was forced to sell his business to the city to pay her debts. The result was the water and sewer department of Warren, Ohio was born.
That same year my mother's parents passed away within three months of each other. With six children and his house and extra income gone, my father had to start paying rent and find a second job.
The steel company worked only two or three days a week. On the other days, groups of men went into the woods and cut trees to divide the wood amongst them to heat their homes against the bitter Ohio winters.
Two nights every week a coal train ran to keep the steel mills supplied with coal. The train was long and moved very slow. Several men would go up the tracks a mile or more and climb onto the freight and stack large lumps of coal on the flat surface on the sides of the coal cars. When the train reached a predetermined location the men pushed the coal from the cars onto the ground. A large group of people waited in hiding until the train passed, gathered the coal in wagons, carts, wheel barrows, and on their backs, and took it to their homes to break up into smaller pieces with sledge hammers.
The coal had to be broken up into small lumps because the railroad detectives seemed to have more power than the police. They could come into homes without warning or search warrants looking for large lump coal. If large lump coal was found or evidence that coal had been broken up there, the man of the house was arrested without question. When proof of purchase was supplied in court they could be released. The problem was that their trial may not be held for weeks or even months. More often than not they went strait to a work gang without receiving a trial.
Later that year dad was involved in a serious accident at the mill.
Large gas fueled blast furnaces were used to create temperatures hot enough to melt raw materials to make steel. While still in liquid form the steel was poured into molds and cooled, then stored waiting further processing.
The furnaces had to be inspected after a specific number of operating hours to assure all components were working properly. When the furnace was cooled down a new fire brick lining was put in to replace the old one. While dad was inside a furnace performing the required inspection the entrance door was accidently closed and the gas was turned on. Because the ignition system failed to function, the furnace failed to ignite. When the furnace door was reopened to locate the problem, Dad was discovered inside unconscious. Miraculously, he survived the initial accident, but the after effects were far reaching.
Among his several severe injuries he was diagnosed with Epilepsy. In nineteen thirty-three Epilepsy was believed to be a form of mental illness. Unfortunately for him, my father was committed to a state sanitarium for the insane at age thirty-four.
When my father was committed my mother was left the sole support of six children under the age of twelve. She was only thirty-one years old. Our family, like many others, was entered on the county relief rolls. The county allotted ten dollars for each child and twenty dollars for each adult, giving the family a grand total of eighty dollars a month to feed, clothe, and house seven members of the family.
I vividly remember when the relief baskets would come. I was just five and not in school yet and mom and I were home alone. The relief workers brought several baskets of food like powdered milk, dried prunes, powdered eggs, lard, sugar, dried beans, coffee, flower, peanut butter, jelly, and other staples. They would just pile them on the floor and go away.
That was the only time I remember seeing my mother cry. She would sit on the floor with the baskets all around her and cry. I didn't know why she was crying so I just crawled onto her lap. She put her arms around me and we cried together. By the time the other children got home from school everything was put away and dinner was ready like nothing happened. That remains our secret until this day.
It was impossible to live in the city where the cost of living was high. We were forced to move out into the country where rent was cheaper and we could have a garden and trees to cut for firewood.
The first house we rented was small and very cold. Every extra penny was spent on food and fuel. During the winter storms the wind blew snow into the house through the cracks around the windows. The cracks were stuffed with rags or whatever could be found to help protect from the bitter cold. Mom asked the county for help to buy more coal, but they said they had a formula to go by and there were no exceptions.
That spring was when I met Norman Rood for the first time. He owned the farm next to the house our family was renting. Norm, as he was called, was about sixty years old, short and stout, with thick white hair and a very pleasant nature. He and his wife, Happy, had no children which made him very sad. For what ever reason he and I formed a bond immediately and we were like two peas in a pod. I literally became his shadow.
The summer I was five years old, I followed that man everywhere he went. I would get up early in the morning and be with him when he did his chores in the barn. I sat with him on the high wagon seat behind his team of horses. I even walked behind him when he plowed the ground, trying to match his footprints in the fresh furrows.
My mother told him often that if I got under foot he should send me home, but he never did. I usually ate supper at his table. Sometimes I would fall asleep in his big chair, but I always woke up in my own bed the next morning.
I often wondered if our family would have survived that winter if it hadn't been for Norm and the other neighbors. Several wagon loads of wood and some coal mysteriously showed up at our house. That Christmas coats, boots, gloves, and hats appeared under our Christmas tree that no one seemed to knew anything about.
Norm had only a third grade education, but he had good horse sense, that's what they called it back then. He didn't know much about setting goals or planning for the future, he just lived from day to day. His future depended on the weather and the farmer's almanac. He was the third generation on the same land. Farming was in his blood. He told me his beliefs about education and how important it would be in the future.
"This is the nineteen thirties. The future is in the factory not on the farm. Young people like you need to go to school and get an education, even go to college," he would say.
He told me he was a God fearing man. He didn't have time to go to church, but that didn't mean he didn't believe in God.
"The day of the week don't matter. When the time is right I go out into the field, or under a tree, and me and God have our talk. I tell him what's on my mind and he tells me what's on his. When we get things right we go about our own business until the next time. What's between you and God is private," he told me often.
The next spring Mother was able to rent a small farm that had an out building suitable for livestock. I still hadn't started school so I didn't know the details. I think my uncle helped us get a milk cow and two small pigs.
One day I let the pigs out of the pen to play with them. When I got tired of playing the pigs wouldn't go back into the pen. The whole family chased them for a long time before they were caught. I never did that again because if Mom's threats came true I wouldn't be writing this today.
This house was much better than the last one. It had a second floor where the children slept, and Mom had her own room on the first floor. There was a nice fertile garden where we raised enough food to eat and be canned and stored for winter. Besides the garden there was a huge pasture, a large wooded area, and a creek with a nice place for swimming. We weren't to cut down any trees, but there was more than enough fallen timber to keep the house toasty warm all winter.
The year before I started school our house was the last one on the school bus route, so it had to turn around in our driveway. In the spring when the weather was warm I waited outside for the bus every day. A few times after my siblings got off the bus the driver would let me get in and look around. That summer all I could think and dream about was riding in that big yellow school bus.
One bright sunny day in September nineteen-thirty-six, like thousands of other six year olds, the day I had been waiting for all summer finally arrived. When that big yellow bus came to a stop in our driveway I was the first to climb aboard. I sat myself on the first seat behind the driver so I wouldn't miss anything that happened. When the bus finally arrived at school all the other kids got off and I just sat perched in my seat.
"You have to get off also," the driver told me.
"I just wanted to ride the bus, you can take me home now," I answered.
"I'll take you home after school with the rest of the kids. You have to go into the building now," he said sternly.
Both frightened and happy at the same time I put my best foot forward and went through those big-dark doors into the unknown of the first day of school. Little did I know that day was also the first day of the battle that would continue throughout most of my adult life.
It was hard for me to be quiet and sit still in school. I had no clue of what was going on around me. I don't remember my mother or any of my siblings ever teaching me how to count or learn the alphabet. I guess they figured that I would learn along with the other children and not just look out of the window and watch the kids play on the playground. When the teacher called my name I didn't pay any attention to her, so she would put me in the corner or out into the hall.
Soon life became a daily routine, ride the bus in the morning and back at night with school in between. It was sometime after Christmas Vacation when the routine was broken with vengeance.
The northeastern part of the United States has a history of winters with the abundance of snow and bitter cold winds. The weather during the 1930s was far beyond the natural cycle of seasons. Weather during those years set records that still stand today and stand out in people's memories.
Ohio is located far enough to the east that it is usually spared the blast of the frigid artic air that roars down through Canada into the central planes each winter. Every few years these storms become so large and fierce they do not end on the central planes, they push their way through the eastern states all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Storms of this magnitude are known as Northeasters. They leave a wide swath of property damage and large amounts of snow that paralyze the area for several days and sometimes weeks.
Sometime after Christmas the weather turned cold and the snow began to fall over the week end. By Monday morning there was at least two foot of snow on the ground. We children got ready for school as usual because we didn't have a telephone or electricity for a radio to learn about school closings. Usually the two foot of snow wouldn't be enough to close the school. After realizing that the snow plow hadn't cleaned the road, we knew the school bus wasn't coming that day.
Our home was a large two story farmhouse shaped like the letter T. The extension off the back had two bedrooms, one on each floor, with no window on the lower level. About ten feet from the back door was a shed which was filled with fire wood each summer. Forty feet or so beyond the shed was the barn where the animals were kept.
Over the next five or six days the temperature dropped to at least thirty degrees below zero, with the wind gusts of about sixty miles per hour. Electrical power and telephone service was out throughout the entire northeast. That had no effect on us because we lived in a rental house that had no electricity, running water, or telephone.
The house had only two sources of heat, a pot-bellied stove in the living room, and a cook stove in the kitchen. Winter clothing and bedding was brought into the living room and all the other rooms were blocked off from it except the kitchen.
The older family members worked in shifts to keep both fires going day and night and cared for the animals. The younger ones carried wood from the shed and vegetables from the fruit cellar.
After the snow drifted high enough to cover the windows on the first floor the house no longer shook and trembled against the wind. We didn't know how much snow had fallen, but the house was much easier to keep warm. The major concern was the snow piling up on the roof and blocking the chimney. That would prevent the use of the stoves for heating.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from My Battle FROM WITHIN by H A Poff Copyright © 2013 by H A Poff. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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