Another decade may have passed…

Liver and onions are a meal no one confesses to. It simply is not politically correct.

When I was a child, organ meat fed many a working class family. Liverwurst in a length of intestine…yum, yum. Sometimes Mom said it was braunschweiger, but made no difference to the kids who could say neither, and called it spread meat.

Liver was a special treat in our house. Family story had it that my dad came home from work, inhaled deeply, and said “steak” on the exhale. Mom had to say it was liver, which he could not bring himself to eat. The difference in the palates of the granddaughter of a German grocer and the grandson of a Presbyterian Irish schoolteacher. Ever after we ate liver when Dad was out of town on a business trip.

We ate Mom’s liver because it was pretty good, and the onions and mashed potatoes were great. Then my brother, the Old Cornmudgeon came back from England with his trophy wife. Oh, our Hazel. She made Yorkshire pudding so wonderful that my uncle, a WWII veteran who shipped out of England, got up and waltzed her around the kitchen.

Hazel’s liver became a family gathering. Hazel taught us you only turn liver once, and voila, no more tough liver on any plate in our family. But the sixties rolled into the seventies and eighties, and suddenly all the best food was no good for us. I’m sure liverwurst remains available at good delis, but don’t expect to find it at the current incarnation of the local A&P.

And so, liver went out of our lives. Until the year Hazel called from England. We could say no, she said, but it would be a great favor if we would allow her to bunk at our house while she showed off her America to her husband, Bill. The question went round the house, to a unanimous YES. So, Hazel and Bill came to visit. Often, as it turned out.

Of course, not many days went by before someone said, Remember those liver and onion dinners! And, of course, Hazel made liver and onions and I believe Walt even came up from Southern Ohio to meet Hazel’s husband and eat liver and onions. I’m thinking that was in the early nineties.

Now, it’s liver and onions when Hazel comes over. Or, a friend visits from Texas and leaves a fifty pound sack of Vandalia onions in our living room. Mighty fine eating.

Supper tonight. Eat your hearts out.

Mother’s funeral

My mother had a wonderful funeral. I’m sure she smiled, and forgave us most of it.

To start at the beginning, mom lost the fight to a virulent breast cancer. We took her to the hospital when we realized we were completely unprepared to care for her at home, the end snuck up so fast. Being mom, she closed her eyes, intending to open them no more. She did open them one time, to sign a check for her entire annual tithe to her church. The same her shyster lawyer stole to close her estate of one old car. My sister and I made good the tithe, and the small church was grateful.

Pat, my cousin in Texas, sent a plant to the hospital. Mom smiled and said “Dallas.” Pat is the daughter of one of our dad’s uncles. Her parents died very young, alcoholics, and my parents tried to adopt Pat. The staunchly Catholic faction united against my fallen from grace father who had the additional audacity to marry a Baptist. They sent Pat to live with an evil cousin in Texas. Pat grew up, married Ellis, and that’s how I have cousins in Texas. The day after mom saw the plant Pat arrived at the airport; mom was the last living relative from those days. We all were sad she was a day late.

Not long after we moved in together, Mom joined her brother’s church, a more fundamental church than I could imagine her being with. But—Uncle Hank’s church had bus tours for seniors, and to be assured of a seat every time, she had to be a member. She joined. Somewhere during her affiliation the old minister retired and the church hired a young woman for an interim minister.

Mom and Stephanie made an immediate connection. After there was a new minister at Uncle Hank's church, Mom would show up unannounced at Stephanie’s new churches; she liked what Stephanie had to say.

On Mom’s initial trips to the hospital, a year before her cancer went viral, Stephanie would pop from an elevator, a tiny bit of a girl. “There you are!” The two of them were off, and I went to the family waiting room. Jan and I teased Stephanie, she was the good daughter, and Stephanie replied “Not if she knew everything.” I knew she was alluding to being a tiny, gay, sprite, and simply replied mother loved her.

So, you know Mom is going to die very soon in my story, and she did. We took her to the hospital on Tuesday, on Wednesday we told her we had a hospice room. Warm blankets at hospice did not entice her, the hospital blankets were just fine. She died on Thursday, but not before she told us “No notice.”

Mom and Uncle Hank, 1936

Uncle Hank stood beside her body, held his big sister’s hand and said, “We were on vacation in Florida. She never told us your dad died, you know. She didn't want to bother us.” He waited twenty years to tell us that.

Mom was a planner. A, B, she had an entire alphabet of alternative plans in her repertoire. Leaving on that particular Thursday, the next day being Good Friday and Easter on Sunday was her Plan A, I know. The phone calls went around, people gathered in her hospital room, then at the house. It was a beautiful early spring day, the bees were out. We gave the hospital instructions to send mom to Hennessy’s, her Irish funeral home of choice the many times she had to use one. We went home to join her guests.

I'm only half way into the story; but it's almost finished tomorrow.

Summer games

Summer means family gatherings, often accompanied by loud, raucous family games.  Croquet was popular among the neighborhood kids on a hot summer afternoon.  Our back yard, at forty feet wide and sixty feet long, was an ideal court. The game often was set up at family picnics.  Children, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents played—my great-grandmother sending an opponent ball clear down the yard to cries of “Hit it hard, Marcia, hit it hard!” 

Uncle Hank had a lathe, and he turned new threaded ends on many a toilet plunger handle or a handy broom to replace a mallet handle severed enthusiastically from a mallet’s head.  That game dwindled in popularity as the adults grew older, and especially as the children grew older and pre-teen boys saw the mallets as handy weapons to settle rule disputes.  Dad put the set high in the garage rafters; effectively ending croquet games.

When we moved to this house the big front yard could not go to waste.  Croquet was passé, but Uncle Hank introduced us to bocce ball, and the tournaments began.  At every picnic, no matter who was here, teams formed and bocce was played.  Uncle Hank, half English, half German, lived in a Polish suburb; he knew bocce and he captained one team.  Our friend Marilyn, a tough Hungarian, born with bocce blood, captained the other.  The rest of us just played.

There were tough and exciting games one summer, reminiscent of the old “Hit it hard, Marcia!” days. We played on down to Labor Day, when the winning team would be declared. So many people came to that party there was an audience, as well as two teams.  A lot of cheering would be done.

At a time out in the game, when Uncle Hank and Marilyn were nose to nose on a point of order, Scuffy, the corner dog came trotting down the road.  Scuffy was the company dog of a business along the main road.  Although he had a dog house behind the fence, weekends found him lonely.  Being a terrier, he often went under the fence and in search of adventure.

One of our guests, Danny, is a police officer in a neighboring city. Danny was concerned the dog was lose.  He would even take Scuffy back and figure out how to get him over the fence. We told him to be patient; it was about time for our police patrol car to make the rounds.

The township black and white came down the road, the officer waved at all of us assembled on the porch and lawn, Uncle Hank and Marilyn still nose to nose.  Then the officer saw Scuffy, called him over and put him in the car.  Danny said now he’d seen everything; a town so small the police knew the names of the dogs, too.  He would have a story to tell at work. The patrol car came back up the road, Scuffy’s head out his window, riding back home.

The rule of the game was settled, in Marilyn’s team’s favor.  I have no idea who won, but it was a great tournament. That was the last summer we played bocce.  Mom’s next summer was spent in declining health, she was gone in March of the next year and Uncle Hank that fall.  The game used to be in the garage; Tom’s probably hung it from a rafter, out of the way.

Mom in Las Vegas

Mom came by her wandering foot genetically.  She was born in 1918 and on her father’s vacation excursions.  Niagara Falls or the Pacific Ocean, all the same to him, from Cleveland, Ohio.  I wonder what my grandmother thought of lugging bedding for a family, and probably guests, from one set of tourist cabins to another.  I do recall Mom telling of one vacation in which she had cherry pie for breakfast every morning.

Travel and vacations were important when I was a child.  A trip of several days to St. Louis when I was about six or seven involved motels and hotels, and probably tipped my frugal mother (and father) into the camping mode, the accommodation I recall from my childhood.  Some of my first blogs recounted family camping, and especially a tent my dad fashioned of a parachute, marbles, and a tent pole.

Mom budgeted for the annual family vacation.  She had a shoe box with envelopes, each labeled with something she was saving for.  One envelope was the vacation fund and the figures would accumulate down the outside of the envelope.  On one very cold winter morning the engine block of the family car cracked.  But by cashing some bonds and using the vacation fund our family left behind the 1935 Dodge.  My brother Walt and I were not sorry to be sitting in the back seat of a 1948 Dodge.  No more sheet metal slicing the backs of our legs.

When we moved to this house Mom was seventy, and still travelling.  In the preceding decade she had visited friends and relatives in Missouri, Texas, Florida and points between, accompanied by friends or her sisters-in-law.  Camping days were over, but I know Mom looked for the best motel deal available.  I have mental images of her at a motel counter, with tiny, white haired Aunt Helen Rita, negotiating a better rate.

Our Uncle Hank retired after we moved here, and mom noticed him and Aunt Flo taking a lot of little weekend trips—by bus.  Their church senior group organized the jaunts and mom was welcome to join them, if there was an unsold seat left.    After missing a few trips she would have enjoyed mom took matters into her own hands and joined Uncle Hank’s church.

The senior group of the church organized tours that required air travel and although Aunt Flo and Uncle Hank could be off to Disneyland or Broadway, mom was not interested in those tours.  Until the trip to Las Vegas came up.  Her cousin Tommy and his wife Mary would be coming from Texas to join them for several days in Las Vegas.  Mom was so excited she bought a new suit case. 

It would be my mother’s first ever airplane trip and I said I would see her to her gate and wait until she boarded (1995). Well, she could figure that out by herself!  It’s a long trudge to the gates at Cleveland Hopkins, but she only allowed me drop her.  As I slowed down, knowing my mom, I handed her two dollar bills and said that the approaching man, the Sky Cap, would be carrying her bag, and please tip him, and everyone else who helped her.  That’s how they earned a living.  I could not get out of the car in time; she got her suit case and marched right past the outstretched hand of the Sky Cap.

When I picked her up a week later she handed me two dollars, announcing she had carried her bag herself.  Everywhere. She and Tommy had a wonderful time.  In my files I have a picture of others in the party facing their machines, pulling handles, but Mom and Tommy sitting shoulder to shoulder, backs to a machine, chatting like long lost cousins.  I may never find the picture to illustrate the story, but you can see it in your mind’s eye, I know.  Oh, yes, she didn’t waste any money on those casinos, either.

Mom and Uncle Hank on vacation, about 1931

Names happen

When I was ten or eleven, and had a new baby sister named Janice—Janice, Dad said.  “I didn’t name her Janus"—my friend had a new baby sister named Kimberly.  It sounded wrong.  How could a kid go through life named for Kimberly-Clark, the Kleenex company. I come from a family that swapped names around, generation to generation.  

In retrospect, it was the cusp of not your father’s name.  Or mother’s, either.  It happened in my own family, right on the heels of Kimberly.  My Aunt Flo, faced with naming her daughter Ethel, after her mother, or Ethel, after her mother-in-law, named my cousin Barbara.  When my next cousin was born two years later, she named him Kenneth.  Barbie and Ken.

My mother was named Lenore Caroline, matriarchal family names.  Her brother, my Uncle Hank was named Henry Melvin, from his grandfathers on both sides.  His paternal grandfather, Charles Henry Rolf, actually had the same name as a sibling who died as an infant.  Except, the sibling was Henry Charles.  Thrifty people, those German immigrants.

My grandfather expected my mother to be a boy.  No girls had been born in the family for generations.  He was so surprised he dubbed her Nicodemus, and she was called Nikki by everyone except my grandmother.  All my aunts, uncles, cousins called her Nikki or Aunt Nikki.  My dad called her Nikki. 

When I married the naming situation was serious.  My husband was adamant our first child would be a boy, and would be named after him.  Another Junior.  When she surprised him, he named her Joanne (after me) and Elizabeth (after the girlfriend who dumped him after high school).  I was not about to have a big Joanne and a little Joanne in the house, and had no problem with Elizabeth, except for its length, so I told everyone to call her Beth.  It’s worked out well.

My second daughter also acquired a name she wasn’t given.  Her father again intended her to be a boy and be named junior.  Foiled again. I suggested a name to honor her Irish heritage, but quit that idea immediately on learning he would convert it to an ugly nickname.  For a girl, he said, he wanted Michelle. The name du jour in 1967.  Of Beetles renown.   She was Michelle from September, 1967 until July, 1968, when my brother and sister-in-law had a baby, and named her Michelle.

“We can’t have two Michelle’s in the family,” Helyn informed me.  Yours will need a nickname.  I protested ours was named before hers was even conceived.  “But we liked the name first,” she settled.  I’d never liked Michelle; Shelly was fine with me.  In truth, I don’t think my husband called her anything but Shelly.  And, my brother’s Michelle has always been Michelle.  A good name for each of them.

My granddaughters have traditional family names.  Shelly used my dad’s sister’s names, Laura and Ruth, for two daughters, and Beth named her daughter Caroline Lenore to honor her grandmother, Nikki.  Her son, France, may still be on the road to his name.  Born William Francis, he got his first name from his father and his second name from the gourmet hot dog establishment in the lobby of the hospital.  In honor of its being open on Christmas Eve, when he was finally born.  We call him Francis, but I’m thinking he’ll grow up to be a mighty tall Frank.

Nikki, standing by her father

Walter Ernst Rolf, Lenore Caroline Rolf, Henry Melvin Rolf, Ethel Lenore Cox Rolf

Just goofy

The whole extended family often visited when the children were young. Several generations of brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, grandparents, aunts and uncles in the summer, in someone’s back yard, watching all the children at play.  Children were required to get dirty so they could get a bath and go home to bed.  My niece and a nephew:

Sometimes the grown-ups might have made themselves just as dirty.  My dad on a tiny tricycle. Early ‘70’s.

My Uncle Hank back from a spin up the road.  I believe that’s my brother’s motor scooter.

When I got my motorcycle I drove it home from the dealer to my parents’, but needed practice trips through the neighborhood before I rode to Mentor.  I practiced corners, downshifting, stopping and starting.  Feeling pretty confident after a couple of hours, I started back up Gardendale hill and saw my two brothers across a vacant field, on Moraine.  There was a footpath between the streets that went down a hill, across a flat plain of ground that Grandpa Schook gardened, back up a hill and onto Moraine.

The grades down and up were fairly steep, and as I started up the grade to Moraine my bike gave a little choke signaling imminent stall.  Walt and Mel were yards away, above my head on the road.  Mel yelled “Downshift and give it some gas!,” both of which I promptly executed.  The front wheel immediately came up off the ground.  I looked up at two brothers laughing so hard as to be no help as the front wheel rose higher and higher.  No question I would be over backwards in a minute.  What to do?

I stood up on the pegs and leaned over the handle bars to get the front tire back on the ground.  And my brothers kept on laughing.  Leaning on each other, tears rolling down.  I crested the hill on the back tire and got the front tire down only when I reached the level of the road.  My brothers were behind me, shaking with laughter.  I was furious.  I did a one footed U turn and aimed straight for them.  At the last moment they moved aside, revealing the big oak tree they were in front of.  I missed it, too, and turned to face them.

“That,” said Mel, “is called a wheelie.  You’re damn good.”

The scream house

Unlike the sidewalk, the scream house construction didn’t get documented with pictures.  Half way down the sidewalk, on the left side, there’s a shed type structure put up by the current owner.  Sadly, he tore down the patio and covered up the cobbles to do it.

In the beginning there was the screen house.  Dad built it about 1957.  It was a frame of a house, complete with pitched roof, and screens for walls.  Jan was four.  It was her scream house.  Before he built the scream house dad had to make the patio under it.  He laid hundreds of brick cobbles that he discovered as construction waste at Botzum Brothers, the company mining the pit.  They were his for the taking.  The pile surely weighed a ton and was three quarters of a mile from our house.  A quarter mile of that was the climb back up out of the pit.

Dad furnished the clothes line and paid the neighborhood kids a nickel a cobble to drag those bricks up from the pit and down the street to our back yard.  I think that took us the entire month of June.  After dad laid the stone floor he assembled the scream house on top of it.  Every fall he took it down and stored it in the garage.

The cobble stones, on the left.  Quite a few years after they were laid; probably between the screen house and its replacement.

A glimpse of Jan's scream house over her shoulder.

Dad ran electricity to the garage and the patio.  He dug a trench the length of the yard and laid a pipe that went through the basement wall.  Walt held the ball of cord at one end and dad started up the vacuum at the other.  The line was sucked 200 feet out to the garage.  Then the cord was tied to the electrical line and slick as you know what, the electrical line was pulled through.  This probably did not violate a single zoning code in 1957.

Mom, Jan, Joanne, Walt, Mel, Uncle Bill, Dad.  That grin on dad's face is knowing the timer will trip perfectly.

The scream house was our haven in summer.  Mom set up her sewing machine.  She may even have set up a quilt or two. We ate every meal there. She made pancakes in her trusty electric skillet on the weekends.  One time I reached up to unplug the coffee pot I had just emptied into my parents’ cups.  Just as I reached dad jumped up and shouted “NO,” but my hand had already closed on the plug.  Bare feet on damp stones.  I was thrown the ten foot width of the patio and landed on my back.  Unconscious.  When I opened my eyes dad was compressing my chest and counting.  He looked at me and said, “How often have you been told to wear shoes!”

In 1965, early one April there was a freak wind storm.  My brother Mel had just put the scream house together, and it sailed away forever.  The next patio cover was not screened.  However, it did not have to be disassembled and reassembled annually.  Dad’s health was not up to new construction and Walt was in the Air Force, so Mel and our neighbor Chico built the new patio roof.  The new roof was barrel shaped, with fluted green fiberglass covering.  From then on, when dad was not using his camera for family events he would reach up and store it safely from harm on one of the four by four rafters.

 Mel and Chico, constructing.

Mom supervising.

The camera holder completed.  Right up there on the cross rafter in the foreground.

From Grandma Lytle to Shelly

Mom wrote this informational narrative to my daughter, who was assembling genealogical information.  Tommy and Jimmy are mom’s cousins, sons of Grandma Rolf’s brother, Elmore.  Ruby is their mother.  I found some more Rolf vacation snap shots and put them in a reasonably appropriate place.   And, this 1921 labeled by my Uncle Hank.

Letter from Grandma Lenore Lytle to Shelly, May 11, 1990

Dear Shelly

Tommy sent the information I asked for.  Aunt Ruby’s first marriage was to Elmore.  She had an unusual middle name for a girl.  She was an only child.  Her Mother was a widow and married a man by the last name of KOESTLE.

You said Laura’s genealogy listed occupations.  Uncle Elmore was a “moving picture” operator at the Denison Theater on 25^th Street.

Grandma (Lenore) kept a boarding house for the operators of Selzer Ave. because Grandpa Cox (Melvin) was a painter and work was non-existent in the winter.

My father was a watchmaker and was an apprentice in that trade for several years.  In 1923 he went out on his own in the front bedroom at 5214 21^st St. in Cleveland.  Later, he converted the double garage into a shop and assembled clock movements for the Service Records Co.  It is still in business.  The instruments were mainly in the then fledgling trucking industry.  Drivers were paid for running time at one rate and standing time at another.  My Dad also developed other clocks for other purposes.  The biggest headache was to get a strong enough spring in a small enough space to run the clock for 72 hours.  Times have changed.  Now we throw watches away and buy a new one.

Grandma Rolf work alongside Grandpa and was the driving force in his success.  She never let him get discouraged.  She made the deliveries of fixed watches and clocks to the many jewelry stores in Cleveland.  Dad took care of the Grandfather clocks because he had to reassemble the clock when he repaired the clock movement in his shop.

Henry and I cleaned many a clock movement in high-test gas with a solvent to prevent explosions.  Even though we were warned to keep the door and windows open, we occasionally disobeyed.  It didn’t take long to get “high”.  However, we were reminded over and over of the danger so we pretty much “obeyed”.  Guess that’s why I’m still here.

Dad employed my Grandfather Lou Troike’s next door neighbor Wilbur Ludwig, two men he had trained—Harry Maxwell and Eddies Jenkins (only had one eye). Eddies was my secret hero when I was in the 8^th grade.  My Maxwell had polio as a youngster and was on crutches.  Also, a young diabetic boy worked, but I can’t remember his name.

Back in the 30’s no one had much money.  WPA was the form of employment for many men.  Dad repaired alarm clocks at 25c and that’s what kept him going during the worst of the depression.  Then the Lewis Recorder hired him as a contractor and things got better.

Great Grandpa Rolf (Walter Ernst Rolf) loved to travel.  He would love all these highways.  Guess I got my wandering feet from him.  He never was much of a church goer, but, the Broadview Baptist Church and everyone around him benefitted from his generosity.  No one in the neighborhood went hungry.  He was most happy when everyone around him finally recovered from the depression and got off WPA.

Uncle Hank, tourist

Mom, 1933.  Another vacation, I'm sure

Great Grandma Rolf (Ethel) quit school after 9^th grade.  Algebra was enough for her.  She went to work at 16 as a cashier at May Co. downtown.  Money was needed at home.  Typhoid, scarlet fever, and other contagious diseases were the order of the day.  Rows of houses had signs on them.  I don’t know how the well people fared.  They had to stay elsewhere.  Bring groceries and leave them on the steps.  The Mom of the house really had it rough.  She was quarantined too and had to take care of the ill.  Uncle Elmore was about 18 when he had typhoid.  He managed to survive.

Before the stock market crash of 1929, Dad helped an unemployed carpenter by having him build a cottage in the Sheffield Lake Village off Route 2 East of Lorain.  We cousins had a lot of fun with our friends.  Tommy and Jimmy built a miniature golf course in the vacant lot between our two cottages.  You had to pay a penny to play.

Mom (right) and Uncle Hank at the cottage, 1932

We had Catholic neighbors behind us.  Of course, our parents went to Cleveland every day to work.  The mothers went in once a week to do laundry (no Laundromats) and we all were on our own.  We didn’t go swimming that day even if it wasn’t raining.  I was about 12 or 13 and younger than the 4 Catholic girls.  I had to go and hold their hands when it stormed and they were alone.  Never could figure out why they were so scared.  Always felt their religion should see them through any problem.  They went to Church every Sunday.  I didn’t go in the summertime.  Once in a while a visiting preacher would come to the dance hall and the community would attend.

As for me, I finally grew up.  I graduated from James Ford Rhodes in Jan. 1936.  I turned 18 the next month.  I went to a Burroughs Calculator School.  I had to be the fastest operator because I was the only one who had a watch.  I had to get done so I could time the rest of the students.  Good thing my Dad was a watchmaker.

I went to work at Bailey Wallpaper Co. in May, 1936 at 33 dollars a month.  My own claim to fame at that job was helping to set up Social Security.  I typed up those little cards for the employees.

I met your Grandfather through a neighbor who lived on our street.  Daisy Haupt knew Frank Neillie from WPA days.  She helped Laura and Frank and the three children (girls).  Again, neighbors helping neighbors.  Laura and Frank lived in Independence and we would all congregate there to play “Armbusters”.  You removed all valuables from your arms because 10 or more people playing solitaire can get quite hectic.  Iris, another neighbor, and I always made food to take.  We had to hide the cake in the trunk because Henry and Mike Baehm would eat the nuts and or the frosting.

Daisy and Don built a house on Valley Rd. and your grandfather helped wire it.

By the way, Grandfather went into the Army at 17.  He was medically discharged in 1931 and he always said 1932 was the year he didn’t eat.  He did manage to accumulate tools.  Walter still has most of them.  He had been a radio operator and instructor in the Army.  When he couldn’t get a job at the radio station in Cleveland, he got on a wheat carrying freighter on the Great Lakes.  He stayed there until he got caught in a cable and flipped overboard and broke his ankle.  He stayed with Daisy and Don, but I didn’t meet him then even though I walked past his house every morning and he would come to Dad’s shop to pass the time.

He went to work at Babcox and Wilcox in Barberton.  By then, Laura and Frank put two voting booths together and called it home.  We managed to meet there in late 1941.  We were engaged by Easter 1942 and married in June.  He wanted to be married before he was 35.  His birthday was in August.

When I was pregnant with your mother, he got the last work release issued by B&W and went to work for Goodyear Aircraft.

He always felt that he had been born in a wonderful time.  He had come into the horse and buggy age and went out in the middle of the Space Age.

Enough memories for one day.  There are more good ones than otherwise.  I’m grateful.  Love, Grandma

Walter E. Rolf trips

At Quaker Oats on the way to Niagara Falls.  In front to back pairs, Uncle Hank, Grandma Rolf.  My mother is the young girl in front of her tall father, Walter Rolf.  Beside Walter, Grandpa Cox.  In front of him, Grandma Cox.  And assorted friends and other relatives, including Grandpa Rolf's step-father, Lou Troike. 

My mother saw a deal of the country as a child in the late ‘20’s and 1930’s because her father loved to travel.  He packed up more than his family.  These were group excursions, friends and relatives, travelling in vacation convoys.  My grandfather looks quite the expansive and ebullient patriarch in these pictures; I see him as a Teddy Roosevelt, Rough Rider kind of expedition leader.  Mom’s grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Cox were generally along on these trips.  Grandpa Cox didn’t drive.  Grandma Cox didn’t drive well.  Car transmissions were standard shift back then.  Marcia could navigate the flat well, but the hills were iffy.  To solve this, her car was always between two others.  Her standard instruction was to shift to neutral and be pushed up the hills by the trailing car and go down the hill on the bumper of the lead car.  Apparently it was a standard and well oiled routine for all of them. 

Marcia Cox and Ethel Rolf at Niagara Falls

I understood mom’s stories of Tourist Camps; we passed a lot of these highway cabins and motels in my own family vacationing in the 1950’s.  The link is to an excellent description of tourist accommodations and dining in the 1930’s.   Mom said on their trip west in 1936 she ate cherry pie for breakfast every morning.  My Grandma Rolf told me that Uncle Hank was a difficult eater, who, to her mortification, exclusively ordered mashed potatoes and water.  She only got substantial food into him when she could make him a sandwich from the provender of a grocery store.

Uncle Hank, Grandma Rolf (at the car), unknown friend.

Grandpa Rolf had a movie camera on the great trip west in 1936.  There are hours and hours of moving pictures of scenery. In black and white. In the entire film the one scene with people was my grandmother, mother and uncle emerging from a trading post.  Ten seconds of footage.

The surviving souvenirs of the great trip came from trading posts.  When my grandmother sold her house, most of the Apache trays, olla’s, rugs and pots were packed away at my parents’ house, then sent to my house, where all remained packed away except one large olla, where we threw our wet mittens and scarves every winter.  The souvenirs all moved in here with us and kicked around for a few years until I decided to send them to a more appreciative home via EBay.  The prices the baskets brought were astounding, and even after I took a severe email lashing from someone who could not believe the olla “had been the family junk basket for over one hundred years,” in its very deteriorated condition it sold for several hundred dollars.  As did the pots and rugs.  A winnowing tray was the real sleeper, and as a bonus, we sent the purchaser a tape of the hours and hours of moving scenery from the great trip west.

Mom remained a great traveler and commandeered children and grandchildren for annual vacations.  In 1980 we took our own great trip west, to make another visit to Yellowstone and to see Mt. St. Helens.  Somewhere in Wyoming mom looked out from the interstate and said “Look.  Over there.  It’s the road we took in 1936."  A snaking little road way down in the valley, climbing up the mountain.  We left at the next exit, worked down to the road and took it for the rest of the day.  It was serious, tiring, hand over hand mountain driving. We had a flat on the camper trailer on the mountain and I off-loaded ten kids to the other side of the guard rail while it was being repaired.  A rattle snake backed us all up to the guard rail and we climbed up and just took it all in.  I could just see Grandpa Rolf, jaunty pipe, leaning back in the seat and leading his expedition.

Transcribed from Lenore Lytle’s typed account:

A year or two before her death in 1997 (which took all of us by surprise, as she intended, at minimum, to usher in the new millennium) Mom took the typewriter and spent several days clicking away.  We found this account when we sorted through.  I’ve posted some photos as her narrative goes along, and made a link to the Cleveland stockyards.

To anyone who might be interested in the background and events in the life of Lenore Caroline Rolf Lytle;

HENRY CHARLES ROLF                                                                        1868-1907

CAROLINE SCHACHT ROLF TROIKE                                         5-10-1871 – 10-2-1953
WALTER ERNST ROLF                                                             1-10-93 – 2-18-45

MELVIN ELMORE COX                                                             8-10-72  -  6-9-54

LENORE SMITH COX                                                                1873-1923
ELMORE COX                                                                          1892-1918
ETHEL LENORE COX ROLF                                                       1894-1989
HELEN LOUISE COX SHULTZ                                                    6-24-04 - 6-18-76

Children of Walter & Ethel

LENORE CAROLINE                                                                 2-4-18
HENRY MELVIN                                                                       12-16-23

Children of Elmore & Ruby Eberhard Cox Keller

EUGENE HOWARD                                                                  1-25-16
ELMORE THOMAS                                                                   5-1-18

Children of Raymond and Louise Shultz

MELVIN                                                                                   1923

My great grandparents lived in the Harvard Avenue area of Cleveland as did my paternal grandparents.  They owned and operated a grocery store.  Dad had a 6^th grade education which, at that time, was deemed sufficient for a boy.   Grandad died in 1907 from a massive heart attack, and Dad went to work.  In 1908 Grandma married Louis Troike who had been born and raised in the Sandusky, Ohio area.

During Dad’s early teens, the family moved to 3891 West 20^th Street off Denison Avenue.  Grandpa Troike had gotten a job in the stockyards.

Elmore & Mom were born on a farm in Austinburg, Ohio.  In the early 1900’s the family moved to 2404 Selzer Avenue.  Aunt Louise was born there.  Grandpa, along with his three brothers, Norval, Clarence & Pearl were painters and paperhangers.  Grandma took in borders.

Mom completed 9^th grade and quit.  Algebra was enough math for her.  She worked downtown Cleveland at the May Company as a cashier.

Recreation was simple for the young people.  Tobogganing down the hill at the old Zoo, now known as Cleveland Metropolitan Park System, boating and ice skating in the same area.  The boys were happy to quit walking when motorcycles were made.

Grandma had a goiter and leakage of the heart as did her sisters.  Being in poor health, a lot of the work and responsibility fell on Mom’s shoulders resulting in a nervous breakdown at age 16.  When there were contagious diseases such as measles or scarlet fever, houses had a sign plastered on the door.  Anyone who worked stayed with relatives or neighbors.  Uncle Elmore was stricken with scarlet fever but survived.

Practical jokes are an age-old custom.  Mom told about the time she was upstairs cleaning, saw Elmore in the yard, yelled and spit.  Right in the eye!  Trapped!  Fortunately, he thought it funny and he didn’t retaliate.

In the summertime, clothes were washed in the back yard using a wash tub and a scrub board.  Same tub used on Saturday nights for baths.  No inside plumbing either for quite a while. Most of the washing fell on Mom’s shoulders.  Men boarders wore white shirts.  Elmore had been pestering Mom and when she heard footsteps in the side yard and whistling, she took the sopping wet shirt and threw it.  It wrapped around the unsuspecting face of Walter Rolf.  What an introduction to her future husband.

Ethel & Walter Rolf, 1915

They married August 6, 1915 in the Congregational Church.  They lived with his parents until February, 1918.  The worst flu epidemic of the country was in full sway.  Mom was in Lutheran hospital having me.  Dad was taking the only medicine available—whiskey, and was moving them into the Roshier Building on West 25^th Street.  That was his introduction to Keston and Emma Brigham.  They were sharing the same elevator.  Emma became a life-long friend.

Ethel & Lenore Rolf, 1918

When I was a little over a year old, they moved to Gifford Avenue on the West side of Cleveland.  Dad was working for a sewing machine company in the Harvard Avenue area.  Most of the time Dad walked to work because he didn’t have a nickel to ride the street car.  The motorcycle had been sold, because three couldn’t ride at the same time.  Mom said their main diet consisted of macaroni and tomatoes.

While living there I got my first scar.  Seems the boy from downstairs pulled over my highchair and we all went down the stairs.  Cut my upper lip only.  I guess I was a happy tot.  Mom dressed me in a lace curtain, her old shoes and I paraded up and down the street with a groom alongside.  Now that is history.  I know because my Mother “told me so.”

Lenore, by an itinerant photographer with travelling prop

Before I left Gifford Avenue, we got a collie dog.

When I was about four I became aware of Grandma Cox’s house on Selzer in a very dramatic way.  I had a handful of nails in my hand.  There was the nicest hidey-hole in the baseboard, so I stuck them in there.  The electricity shot across the room, the one fuse in the house blew.  I lived and had many happy times in that house.

I only remember my Grandmother as not being well and laying on the davenport in the living room and/or in bed.  When she died in the spring of 1923 I remember that she wore a grey dress and had an American flag stuck in her bosom.

Back to the history lesson.  Dad left the sewing machine job and went on the railroad as a fireman.  World War I was going strong and they needed help.  That lasted until the train derailed on the Howard Street overpass in Akron and pinned him between the boiler and the front of the cab. He then went to work for a jeweler by the name of Russell and learned the watch making trade.

By 1922 the jeweler was bankrupt. Dad had a hoard of leaded cut glass and decided that was enough of working for somebody else.  The war was over and men needed to be trained for jobs.  He went to the Cleveland Trust Bank on the corner of Broadview and West 25^th street and after much discussion between the manager and Dad, he got the loan to buy the house at 4214 West 21^st street in Old Brooklyn.  Again, I know this because “MMTMS”.

1923 was a momentous year.  I started kindergarten at Benjamin Franklin School.  I walked up 21^st, down Valley Road to Creston.  Crossed a couple of streets until I reached Spring Road.  About those elementary years, I remember very little.  I must have been a good student, Mother never had to go the Principal.  I do remember in kindergarten of being very disappointed that there was no electric train under the Christmas tree.  Dad was a train buff and we always had an electric train.

Grandma Cox died in the spring, Grandpa married Marcia Enos in the Fall and along came my brother on December 16^th.  I never knew Mom was pregnant until Grandma Troike came over to take care of me.  I was so excited I threw up all over the bathroom

Henry Rolf, 1925, W. 21st Street

When I was about 3, I needed a new winter coat and shoes.  There was little money, but Dad took me by the hand to see what he could buy with what he had.  As he rounded the corner of Selzer and 25^th, he put his foot on something skittering along the sidewalk.  Nobody was in sight and when he picked it up he had $20.  I got my coat, a hat, a muff and shoes.  I loved that muff and carried it everywhere.  Of course, somewhere along the line I left it hanging on an outhouse door somewhere.

He opened a shop in the front bedroom and had two trainees.  For quite a while, I went to sleep with the ticking of clocks and chiming cuckoo clocks on the wall in the hall. 

Henry Rolf, mid 1930's

Junior High was in the same school.  I loved Geography.  By then we changed classes.  Also, French was introduced into the Junior High level.  Doris Sorge was my teacher.  I had her all through high school.  She was promoted to the high school when our class graduated.

Dad and Mom bought a cottage in Sheffield Lake near Lorain in the spring of 1929.  My cousins Jimmy and Tommy (Elmore’s boys) lived next door with their Grandmother, Mrs. Koestle.  Dad went to Cleveland every day and we went swimming, played cards, played cops and robbers with cap guns.  The new outhouses were the jails.  You got put in the front door and snaked out the clean out door.  Our outhouse had hollyhocks.

Rolf Family & cottage