Transcript: Oral History Interview with Selina "Lee" Sworsky

Conducted by Linda Cameron on September 10, 2008 in Fridley, Minnesota

LS   = Lee Sworsky
ES   = Edmond Sworsky
LC  = Linda Cameron

LC:  Lee, would you please state your full name and spell it for us?

LS:  Selina Sworsky – S-W-O-R-S-K-Y

LC:  And you got the nickname Lee from Selina.

LS:  Yes, from Selina.

LC:  What is your maiden name?

LS:  Eccles – E-C-C-L-E-S

LC:  When and where were you born?

LS:  I was born in Bradford on 24-March-1922.

LC:  And Bradford is in Yorkshire?

LS:  Bradford is in Yorkshire.

LC:  In England.

LS:  In England, yes.

LC:  What were your parents’ names?

LS:  It was Edith Violeta, my mother; Edith Violeta Holland, her maiden name.  My Dad’s was Percy Eccles.

LC:  And where did you go to school?

LS:  All Saints Protestant School.

LC:  Did you go on to college?

LS:  No.  I was workin’ at – I wa’n’t even 14 when I was workin’ in the mill.

LC:  Oh, in the mill; in the woolen mill?

LS:  In the woolen mill.  We made wool and Yorkshire is noted for that.  And  [there were] woolen and the cotton mills, but I was in the woolen mill.

LC:  From the age of 14 on.

LS:  Oh, yeah.  And my mother got my money.

LC:  And where did your father work?

LS:  My Dad worked in the mill.  He was an overlooker [foreman].  My mother, when she worked, she worked in the mill. 

LC:  What did she do?

LS:  You know, I think she was in the spinnin’.  There were different kinds of work, see.  The combin’, where I was…I was in the combin’ and that was…oh, all the wool was beaten in this machine and it went round and round, and then it smoothed it.  Oh, it was noisy.  It was noisy all time!

LC:  Was the mill far from your home? 

LS:  Well, I used to take the streetcar.  I would go all the way up Manchester Road and then when you got to where I went it was Shelf.  They called it Shelf, that part of town.  You want to go up this hill – it was quite a hill – and we used to run up the hill.  We were always late.  And you’d go up there, and go in there, and that was a big mill.

LC:  And what did you do there as a girl?

LS:  As a girl, I was – well, at the beginnin’, I was goin’ errands.  You know makin’ the tea.  They wanted it for breakfast, and what they wanted for lunch, and we had to run and that.  But after that they taught you to be on the machine.  That was kinda…

LC:  That would be weaving?

LS:  We weren’t in the weavin’, we were more in the combin’.  Getting’ the wool ready, you know, and that was all.  They are big machines.  I wish I could remember all of hem.  They had the spinnin’ one, and that went into big bobbins, you know.  And then that went into another one.  It was quite a thing.  And it was Palmer and Lunds[?] and that were one of the biggest mills.  I think they called it Lady Bowma.[?]  My mother.

LC:  Did you have siblings growing up?

LS:  Oh, I had two sisters. 

LC:  Did they work in the mill?

LS:  They both worked in the mill.  My sister, Annie – she were five years older than me – and my sister, May, was two years older.  I was the youngest.

LC:  And did you have extended family in the town?

LS:  Oh, every weekend we went to the gardens and took flowers to Grandma’s grave.  And then we’d go see Auntie – Auntie Lil and Auntie Carrie.  And my Dad would take us.  And then in the afternoon, the kids used to go to the cemetery and share the flowers ‘round.  [Laughter]  We used to take jam jars and, let me see, “Oh there’s no flowers – we’ll put some in.”  So there were always some funeral so that we had more flowers.   We’re puttin’ in perfume flowers ‘cuz we felt  -  I said, “They’ll throw us in jail here maybe!”   Yeah, that were one big thing we did, share the flowers.

LC:  So working the mill from the age of 14, then, did you not go on to school after 14?

LS:  Never went on to school.  And this is funny, my mother came over, you know, and my boys were in college – well, it was summer so they were working in the slaughter house.  They got scholarships at the university, but in summer they worked in the slaughter…  But when my mother came she said, “Well, what do you mean they’re goin’ back to school?”  I said, “Because they’re on scholarship, Mum.”  “Well, they’re not goin’ to be any good to you!  What you gonna do?”  I said, “I didn’t have them to be good to me.  I’m good to them.”  But see that’s how it was where we grew up.  They wai’d for the children to grow and then they could bring the money home.  Cuz it was a poor part of England.  Yeah.  But we always went on vacation for a week.

LC:  Where did you go?

LS:  Blackpool!

LC:  Oh, did you?

LS:  Yeah, we always went to Blackpool.  And I always remember when I was younger my mother used to have a table and she had a cupboard and then so she cooked our food.  Then, as we got better – as it got different, then they brought our food to us.  So it was kinda nice.  And then at mornin’ my Dad used to take us at coffee at mornin’ down on the sands.  And you know the ocean used to go way out.  When I came here, the first time I went to Florida, it was hot.  You could hardly walk on the sand!  And I’m waitin’ for the ocean to go out and it never went out.

LC:  We don’t have the tides that you do?

LS:  No!  And we were at – where we were in Florida it didn’t go out.  Yeah, and it was just still there, you know, and I’m thinkin’, “When’s it gonna go out?”  But in England, 50 mile anywhere round, you can get to the ocean. 

LC:  What was your favorite memory of those vacations?

LS:  Oh, let me see.  You want my favorite one, it was a funny one… Mother knit us a swimsuit, and we went in the water and it was a real heavy wool, and we couldn’t come out of the water because…  And we had to pull the thing…[Laughter]

LC:  I don’t suppose you have a picture of yourself in that suit…?

LS:  I wish I had!  I wish I had!  I tell you that was so funny!  Mother made it out of the wrong yarn.  And we got in there and come out, and oh, dear!  And what else did we do?  We used to go on the sands.  My Mother and Dad used to go out at night and we’d stay.   I always remember it were Yorkshire Street and I had the number of it too.  I had a picture of that.  We stayed there and then Mum and Dad used to go out.  But my sister, she was older than us see, so she went dancin’ a lot.  But there was always a lot of dancin’ in England.  You could go to lunch dances, supper dancin’, there were always somebody at the dance. 

LC:  Now back track a little bit.  What year were you born?

LS:  24th of March, 1922.

LC:  When were your siblings born then and what were there names?

LS:  May were born two years before me – she’s the same age as Ed – she’s 88 now.  And my sister, Annie, well, she were five years older than me so that would be…  She died…she got cancer when she were forty in the breast.  And they took the whole breast off.  Oh, it was an awful thing what they did.  She never let anybody see it cuz she was so ashamed.  And then see they didn’t get it all so it went from one place to another.  And she died at 60.

LC:  Oh, that’s a shame. 

LS:  But then they didn’t know as much, you know? 

LC:  Still a twenty-year span – that was pretty good in those days.

LS:  And then, her daughter got cancer.  She died.  And just two years ago her granddaughter died.  So it must have been in my sister’s genes.  None of us had it.

LC:  Oh, that’s so sad.

LS:  Yeah.  Oh and she was such a lovely girl.  I think she was about thirty-some – early. 

LC:  So your husband’s name is Edmond Sworsky.

LS:  Edmond A.

LC:  Edmond A.

LS:  Edmond Aloysius. 

LC:  And where is Ed from originally?

LS:  Oh, he’s from Minneapolis.  Northeast.

LC:  Now I want to talk a little bit about the war in Europe.  As Europe was building up to war were you aware of what was going on?

LS:  You know they used to always talk about this, saying they were going to come and bomb us.   And then, you see, they were buildin’ the air raid shelters. 

LC:  Now when was that?  How far in advance of the war was that?

LS:  Oh that was – must have been a year or more.  And they were scared.  And then they started bringin’ the gas masks. 

LC:  Now was this before Hitler marched into Poland?

LS:  I don’t know.  I can’t remember that.  But I know he was takin’ all the countries.  They were really worried.  Then they got the barrage balloons, see, after and we had them all around England.  That were the small ones.  I was on those.

LC:  We’ll talk about those in just a minute.  So what was England like at that time?

LS:  What was it like…well, you know, they ‘re so easy going we really didn’t you…like the neighbors they had a big bucket and they fill it with beer and everybody’d dance on the weekend.  Our weekends was always…it was a weekend!

LC:  A celebration?

LS:  A celebration, yes!  I was so surprised when I came here and they didn’t do that.  Then the kids always used to dance with their parents and that.  So it was – everybody were friendly.  We never had any Negroes.  We never saw any Negroes until after the war.  Isn’t that funny?  And we had these Indians come around selling silk clothes, silk scarves and that.  That were the closest we ever got to…

LC:  …minorities. Isn’t that interesting?  How did you feel about the war?  When you first hear that Hitler invaded Poland, do you remember what you were thinking?  Were you scared?  Angry?

LS:  I was scared.  And then the Salvation Army used to come around a lot, you know, and they’d all sing.  And my Dad – oh, he was all for the Salvation Army.  And they’d sing, “Are you ready?”  And my Dad would say, “I’m always ready for ya’.  I’m ready.”  My sister and I’d say, “Naw!  We’re not goin’!  We’re not ready!” 

LC:  Ready for what?

LS:  You wanna die?  You can’t die, ya know!  Oh, it were funny!

LC:  Ready for salvation!

LS:  For salvation, yeah!  My mother sent us to all the – like the Sunday School.  And we went to Vandervort and Glory[?] ‘cuz my mother worked in the club, and she worked behind the bar.  So she knew where we were when we were at the churches.  So we went to Vandervort and Glory.  We signed the pledge that we wouldn’t drink.  We had to sign that.  And then we went to another…  Oh, she always had us at the churches.  But my Mum and Dad never went to church.

LC:  What kind of church was it?  Church of England?

LS:  Church of England, we belonged to.  But then we went to all the other churches, too. 

LC:  You made the rounds.

LS:  One night she’d have us at this church, and the next night she’d have us at the other.

LC:  So it was sort of daycare, or evening care.

LS:  Yeah.  And she knew where we were!  But the, at the end, of the year we’d always get a – not a bible, it was a book about Jesus.  So we got a lot of books cuz we always were there.  Salvation Army, we were there too. 

LC:  Now, how did your family and friends feel about the war starting in England?

LS:  Oh, the older people, like my Mum and Dad, they were real worried.  Cuz we didn’t have anything.  We had nothing to fight with. 

LC:  And Bradford, as an industrial center, was probably a target.

LS:  We were the first one targeted.  Yeah.  I forgot what they called him.  He used to come on the radio and say what was bombed.  He were from Bradford, too. I have forgot his name.  And they bombed – oh, I remember that cuz we were going somewhere, and I think we were goin’ to a show, or something, but it was Saturday night and the mills weren’t open – they were all closed.  And a lot of the places in town were closed.  But they came and bombed.  We had to go into this field and stay at the bottom of the field.  My Dad said, “Stay there.”  Cuz they didn’t want us to get killed. 

LC:  To get away from the mills.

LS:  Yeah, get away from the bombs.  But, you know, when we used to go in the air raid shelters the Salvation Army was always there.  They was always making tea, and they were always on the tambourine, and they were singing.  We thought nothin’ about the people comin’ in and bringin’ the dogs.  They brought the babies; they brought the dogs; we had everybody in there.  And everybody were happy.  There were nobody – they were scared, but they didn’t never really showed it.

LC:  But there was a real community spirit. 

LS:  A very community, yes! 

LC:  Was your house ever in jeopardy from the bombings?

LS:  No.  The Coventry got it and it did bomb somewhere around, but our house wasn’t, no.  But we always rented.  Everybody I knew rented.  Nobody owned a house.  Not that we knew of, you know.

LC:  Did you have any relatives who were in the service during the war, besides yourself?

LS:  Oh, yes!  I was, and my cousin, Billy Lupton was in, and Billy Holland, he was in.  Cuz we’d come home on leave and see – I have a plaque in there – my Aunt Lil, she used to always stand at the door and wave to us, and she’d cry, you know, when we were leavin’.  So she brought me this plaque and she said, “Now, put this on the wall and that’s me watchin’ ya!”  And I’ve still got it in there.

LC:  That’s lovely.  I’d like to see that later.

LS:  Yeah, it’s there, my Aunt Lil gave me that.

LC:  When did you enlist in the service for the military?

LS:  Oh, let me see.  What were I doin’?  I was in the mill and we were all talkin’.  And then I met this other girl and she said she was gonna go down and join up.  And I thought, Gee, that would be…you know.  And I were thinkin’ about – they had these jumper pants, you know, and green sweaters and only the rich people wore that.  But it were for the Land Army.  Well, I’d never been on a farm.  Oh, I really could see myself in that!  And when I got there, I couldn’t get in.  They put me in the Air Force.  That was a good thing cuz I wasn’t a Land Army girl.

LC:  So you were looking at being a “Land Girl”?

LS:  Yes, a Land Army girl.

LC:  And that’s what your friend was going to enlist in?

LS:  Yes, she was going to go in there.  Well, she didn’t get in, either. 

LC:  Where did she end up?

LS:  She ended up in the Air Force with me.

LC:  This was the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

LS:  Yeah, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

LC:  So your friend influenced you to join up.  How’d your family feel about that decision?

LS:  Oh, my mother said you won’t pass cuz you’re not well.  My mother always said I was sick – I was anemic, and I was this, and I was that.  Yeah.  Well, then when I came back and I was A1 – oh, she was upset!  She was mad!  She said, “They know better than that, Lee!”  But, I tell ya, I was healthy!  But my mother always had me sick.  She were always tellin’ me I was sick too.  I was the youngest one. 

LC:  How old were you then?

LS:  How old was I?  I’m tryin’ to think…  I was 19, yes.

LC:  Did any of your sisters enlist?

LS:  Nope. Nope.  My sister, May, she had to go make munitions.  So that’s why – you either had to go away and make … and some of the girls would come back and their skin was all yellow.  They were underground.  So when you were young you’d think oh no I don’t want to be like that!

LC:  So the defense plants were underground?

LS:  I don’t know where they were.  I don’t know where they were.  They were away from home.  But some of the girls, I don’t know where they were workin’, if it were the mill that they were workin’ in, and it could have been the material they were using, but their skin was getin’ all kinda yellow and that. 

LC:  Did your sister leave home, then, and live somewhere else during that time?

LS:  No, she traveled.  I think they had a bus.  The bus used to take them and bring them home. 

LC:  Oh, I see.  So she could stay at home. 

LS:  Yeah.

LC:  Where were you stationed during the war?

LS:  Oh my goodness, let me see…  When I first went I was at Morecambe.  And that’s where we had to do our drillin’.  But I’ll have to tell you what they did when we first went.  You see, they never told us anything.  They never told us what were gonna happen when we went in there.  My mother was so sure, and she told me, “You won’t pass.” So I thought, “Well, I won’t pass,” but I did.  So then when I had to go – we had to go to the [bus tuckers?] and we had to go to this – oh, it was a big, big hall – and we had to go in here, and we didn’t know he were a doctor, but he came, and we had to take our tops off.  Well, you know, when you’re young, and you’re all together and takin’ tops off, this is kind of upsettin’ anyway.  And then he came around, and you had to open your hands like this [gestures], and then he had a stick and he’d lift your breasts up and look underneath.  Oh, everybody was upset and we didn’t know what it was!  And we didn’t know what he was looking at! [Doorbell rings. Interview session ends.]

[Interview resumed, 8-Oct-2008]

LC:  Lee, where we left off last time we were talking about you enlisting in the service in England.  If you could tell us a little bit about what you went through when you first enlisted.

LS:  Well, they took us to this camp and then we had to go to this – well, it was kinda like a hospital – but we didn’t know we were going to do this.  We didn’t know anything.  Then we have to go through this doctor.  We have to take all our top off – take our top off.  This was hard because nobody knew each other.  Anya were my girlfriend, but nobody else.  So we were there and this doctor came and he wanted us to stand and put our fingers out.  But then he had a stick and so he lifted our breasts up and looked under there.  But you know they should have told us they were looking for scurvies or something…  We didn’t know what they were lookin’ for.

LC:  They didn’t explain it to you at all.

LS:  Didn’t explain, and I was so small I don’t think he could’ve lifted them up!  They were quite a few of them like that, you know.  It was kinda scarey and embarrassin’.  So we got through that, anyway, and then we went back to the barracks.  Then the officer came in and she was talkin’ to us about what we’d do – how we’d have one day for stayin’ home and gettin’ everything together, but then we have to go for the boot trainin’.  So we went to Morecambe by the ocean.   That’s where we did our boot trainin’, you know, where you have to march and everything.  When we went in the cookhouse – oh, they had tea in big buckets!  We were all sayin’, “Can we have a cup?” 

LC:  Doesn’t seem very genteel, does it?

LS:  No!  Big buckets!  And the smell was real strong.  So there was a lot of us we couldn’t eat.  It was just awful.  If you didn’t eat and you didn’t feel good you could go to the doctor’s.  So I went to the doctor’s, and I’d only menstruated a couple of times.  I wasn’t regular, you know.  So the doctor started talkin’ to me and said, “Have you been a naughty girl?”  “No.”  I couldn’t think if I’d been anything – I haven’t been naughty, or anything.  You know, it took me a long time before I found out it was – was I pregnant. 

LC:  He didn’t ask you that.

LS:  Oh, no!  Just – “Was you a naughty girl?”  And I was sayin’ – “Naughty girl?  No, I haven’t been a naughty girl.”  [Laughter]  So then we were at Morecambe and my mother came down and she’d buy me some fruit.  I’d buy an apple or something to keep me going.  But then I got over it.  Then we got through with the boot camp, then we were sent to – all over the island we had all these…kinda like balloons –

LC:  Oh, yes, barrage balloons?

LS: …barrage balloons.  That’s what we were on, so we had to have training for that, and then we were sent out to a different part of England. 

LC:  Where did you go?

LS:  I was at Lancashire.  But, you know, in England the ocean’s not that far away.  In fact we used to go to dances.  We’d go to dances at Blackpool, and then come back the same night.  You could go on the train.  So that’s what we did there, and that was kind of interesting, because when the German’s came you had to let the barrage balloons out.  Just to keep the Germans up.

LC:  Talk about the barrage balloons.  What exactly did you do?

LS:  We had to keep it in good shape.  And they’d tell us what to do – you know, we’d have to keep it full.

LC:  How big were they?

LS:  Oh, they was about as big as this table.

LC:  So about five feet in diameter?

LS:  Yeah.  Then every time the sirens went you had to let that out.  There was so many did that, and then next time there was so many did the other.  Like you had to empty – we had big buckets that we went to the toilet in, so then at a certain time you had to empty all them at night, and then maybe the next time you’d be on the barrage balloon. 

LC:  You rotated your responsibilities.

LS:  We rotated.  Yeah.

LC:  Where were the barrage balloons stored?

LS:  Right on the site where we were. 

LC:  In a building?

LS:  No.  Right on the ground, right in the back.

LC:  So maintenance was basically keeping them….

LS:  Keeping them good.

LC:  …clean, and full of air?

LS:   Yeah.  And then as soon as [the sirens sounded] you’d have to get it up.

LC:  How were they anchored?

LS:  Oh, they were just – they were anchored – I’m trying to think.  There were kinda long things and then they hooked on.  It was kind of a piece, and so it was enough anchor in there to keep them down. 

LC:  It held them down.  And you had some kind of a release that you just let them go?

LS:  We let them go slow and then go up.

LC:  And then did you have to pull them back in after…?

LS:  We had kind of like an engine.

LC:  A winch?

LS:  We had an engine, we pull it down.  But at the end we have to pull them down and tie them.   But that’s when you worked your muscles, you know, so I was – oh golly!

LC:  How many of you were on the balloons?

LS:  There was ten of us.

LC:  Ten of you.  How many balloons was your group responsible for, do you know?

LS:  Just the one.  But they weren’t there all the time.  They had so many hours on otherwise we’d have been all the time. 

LC:  The purpose of the balloons was to keep the German bombers from flying low?

LS:  From flyin’ low, yes.  We’d have to keep them up so they couldn’t come down and bomb us. 

LC:  I suppose every air base and every major location around England had those. 

LS:  Oh yes!

LC:  What other kinds of responsibilities did you have in the WAAF? 

LS:  What were the responsibilities...?  You have to keep your uniform good.  We had like a Quonset hut, and we lived in there, and you had to keep that up.  And then once, like maybe on a Thursday or a Wednesday, that were the night you didn’t go out.  That’s when you cleaned and you all got together.  And then she’d tell ya; then the officer would come and say, “Well, there is so many girls pregnant.”  Oh, dear..!

LC:  Oh no! Really?

LS:  Yes.  She’d feel real bad - she were a real nice officer – and then she’d say that they were pregnant, and everbody’d say, “Oh, dear!”

LC:  Please tell me they weren’t American G.I.s!

LS:  No.  Well, one was, and she was such a nice girl.  And she was going with this American, in fact, he gave her a ring.  She got pregnant, and she went home, and her mother was real upset.  And when she came back, he had left.  He had left.  He’d signed up and went to a different part of the country.  She was real nice – Jean, they called her, Jean Jenson.  And I often wondered what happened to her because she was nice.

LC:  Now, how long were you in the service?

LS:  Three years.

LC:  Three years!  Were you able to go home?

LS:  Oh, yes!  I could go home on a weekend.  Not every weekend.  Only certain times you could go.  You kinda hitchhiked, or else you got the train, if you had enough money.

LC:  What rank did you achieve when you were in the service?

LS:  Just a private.  After that, we were winnin’ the war, so the barrage balloons came down.  So then we have to go to school.  We were with the Navy, with all the…and we had to do something on the planes.  Refuel…nothing real bad, you know, but we had to be on the plane. 

LC:  Still making a contribution.

LS:  Yes.

LC:  When and where were you discharged from the service, Lee?

LS:  You know, I was trying to think of that.  I wonder if it’s in ma’ book.  I’ll look in my book.  Hey, Dad, where’s my Air Force book, when I was discharged? 

ES:  That’s a good question!

LS:  You had it, remember?  I’ll find it cuz we had it.

LC:  OK; I’ll keep that one as a question for later.  In what ways did the war change your habits, or your way of living?  Did it have a lasting impact?

LS:  Oh, I think so.  You meet so many people.  Like we had one officer and she was really a nice gal and she’d say, “Don’t go with them, girls!”  She were tryin’ to sort the girls out, cuz some knew more that the other girls.  Some had been “around” more than the others.  She’d always call, “Don’t go with Lil Breely.”  And Lil were my best friend.  She were from Nottingham, and she were younger than me.  And she came over here – she were in Michigan.  We used to get together about three times a year.

LC:  So you kept in touch.  Did you make other good friends during the war?

LS:  Oh, yes, yes.  I’m sad about one – that were Dot Cooper.  When I was in Florida I was always gonna go to Birmingham, Alabama.  In fact, I’ve got a picture of her husband and her little boy in my wallet.  I was always gonna stop there and see them, and I never did.  And here I got my magazine one month, and Dot, she’d died.  Oh, and I felt real bad.  I had the chance to go!  When you’re movin’ from one place to another when you’re in Florida – well, you’ve got all your packin’ and you just go!  But I should’ve stopped.  But, what ya gonna do?

LC:  Now were you affected by wartime shortages when you were in the service over there?

LS:  No.  In fact, when you’re goin’ with Americans, a lot of them worked in the cookhouse!  [Laughter]  No, it didn’t bother me much.  I don’t think I ate that much. 

LC:  Was there something in particular, though, that you remember having to go without that you really missed?

LS:  Yeah, you couldn’t get nylons – oh, no, you couldn’t get those.  And you couldn’t get high heels.  But you couldn’t wear them – you had the uniform.

LC:  Sensible shoes.

LS:  But the uniforms, if you kept them nice, they were nice ones, you know.  Then we had the pants and jacket – the Eisenhower – we all had Eisenhower outfits.  Then you had your outfit to go out on the weekend or on Sunday.

LC:  What did you wear when you went out?

LS:  I wore my uniform.

LC:  Did you?

LS:  Oh, yes.  And my husband said, “You know I didn’t want to tell you,” he said, “but I could see you comin’ around the corner,” because I had brass buttons.  I had a forty-two [inch] bust.  You see, that was from all the climbin’ and pullin’ and everything.

LC:  You had a lot of exercise.

LS:  We had a lot of exercise!  We used to have exercise every mornin’ too! 

LC:  Now you already talked a little bit about going dancing in Blackpool.  Tell me more about your social activities while you were in the service.

LS:  Well, I went to Blackpool – that’s before I were in the service.  Cuz there were dancin’ – in England, there were dancin’ at mornin’, dancin’ – somebody always had a dance goin’.  And you’d dance with the girls, you, and that’s how you learnt to dance.  But when I came here, they wouldn’t let you do that. [Laughter]  I know!

LC:  We did it in high school!  [Laughter]

LS:  Yeah!  We went to the restaurant downtown – oh, you’d know it, was a well-known restaurant – so all the English girls – I met so many English girls – and we went down there one Monday, and we went to the [unclear] for dinner.  So then there were a band and we got up, and manager came and told us we had to sit down.  “But we have,” he said, “We have gentlemen here,” and they were in for something, and they would like to dance with us.  Well, we were all young, you know, but we weren’t going to dance with – we hadn’t been married that long, so we wouldn’t dance with them.  But no, they made us sit down.  In England you’re so used to that, you know, cuz everybody does.

LC:  In the service though, if you had time off or an evening free, what did you girls do for entertainment?

LS:  Oh, we’d go to the village.  When we were at Morecambe, when we first went in and we have to do so many hours of marchin’, then were a lot to see there.  Because that were like a – more to do, more like Blackpool. 

LC:  So it was a market town, or…?

LS:  Oh, yes, it was nice.  It was good.  We were in Wales – I remember bein’ in Wales, and we went down to the market and everybody was speakin’ Welsh.  They wouldn’t speak English, I don’t know why. 

LC:  And you couldn’t understand them?

LS:  You couldn’t understand them!  I’ve got friends from Wales and they speak English.  But they were all speaking Welsh.

LC:  Now when were you in Wales?  Were you stationed there?

LS:  Oh, I was stationed – yes – stationed in Wales; I was stationed in Scotland. 

LC:  Really?  Where in Scotland?

LS:  Well, oh, let me see…I can see it, but I can’t…I weren’t there long.  But, oh, you have to be strong to live in Scotland. [Laughter]  It can snow in summer, I tell ya!

LC:  That’s why my family came here, I think.

LS:  In fact, I took Ed there.  He wanted to go to Scotland and I said, “Oh, you don’t want to go there!  Go South!”  “No, we’ll go to Scotland.”  And we were in this village and this gal come up and propositioned him!  He remembers that!  Yes, she did!  And it was a beautiful village, and my brother-in-law were with us, and my sister, and my brother-in-law said to Ed, “Did you understand her?”  She told him to get rid of me. 

LC:  A pretty thick accent, then.  Now, did you travel – aside from being stationed in different places did you travel much during the war?

LS:  No, just to go back home or if I went home with one of the girls.  You’d take your friend home, or else you’d go to Doncaster… I went to Doncaster a few times, and I went with Lil to Nottingham.  That’s where Robin Hood lived.  She lived there.

LC:  I think it’s time you tell us the story of how you met Ed.

LS:  How I met Ed, oh dear.  Well, it was my birthday.  There were four of us and we went up to the village.  We were going to have a shandy – that’s 7Up and beer – and so we were there, and here comes these two Americans.  They came in and they started talkin’ to us.  Ed kept sayin’ to me, “Hey, Blondie, you want to go to a dance?”  I said, “No, I’ve got my bicycle.”  “We’ll push your bicycle!”  I said, “We’ve all got bicycles!”  “Well, we’ll push the bicycles!”  So we went to the dance.  Ed couldn’t dance!  That’s what he told me!  So I were dancin’ with everybody.  And then we went back and they pushed our bikes home for us.  And then he came lookin’ for me again.  He came to the camp.  So he was talking to me and I said, “What do you do?”  He said, “Oh, we just go back to the village and have a drink.”  I said, “Well, that’s all you do?”  There’s nothin’ for them to do, see, when they were out from the hospital. 

LC:  Now, where was this?

LS:  This was – oh, dear, now I’ve got that written down because I’ve been back so many times.  Upper Haven – I’ve got it down. 

LC:  Upper Haven?

LS:  Upper Haven.  [Calling] Ed?  He’s deaf.  No, he’s in the back somewhere.  He’ll remember.  I’ve got it written it down, and I’ve got pictures of it, too. We have pictures of that place, cuz they had a dance – that’s where we went to the dance, there.  We’ve been back since.  When we went back to England, we’ve been there.  Anyway, he asked me to go to the dance, and I went to the dance, and then he came lookin’ for me.  I used to say to my mother, “There’s so many boys, and they’ve nowhere to go!  And they stay in the village and then they drink.”  She said, “If you meet a nice quiet one,” cuz, you know, it was awful of the papers but they never put the good things in.  Always the bad things, so everybody was scared of Americans.  In some of this writin’, and I’d say, “No.”  They never seen an American in my town, cuz I were in Yorkshire, you know, up there.  So my mother said, “If you meet a quiet one you can bring him home.”  So that’s how come I took him home. 

LC:  Ed was quiet?  [Laughter]

LS:  I thought he was!  When I came once in to look for him, I said, “Say, is the Ranger there?”  He says, “Oh,” he says, “if you’re lookin’ for him, he’s had stitches.”  I said, “He’s been what?”  He said, “He’s been in a fight.”  I said, “Naw, naw, he wouldn’t.”  Yeah, he’d been in a fight. 

LC:  Oh, dear…!  So what did your parents think of him when they met him?

LS:  Well, oh this is funny.  We got home – we got to Leeds and then we have to get to Bradford.  So we were waitin’ for the train to get us in.  So we didn’t get home till about, oh, about 3:30 in the mornin’.  So I couldn’t wake my dad up; I woke my mother up.  So Mother gets up and she comes down and she’s makin’ sure that Ed and I aren’t goin’ in that bed, and she puts Ed in bed with my dad.  He’d never seen my dad!  Never seen my dad!  My dad were little – like little “Andy Capp” [English cartoon character] – and here’s Ed, always tanned, he’s real brown, got dark hair, and got a beautiful build, and put him in bed wi’ my Dad.  So I’m thinkin’, “Oh, I hope he don’t put his foot in the potty.”  Cuz we had a toilet outside!  [Laughter]  This was awful.  My dad woke up and Mother were downstairs makin’ breakfast, cuz – well, he was goin’ to church…well, I don’t know what she were doin’.  She were downstairs, and we only had one egg!  But she were gonna give him that one egg.  He got up and when he was downstairs my Dad comes in to me, he said, “Where’s your mother?  Who’s the black bugger been in my bed?”  I said, “That was my friend!  No, he’s tanned Dad!”  And he had a shirt on that made him look darker cuz it were Army color, and then he were tanned.  He looked good.  So he said, “What’s he doing to your Mother?”  I said, “No, Mum’s downstairs.  She’s makin’ breakfast.”  I thought, “Wait till she knows he’s Catholic!  She’ll really…”  So, anyway, she said, “Can I make you breakfast?”  He said, “No, thank you, ma’am, I’m goin’ to communion.”  So he didn’t have breakfast ’til he came back.  He were goin’ to church, see.

LC:  And you weren’t Catholic.

LS:  Oh, no!  We were Church of England. 

LC:  What did she say to that?

LS:  Every time the Catholic boys – oh, they were always over at our school sayin’ – callin’ for us.  They’d get more days off than we did.  You know the Catholics, they have more Holy Days.  We’d be doin’ exercise in the school grounds, you know, and they’d come up and yell to us.  So my Mother said, “Don’t go with them Catholic boys!”  She always said that.  But she’d bake bread and she’d always give one to the priest and one to the sisters.  We always give them a loaf of bread.  But we couldn’t go with them Catholic boys.  But we all liked Catholic boys.

LC:  Is that true?

LS:  Yes!  All of it.  Isn’t that funny?

LC:  What did she say to that?

LS:  Well, she’s not goin’ to that church anymore!  But she went three times.  But I was the only one that changed Catholic.  [Brief pause in interview.]   Ed got up to go to church, and Mother was always [against the] Catholic – well, nothing we could do.  But my Dad kept saying, “He’s a nice chap.”

LC:  So he liked him.

LS:  Oh, my dad thought he was a nice chap.  Yeah.  “He’s so nice.”  And he took him to the club and they had a drink, and then they came home.  They got along real good, but my mother said, “He lives too far away.” 

LC:  She didn’t want you to marry him.

LS:  No, it’s too far away for her to go, you know.  No, “He lives too far.”  She didn’t – you know.

So, then he kept comin’, and we kept gettin’ together.  That were March.  And then he came once, and he came to the camp, and then we went out into the woods – we were walkin’.  It was real pretty around there.  The cuckoo was cuckooing, and I said, “You know what?  They say whatever you’re doin’ and you hear the cuckoo – that’s what you’ll do the rest of your life.”  Ed said, “No.”  I said, “Yeah, that’s a saying.”  Isn’t that funny?  Yeah, the cuckoo were cuckooing!  And so then he asked me, would I be the mother of his children?  I thought, “Oh my goodness!  This is new.  I’ve never heard that before!”  But then I think it’s an old one that the G.I.s had.  But I never heard that before. 

LC:  So you called his bluff.

LS:  Afterward I said, “You know what?  Was it somebody else said?”  “No,” he said.  He said that to me, see.  It was an old saying.

LC:  How long did you know each other before you were engaged?

LS:  Oh, well, then he asked me to be the mother of his children, and I thought I were Queen Elizabeth when he asked me that!  I were engaged to an English boy.  He was a nice guy but he drank.  He would drink, and we’d go to a dance and if I danced with anybody then he’d leave and he’d go to his mother and dad in the pub.  So then by the time I were going home his dad used to have to take me home.  He were nice but he drank and that’s hard.  Cuz, you know, over there you’d see the children and they’d be sittin’ on the steps of the pub waitin’ for their mothers and dads to come home, and I always felt bad about that.  I used to say to my Mum, “They shouldn’t do that.  They shouldn’t let them children do that.”  Cuz I were always babysitting some, cuz I were the youngest.

LC:  How long were you engaged? 

LS:  Let’s see…the 24th of March I got to know him, and we got engaged and we got married the 16th of August.

LC:  Wow!  Pretty fast.  What did your parents say when you broke off your engagement and decided to marry Ed?

LS:  They didn’t mind because they knew that John drank. 

LC:  Even though Ed was from America.

LS:  In fact I gave my mother the ring.  My mother lent my sister it and she lost it.  He come over and we was gonna get married in Doncaster.  That’s where my friend lived, Jean Quail.  We were gonna get married there, but when we went to get the license they wouldn’t let me get married there cuz I didn’t live there.  I lived in Bradford, so we had to go…  And my sister was on the way out to Doncaster for the wedding and we weren’t getting married…we had to go home.  So my mother bought a wedding cake and we had to get married – at the Catholic Church. 

LC:  The Catholic Church.  That must have been something for your mom, too.

LS:  Yeah, my mother went to the Catholic Church again.  There were a lot of people, cuz they’d never seen an American.  The Americans never got as far as England.  They got to Leeds, but they never got as far as [Bradford].  I don’t know why.  It was all woolen mills where I lived – woolen mills, and cotton mills, and all that, you know.

LC:  And how did you feel about the prospect of emigrating?

LS:  You know, I never thought – You know, when you’re young, everything is good and everything is, you know, exciting.  And then I knew Dot Cooper, and I knew that she were gettin’ married, and then I went back and I was gettin’ married, and we come home and got married, and then we went and walked down the town, and I says to Ed, I said, “You know we haven’t had a picture,” I said.  “We should stop in here,” I said, “cuz this is the main photography place.”  So we went in Jerome’s, they called it, we went in there, and we had the wedding picture.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have had a picture!

LC:  You wore your uniforms.

LS:  Yeah, we wore our uniforms.  The boy that was ganna come, well, he couldn’t come.  When we were gonna get married it would have been there but then we couldn’t get married that time so.  Then the man next door, he was the best man for us.  My sister stood up for us.  We were in uniform and we just went to the Catholic Church.  Mother had a dinner – we had a dinner there. 

LC:  Were there any special procedures that you needed to go through to marry an American? 

LS:  No, I don’t think so.  I had to fill a paper out.  Ed had to fill papers out and it took so long before he could get married. 

LC:  So you had to wait a certain amount…

LS:  We had to wait a certain amount, yeah; otherwise we’d have been married earlier.

LC:  Did you live together after you were married, or did you go back to your separate camps?

LS:  On our wedding night – well, my sister had got this house, but she’d never lived in it.  Her husband was a prisoner of war [of the] Japanese.  She’d done the baby.  She were pregnant when he left and so she had Winifred.  So she were livin’ at home with us – with my mother, and that.  So she said, “Oh, you can have my house!”  Cuz, you know that were nice, and they had the bedroom.  So we went there for the night.  We were killin’ bugs!  She didn’t know, but oh…!  And the bedbugs!  Oh!  I’m sayin’ to Ed, “There – there’s bugs!  I can’t stay here!  I can’t stay here!”  I packed up and we went back home!  [Laughter]  And that’s true.  But my sister didn’t know that cuz she’d never lived in it. 

LC:  Did you literally leave that night or did you stay the night?

LS:  We stayed but it were very early.  Because it was bad!  I said, “Oh, no, no, never!’  You heard of bugs there but I’ve never seen bed bugs.

LC:  Good thing the cuckoo wasn’t…cuckooing then! 

LS:  Yeah, “when the cuckoo went…” – oh, that was funny!

LC:  So now, where were you and what were you doing when you heard about the surrender of Germany?

LS:  Oh, let me see.  Germany.  Well, we got married August…let me see…When we got married you couldn’t get much to drink because that were at the ending of the war.  It was around the time we got married.  I’ll have to ask Ed about that, I’m pretty sure.  I don’t know.

LC:  And what date were you married?

LS:  16th of August.

LC:  16th of August, Nineteen forty -?

LS:  Elvis died that day, too.

LC:  Forty…?

LS:  Oh, what were it – ’44?  We’ve been married 63 years. 

LC:  Wow, that’s really something!  So that would be ’45, if it was…

LS:  It’s’45.  Cuz the boys are 61, and I came over…

LC:  Now did you celebrate at the end of the war in Europe?

LS:  Well, a lot a people did, but like I said, we got married but you couldn’t get a drink anywhere cuz everybody had been celebratin’.  So they couldn’t…but, yeah, it was nice.  I think I was takin’ up with the weddin’, and that.  And then Jean Quail was supposed to be in the weddin’ and she couldn’t come cuz I couldn’t get married there.  So we have to move the wedding up.  It was really a rush job.  But we had no trouble at the church.  The priest was really nice.

LC:  Do you have any regrets that you didn’t get to wear a beautiful white dress?

LS:  Oh, no. 

LC:  Or have tons of flowers?

LS:  Oh, no, no, no.  We’ve had a good life.  A very good life we’ve had, yes.

LC:  Do you remember hearing about the surrender of Japan and the end of the war?

LS:  Yes, I remember that, cuz Ed’s brother got killed there, you know, in Japan.  Ed went home because his mother was sick.  She had cancer.  So let me see, August…he wasn’t with me long cuz he was stationed at by the Air Force, but not my Air Force, he were up at Warrington.  He left from there, but I was still in the service when he left.  Then I had to go to this place and become a – be discharged.  So then I came over – when did I come over?  March, I think – I think I came over in March. 

LC:  I think that’s what he says in his interview, yes.  He said it was quite some time.  It says Ed was discharged in November of 1945 and returned to the States.  But you weren’t able to come over right away.

LS:  No.  I had to go with them, and I went onto the boat and it were condemned and then we got on the Queen Mary.  Yes, we were.  It wasn’t redone because the soldiers had been on it.

LC:  Now was this when you came to America?

LS:  When I first came. 

LC:  So you came over on the Queen Mary!  Wow!

LS:  Yeah, with the service, you know; they pay for that.

LC:  Now tell us what that was like.

LS:  Oh, it was good.  Then we had to go to the camp first, and then from the camp we went to the boat.  We had all Italian prisoners of war that were servin’ us, you know.  They were singin’...and the Germans…  They were very friendly. 

LC:  So it was still pretty much a troop ship at that point?  It hadn’t been converted back.

LS:  Oh, the Queen Mary, no, it was just like.  I went on it after and it was beautiful..  This was funny: I was on it, Ed was on it, and my mother was on it. 

LC:  At different times, though.

LS:  Yeah, at different times, yes.  Ed came back on it, yes.

LC:  So what was the food like on the Queen Mary? 

LS:  It was good. 

LC:  [Were the] prisoners cooking it, too?

LS:  I don’t know, but they were serving us, I know.  Now I don’t know if they were on the boat, but they were in the camp.  They were in the camp until we went and then went to the boat. 

LC:  Were there many women on the boat coming over?

LS:  Oh, there – with me, yes.  G.I.s.  We were all brides and there were one little girl and she had two children.  She were real quiet, and she were from the country.  She had two little children, and when she got to America, when she got to New York, he didn’t come to get her.  They sent her back.  I often wonder what happened to her. Cuz they were his children. 

LC:  So you had to be met at the port to be…

LS:  Yeah, you have to meet, or else you had to have a certain place to go. 

LC:  Did you have to go through Ellis Island?

LS:  No.  We went to New York and then from New York we went to Chicago, from there to Minneapolis.

LC:  How long did it take you to get over here?

LS:  Not long – I think it were about six days on the Queen Mary.  I went on the Britannica and it were fourteen days.  That’s when I took the boys back.  I thought, “I came on the boat, I have to go back on the boat.”  Oh my God!  I could have flown!  I could’ve flown, but…

LC:  Now you know.

LS:  Now I know, yes.  But my mother wouldn’t fly.  It was my mother’s fiftieth anniversary and we saved enough money for them to come.  See my mother had been, and she came on the boat, and she’d been and then come back.  But my dad hadn’t been here.  So for their anniversary we’d saved enough money for them to come.  So we sent the money and told them, and she wouldn’t fly.  And my dad wanted to fly so dad came and she never came then. 

LC:  Now was there a problem getting you into the States?  Was there a problem getting you over here?

LS:  No.  I tell you it’s because I were in the service.  The other girls that weren’t in the service, they had to go to London.  And they had to go – I don’t know if they got examined – well, they had to be cuz they had to be clear.  I was in the service so I had no trouble.  Cuz I’d been examined all the time. 

LC:  What were your feelings upon leaving England?

LS:  I think – I was so young, it was exciting!  I was with the girls again.

LC:  Did you know you’d be able to come back?

LS:  No, I never thought…Well, I tell you, the money I got from Ed I put in the bank and I put it in my dad’s name for if anything happened, he could send for me and I could come home.  We talked about that.  My dad would get the family together and he’d say, “You have to keep track of her because if you lose her, you’ll never find her.  America’s a big place!”  Well, it is a big place to England, you know.  So he was always tellin’ them that – that they had to keep track of me.

LC:  So afraid they’d lose you.

LS:  They’d lose me and never find me.  Yeah.  [Laughter]

LC:  Has your sister been over to visit you?

LS:  Oh, my sister’s been.  She used to come every winter, and we’d go to Florida.  She used to come and go to Florida with us and she loved it.  But now she’s blind, see, so she’s in a rest home. 

LC:  What were your first impressions of America – your new homeland?

LS:  Oh, dear, let me think.  I don’t know…I went downtown – the first time we went downtown, we were goin’ to a weddin’ and Ed gave me some money to go.  I think I was in Donaldson’s and this lady kept bringin’ me dresses.  I was so lonesome and I were cryin’.  And she’d come and give me a dress and she’d say, “Oh, that looks nice.”  And then I thought, “Oh, she thinks there’s somethin’ wrong with me.  I’ll have to pull myself together.”  So I was okay, and I went home and I told Ed, “I’m never goin’ there again because no one spoke to me.” 

LC:  Oh, really?

LS:  Except the lady that were helpin’ me.  Because where I come from you go downtown – you know everybody.  So it was a big difference.  You know, you can say “Oh, come have a cup a tea.” 

LC:  But wouldn’t that be true if you went to London, for instance?

LS:  That’s true, yeah.

LC:  A big city?

LS:  That’s a big city, yes.  No, I think England – you know, the English people talk to everybody. 

LC:  Yeah, they do.

LS:  They really do!  If you’re on a bus you are no’ a stranger cuz everybody knows everybody.  And that is true.

LC:  Now, when did you become a citizen?

LS:  Oh, God, I became a Catholic and I became a citizen!  My boys were goin’ to be in 1st communion, I think, and I become a Catholic and I become a citizen.

LC:  So it was sometime after you came to…

LS:   Oh, yeah.  But, you know, when I first came, my brother-in-law had to put money up for me so I wouldn’t be a ward of the court.

LC:  A sponsorship sort of thing…

LS:  You have to put money.  And then when we have to go down to the school, and we had to go for lessons to learn about America.  That’s when I got to know so many English girls, and I’d say, “I bet you were sayin’ the same prayer as me – please send someone that knows me!”  Because you know it was different – it was different for us.  When we came we had to go and learn about America, which was good.  But we couldn’t become American citizen for five years. 

LC:  Oh, I didn’t realize that.

LS:  Yeah, it was five years.  Cuz I took the boys home, and then the Korean War came on.  That were ’50?  And before ’50 and the Korean War come on and I couldn’t get back.  My boys got sick – they got the measles.  So I had one with the measles and I went to the doctor and I said, “Could you give him a shot of vitamins?”  And he said, “Oh, you rich Americans think you can buy everything!”  And he knew me, that doctor!  That weren’t nice! 

LC:  He was probably teasing you.

LS:  I don’t know.  Poor Terry and Tony – they had the measles.  So I carried Tony on the boat when we gone.  But we were there for almost six months, and they said if I’d have been there over six months I’d have had to wait another five years!  That’s what they told me!

LC:  So you were lucky to get back when you did.

LS:  Oh, yeah.  But it’s funny as soon as I got back I knew I weren’t stayin’.  When you go back and you see. You think, “Oh, no.”

LC:  You knew your life was here.

LS:  Oh, yeah, I knew my life were here.

LC:  Now, where did you and Ed live when you first came back to the States?

LS:  When I first came to the States…well, his mother had died.  I wish she hadn’t have done cuz she was a good woman.  But so his mother had died and his dad was an alcoholic and drank so we never saw him.  So he didn’t have anything, and I think his sister-in-law had took his clothes.  She had his pants on once!  And she took a lot of his – you know he had nowhere to go.  He were livin’ with his sister.  So when I came, I lived there.  And then we knew this guy, and he were a politician, and he’s got us a Quonset hut.  So that’s how come we got there.

LC:  Who was the guy?  Do you remember?

LS:  Oh, Ed knows his name.  I knew his wife too.  But he got us a Quonset hut.

LC:  The Quonset hut was on Buchanan Street.

LS:  On Buchanan, yeah.  Well, Ed took this house that his brother gave him.  I knew the goats were in it, and they were all goats and that, and he took it and he made a house out of it.    It’s still there.

LC:  And that was up in New Brighton?

LS:  That was in New Brighton, yes.  We had no running water.

LC:  Was that after the Quonset hut or before?

LS:  No, that were before.  This was before.  We had to get something cuz I were pregnant.  My friend, Montford he let us have his apartment in St. Paul. 

LC:  And that’s Montford Dunn.

LS:  Montford Dunn.  Oh, he was a beautiful friend!  So we were in his apartment until Ed finished the house then – the chicken house that we lived in.  We had a big milk carton and he’d fill it every mornin’ for me so I could wash the kids’ diapers.  Yeah, we lived in that.  We had two cribs and a bed and I could put my hand out and turn the stove on.

LC:  And this was the converted chicken coop where you lived?

LS:  The converted chicken coop, yeah.

LC:  How long were you there?

LS:  Well, let me see.  My boys were…well, I don’t know.  I’m trying to think, cuz the boys had double hernias – they had double hernias.  So then we went to the Quonset huts.  Cuz I had to go in town with them all the time.  They had to see the doctor all the time.  I went to this one – they had a clinic, and it were for free.  So I took the boys there and she said, “They’re never going to get better  They have to be operated on.”  Well, I had these big truss for them, a little truss, you know, and it kept the things in there.  But sometimes they’d pull on them and they’d come out and they’d cry.  So I had to have them operated on.  They were operated on.  They’ve never looked back.  It were the best operation they ever had!  It were good cuz they wrestled and everything. 

So then we lived in the Quonset huts…from the chicken coop to the Quonset huts, and we stayed there, oh, I think the boys were about two or three.  That’s when I went to England with them.

LC:  Tell me what the living conditions were like in the Quonset hut. 

LS:  Oh, well, the only thing that was kinda hard…in the winter, you know, it was all tin so you’d see the frost inside.  And the windows – you couldn’t open the windows.  This is why we moved, because we were there and the neighbors next door had the children, and they were bakin’ or something and one of them left her children in the Quonset hut.  There were two families in a Quonset hut.  And she left them there, and the stove – as you come out the bedroom there’s the stove, there’s the living room, there’s the kitchen, so the stove’s right in the middle.  I don’t know what happened, but it got on fire, and you couldn’t get in there and the windows were just stuck.

LC:  This wasn’t in your Quonset hut.

LS:  Not in my Quonset hut.  That were in the neighbors.  And you couldn’t go to sleep after that. You’d think, – “Oh, my God, if it comes…,” you know…  So he did get us a Quonset hut and then, after that, we found out that – Ed worked up in Columbia Heights and there were these eight houses, and no down payment for a G.I.  Yeah, that was …oh, wonderful.

LC:  We’ll come back to that house.  I want to talk a little bit more about the Quonset hut.  Cuz that was such a post-war thing.  Did you have running water in the Quonset hut?

LS:  Oh, yeah, we had running water.

LC:  Did you have a bathroom? 

LS:  Oh, yeah, we had a bathroom.  The only thing, like I said, they had the stove, as you left the bedroom and the bathroom, then you come and here’s the stove, and here’s the living room and there’s the kitchen.  So you couldn’t get…That’s when they put a big door.  It wasn’t a door to see, you had to punch it out.  You could get in and you could go to the next door.  So you could get away if the fire came on again.

LC:  That’s pretty close living conditions. 

LS:  Very close, yeah.

LC:  What was it like having to share a Quonset hut with another family?

LS:  Oh, well they had their own…

LC:  They were on the other side of the wall.

LS:  The other side of the wall, yeah.

LC:  But was it noisy?  Could you hear them?

LS:  Oh, you could, yeah.  I’ve got a picture of us all together.  Did you see? 

LC:  Yes, it was a good picture.

LS:  And babies…

LC:  Everywhere!

LS:  Everybody would look at it and say, “How come you’re not pregnant?”  I said, “I got two already!”  Cuz somebody were pregnant they thought everybody should be pregnant. 

LC:  Did you like your neighbors in the Quonset hut?

LS:  Oh, yeah!  Marshalls – I think they got divorced.  And then we had another one from New York.   He was gonna be a…Some of them were going to school.  You could go to college from there.  We couldn’t afford that. 

LC:  Even with the G.I. Bill?

LS:  I don’t think so.  Because we had the two. And – I don’t know…He got the job at the gas company.  He worked; he worked hard.  He’d take the boys to the drug store.  He’d put them on his shoulders and take them to the drug store for ice cream.  I used to carry one on each hip and take them all over.  And then we had another one…Sandy and – what was her name?  Oh, she was a real smart gal.  Her and her husband, they had two boys.  Sandstones!  They had a boy as old as the twins, and then they had a younger one.  They lived in the top Quonset hut…half of it. 

LC:  Have you kept in touch with any of those folks over the years?

LS:  No.  And that’s funny.  No, I’ve never… I’ve heard about them and I’ll see something and I’ll say, “Oh, that’s the Marshalls.  They weren’t getting’ along before and they got divorced.  That was sad. 

LC:  How many children do you and Ed have all together?

LS:  We’ve got three.  The boys and then we’ve got Timothy.  And then we’ve got Steven and Brian and Stephanie, and have we got another one? 

LC:  These are the grandchildren?

LS:  These are the grandchildren.  We’ve got four, I think, we’ve got four.  I have to think.

LC:  Any great-grandchildren?

LS:  Oh, yeah.  We’ve got Dawn’s.  They got divorced.  That was a mess too.  Yeah, she’s got … I don’t see him, see, cuz he’s with the father.  Oh, gosh, this is awful.  I’ve got a thing he wrote about me on the porch.  He wrote me that real nice.  The oldest one.  And he was such a nice boy, but when the divorce came he got kinda different, too. 

LC:  That’s difficult for children.  Where did you and Ed live after leaving the Quonset hut?

LS:  We went up to Columbia Heights. 

LC:  Could you describe your house?

LS:  Oh, yeah, it was little.  We had the two bedrooms, the living room and a kitchen.  It was just a square.  In fact it’s still there and they built onto it.  They built high.  Ed finished the basement.  It were for sale and I said, “Oh, let’s go see it, Ed!”  And we went, this were after we moved up to Fridley, and we went to see it and the guy said, “Oh, we have to show you the basement.”  And Ed said, “Don’t say it!” And Ed made that basement!  But it was small.  But we were goin’ to put a top on and make it bigger.  The best thing was to get a bigger house cuz then we had Timmy, see. 

LC:  Do you remember the address for that house?

LS:  Chatham Road.  5250 Chatham Road.

LC:  Do you remember what you and Ed paid for that house?

LS:  Yeah, we paid… I think it was 8 – 9.

LC:  Eight thousand, nine hundred?

LS:  And I think we sold it for 12.  I know it were 8,000 and my sister-in-law was so dead against us not buyin’ one because she only paid 3,000 for her house.  But that were years ago!  So every time – “Oh, you’re not going to pay that for a house!” 

LC:  Did Ed use the G.I. Bill to purchase the house – a low-interest loan – a G.I. loan?

LS:  Yeah.  A G.I. loan, yeah.

LC:  And compared to the Quonset hut, what kind of features did the new house have?

LS:  Well, we had the yard.  We had a yard in the back and then we had, oh, a bigger house.

LC:  Did you have appliances in that house?

LS:  Oh, yes! 

LC:  Did it come with a washer and dryer?  What kind of washing machine…?

LS:  Oh, yes, it came with it.  I don’t know about the washer and dryer.  I must have had a washer and dryer.  I have to think about that.  I know the stove and refrigerator went with it.  [To husband]  Hey, Ed, did the washer and the dryer come with the house on Chatham Road?

ES:  No.

LS:  Just the stove and refrigerator?

ES:  Nothin’ came with it.

LS:  No, that’s right! 

LC:  You had to go and buy your own appliances.

ES:  It was a brand new house.

LS:  Yeah, it were a brand new house.  Did we have a gas refrigerator then?

ES:  Yeah.

LS:  I think we had a gas refrigerator.

LC:  Did you have all gas appliances in that house?  Oh, of course, Ed worked at the gas company!  Did you get a discount on those?

ES:  We didn’t have an electric for the refrigerator.  [Laughter]

LS:  Did we have a washer and dryer?  Yeah, we did. 

LC:  How long did you live in Columbia Heights before you moved to Fridley?

LS:  Oh, goll… The boys were in school.  They went to school when we came to Fridley.  Tim was two years old.

ES:  Tim was born in Columbia Heights.

LS:  Yes, oh, yeah.  He was two year old when we moved here. 

LC:  And Tim was born what year?

LS:  1953 – Timmy’s 53 now, isn’t he Ed?  What year was Timmy born?  He’s 53.  There’s eight years between him and the boys.

LC:  That would be 1955.

LS:  And there’s eight years between them.

LC:  I’m going to go back to Columbia Heights for just a minute.  You said that your house was new and that were eight house there.

LS:  There were eight houses…

LC:  What was the neighborhood like?  Was it developed?

LS:  No, they were developin’ it.  And then, you see – the back it was a hill, and then there was another guy and he built eight houses there, at the bottom.  But you know what he was doin’…he put the sewer…

ES:  Tim was born in ’54.

LS:  OK.  The sewer wasn’t in and he’d come and he’d pump all the sewers.  And it’d lay on the ground.  Oh, and I was havin’ a fit, because Polio was very bad then.  I don’t know how he got away with it!  I found out that one of the doctors was supposed to be the head of all this, but nobody were doin’ anything.  Ed’s friend lived up ther,,e and he wouldn’t do anything.  But yeah, they left it.  He’d do it once a week. 

LC:  Was it pretty much fields around you, then?

LS:  It were fields.  Oh, yeah.  And then the boys loved it cuz they could walk down to the lake.

LC:  Oh, sure.  Did you have dirt roads at that time? 

LS:  It were dirt roads, yeah  But then they had a tent behind in the yard and they were always outside.  They were fishin’ or something.  Oh, they loved it.  They didn’t want to move. 

LC:  Why did you move to Fridley? 

LS:  Because we needed a bigger house.  We were figurin’ on makin’ it bigger but the rooms were still small – the rooms were smaller.  Then we saw this – this was a model house.  It were all brick on the outside but we lost it in the tornado, see?  We got twelve thousand for that one.  This, I think, were fourteen thousand. 

LC:  Now the Fridley tornado was May 5, 1965.  Can you describe what that day was like for you?

LS:  Well, I worked at the bakery at Shopper’s City in Brookdale.  It was a nice day.  I went to work before 4 o’clock cuz I worked evenings, and then Ed’d come home and he’d watch the kids.  He’d be home with them.  Then he had a ball team so he had the kids playin’ ball.  So when I went it was a nice day; no storm; nothing!  So I went and I heard after that we’d had a tornado, and it said at the school.  I thought, “Oh, my God!  At the school!”  That’s where he was.  Then I called and the phone rang, and nobody answered!  Somebody brought me through – I think I got home about 12 or 1 o’clock in the morning.  The gas company brought me home.  And oh, it was a mess!  Guys were in the house and they’d have a cigarette and they’d throw it!  I said, “Ed, give them an ashtray!”  He said, “What for?” he said, “We have no house!”

LC:  Describe the house.  What did it look like?

LS:  It was – we had water.

LC:  Deep water?

LS:  Well, no, you know, you could walk through it.  The first one took the porch, and the next one took the garage, and the other one took the house.  Our bathroom was okay.  So everybody were usin’ our bathroom.  So that was okay.  But nothing, you know…

LC:  Were any of the neighbors injured or killed?

LS:  No.  There was some gal in the school over there, I don’t know what happened, she’d gotten thrown down the stairs but she was okay.  No, nobody was hurt.  Then we had, oh my goodness it was a mess.  We had people all over.  And Ed went and turned everybody’s gas off.  You know the people had been in there to loot before he even got there.  The people would come up and somebody had taken the televisions.  Somebody had taken everything!  Isn’t that awful!

LC:  Now where did you and your family go after the storm?

LS:  We ended up at my sister-in-law’s.  My sister-in-law was nice but she had no children. 

LC:  And where did she live?

LS:  She lived on Cleveland Street.  In Northeast.  She had a nice little house and we had the back bedroom.  The boys were through school then.  The boys were graduatin’ – they were goin’ to college.  They worked at the school, on the roof.  They were roofin’.  When we went all the guys would yell, “Here comes Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee!” 

LC:  The twins, I take it?

LS:  The twins. They said, “Oh, Mother!”  I said, “That’s alright!”  They were makin’ such good money they weren’t gonna go to school.  Oh, no,” I said, “you’re kiddin’.  So Dad talked to them and they went to school.  [Laughter]

LC:  Now you and Ed were able to rebuild the house after the tornado.

LS:  Well, it was a blessin’.  There was a meetin’ at the church.  We had two people out and they weren’t gonna give us a fireplace; they weren’t gonna give us a garage.  We’d no money.  We just insured it for what we paid for it.  So, you know, it’d gone up since then.  So we couldn’t buy it.  Ed were gonna sell the lot.  We were gonna move further out.  As we were goin’ to church there were a couple up back of us and they said, “Hey, what you kids doin’?”  I said, “We’re gonna sell.  We can’t afford to build.”  They said, “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”  He said, “Don’t do anything until I come see you.”  We didn’t know but he watched our boys wrestle.  The boys used to wrestle for the high school.  They always watched them.  We didn’t know them.  It were Harvey Peterson and his wife.  And he said, “I’ll build for your insurance.”  And he gave us everything.  We didn’t get the brick back on the house cuz they taxed you on everything.  They taxed you on your tile, they taxed you on your brick, they taxed you on everything!  So we didn’t put the brick back on the house.  He was real good!  We got the fireplace.  We got the garage.  We got everything.  Then we had – when they took our house down we had the built-in stove, you know.  So we gave them a lot of things cuz he were building a cabin.  So that was kinda nice.  We did give something.  But he was very good to us.  Cuz that’s all we had were the house.

LC:  Now is this house the same layout as your old house?  Is it very similar?

LS:  Yeah, this is how it was.  Very much the same. 

LC:  So Ed worked for the gas company. 

LS:  Almost forty years.

LC:  Minneapolis Gas Company?

LS:  Minneapolis gas company.  He retired, see.  So many of them had retired there weren’t enough people that knew so he used to go back in summer.  Then they’d give him a car and then he’d work in summer.  He were a supervisor.

LC:  Nice to be appreciated, too. 

LS:  Yes, cuz he was a good worker.

LC:  Now, you mentioned, you continued to work after the war, too.

LS:  I didn’t work until Timmy…that was another story of our life, too.  That’s my Susannah.  I had a friend that worked downtown in that Chinese restaurant…

LC:  Nankin?

LS:  Nankin!  She worked there, did Stella, and she said, “There’s a guy down there and his wife’s pregnant and she don’t want the baby.”  “Oh,” I said, “no!”  Well, my Timmy were in school and I was gonna get welfare children.  But the doctor told me, he said, “How come the mother and the aunt are not having them?”  Well, then it came out that the mother had got sick and then the aunt had got sick.  He said, “You know it could be something the children have got and they are passing it on.  I don’t know what to tell you but I would tell them that they’d have to take the children to be examined.”  So I couldn’t get welfare children and nobody home and he didn’t want me to work.  So, when I heard about this, I said, “You tell her I’ll have that baby, whatever it is!  I will take it!”

LC:  As a foster mother?

LS:  Yeah.  I’d take it.  If they had no money that’s alright I would look after it.  So she went to California and she had a little girl.  Susannah.  They brought her here.  She was suckin’ everything out of a bottle – nobody had been good to her.  But she was the best – she was a lovely baby!  And she was a girl too!  And my Timmy said, “She’s my sister, isn’t she, Mom?”  I said, “That’s your sister, yes.”  And he’d drag her all over.  She were two.  I only saw her mother once, and she were on her way for a date.  But afterward I found out they weren’t married.  She left her husband and three children.  Then she got married again to…oh, some doctor she married.  But she had a boy and two girls to her first husband.  So then I had Susannah.  So [Susannah’s mother] came once and she were goin’ on a date or somethin’.  Susannah didn’t know her.  I were Mama and Ed was Dad, you know.  So, she was kind of bloated and I thought well maybe she drank and maybe she had something – I don’t know.  But afterward I found out that she was an alcoholic. 

LC:  So what happened to Susannah?

LS:  I had her ‘til she were two.  [Her father] used to come and see her.  Then he said. “You know, Lee, I’m going to take her back to my mother.”  His mother worked for Chiang Kai-shek.  They were better off, you could tell, his mother and father.  She had two boys and this was Susannah.  So he said he were gonna take her.  I said, “You can’t!  She’s American.”  And I never thought he could take her out the country.  But he took her to some state and he got her on a freighter.  They took her.  It took her a long time to get there.  But the Grandma took a picture of her in her Mandarin clothes.  Oh, she was cute!  So she sent me that.  And that’s the last time I heard from them until Ed and I was goin’ to – we were goin’ to Chicago.  It was on a Thursday.  I were workin’ then cuz when Susannah left I couldn’t…  The doctor said the best thing to do was get a job.  I needed that to get her out my mind cuz I could hear her callin’ me!  Oh, it was bad!  The phone rang and she said, “Lee, this Susannah.” Oh!  My God, I couldn’t believe it!

LC:  How many years had passed?

LS:  A lot.  She were in her twenties.  She said she were married to a Chinese actor and she had a little boy. 

LC:  She was still living in China?

LS:  I got pictures of her here.  And I’ve got pictures of her when she were home.  She’s got a little boy.  She didn’t remember Dad and I.  But she had pictures of us.  Her Dad always talked about us.  So that was good.  She said, “You know, my mother is an alcoholic.  She was put away.”

LC:  It was nice that she got in touch with you.  Have you seen her since?

LS:  Yeah.  No.  I always thought she would…but she remembered Timmy.  I wished Timmy would have been with us but he wasn’t. But she was nice to…

LC:  Then you went back to work.  Where did you work?

LS:   I worked at the bakery.

LC:  What did you do for them?

LS:  I made doughnuts.  It’s funny though, the guy I worked for was German and he was a good baker, and very clean, and his wife were German, too.  If I had any odd doughnuts I’d always save them cuz there was a young girl that used to come with her mother.  I used to give her a little bag of doughnuts.  So he were bringing this stuff out to me – the mixture to put it in – and he says – he saw this girl with her mother and he said, “They should kill people like that.”  I said, “If it were your child would you kill her?”  Isn’t that awful?!  But they were Germans, see, and that’s what they believed.  I said, “If that were your girl, could you do that?”  He never answered me.

LC:  No, of course not.

LS:  But it were funny.  He was a good boss, though.  I walked out a few times and went back again.  Somebody said, “F” and I don’t like that word, “F”, so I said, “I’m not comin’ here.”  And he called me and said, “Come home, Lee!”  And I wouldn’t work in summer, cuz Ed wanted me to be home with the kids.  So that was good.  I got that, and…

LC:  And this was at Shopper’s City?

LS:  This were Shopper’s City.

LC:  Where was it located?  It’s close by?

LS:  Oh, let me see.  It’s right up on the main road.  You know, you go to Brookdale and turn right, and you go up that way [gestures].  I’ll have to ask Ed where it was.  It was Shopper’s City, and it’s been so many places – thing,s now.  But they had Shopper’s City there, and he had the bakery.  Then, you know, I kept in touch with him cuz I always liked him and his wife, and he went in to have some operation, and you know when he got there he had cancer of the bone, and he didn’t know, and he died.  I’ve got a picture of him.

LC:  How long did you work for him?

LS:  Oh, I were there ten years.  When the tornado came, the guy that were my boss – he came and took everything they could – the furniture – and they got a trailer and they saved it for us.  They were both were very good to us.  They all were good to us.

LC:  It was in the sixties that you worked there?

LS:  Yeah.  I worked ten years for him. 

LC:  Is that the only job you’ve had, then, since the war? 

LS:  No, then I met Thelma.  Thelma was my English neighbor.  She was an English gal.  She came from Milwaukee.  Her husband was the head tailor – he went to Chicago and he was the head tailor for Nieman Marcus.  Oh, he was a good tailor.  He was Italian.  So then Thelma said to me one day, “You know what we should do?  We should go cleanin’ houses.”  I said, “Yeah, we could!  Two of us!”  So we both went cleanin’ houses. 

LC:  You had your own business.

LS:  We had our own business.  And they’d come lookin’ for us.

LC:  You were Entrepreneurs! 

LS:  Because we were English, they thought they had two English maids.  Oh, it was so funny!  They’d come lookin’ for us.  We worked four days a week, but we did four houses a day, too.  We’d start early.  We’d start early and we had a key and we never touched anything and we were always real honest.  We took our tea bags and our tea!  [Laughter]

LC:  Was Thelma one of the girls in your club?

LS:  Yeah.  Thelma was an English gal.

LC:  Tell me about the club.

LS:  Well, let me see…the parents started it, and then Molly Rhymer, that were a friend of mine, and she had no children… I got the papers, but I said I was workin’, so  Molly said, “Well, I’ll do it.”  So Molly got all the papers in, and we got all the English girls that we knew and we joined.  We could go home.  Ed and I went to England for $500!  I mean, boy, that was…!

LC:  This is a National group?  A local chapter of a National group?

LS:  Yeah, it was an English group.  We got tickets and both went for $500.  We couldn’t do it now.  But that’s when the club were first started. 

LC:  Do you still belong to this club?

LS:  Yeah.  I’m still in it.  We meet once a month. 

LC:  How many members do you have? 

LS:  Oh, we have fifteen!  We have the daughters now.  Cuz a lot of them are dyin’.  So we have the daughters and they love to come. 

LC:  What kind of activities does your club do?

LS:  Well, we go to any plays.  If there’s a play on we always get together and go there.  And we always have a picnic.  I had a big garage sale, but that were a long time ago.  We had this English garage sale.  It was real good.  Every time I looked somebody else would have somebody else’s dress on!  [Laughter]

LC:  You were shopping amongst yourselves.

LS:  Then we had Brenda over.  Brenda was quite a gal.  She had cancer and she’d lost her hair, so she had no hair but she’d sit there and take the money at the garage sale.  She were tellin’ everybody what good things they were – “Oh, that’s very good!” 

LC:  Do you remember when your group first got together?

LS:  Oh, golly – when did we first get together…?  I’ve got it in my book…

LC:  We talked about the grandchildren.

LS:  And then the great-grandchildren, we’ve got: Brian, Brandon, and CJ, and then she’s got Ashley.  That’s the girl – she’s fifteen now.  They live with the father.  And they were doing so good you know.  They were good in school and they were going to college were the boys, and the father bought a truck, so they’re both workin’ for him.

LC:  Oh, as truck drivers?

LS:  And he don’t believe in colleges or anything.  It’s a shame. 

LC:  Course, they can always go back later.

LS:  Oh, yeah.  They can.  They were good boys. 

LC:  Now I’m going to talk a little bit about the lessons and legacies – lessons learned from all the [experiences] you’ve gone through, and the legacy that your generation is leaving behind.  Now, your generation went through the Second World War, and when you look back on that, what impact did that experience have on your life?  How did it shape your character, Lee?

LS:  Well, you have to be a little stronger than you was.  But you know they had the air raid shelters – we had a field and they made the air raid shelters there – and, you know, anytime you went in the Salvation Army was there, and they were so good.  They’d have the tambourines and somebody would have a cup a tea.  You know the people would come in with the dogs and the babies and nobody got mad.  They didn’t say, “You can’t bring that baby in here!” “You can’t bring the dog in!”   You know we were all in there.  And English people love dogs! 

LC:  Oh, yes, I know!  [Laughter]

LS:  Yes, they do!  So they’d get the dogs in and everybody’d go in there.  Then we’d have the air raid wardens comin’ around.  The first time they bombed, we were on our way somewhere and they told us we had to get down into this field.  That were the first time they came over and bombed.  But none of the mills were workin’.  And they came that time and they bombed.  They did damage,e but nobody were killed that much – there were some.  But we had to go into this field and lay real quiet, you know, and stay there. 

LC:  Were you scared? 

LS:  Yeah, you were scared, and then you were feelin’ bad cuz you had your dress on or somethin’, and you’d think…But that’s how it was.

LC:  Did you get used to the bombing raids?

LS:  Yeah, I think you got used to the routine, because they’d come over three times a day. 

LC:  How far was the shelter from the mill?

LS:  Oh, not far.  They were close.  But at home, they were in the field across – where I lived.  We called it the brick field.  That’s the field the kids used to play in.

LC:  So the bomb shelter was actually in the field?

LS:  Yeah.

LC:  Did your family do that?

LS:  No.  The workers – the town did that.  My uncle had the air raid shelter built under the table.  He lived in London, too. 

LC:  Did you lose any family?

LS:  No.  No, I didn’t lose any.  My brother-in-law were a prisoner of war in Japan.  And my sister were pregnant so he didn’t see the little baby, the girl, ‘til she were four.  That was sad.  That was Winifred.

LC:  In what other ways might the war have impacted your life?

LS:  I met a lot of people.  And, you know, Dad always used to say, “It’s no good cryin’.  Don’t cry, because nobody’s gonna sit and cry with ya!  Cuz they’re all too busy.  So you have to just keep goin’!”  Even when I was homesick – he’d say, “Just keep goin’” 

LC:  “Be British.”  [Laughter]

LS:  Yeah, oh God, yes!  Yes, you have to “be British”, yes, isn’t that funny?  [Laughter]  Yes, yes, you have to “be British” and you have to keep goin’.

LC:  Do you think it impacted the way you live?  The care you take in spending money…?

LS:  Oh, yes, I think.  You have to be…yeah, cuz it wasn’t available.  I think that’s good.  Like even when Ed and I were first married if we charged $5, that’s was it!  We never –

LC:  Pay as you go.

LS:  Yeah, we always paid!  But I think that’s what made England so low, because you couldn’t have a charge-a-card, you know...  Even when my mother came I bought my mother a dress, and she was with me when I bought it.  It were a polka-dot dress, and she loved it.  I charged it.  And she wouldn’t wear it cuz I charged it.  When I paid for it, she’d wear it!  She didn’t want to wear it!  But when I paid for it, then she wore it.  That was England, you know.

LC:  If you could share a lesson learned from your experiences during the war with younger generations, what would that lesson be?

LS:  I always say if you feel real down, you’re down, but just wait – something’s comin’! 

LC:  Something good.

LS:  I always think so!  My sister, her son was married for twenty-seven years to this gal, and Ed always said she were a “butch”, but David was such a quiet boy, nice boy.  But the only people they went with was her mother and dad.  They’d go on vacation…with her mother and dad.  Nobody else.  Then the father died and then it came out – she was a – well, she had a girlfriend.  When the father died that’s when it came out.  And she’d been married twenty-seven years!  But there were no children.  And my sister was just – oh, she was just devastated.  She didn’t know what was goin’ to happen to David.  I said, “He’ll be alright!  You watch!”  And he was.  I went to his wedding.  That were four years ago.  He met this girl with two little girls.  Nice, and they’re real happy.  They’ve both got good jobs. 

LC:  So pretty much “take what life gives you because it’s going to get better”.

LS:  Yeah.  It has to be, and it does.  Yes.  Cuz I’m always saying there’s always somthin’ come.  Ed was so upset when that tornado…He just couldn’t believe it cuz that’s all we had.  And I said, “Don’t…We’re OK.  We’ll be [OK].”  Then this guy comes, and he built the house.

LC:  I love your optimism.

LS:  I’ve known so many things that happen like that, though, you know?

LC:  Yes, serendipity.  Well, like what you said about the cart.  The electric cart.

LS:  Oh, yeah!  I was at that window and she saw me, and she stopped in.  She has three girls.  Course they’re grown up – the youngest is nineteen now.  So I don’t know, she must have had it for their father.  Cuz it was at the mother’s house.  So she’s gonna clean it up and bring it to me. 

LC:  That’s really nice.

LS:  Yeah, isn’t that nice?

LC:  Neighbors helping neighbors.

LS:  Yes – oh, yes!  I think that’s good.

LC:  Well, Lee, is there anything else you’d like to add to the interview?  You’ve done a terrific job!  You’ve been such a treat to interview!

LS:  Oh dear, there were so many things happened. 

LC:  Any more incidents in England that you can think?

LS:  All the neighbors, they’d have this big bucket, and they put beer in that and they’d all dance up and down the street!  On the weekend – yes!  On the weekend everybody – and the Grandmas, and everybody used to dance.

LC:  You guys should start that tradition here on your street!

LS:  Yeah, I know!  Then we’d all – on Sunday - Sunday dinner, you know, we had a lot of food.  We’d all have it put it together and we’d all share.  Yes!  We used to do that on a Sunday. Isn’t that funny?  Just things that we have, you know.  But, you know, it were funny, we never had any boys – we had three girls – but there were always boys in our house.  We were playin’ cards, or we were playin’ something.  It was just the neighbors’ children.

LC:  In spite of the fact that you had to work at the mills from – what age were you?

LS:  Oh, I wasn’t even fourteen. 

LC:   – from fourteen, you still say you really had a good childhood.

LS:  Oh, yes, I did!  I had a lovely father.  My Dad – you woke up in the night – my Dad was right there.  And he’d say, “Are you alright?”  I’d say, “Yeah.”  And he were always tellin’ us things, you know – like he’d say, “Nobody’s gonna cry with ya!”  And we’d have to just keep goin’.  And we’d all keep going.

LC:  Were your grandparents still living?

LS:  I remember when my – I’ve got my picture of my grandparents.  That were my “little grandpa”, and he always came and brought us a little flower to take to the teacher.  He went to the gardens all the time.  We used to go to the cemetery, and we’d go to the gardens, and then we’d take jam jars, and some people would have flowers and some didn’t, so we’d, “Oh, they have no flowers!”  So we’d…You know, here they would say we were stealin’ but we wasn’t!  We were just sharin’ it all out! 

LC:  Playing Robin Hood!  [Laughter]

LS:  On Sunday.  Yes, we did!  [Laughter]   

LC:  Stealing from the rich, and giving to the poor! 

LS:  And when I think now, I think, “Oh, my goodness!”  Yes, we’d share the flowers out.  And “he has no flowers!”  Oh!  And somebody would say, “Well, he don’t have any, either.  We’ll take some over there.”  So we did, and my mother never stopped us from doin’ it.

LC:  Did your grandfather take you there?

LS:  No, my dad did.  Then after we could walk to the…we could walk to the cemetery and the gardens.  There was always nice gardens.  We’d go in there, and then we always went to my grandma’s grave with my dad.

LC:  Did you know your grandmother?

LS:  Oh, yeah, I can remember her.

LC:  Your father’s mother?

LS:   That’s my father’s mother, yeah.  My dad’s dad were a little guy.  My grandma, she always had a bag and I think she were the betting lady!  I think they betted with her.  But she always had that bag with her. 

LC:  What about your mother’s parents?  Did you know them?

LS:  No.  I just knew my grandpa.  My dad said, “Never leave my children with your father,” cuz he wasn’t good, and her mother died when she were fifteen.  And he used to bring women home, and everything else.  I think she had him put in prison once.

LC:  But you had good experiences with your dad’s parents.

LS:  Oh, my dad, with my dad, he’d take us all over, would my dad.  Somebody’d say, “You got a nice daughter there, you know, Percy!”  They’d call him Percy.  And he’d say, “I’ve got two just like her at home, too!”  He was so proud of his girls.  He was very good.  But my mother – I think she had such a hard time when she were young.  She would say things to us we didn’t understand.  But my dad…he’d put our clothes by the fire when we got up.  “Oh, I’ve got your clothes by the fire – all gettin’ warm.”  He was soft – very soft with us.

But when he came to America, we picked him up in Chicago cuz there were a strike or something on, and they were going to put him off in New York.  I said, “Oh!  Get him to Chicago and then we can get him.  So we drove to Chicago and picked him up.  It was in the evenin’.  I think he were the last one off the plane.  He were tryin’ to give them a tip.  [Laughter]  He thought he should give them tips!  So we picked him up, and we set off, and he’d say, “Are we almost there?”  “Oh, no Dad, we have a long way to go.”  “Could we have a cup a tea?”  So we’d stop – on the overpass, you know, they had restaurants, in from Chicago? – so we’d go and have a cup a tea.  Then he’d get in the car again, and he couldn’t get over how big this place was!  Oh, this place we were going to?  Oh, my goodness!  Anyway, we finally come to this house – and this was when we’d had it redone.  The storm had come, the tornado, and we had the house [rebuilt], and it was nice.  So here comes dad.  “Well,” he says.  He comes in the house, he says, “Well it’s just like Buckingham Palace!”  We only had one light!  I had lights in here – lights in there.  “Just like Buckingham Palace,” he says.  And it was the highlight of his life, coming to America. 

LC:  How long did he get to stay?

LS:  Well, he was worried about mother.  She didn’t come because she wouldn’t fly and it was their anniversary.  Then we took him up to Canada.  He got something with his arm and he couldn’t move it, and it were at night.  So he woke me up.  Ed took him to the doctor’s and we got him better.  He said, “Do you mind if I go home?”  I said, “No, that’s okay.”  But he was sorry he went back, cuz he missed – you know, he liked it here.  And oh, it was so good.  So he went back.  But he talked about the trip all the time.  And he always said Ed was “a nice chap”.  [Laughter]  Isn’t that funny?  They called him Percy so when I were havin’ the boys I said I’m gonna call one “Percy”.  [Ed] said, “He’ll never get through school! You cannot call him ‘Percy’!” 

LC:  It’s such an English name, isn’t it?

LS:  You don’t hear it as much now.  But that were my dad’s name – Percy.  He always talked to us about things – about life.  It was good, you know.  When I were comin’ to America tryin’ to talk to him.  But I had a good life.  It was strugglin’ at first, yes.  Then when I had the twins, see, I nursed them both.  And I put them both together, and I’d sit on the bed and do it.  So many people couldn’t understand how I did that, you know.  And some of the young ones – “Eeewwww!”  It didn’t hurt me.  In England they always nursed, anyway.

LC:  Did you use Dr. Spock’s Baby Book?  Did I ask you that question?

LS:  No, no I didn’t.  I never saw it.  My boys were good, though.  When I were homesick – oh, I was homesick.  I couldn’t talk to anybody.  I were cryin’.  And Ed said, “You can go back, but your not takin’ the boys.”  “Oh!” I said.  Them’s my boys!  I’m not leavin’ my boys!”  That’s why I can’t understand some people leavin’ their children.  Oh, I can’t.  No, my boys were good.  Did you see that picture in the hallway of them?

LC:  Yes, I did.

LS:  They were happy kids.

LC:  They were cute boys.

LS:  Oh, yeah, they were good.  They were real happy.  Then we had Timothy.  But Timmy would say, “Mom, will you a baby?”  We had dogs and we had birds – and “will you have this, Mom?”…and will you have…  But when we had Susannah, oh, he was real happy.  But we only took her for two years.  Just two years we had her.  That was good.  Everybody said, “Would you do it again?”  I said, “Oh, yes, I would.”  Cuz it helped her and it helped me.  That was okay. 

LC:  Is there anything else you can think of that you’d like to add?

LS:  I’m trying to think…

LC:  This has been a tremendous interview.  Thanks so much, Lee! 

LS:  Oh, thank you.  I’m trying to think what the girls all said when I were comin’ to America.

LC:  What did they say?

LS:  Oh my goodness.  [Laughter]  Oh!  I don’t know…Every time they’d read a book about America, and that…“[Gasp] Do you know what they do over there?!?”

LC:  [Laughter]  So they thought you were getting yourself into “hot water”?

LS:  I’m going to get into a real – oh, yeah.  Oh, my goodness!  When I went back, see, then I went back to the welding.  I were a – I welded, in England, yeah, and that were close to home, too.

LC:  You welded?

LS:  Yeah, we were weldin’ – oh, it were parts for cars.  So when I went back with the boys, you know, we were there so long, I went to work, then.

LC:  Okay, now wait a minute. 

LS:  That were when I took the boys back.

LC:  You were welding when you took the boys back?  Did you do that before?

LS:  No.  I did it when I were there for the six months. 

LC:  How ever did you get into that?

LS:  Well, I came out of the mill – well, I did it because my sister worked there, too.  So I were with my sister.  Then I got into that.  And then when I came out [of the service] after Ed left, I went back there for a couple of months.  And then I were gone.  But it was so funny – they couldn’t take my tax.  I’m still English!  I was English, then.  I weren’t even American!  But when I went back with the boys, then I was still English, I weren’t American then, so they had to give me the tax back.  It was real odd how they did that.  But I think that helped me to get...  I was in the mall one day and this girl says to me, “Lee, did you sign up for your pension?”  I said, “You’re kiddin’!”  “No,” she said, “you worked over there.”  “I worked in England,” I said, “and I was in the service.”  She said, “Well, I’ll give you the address.”  So she gave me the address, and here I got this pension. 

LC:  You get a pension from England!

LS:  It’s my social security!  But I got 1200 cuz I didn’t sign for it. 

LC:  Did you get this from the Army?

LS:  From the Army and when I were in the mill.  This friend I knew, she had it a long time and never told us.  I told everybody!  Everybody got the pension!  Well, you know if they needed it, and it’s theirs…  So now I get about 350 a month.  Otherwise, you know, I wouldn’t have got it.  But my son thinks I’m awful cuz I take it from a poor country.  I said, “No, England’s not poor!” 

LC:  Well, you did your part.

LS:  I worked, and I were in the service. 

LC:  Everyone takes it from our poor country!  We’re poor now!

LS:  I know that Giovanni, that’s Stella’s husband, his mother came here, and I don’t know how she did it, but she went back with a pension.  She went back to Italy.  So I don’t know, there must be some way…  But you know this other friend of ours, she married a guy from Turkey.  She had two boys.  Her boys are here goin’ to the university and it don’t cost them nothing.  I can’t understand it.  And they’re going there and they got a job and they make twelve dollars an hour.  And they got a place to live and everything!  And they fly up and see them.  That’s not fair, cause there’s so many of them have to get loans to go to school.  But these – no, it don’t cost them and both of them go. 

LC:  Well, I’m going to turn this off now, and if you think of anything else you’d like to tell us, you let me know.

LS:  OK.

LC:  Thanks, Lee!