By Velma Rose Smith

It is good to look back and remember Happy Days. I remember waking up on a Sunday morning, listening to the rain falling outside. It was June 26, 1927. I said to Arnold, it is time for you to get up and call Dr. Neal and go get Aunt Jen. He jumped up and went to the telephone, came back, “the phone is dead”. “I’ll go get you Mother, call Dr Neal from there and go get Aunt Jen”. I had been telling, I wanted a dark haired, brown eyed baby boy. When Dr. Neal arrived, Mama had him come in, pulled down the covers and showed him a baby boy, all dressed, he was sure surprised. Then when Aunt Jen came bustling in, ready for work, she was more surprised. He was a beautiful baby, just what I ordered. We were living in Uncle Jay’s house on Rt. 6.

We moved from there the first of November to Montoursville. It was a cold house so I put the iron baby bed in the kitchen and used it as a baby pen, (before we had such a thing), so he really didn’t walk until we moved in August to the Burr Dewey farm and lived in the little house. (The Burr Dewey farm is now the Ronald West farm). Burr sold his herd, so Arnold got work at Niles Lumber Camp above Blossburg. J. Emerson became very ill, it was during a blizzard. Mama and Papa were both sick too. Dr. Neal couldn’t make it so I called Aunt Em. She said it sounded like pneumonia, told me just what to do. I followed directions. The next day when the Dr. came, he said it was pneumonia, the fever broke and he was over the worst. I prayed all night and God let me keep my baby boy.

March 1928 we moved, our house was what they call a Mill House at the Lumber Camp. I had suggested it would be nice to have a second story bedroom. They are constructed of green lumber. J. Emerson survived his first accident here. I had him in my arms, started down the stairs, my heel hit a knot and caught in the hole, throwing me down the stairs, he flew out of my arms landing on his back on the living room floor. He screamed and I screamed, and one of the lumbermen heard the commotion from the road, ran into the house and picked us both up. He couldn’t find us seriously hurt, so he hunted Arnold up and told him he’d better go home. I thank God for saving my baby.

June 1st, 1929 we moved to Blossburg, by George Bowers, to a neat yellow house. Arnold worked for a coal delivery.

Everyone thought J. Emerson would be jealous when Baby Eileen arrived, but when they brought him in to see her, he took her hand and she gripped his finger, he said “ain’t she nice”? It seems they formed a bond right then.

When he was 3 1/2 years old Wayne and Wanda were learning pieces to speak at church for the Christmas program and he wanted to learn one, so I taught him a 4 line verse, ” Our baby has never seen Christmas yet”. He wanted to walk to church with Wayne and Wanda, so I let him go. Vaughn’s and I walked down later. The program was ready to start when we got seated. I looked for J. Emerson to sit with us and I saw him with Wayne up front. The program started and the first number they called for, I heard “A recitation by J. Emerson Smith”. I about swallowed my tonsils, he wouldn’t know where to go, he wouldn’t know what to do, he is just a baby, why doesn’t Wayne go with him. That little guy walked up on the stage, said his piece loud enough for the whole church to hear and walked back down to his seat. The church resounded with clapping.

We got a tricycle for the children to ride, one tricycle, 3 kids. They argued over who would ride all the time. Wayne and Wanda went out to Papa’s for a week and Jay didn’t know what to do. I said “Why don’t you ride your bike?”. He said. “It is no fun, when there isn’t anyone else wanting to ride it at the same time”. He would stand at the window and look out for a long time and ask questions.
“Why do the robins have red breasts?’
“Why do the clouds sail across the sky?’
“How do cats get kittens?”
“Why do cats carry kittens by their necks?”

One day I was washing my long hair at the sink when there was a knock at the kitchen door beside me, I pulled my hair to one side and opened the door. There stood a strange man, said he was the new Methodist preacher, so I apologized for my looks, asked him in, and told J. Emerson to go in the living room with him and I would be in soon. I could hear them talking. Preacher said “That is a nice dog you have” and J. Emerson said “Yes he is, he can lick any dog in town”. Then the preacher said, “Whose boy are you?” and J. Emerson said, “I am Preston’s boy”. “And who is he?” and J. Emerson said, “He is the man who has the barn next door by the house”. I sure dried my hair in a hurry. It was Preston’s barn next door and he thought J. was so cute and made a lot of him and gave him presents and told him he was his boy. He asked to adopt him.

One day the neighbor down the street came up with J. Emerson by the hand and a flag sick in the other. She said he and a neighbor boy were playing around the big trunk of the tree in her yard, poking each other with the pointed stick. She said it was funny to watch but she was afraid they would poke each others eyes out.

Papa gave J. Emerson a little leather purse with 35 cents in it for his 5th birthday. 35 cents: 10 cents to go to a movie, 5 cents candy bar, 10 cents for a pair of socks. This was depression time, remember. He took it with him to go to Island Park. Esther and her kids were there too. He lost the purse, we hunted all afternoon for it, but didn’t find it.

When Eileen was 2 weeks old, Wayne and Wanda came down with the mumps. A week later J. Emerson came down the stairs, hands holding his neck, says “Daddy, I think I got the bumps”. He sure had them, he had no neck. Wayne had the chicken pox and then the whooping cough and the others had them. Then the town of Blossburg got scarlet fever. Arnold had it before but the five of us got it. We couldn’t get a doctor or anyone to come and so Arnold and Wayne, who recovered quickly, took care of us. We all recovered but it left J. Emerson deaf. I mean deaf in the ears. His ears ached all the time and he was really deaf. We took him to Dr. White in Wellsboro all winter, every week. He did all he could for them. Jay couldn’t even hear the fire whistle across the street. When he started school, I explained it to the teacher. She put him in the front seat. She was good to him, spoke directly to him and he read her lips.

June 15th, 1934 we moved from Blossburg to a farm in Whitneyville. It was a big change for all of us. Jay helped me transplant a big bed of iris. He weeded the garden, and picked berries. He drove the ford tractor, dragging, when he was 8 years old, he went to sleep and drove out in the meadow. I sent Eileen out to wake him up.

When he started school in Charleston, I explained his deafness to the teachers, but some of them didn’t listen. Eunice (Kane) said she could spank him and when they marched out at night, he would smile at her and say “Goodnight Miss Mclnroy”. He was full of fun and like to irritate the teachers. He often took a marble or some little thing and traded it off, kept trading and came home with a good jack knife.

Wayne soon had a paper route and Wanda sold magazines, so Jay and Eileen sold salve. They ground horse radish and sold it in jars. They got leather, cut it in pieces and took alphabet macaroni and put names on the leather, a small safety pin on the back. Made nice pins and sold a lot of them at school. Later J had the paper route.
Jay was only 10 years old when Jeannette was born. He and I had set out a small bed of strawberries in the fall. One morning for my breakfast, Jay picked the first ripe strawberries, washed them and cut them up and fixed me a sauce dish and brought them in to me. I love strawberries and they were the best I ever had.

I forgot to mention that when he started school out here, he gave his name as Jay and dropped Emerson and we soon did too.

When he wanted a bicycle, he raised a field of potatoes, sold them, bought a calf and raised a nice heifer. Sold it and bought the best bike the Sears store carried. Later he sold his bike to Eileen and with other money he saved, he bought his first motorcycle. The bicycle and later his motorcycle spent their winters in our dining room.

He raised another calf and had his own Holstein cow. One summer morning when he went after the cows he found her dead. She had eaten fresh clover, drank a lot of water, bloated up and died. He had a big yellow cat that was his pet. He got a pup, named him Major, that followed him everywhere he went. He found the cat dead laying on a bale of hay in front of the cows. The pup got run over on the road. Arnold was working away so I called Joe Robinson Sr. He came up with his car, went with Jay to get the body and helped him bury his dog. I went down to the barn to see why he hadn’t come in for supper. He was sitting on a bale, looking very forlorn. He said “I just can’t love

A family moved into the brick house and they had a son the age of Jay. At last he had someone his age, this summer they were 14. He had always had to trail behind Wayne. These two boys became inseparable. Both had to work hard on the farm day times but they had their evenings together. They found a baby crow and raised it. They built a box on the side of our toilet and kept it there. It became a real pet and they spent hours training it to do tricks.

One night when it was dusk I went out to tell Harry his folks called and wanted him to come home and help his father saw some wood for firewood. So they put their crow back in his box and told him they would be back tomorrow, and they were going to split his tongue so he could talk like a parrot. They called to each other “Goodnight, see you tomorrow”. Jay went to bed. Later, that night, I got a call from Mary Bryant, she said that Harry was dead. He had helped his father cut wood, but when they went into the house, he said he was too tired to eat supper and laid down on the couch. When his folks told him later to come to bed, they found him unconscious. They called Mary to come up and she called the Doctor. It was a sugar coma and too late to save him. No one knew he had sugar.

I woke Jay up, I knew he would want to be alone to grieve. Of course, he felt terrible. The next morning I watched as he went out to feed the crow. He opened the door, took it out, cut the string from it’s leg, talked to it for awhile, then put it on the clothes line and watched it fly away. Soon after this he said to me “I can’t love anything or anybody, for if I do it will die”.

The next summer he got a real big hurt. We had 3 colts. We told Jay he could have one of them for a riding horse. So he was learning to ride and taking care of her. We had one expense after another, just about everything went wrong. We sold our colts and all the cows we could, and there was the taxes yet to pay. Jay understood, and he knew we felt troubled also, but we had to sell his colt. I still have a vivid picture in my mind, of him standing in the driveway, after saying goodbye to his horse, and watching as the truck went out of sight by Benedicts, with tears running down his face. None of us said a word. I cried and I am sure Arnold did too.

The next year as he was trimming the pear tree, the phone rang and I was told the barn by the brick house was on fire. I told Jay and he ran up, as Oscar Gile and Sam Kroll and others did. The cows and horses were in the barn. They went in, all came out but Oscar and Jay. They unstantioned the cows and drove them out with burning timbers falling through. All were watching and were really scared. What a relief when the two came stumbling out, made it to the fence, where others came to their aid.

He was captain of the basketball team. He sang in a Boys Quartet. He had Carl Ingerick make him ski’s and went skiing. He and Eileen roller skated to school. He had his happy times too.

He saved his money and bought me silverware from the store, went to Claude Carpenter’s sale and bought me plates bread tins, etc. instead of buying for himself. He regained enough of his hearing to get along.

At High School Jay was in the office for some mischief misdemeanor. Money had been stolen from the sports fund, the teachers were searching every boys’ pockets. They came in to search Jay’s. Professor Charles Berilla said to stop. He said “Jay does annoying things but he doesn’t lie or steal.”

Another disappointment – from a small boy he had always said he was going to join the Merchant Marines. So his senior year, he applied. He and another boy went for their examinations. He passed the tests but failed the physical. He had false teeth! He had his upper plate when he was 14. He surprised the nurse when she came to clean his teeth, after she cleaned them, he took out his plate and asked her if that wouldn’t have been easier. A couple of years later he got his lower plate. He did go in the army.