[Mum typed up the first installment of her memoirs in 1989, covering her life until her engagement in 1935. She then worked on handwritten drafts of mainly later material, which were among her papers when she passed away in 2010. I've rearranged this material in chronological sequence, with a few headings, and edited it lightly. --Clayton Lewis, 2010]
Dad loved to go on a camping trip, and so he had made arrangements among his friends the donkey boys to come to take a small party of us camping. As I remember it, we had Elsa Siemer and 2 children and Kate and Arthur Lockley with Sonny with us.
The Hot Spring Temple was a little decrepit temple in the lower level of the mountains seen from the beach resort, as in my oil painting. Not far as the crow flies, no quick transportation to reach it. I remember the poverty of the little villages we walked through as we went into the mountains, our train of donkeys carrying our food supplies, clothing, bedding and utensils.
The monks rented us an old two-story building already dangerously decrepit-- the floor of one end of the upper story had already fallen down; our mothers could imagine one or another child falling down, so we kids were all warned to keep to the good part of the old floor. Getting there late in the day, we all spread our beds and settled down after supper.
The next day Dad arranged with the monks to have the bath house reserved for out party. We wanted the warm water that flowed through the large tub to be fresh. The little mountain stream that flowed down the valley in front of the temple was cold, but we found little spots among the grass where warm water bubbled up, like dishpans for us to use after our meals. We swam in the river, and after supper we all went into the warm water in the big stone tub.
One afternoon we decided to explore higher up into the mountains. The region included some old square towers, part of the defense system of the Great Wall, that begins at Shan hai kwan (Mountain - Sea - Close). As we strolled along we lost track of where we had left the temple, and some of us agreed that we were lost. Some of the children panicked, and then we were all bawling. The fathers, who had gone on ahead, heard us, and led us right back to our little temple. Not far.
Another year, when I was about thirteen years old, Dad had some visiting YMCA officials from New York to entertain, he decided to take them to the very primitive area of China that was Tang-chuan Sse.
Again he organized equipment for camping-- which was fun. We had Norman and Winthrop Long, teenagers, with us- their father was in the YMCS in Mukden, Manchuria.
Another part of the Chinese defense system was a large bronze bell hanging in the front courtyard of the temple. Dad, and maybe his guests also, were curious about the sound of this big bell. He picked up a plank and struck the bell- it had no clapper. The bell was satisfactorily resonant, but after about three strikes a monk came rushing out to stop the ringing. The bell was used to signal an attack!
Our party ate up most of the supplies we had brought, so Dad decided to see what food he could buy in the valley. We all walked farther into the mountains to the nearest village. Few people there had ever seen people like us! We stood around in the shade of some trees in the center of the village of mud brick houses while Dad introduced us and told why we had come. The very dignified elders told us, after consulting each other, that if they sold any of their food they would not have enough for themselves to last through the year.
Dad had also dispatched Win Long back to Peitaiho to buy some more food. When he cam back the next day he said that he had brought twelve loaves of bread and some other food. When it was unpacked, the twelve loaves included eight rolls. I think there was probably a couple more large bars of Star chocolate, sweet but not milk chocolate. Dad always had this on his camping trips because in those days it was believed that chocolate was highly nutritious. Mim ate so much on that trip that she destroyed her appetite for chocolate.
On the station platform in Montreal I when I boarded the train I was impressed by a young man wearing a well pressed white linen suit. I wondered how the suit was going to look at the end of our nearly a week of travel.
There were perhaps two coaches filled with third class passengers, but in my first class car I was the only paying passenger. The other passengers were the mother, the wife and the young daughter of a railway official. We talked about Canada and I told them I was going to China. When they got off the train in Medicine Hat the older woman told me, "Now don't marry one of them!"
I remember approaching the Rockies from the wheat land from Winnipeg. I was able to see the splendid Chateau at Banff, and sorry not to go anywhere near Lake Louise. It was very early summer, so there was so much snow on the track to call for some track-clearing ahead of our locomotive. The trip was beautiful in the river valleys.
We reached the harbor at Vancouver in late afternoon, and found my ship, the Canadian Pacific Empress of Russia within walking distance of the train. I could go right on board, although we would not sail until the next afternoon. There was time for me to visit some stores, so I went to a big one that had a plant department. Peonies were in bloom in the gardens all around, so I decided to take some to my mother. I made my selection, placed an order, and then found that I would not receive it until fall.
I was one of a half-dozen college students on our way to China. One was Richard Mather, a couple of years younger than I and the brother of my Tungchow classmate Brewster Mather. Their father was a Presbyterian evangelist in North China. We leaned on the deck rail for hours, as Richard talked about questions of theology. We both liked each other, but I felt I would not want to be a minister's wife.
We played a lot of deck tennis and promenaded around the deck, and enjoyed stops at Yokohama and Nagasaki. Our route from Vancouver did not go as far south as Hawaii.
Approaching Shanghai from Japan we sailed into water brown with the silt from the Yangtze River. Up to the smaller Whangpu River to Shanghai, with its hundreds of ships of all sizes and kinds, and then I stepped up onto the Bund.
Dad met me and took me out to the French Concession, where we visited some YMCA friends in the Y compound where our family had lived from 1923 to 1926-- feeling very much at home again in that part of the world.
Taking the train to Nanjing we reached the big new national capital early in the afternoon. Mother met us with a horse carriage at the Hsiakwan station and we took the long ride to the main part of the city. What I remember about this ride was passing dozens of stores selling yard goods. At that time Chinese men who know would wear suits were wearing long silk gowns, and I saw bolts and bolts of silk in the large open stores along the way.
It being summer it was time to travel north to our family home in Peitaiho. From Nanjing this was a three-day train trip. We packed clothes and food and the servants we would need there, and went across the mighty Yangtze (no bridge then) to Pukow and boarded the Blue Express, of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagonlits-- the equivalent of our Pullman travel. The cars were dark blue in color,and cleaner than the usual train cars. We left this train at Tianjin and took the familiar five hour ride on to Peitaiho. I still remember my pleasure at being able to walk past the shore up the hill to our house.
Mim was at Wellesley, but Rachel and I roamed the Lotus Hills, Rocky Point, and East Cliff. I freed myself from feeling that I should follow my parents in being always quiet, so I shocked Rachel when I greeted the president of Yenching University at his summer place with some enthusiasm, "Dr. Ferguson!" His sister Mary and his wife were there; Rachel and I went up several times, and had interesting visits. We also visited Mr. and Mrs. Bliss Wieant of the Yenching music department. Their place, rather remote from the beach, had a magnificent view of the mountains in Manchuria that are in my oil painting.
We borrowed books from the little summer library, looked over the jewelry from Beijing displayed at the side of the main road, and saw the fine laces and embroidered linens brought from Chefoo to our big porch. Mom bought some of mine then that I have used for so many years.
In September back to Nanjing, where I started doing office work for Dad. I filed piles of papers and did a little typing, taking slow dictation, but Dad continued to do much of his typing.
When it came out that I know the French language was also invited to teach French in the little Hillcrest School, an elementary school for American children preparing to go to the Shanghai American School.
What I remember of these days is that looking down below the hill was a small field where a few water buffalos were kept, and one day two of them began to fight. The farmers had quite a struggle to separate them! There was also a small bridge over a dry gully, and family of about six people lived under the bridge. Their principal income was from the dried tangerine peels they could collect.
During my second year of teaching, Ginling called me to teach an English class for high-school seniors. They said there would be little to do, as some practice teachers would be doing it. Actually no students did any of the teaching. Among the class was Jeannette Kung, the very boyish young daughter of the Finance Minister H.H. Kung. Jeannette had her hair cut boys' style and refused to wear girls' clothes. She was the most fluent in English in the class. Another member was a very pretty girl who was very filial. In spite of what her classmates said to her, she willingly proceeded to be the concubine of a wealthy man.
I worked for a year teaching English at the School of Medicine and Pharmacy of the National Government, at the request of my father's friend Dr. Shen Keh-fei. It was at the time that Mussolini was adding Ethiopia to the Italian Empire, and I believed that this Empire was going to be shortlived.
In this last year I used to go up the home of the Okeckis. Mr. Okecki was a hydraulic engineer working for the League of Nations. He had brought his wife, his two little sons, Woitek, nine, and Janek, five, and their Polish governess. She was bringing the boys us with a little switch, so they really were well behaved, and could click their heels together when I came. They could relax with me as we played in English and had tea in glasses with apricot jam. However, their mother used to spend many days in bed, not feeling well. I decided later that she was bored. Not speaking English, with no Polish friends, and having no idea at all of what to do in this Chinese capital city, she just went to bed. If I had recognized her trouble I would have got her out.
The wall around the Okeckis' yard was the wall around the home of an official in the Japanese embassy. At this time a certain member of the embassy felt he had been degraded in the hierarchy there, and went outside the city to the Purple Mountain to commit suicide by exposing himself to lions and tigers. When he disappeared, the Japanese accused the Chinese of kidnapping him. They threatened to bomb Nanjing if he were not released. We spent a couple of very frightened days, while the Chinese were trying to find the man. Then a farm woman reported that a stranger had been roaming around the mountain. Frank Price went out to see who this stranger was, and brought him back, to our great relief.
At about this time, when I was on my way to the Okeckis' I heard one Chinese ask another whether I, obviously looking unChinese, was a Japanese. The answer was, no Japanese look much like us.
On another occasion I was walking to the university past an office guarded by a couple of soldiers. This was while I was wearing my new Chinese gown. One asked the other, "Is that person a Chinese?" The other replied, "No, she is a Chinese who has changed her head."
Our group arranged outings on weekends, either by bus or by horse carriage outside the huge city wall. We had picnics at the Memorial to T'an Yen-k'ai, a revolutionary, and other beautiful new monuments built on the foot of Purple Mountain. The largest one, the Memorial to Sun Yat Sen, the "Father of his Country," who helped to overthrow the Ching Dynasty.
The Nanking Women's Club was mostly the wives of the American faculty at the university, and held monthly meetings, usually in the home of a member. For one meeting I prepared a talk about the 7th (?) century Chinese painter Ku K'ai-chih. Dad collaborated with a couple of others on entertaining little skits, and another whose humor we enjoyed was the English historian (?) George Taylor. His wife Roberta White had been one of the family who sent the summer of 1921 at our house in Peitaiho. We did not see much of poor Roberta, was sick much of the time. (Amoebas?)
I arranged with some of the other American young people to have a paper hunt that next weekend. I helped to tear up a lot of newspaper into shreds to make the trail, and my Dad went out with us. We all had fun, and Dad came home saying he had enjoyed Ard's dry wit.
Ard and I thought of going on our honeymoon in the Philippines, or in Hangjou, in our spring vacation. Alas, our vacations did not coincide. We had to set the day on New Year's, an important for everyone in Asia-- and for only a few days. The ceremony was in the afternoon in the beautiful new chapel of Ginling Women's. It was in Chinese style with large varnished red columns and multicolored beams. Mom bought many pots of poinsettias and narcissus plants in bloom. Dad made at least two wooden candelabras in which we had red candles.
We had two ministers to perform the ceremony-- one an old Chinese friend of my father, the other Rex Wheeler, Ardron's Presbyterian landlord. My maid of honor, in light green crepe, was my old friend Alice Morris (with whose family I had enjoyed a house boat trip around Soochow when we were in high school. Dad's best man was Brian Low of New Zealand. My two Chinese bridesmaids were in apricot crepe, Grace Sung, the daughter of Dad's associate secretary of the Tienjin YMCA, and Rachel's Ginling classmate Dzo Yulin. My Sunday School class of little girls were there as flower girls, in apricot crepe. The head of the Ginling Music Department played a piano solo, and a student of Ard's played a solo on the violin. I made no lengthy repetition of my vows-- I would not say more than I Do a few times, and I particularly was unwilling to kiss my handsome bridegroom in front of the congregation. My little flower girl was Sara Alice Fenn, and we also had as ring bearer little Jimmy Thomson (now at Harvard University
My mother wanted to have the wedding cake like her own back in Worcester of which she had always preserved a piece in a fancy box in her dowry chest. So she ordered a large traditionally decorated cake from Kiessling's in Tianjin. Dave and a couple of boarders at our house , Miss Kavanagh and Mme Bokituskof, made piles of little sandwiches, which Chuck transported to Ginling in many trips on the dark snowy day.
I wore my mother's white satin gown, made by Aunt Carrie, who was a professional dress maker. My veil was new, made of white net with applique's of Philippine lace. I was disappointed in this, as the net was not a really fine tulle. When I had got dressed at home I came down to the dining room to show our servants, who could not appreciate a bride all in white, the funeral color in China-- I should have been in red.
When the knot was tied and the recessional began Ard and I turned to march out. Then we began to hear a rustling in the audience. Then we found Sara Alice leading Jimmy out past us-- to lead going out as she had led going in.
Since we were going only to Shanghai Ard thought some of our friends would go to the railroad to see us off, which he wanted to avoid. So we went for our first night to the new little China Travel Service Hotel in Nanking-- leaving Alice and Brian to search the train for us. We still remember the pack of dogs that prowled not far outside our window during the night.
In Shanghai there was not much for us to do in January but a little shopping. We saw Clark Gable, I think, in "Mutiny on the Bounty." We also ran into a couple of Nanjing friends, who faulted us for being in the street of Nanjing on our honeymoon. It was then that I bought the set of Belgian lace place mats that I have given to Annie.
The months between our wedding and our departure for the U.S. were much taken up with packing our wedding gifts to be sent across the Pacific. Putting embroidered linens in boxes was easy. We had boxes made for the three rugs we had bought in Shanghai an another for Dad's red scroll rubbing. Making balls with newspaper for all the porcelain and lacquer gifts we were given was slow work-- many of Dad's friends had given us some beautiful pieces, and I had bought some-- which have been broken in the years since.
We also made plans for our trip back, cooperating with Ogden King of the university. A group of teachers returning to the U.S. wanting to go via Siberia and Europe were enough to occupy all compartments but one in a "hard class" car on the Trans Siberian Railway between Manchuli and Moscow. We planned to carry most of our food instead of going into the dining car and we had been told that we could get boiling water at train stops along the route.
We traveled first to Tienjin, where we bought cans of Campbell's soup, cocoa, bread, crackers, and other non-perishable food.
On to Mukden (Shenyang), at that time the headquarters of the Japanese army, then invading North China. Our party was taken to the plush hotel newly built for the officers. When I looked around in the room given to Ard and me I sensed that it might cost us more than we had budgeted. On inquiry we found that it was the most expensive room in the hotel. So out to a plainer, smaller chamber.
We went northward to Harbin, where we were to meet an agent of the Trans Siberian line. Ard went with Ogden King to confirm our plan to occupy all of one car except one compartment. Ard and Ogden found that the agent had assigned all of us to berths regardless of sex. This was unacceptable to our party, and it took the rest of the day for Ard and Ogden to persuade the agent to allow us to choose our own berths.
Travelling hard class meant that we had thin pads on the bunks, four to a compartment, and some thin bedspreads as did blankets. It being summer we not need more.
"Rubber plant" means the railway station at Manchuli to me. There was fighting between Chinese and Japanese soldiers in that region. The window blinds had to be drawn and all cameras had to be sealed.
The scenery entering the war zone was beautiful-- I thought that I would like to come back some time for another look-- the gaoliang fields were green against low hills.
At Manchuli we boarded a Russian train whose tracks were wider apart than the Chinese tracks, which I believe are the same width as those of the rest of the world.
The rubber plant in the Manchuli station was huge, spreading up and across the spacious waiting room. I thought it was strange to find this tropical plant flourishing in Siberia.
We had about eight regular car, of first class and hard class, with a dining car. Rattling along at the end was a flat car, onto which a family had piled all their possessions-- trunks, furniture and farm equipment.
Our car was near the middle of the train, so when we stopped at a station every couple of hours or so we were right where we could buy our kettles of hot water.
At one stop we were out in some flowery fields. The train seemed to be preparing to stand there for several minutes. Ard, Mrs Thurston and Miss Calder, ladies from Boston and other passengers got off the train to pick a few flowers. I, on the train, watched them as they walked farther and farther from the train. Suddenly the train began to pull out. It gained some speed, and all the car attendants blew their whistles and waved red flags from the steps of all the cars. I watched with amusement as the long-legged Boston ladies galloped back to the train. Ard had not gone far from it, and hopped onto the last regular car, making his way through the passengers in the cars behind us. I was relieved to see him back in our party, but some of the folks thought I should have been sure that Ard was going to be left behind in the middle of Siberia. I did not think, crude as affairs were then in the Soviet Union, that a train engineer could abandon a number of passengers so cavalierly.
The day after we crossed the Ural Mountains, making a long curve to approach Moscow was very dry, with dusty wind blowing into the train car. It made us thankful that our long train trip was over. Our party was taken to the hotel, where we met the confrontation between mealtime and sightseeing time.
I remember very little about the sights we were taken to see. One was an old dark palace of boyars of centuries ago. I enjoyed seeing the little private houses whose windows had exterior decorations. I hear that most of these have disappeared by now. We visited the GUM big department store, which had little to interest us. We went to hear the opera, "Boris Godunov" at the Park of Culture and Rest" beside the river. Dad called on some agricultural economics officials, coming out dissatisfied with the information he got.
Our next visit was to Leningrad, where there was more of interest to me. We saw the summer palace of Catherine the Great and went outside the city where the last Czar had lived with his family. The Czarina's bedroom was much decorated with pictures of little boys as she hoped for a son after four daughters. We went outside the city to the Fortress of Peter and Paul (Petropavlovsky) which was the prison in which which Communist prisoners had been closely confined by the Czarist government before 1917.
We then took a night train to Helsinki, Finland. I will never forget how we breathed in after we crossed the national boundary. In the USSR we were constantly afraid of violating some law and losing our passports, as well as our camera and film.
The next morning in Stockholm we made our way to the Pension Berslage that had been recommended to us. Inexpensive, but very comfortable, with excellent meals and right in the center of the city. There we admired the modern buildings, ornamented with fountains and sculptures by Carl Milles. While Dad did an economic report to mail back to Nanking I visited a big department store with a display of Orrefors Crystal. There was a cruise ship in port that day, and a large group of Americans had been brought there to buy crystal. It was a very profitable day for that store. I have always remembered the display of a large table set for dinner-- linen, porcelain, crystal and sterling in the most elegant and simple taste.
We took a half day to visit the University of Uppsala, surrounded by green and gold grain fields.
Out at Drottningholm (Queen's Palace) we visited the small royal theater, only large enough to receive a small audience of royal guests.
The only thing I remember about Oslo is the convenience of he ski slope and jump for the winter season.
Our way to the International Conference in St. Andrews, Scotland led us via Bergen, Norway, to England. The travel agent recommended a stop in Finse, at the high point of the mountains, so we went there for an overnight stop. Finse was a popular ski resort. The other guests in the little hotel that night included a black American family, who entertained us with some negro music, and the hotel pianist played Grieg.
The next morning we climbed down the very steep mountain to a very deep valley, where we found that farmers were trying to dry hay by hanging it on racks. I suspect that the sun hardly reached it for as much as a couple of hours a day.
In Bergen we did a lot of walking around the port, and saw a lot of fish being marketed. We boarded a small trans Channel steamer for Newcastle, England via Haugesund and Stavanger.
I think it was in Stratford that the people in the restaurant identified us as Americans when we asked for napkins. These are baby's diapers there, and they had none for us because so many Americans had been dining there at that time. On our walks we had eaten at many little dining rooms that offered "cut from joint and two veg" at a very good price-- good roast beef, too. We found no meals at a moderate price "with trimmings". It was either simple and cheap or fancy and expensive. This was before WWII changed the English diet.
We traveled north through the fields of rabbits to Edinburgh and St. Andrews. I soon picked up a cold germ, so that my nose was congested until I reached Washington and applied hot packs.
I don't remember anything about a program for ladies- I believe I attended the general meetings with Dad, and many of Dad's Cornell friends.
After the conference we took the farm tour of Scotland with two groups of tourists in luxury buses. The drivers were chosen for their knowledge of Scottish history. Each seat had a blanket in a Scottish plaid, and as we rode from one county to another the county agent rode with us in the bus. We only had to ask what was being raised here or there to be old, Oh, that is Joe Fraser's farm-- let's stop down there and talk with him." This meant that the ladies would be invited to have a cup of tea, and could see the rice pudding baking slowly in the oven.
The route of our tour was a figure eight, beginning down around the peak of Stirling Castle, down the west coast, across by Walter Scott's Cheviot Hills, up to Aberdeen's big fish market, around to Inverness, Loch Lomond, Culloden and many other famous places back to Edinburgh.
In Springfield we found that the old home had been largely renovated, with financial help from Uncle Albion Lewis. Pa, Ruth and Joe had also worked over the summer painting the Springfield schoolhouse.
After just a few days of my getting acquainted with my new in-laws and Dad learning about the changes on the farm during his three years in China we two went down to Washington by train.
We had first to find a place to live. We found an ad for some new apartments on upper 14th Street. A brand new small apartment appealed to me, and with no more consideration we rented it, neither one of us realizing how far it was from downtown D.C.
Then began a couple of weeks of window shopping. In one of Hecht's windows we saw the oak bedroom set that Dad wanted. I found our little maple dinette set. At the Palais Royal I chose a set of dishes, at Woodward's I found the copper-colored puff and a peach colored wool blanket. The set of silver plated Community utensils was in the window of a jewelry store on F street, and we decided to buy this in installments.
When our bedroom set was delivered we were interested to hear that included a "marrow".
I took a long time one day looking over furniture at the big Lansburgh Furniture Company. I know that the salesman was puzzled by a customer who had so little idea of what she wanted, but it was the first time I had ever looked over new furniture of good quality. After this we went to a company that supplied hotels and gave a discount to Farm Credit people. We went there to buy our blue chair and a crib for our expected infant. The salesman helped us to choose one that was more "riggid" than others.
Ard's Cornell friends who were joining the Roosevelt administration at about this time were helping us get settled in Washington. In our first months I had walked to a couple of grocery stores almost every day to get food for myself. Not having learned much cooking in China I had to study my Fanny Farmer cookbook (a wedding gift from Aunt Mim, who had gone to cooking school in Worcester) and gradually learned to make Dad's porridge in the morning, Swiss steak or broiled lamb chops for dinner, and how to bake potatoes to get them "done".
I invited Dad's Cornell friends Don Russell and John Gauss to dinner one evening. We had the utensils and the dishes and the embroidered table linen, but very little skill in the kitchen. When the guests arrived at the front door I went downstairs to let them in. As we approached the door to our apartment we heard a loud bang. It took me a couple of minutes to unlock the door and found that the can of beets, heating in a saucepan, had exploded, showering the little room with red juice.
The next morning I felt rested, and wondered why I should stay longer in the hospital, but Dr. Willson usually kept the new mothers twelve days, and when I went home he advised me to stay down on the bed for about a month. This was when a stay in the hospital was much [underlined] less expensive than it is now!
Aunt Carrie Underwood came down from Springfield, Mass. to help me, and stayed almost a month. She had her first taste of a Southern dialect, making out "how are ya" out of "har yii?" She also went down to Woodward's and bought me two very nice dresses to take the place of my maternity dresses. These were much nicer than I might have found myself.
Dad had to do some land classification work in North Dakota so we decided that Rachel and I would spend the summer up in Springfield, Maine. My baby care was patterned after my mother's care of her babies in China. Having been a professional nurse she knew about cleanliness and disinfection, but not about the modern equipment that was now available. I took along my blue enamel baby's bathtub, with all the fancy gift baby dresses and old fashioned diapers.
I set up the little tub on a chair in front of the open oven in the kitchen when Grammie was making butter and cleaning parts of the cream separator. She never mentioned how inconvenient this was for her- I think she should have chased me out.
After a month or so we were joined by Aunt Emmie and her little Linda, just a month younger than Rachel. They brought up a collapsible bathinette and set it up out of the main stream of traffic. Emmie and I entertained each other discussing our experiences in the births of our infants.
Dad left our new brown Plymouth sedan with Grampie for the summer. This meant that Grampie took us out on drives all around Springfield, Carroll and beyond, which was a treat for Grammie.
When we went back to Washington we rented an apartment on 15th Street across from Meridian Park. I shopped in a grocery on 14th street a block away, so I used to wheel Rachel down in her carriage and right into the store, not daring to leave her outside. This was my first experience with a self-serve store- up on Georgia Avenue my two store were old-fashioned, where the clerk brought items down from the shelves and put them in a bag on the counter for me.
The new location meant a shorter bus ride for Dad each day, but in the new neighborhood there were not enough parking spaces for the tenants of the several apartment houses.
In the summer of 1938 we drove up to Springfield for vacation. It was the year of the conference of the International Asso. of Agricultural Economists at McGill University near Montreal. Grammie and Aunt Neen were willing to take care of little Rachel during our trip. When we came back to Springfield we found that Grampa Hall and family had been on their way to visit the Lewis family, but we were not there at all at the same time.
At this stage of choosing a home we could modify some of the features, so we arranged to get a full bathroom and a large closet in the part over the garage. We also got a door that could be closed between the dining room and the living room, so we could use the dining room as a downstairs bedroom in our first months. We had a wall put in between the living room and the stairs, for more privacy in the stairway.
In the kitchen we put the sink at the far end of the narrow kitchen. This was a bad idea-- having the sink under the window would have been better.
We had a screen porch built at the back of the living room rather than next to the chimney. I had the area of exposed brick of the fireplace reduced to half a brick rather than the whole length of the brick.
We moved into our new home just a day after Christmas 1938-- Dad brought home a nice Christmas tree for our celebration.
The bedroom suite was in the dining room and Rachel's crib was in the study. We did not move upstairs until after John was born. We went to the Contract Co. for a single bed for Grammie to use upstairs when she came to visit, thinking we would buy its twin when we had the money. But by that time it was too late-- to have a pair of beds we had to buy two new beds. John used "Grammie's" bed, and Clayt had only a cot for as long as we lived there.
It was good to be able to park in our own garage, and we began planting shrubs in the back yard. I studied the catalog of Bobbink and Atkins in New Jersey, and got a feeble lawn growing. Not being able to drive, I depended on Dad to drive me and Rachel to a Safeway market at the end of King Street in Alexandria. The capital area was expanding rapidly, but the shopping centers of Shirlington, Fairlington, and other areas had not been developed.
It was good that Grammie could come to help us, because I had a bad hemorrhage when John was born, which left me very weak for about a month. However it gave Grammie a chance to see the main sights of the capital with Dad, at the best time of year.
Dad and I were stunned by the bomb attack on Pearl Harbor. It was clear to us that our country was at war on two fronts. Our government began to organize for war at all levels, and the Farm Credit Administration, where Dad was working, was getting ready to move to Kansas City. This seemed to me an unattractive prospect, and that Dad could contribute more to the war effort by joining an organization working on winning the war. It was not long before he went into the Board of Economic Warfare.
By 1942 the French Government had been replaced by the officials at Vichy, and Hitler had sent General Rommel to take over Egypt and the Suez Canal. Fearing air attacks on this country, we put up black-out curtains at night. There was so much war news on the radio that even Rachel,5, and John, 3, believed that Alexandria would be bombed any day.
They began to play at Killing Bad Getty, poisoning him, chopping him up, destroying in a dozen ways. When I told them to stop punishing Bad Getty they gave him another name. It was then that I found out that they were expecting the real war to reach us. I assured them that we were not in such great danger. Only much later I found out that our ships were being sunk by German subs not far off our own coast.
Food rationing did not inconvenience us much. We would have liked to get more gas for our car. Dad was fortunate to be able to get to work on the busses that ran right down our street. The shortage we felt most was heating oil. We were cold even when we closed off some rooms, so we bought a very convenient coal-burning stove and set it up in the living room. It had two holes in the top, over which I could do plenty of cooking, but it had no oven. We all put on warmer clothes. Rachel found that she was the only girl in her class in school that had to wear long stockings.
An ecumenical Community Church had already been established in the Beverly Hills neighborhood, and I began to attend Sunday services there. However, on Easter Sunday of 1940 (I think) the pastor read a sermon written by another preacher. I found this very disappointing, thinking that for Easter of all occasions a pastor ought to preach his own message.
I decided to move to the Westminster Presbyterian Church, there being no Congregational churches in this part of the country.
The pastor in the new Westminster Church, Cliff Johnson, was a very interesting preacher, compared by some people to the well-known Peter Marshall. The superintendent of the Sunday School was Margaret Vaughan, (Mrs Harry Vaughan, the wife of the President's Chief of Staff at that time.) I undertook to teach a little class, I think of fourth graders. I also helped in the vacation Bible School in the summer.
I had always prepared Ard's breakfast for him, opening his boiled eggs for him so he could eat and run for the bus. By this time his war work made him very busy, so he began to dash off without eating breakfast at all. I considered a bad way to go off to work, so we had quite a confrontation. After this Ard understood that he had to make time to eat breakfast.
Rachel enjoyed having stories read to her. We went over and over a little picture book about kittens dressed in doll clothes, Samantha and Agamemnon. I gave her the letters of the alphabet made of brass, and before long she knew them all. Then she wanted to know what FOR SALE spelled, and then other common signs. Before she was four years old she could read almost anything in the Bible. I remembered that in China literate families started to teach their children characters when they were only two or three years old, so why not bring out our alphabet at an early age?
The nights I spend in the Doctors' Hospital in Washington were at the time of military blackout. In my room, however, the curtains were not opened up at daylight, which troubled Ard. His complaint about this was not well received by the hospital staff, so I was glad to go home after ten days.
At home, Amanda and I were visited by our five-year-old neighbor, Ruth Irene Starr, who liked to come over to enjoy our family freedom. She thought I was mistaken in thinking our new baby was a little girl-- obviously we had a little boy.
That summer was unusually cool. I had to borrow an electric heater when I gave Manda a bath in the kitchen in August.
When Aunt Lillian brought Rachel and John back (a difficult trip for her) we found that they had renamed themselves Sylvia and Dick. They had to readjust to being Rachel and John again.
At the office Dad was pursuing the question of the food supply in Japan, and it was decided to send him to India to find out from Japanese soldiers captured in Burma. He had interesting interviews with men who had been farmers at home, who enjoyed talking with Ard in New Delhi about their crops. He also had a narrow escape from death when an attempt on the life of Admiral Mountbatten was made and failed close to where Ard had been interviewing prisoners.
Before Ard left for India we rented our house for the summer and I took Rachel, John, and Amanda up to Springfield. At the end of the summer it was time for Rachel to start school.
Rachel's artistic talents, imagination and originality were clear by the time she was to go to public school. We had many books for her and the other children to read, so books were no strangers to her. I wanted her to be comfortable as a member of a class of children her age, so we visited the George Mason School on Cameron Mills Road, and she was acquainted with the first-grade teacher, and with the school principal. It was I who suffered the most when she walked up the street with the other children on the first day of school-- I felt very sad knowing that I would no longer have her with me all day.
One year when we were driving around Portland, on our to Springfield John teased Clayt by telling him some imaginary stories. Clayt recognized these as far from the truth and angrily accused John of being a liar. When we were at the farm I took Clayt aside and told him that John was just telling him some jokes, which should not make him angry. The next day Clayt came to me and said, "I've been telling John some jokes and boy, were they funny!"
We called it "Little Yellow," a simple uninsulated summer house with kitchen plus dining room, 3 bedrooms, a large wood-burning range, an ice-box, water carried up from the lake, and an out-house. It was about ten feet above the lake level and about thirty feet away from the edge of the water, depending on how much beach the management of the lake water allowed us. It belonged to Harold and Vivian Noble, whose Selbon Lodge entertained fishermen and hunters.
Harold provided us with baked yellow-eye beans, and Vivian baked us a beautiful birthday cake when we were there for Manda's birthday in July.
We picked blueberries and raspberries wherever Dad could find them. Most of our vegetables we brought from Springfield. Harold rented us a little rowboat, in which we went fishing or practiced diving. We drove all around that region to find cakes of ice for the ice box until one year we found an electric refrigerator had replaced the old fashioned one. We drove down to Getchell's for milk, and over to a spring at the foot of Musquash Mountain for drinking water. We bought groceries from Mrs. White in her little store at the corner of Route 1 and Route 6. One year we had Steve (and Martha) with us and decided to go to Princeton to see the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen", and took up almost a whole row of seats. Another year we found a shop in Calais where cotton jerseys were made, and had a good time picking out our preferred designs. Rachel made us a beautiful table centerpiece of mushrooms and other fungi she found in the woods on Mushquash mountain, which we climbed to the ranger's lookout tower.
Shopping is not one of my favorite activities. I don't have the patience to look over a lot of goods in a store; I want to find what i need as soon possible and then return home.
When I was growing up I was always aware that there were four other children in the family had to be clothed, and expected that my wishes for my own clothes were not important. Rachel had a much better idea what to wear than I did. My mother did not have much style sense, and I would have done better if I could have had Aunt Carrie or Aunt Sue to help me choose my clothes. Too often I let my mother buy me what was at the lowest price when we went shopping. I shudder when I think of what I wore in college just because the price on the tag was low. On very few occasions did I decide to spend what seemed like a high price for a really nice dress that looked well on me.
Then Ard was offered a job in land classification in Puerto Rico. The children were not interested in making the move: "Who wants to go to Puerto Rico?" But we had a good time on the beautiful beach of Santurce. Four months later we packed up to go to Costa Rica on a job in President Truman's Point Four economics program in Latin America. Again, "Who wants to go to Costa Rica?"
By this time we were all learning some Spanish language, the children learning it from good teachers in the Escuela Metodista and I basing mine on the French language I am familiar with. I decided to see how much Spanish I could learn with taking formal lessons. The answer is "not much"- only kitchen Spanish, just enough to buy our food in the big central market and at La Gran Via, the grocery store on the Avenida Central. The clerks were always polite and helpful, and very handsome people. I was impressed by the politeness and formality of the country women who came shopping in the city.
At first I found having to use so much Spanish overwhelming, and I wanted to dump everything Spanish in the river. As I acquired more of the language I was able to enjoy the beautiful little country, "la Suiza Centro-Americana."
About twenty of the research students that Dad was teaching in Ag. Economics came every afternoon to a regular classroom directly above Dad's office in the Research Institute. I often asked questions, which the students would answer-- and my questions were on what I might be seeing around the campus or in the city of Taichung. I tried to correct their pronunciation of English words-- usually to change very solid habits of mispronunciation and to overcome the attempt to telescope the syllables of multisyllabic words. We used dictation occasionally, which meant I had papers to correct.
The Viet Nam war had begun. My students asked why the US was so deeply engaged there. I told them that the US would be glad to leave Viet Nam if the communists would withdraw also-- but I sensed that the students did not believe this. I also felt that the news they received was different from the news I was getting. Most of the students were Taiwanese, not Mainlanders, and there was a rift between those two groups of people with the Taiwanese resenting the takeover of the island by Nationalist Chinese. I had to tread very lightly on any political questions, such as, could Nationalist forces move from Taiwan to retake the Mainland?
This visit was very short-- we flew on south to Sao Paulo, where found that the arrangements for our big international conference had not been completed as planned. Ard put this down to "The Iberian Curse." The big modern hotel, half a block away from the big conference hall, was still only a skeleton, so we went to our room in a little hotel a bus-ride away. The other members of the conference also had travel by bus to the almost-finished auditorium building, which included the dining hall, but not the kitchen. Our noon meal was prepared in kitchens about a block away. This troubled the waiters more than it did us foreigners.
For the meetings we sat in leather-seated chairs in a magnificent auditorium decorated with many beautiful flowers. The lobby was hung with some interesting hangings of macrame. Across the street from the entrance was a large aviary with a number of hummingbirds enjoying some tropical trees. Not far away the Soviet Union was exhibiting some of their exports of agricultural machinery among other things.
I always go out to explore our surroundings even when Ard attends the meetings of the conference. So after seeing Ard off on his bus at the hotel, I greeted a woman who seemed to be an ag. economist's wife like myself. She was a German woman, staying in the same little hotel. I proposed a walk out to the main avenida a block away. At first she was unwilling to come with me, saying it would be too dangerous-- but she agreed to walk with me for a little while when I told her I was not afraid.
The Conference provided us with advertisements of the principal dealers on the main avenida, so a group of about six women from the U.S. entered a big store for a look-see. It was a large luxuriously appointed place, suggesting one in Paris. The several uniformed sales girls in red and black suits were Japanese. One of them seated us on a horseshoe-shaped bench at a small table, and inquired what we would like to see-- very little of their merchandise was on display. One woman said she was interested in a ruby ring for her daughter, so half a dozen rings set with rubies of various sizes were brought out to us on a small tray. The customer found that the price of rubies was far higher than she expected, so she asked about emeralds. These too were much above what she wanted to spend, and we had a little discussion of the size of stone that would be suitable for her daughter, and this depended on her daughter's size and shape. It being clear that none of us was prepared to buy any jewelry there then, we went out to the avenida again.
A few days later I met another American woman with whom I was a little acquainted. On a street corner she gave me the address of a jeweler whose prices were more reasonable. This shop was on about the 10th floor of a high-rise building not on the main avenida. I made my way up to it, and found other Americans knew of this dealer. The atmosphere was of a doctor's office-- no big display of gems and the jeweler was wearing a white jacket. I asked to see some topaz, thinking to compare them with the smoky topaz I had bought in the bazaar in Seoul. The Brazilian topaz were bright golden yellow, and I selected a square cut stone that was in my price range. I saw some beautiful aquamarines in rings worn by Brazilian ladies, but since Dad had brought me a beautiful square cut aquamarine from Ceylon I did not try to buy one in Sao Paulo.
Our guide on a ladies' tour of churches wore a ring with a large square-cut stone of such a beautiful color that I could not think that it was better than a piece of a coke bottle. This woman was asked about a large painting we saw on display. The scene was the sloping deck of a large passenger ship. Passengers, including a priest who was giving them a final blessing, were rushing to life boats. We asked about the crisis, and the guide told us that the painting was of the sinking of the "Titanic". I was not convinced.
The ladies of the conference were entertained at a fashion show and tea in a 12th floor restaurant. Leather being a big produce of Brazilian cattle, most of the items modeled were of fine soft leather.
One evening our tour buses took us to the Jockey Club for dinner and music. We were a big crowd for that dining room. The conversation was just a big roar. The entertainers had been imported from Rio-- the best to be heard, I gathered, but I have to say I was not the most pleased member of the audience.
We had to be on alert when we walked around, whether in the neighborhood of our little hotel or in the newer part of the city around the conference hall. A member of the conference had his briefcase snatched from him right on the main avenida where the traffic was in three lanes in both directions-- the thief just dashed across through all the traffic. He got all our man's travel papers, passport, tickets to return home, and we heard that the unfortunate victim had a hard time proving his citizenship. We were warned not to expect mail to go immediately to its address- better to take it directly to the main city post office- a short walk from the hotel. Every house we passed on the outskirts of the city had its box for receiving mail, and I wondered how often mail was left in them.
We spent a couple of nights in Uberaba, which is in cattle country. Our buses drove us out to a big ranch which had a display of cups won in cattle shows. Our big party were taken to a yard where about a hundred big-horned Brahma cattle had been brought for our viewing. The ladies stayed at a little distance, but the men were taken through the hard to the opposite side of the yard. Dad confessed afterwards that he had been uneasy among all those big half-ton animals.
One of our bus drivers was too confident of finding a good road that day, and took us a long distance down a one-way road to a dead end. I did not watch to see how he got the big bus turned around, but he did, with the help of quite a crowd of observers.
It is a place of volcanic springs of various temperatures. After taking a dip in a large pool of moderately cool water, Dad and I went to the dining room for dinner. I don't remember what the food was, but the cool water was so delicious that I could hardly get enough of it. We dangled our feet in pools of different temperatures before going to bed.
The buildings of the resort were on a slope, and we were told that the top of the slope overlooked a wide plain. We decided to climb the slope to the top and look over what lay beyond. A few other visitors climbed up with us, and we found the slope increasingly steep, somewhat brushy, and with many loose stones. We had to give up our climb before reaching the top- our tour bus would be going on the Brasilia that evening.
I was very disappointed not to be able to look over the rim, which was of a huge crater miles across, probably made by a prehistoric meteorite, and not recognized until an airplane had flown over it.
Leaving Brasilia we flew over the Amazon to Venezuela, and then back to Miami and New York.