By Velma Rose Smith

April 14, 1930, on a Monday night, a baby girl arrived at the home of Arnold and Velma Rose Smith, in Blossburg. She had curly black hair and dark eyes, so dark they seemed to be black. She was number four in the family, and the others loved her. Jay patted her and said “Aw, isn’t she nice”, and a special bond was formed between them at that instant. Brownie, the dog, ran to the bed when he heard her first cry. Papa Rose said to him “You have a baby to take care of now”. Brownie understood him and watched over her faithfully. The baby was named Eileen, after much discussion, with Muzetta for a middle name. She was a nervous baby or maybe alert, she jumped at any loud noise, even the shutting of the coal heater door. She learned to walk young and looked so cute in a white baby dress and bonnet, riding on back of the tricycle, holding onto Jay, as they rode up and down the sidewalk, around our house and the Frank Place. When she got off the tricycle and tried to leave the yard, Jay would hang on to her and Brownie would stand in front of her and bark. We would hear the commotion and either Mr. Place or I would go to their rescue.

Her first Christmas I sat her on a chair in front of the tree, Wayne gave out the presents, he had made a pretty sack for Wanda, Jay, and Eileen and filled them with candy, so he gave them out. She put hers in her lap. As he handed her other packages, she put each one behind her. When he was through, she opened her candy and began eating it. She wasn’t interested in anything else.

She had the whooping cough when she was a small baby, then she had scarlet fever with the rest of us. She never got the mumps as I had them when she was a nursing baby.

One day Jay and her were playing with my clothes pins, as they often did. Then I told him he could go over town and he had to leave and didn’t have time to pick up their mess. I told Eileen she would have to pick up. She was so little, she looked so disgusted. I went to the kitchen, in a few minutes I looked in, she was picking them up a pin at a time and throwing it into the basket, as each one went in she said “darn it”.

The four of them played Billy Goat Gruff, using my table leaf and chairs to make the bridge. Of course Eileen was baby Billy, even Jay and her would play it alone.

She put her cat on the phonograph record, and turned it on, and it would stay and ride around. The cat learned how to turn it on and would get up there and lay down and take a ride by itself, of course, we had to keep it wound.

We had a black board, I taught Jay to read by phonics system, by AT, then CAT, RAT, BAT, HAT, etc. One day I went into the living room and found HA in big letters with blue chalk on the rug. It came out of the rug hard. She learned to read young.

One day I baked a three-layered cake, put white icing on it and covered with coconut, it looked beautiful. Later Wayne went into the kitchen, then called me. There sat Little Princess Eileen on the stool by the cabinet, she had run her fingers all through the icing. I took her down and scolded her severely. But Wayne said to me “If that had been one of us, you would have spanked us”. That was true, I would have. Another time she was sitting on the stool in front of the cabinet, a man came to the screen door, saw her there, said “Where is everybody”. She told him, “Daddy is at work, Wayne is to school, Wanda is to school, Jay Emerson is to school, and Mama is in the toilet”. About that time I walked out of the toilet, at the end of the hall, he looked at me and grinned, said he just found out where I was. I didn’t know him, he had come to see Arnold.

When she got big enough I let her go down back of one of the stores, there was a large sand box where a number of little kids brought their own toys and played together. One day I sent Wayne down to see if she was ok. He said she was ok but she had just hit a boy over the head with a toy truck. I asked what happened and he said, the boy had poured a lot of sand over her head. Many years later, she was at a dance, a young man came up to her and asked if she was Eileen Smith, he had heard someone call her Eileen. She said, “Yes, I am Eileen Smith”. He said, “See this scar on my head, that is where you hit me over the head with a truck.”

One day Arnold and I and 3 1/2 year old Eileen went to Elmira, to one of the large department stores. We were looking for something and we missed something – Eileen had slipped away from us. We looked all around and couldn’t find her, so we notified the desk up front to watch for her. We were still standing there when a lady walked in the door from the street, and had Eileen by the hand. She brought her right to us. She said she was watching back toward the store when she noticed her in a crowd of walkers, by herself. She had been in the store before and saw this little girl dressed in a red coat and bonnet, red stockings and black patent leather shoes with red tops. She looked so cute, she took notice of her, so she knew she belonged back in the store, took her by the hand and brought her back to which she knew would be frantic parents. Thank God for this lady.

Mable and Helen Shultz lived across the street from us, lots of mornings they would come over and ask to take Eileen home with them. They would give her a bath, wash her hair and dress her up with clothes they made for her.

Uncle Jay and Aunt Eva, Rosamond and Lucille came up from Florida and spent a week with us. Rosamond brought material left from making their summer dresses, she made five of the cutest dresses for Eileen. Mama got a yard of red and white checked gingham, made a sundress and panties to match. They made her look like a doll, with her curly hair and pretty ribbons. They sang and danced around with her.

Eileen’s favorite was her Papa Rose and she always looked forward to his coming to visit and taking her for a walk “around the circle”. This tall, thin man would join hands with the little girl and walk around the block.

Then when Eileen was four we moved to Whitneyville. This was a big event for her. Her first question was “Where are the sidewalks?” She had her little broom and the doll carriage ready to take her cat for a ride. She asked Mary Bryant if she could sweep the store porch, and that is what she did every morning that summer. She dressed her cat in doll clothes and wheeled her around the driveway, even up the banks. That cat would sit there and ride. One day the cat was missing and we found out Jess Bryant had shot her because he found her in his hen coop, and was afraid she would kill his hens. I never really forgave him, she was a small tiger cat.

Eileen talked at an early age and mostly quite clear. We kept chickens in a chicken coop by the barn and she liked to check for eggs. I had to teach her to call it the hen house as she called it the “shit an poop”.

Eileen was little and sweet looking but her Blossburg background showed up occasionally. I dressed her up and let her go down to spend the afternoon with Aunt Jen. When she walked down past MacDonalds, Blanche and Mickey were on the porch. Mickey called out to her, “Hello there, you look sweet enough to kiss”. She stopped and said “If you want to kiss me, you have to come over here”.

One day she went over to the store with some change to buy candy. The boys around town were gathered on the porch. Mickey took the money and said “Come on boys, lets go to town and spend this money”. He was surprised when Eileen jumped onto his back and said “Come on, I am ready”. She had learned this trick from Bob and Ralph Kohler, two teenage boys who lived next door in Blossburg and took her for horsey back rides.

One morning when I came up from the barn, I heard strange bird calls from up in the maple tree nearest the porch. I looked up and there perched on a limb, up in that tree, was Jay and Eileen. It scared me, but I walked on toward the house. I said to them, I am going to get breakfast, if you two birds want any, get yourselves down and into the breakfast table. By the time Arnold was in for breakfast they had managed to get down out of that tree.

I am glad I didn’t see them when they got through the hole in the barn roof and sat on top of the barn. Or the time they sat in the West window of the barn and spit on Wayne when he put the cows in the barn, for I wouldn’t have acted so cool.

Eileen and brother Jay got an idea of how they could make their spending money. We could only give them 25 cents a week. They sent for a box of salve and were busy for some time selling salve. They had the paper route and sold some magazines. Then Mama Rose suggested they make horseradish, grind it and mix with vinegar and sell in little glass jars. That kept them busy for awhile. They shed a lot of tears but they kept at it. Then they saw some pretty jewelry, made with leather and alphabet macaroni, gluing a safety pin to the back. They got orders from school and put the children’s name on the pin. They did that for some time.

I forgot to mention that when she was six she was vaccinated, she had a terrible time with it. It became one big infection on her arm and shoulder. We couldn’t change her green sundress for a week. Also when she had chicken pox she was a very sick girl, ran a high fever, one disease which we hadn’t considered serious. She was also very sick with strepe throat.

I remember one winter, she must have been six, Arnold was working on the road, shoveling snow. We all, but Arnold and Eileen, got sick, now we would call it some type of flu. We had a high fever, sick all over. We all lay on the day bed in the living room, all doors closed with the coal heater going. There was Wayne, Wanda, Jay, Edward and myself I would raise up once in a while. Arnold brought in coal, told Eileen how to work the stove, and left for work. She was our nurse and housekeeper. She carried water and medicine for days, we were a sick bunch. I wondered how she did it. I think God was with us, One winter, maybe 1935 our first winter here, Jay came home from school sick. He had the measles. For 2 weeks he and I slept in the downstairs bedroom. Then Arnold came downstairs one morning, said “You have 3 more cases of measles upstairs. He had to leave for work. I got Jay out of bed, made him a bed in the big rocking chair. Then went upstairs and brought a bed down and set it up in the bedroom and got Wanda into it and Wayne and Eileen in the other. I had 3 very sick children for a few days. Wayne was delirious, he tried to climb the headboard, he broke Eileen’s doll, he just wanted to climb out of there, but he soon got over it. Wanda remained very sick. I finally had to call Zelma Hamilton, who lived where Kyle lives now, over to help me care for her.

Eileen was very sick the summer she was 12. This was during the polio scare but at the time we didn’t feel that was what she had. She had a lot of leg cramps and Dr. Neal advised that she stay in bed and isolated from the neighborhood children. A couch was placed in the bay window for her so she could watch the outdoor activities. Later it was determined that she had indeed had a slight case of polio.

One summer day, her and a little friend, Donna Grinnell, decided to make themselves beautiful, so they went to Laura Hall’s bedroom at Mary Bryant’s house and used her makeup and lipstick. For this they had to be punished. (This is the only time I remember Mom spanking me, she took me out to the woodshed and used a stick on me. When she finished, she cried. That hurt me more than the spanking did. Eileen)

One day I heard her girl playmates screaming and running from her. They told me she had an angleworm and was going to put it down their necks. I thought, “Eileen with an angleworm, Oh no!” I knew she was empty handed – but they didn’t.

Arthur Miller chased her around the house, throwing tomatoes at her, but he didn’t think it was funny when she met him at the corner of the house and hit him smack in the face with a rotten one.

Bobby Robinson and her were playing by the little pond, opposite Robinson’s house, he pushed her in but she grabbed him and pulled him in too. She pulled him out and took him home, across the road. Ruth and Catherine were mad at her for getting Bobby wet. It was in April.

She took our tractor and cart and Bobby went with her to get a Christmas tree, for us and for Robinson’s and one for the Church. They got 3 beautiful trees. Quite a while later we learned they got them from posted State land around the reservoir.

A lot of kids played around our house. Someone told them there was ghosts in the Grange Hall. The kids kept telling me and Wanda about the ghosts, and we kept telling them there is no such thing as a ghost. It really upset Wanda for she certainly didn’t believe in ghosts. This one day she was cleaning house, turban tied around her head, when they came in with another story. She said “follow me and I’ll prove to you there is no ghost”. Down the road they went, her in the lead followed by a gang of kids. Bertha Raynack among them. Bertha ran to her house, where Wayne lives now, and told her mother, so Bertha’s Mother said “I’m going with you.” Wanda unlocked the door, and up the stairs followed by the gang, up to the middle of the big room, where there was a terrible groan and noises behind the stage curtain. I heard an awful noise at the house as all those screaming kids and one woman tore down those stairs and outside the hall. Just one left standing in the room, she walked up and parted the curtains and there stood Eileen. Wanda said “I knew it was you”. Eileen had left as they left from the house, but she slipped across the garden, around the corner of the Hall, in the back way, across the dining room, up the back stairs and onto the stage just in time.

Eileen was a regular attendant at Sunday School and church. When a teenager she taught a class of boys that 3 women teachers had given up on. She had good discipline. She was president of
M.Y.F. When Rev. Paul Miller was here he played piano by ear. If the kids wanted a certain song, they would hum or sing the tune and soon he would be able to play it. They did that one night here, hummed the Beer Barrel Polka, and after he played it, she told him the name of it.

She was a good student, she said about high school. “I wasn’t Valedictorian, but I had a darn good time”.

Eileen was my most active child from the time she was conceived. I guess you can believe that.