Childhood

I was the first grandchild, and, from both sides was doted on. On my dad’s side, the grandparents were Grandpaw and Grandma; on my mother’s side, they were Granny and Grandpap. Grandpaw was a retired Methodist minister, while Grandpap was a farmer who later retired from farming and opened a gas station in the early ‘20’s.

Grandpaw McCauley was more jovial than Grandpap Kirsch, whereas Granny Kirsch was more ebullient that Grandmaw McCauley. Both sides, though, thought the sun rose and set on their grandkids. I recall that when I became an Altar Boy in the 6th grade, both Granny and Grandmaw wanted to share. Altar boys needed a Cassock and a Surplice so Granny made the Surplice and Grandmaw made the Cassock. Both were excellent sewers, though I’d say Grandmaw was the more skilled. Grandpaw McCauley was a bookworm who’d lend me books whenever he came to see us. One time he lent me a G A Henty account of the French and Indian war, that left me, as a kid, sympathetic to the English side of the war. Not until I got to HS did I realize that Henty, as an English author, had been biased. Grandmaw McCauley was the mainstay of my Dad’s family. Grandmaw could do everything: cooking, gardening, and sewing. Grandpap Kirsch, though he read newspapers and magazines, was primarily a mechanical whiz who, in today’s terms, would be called Mr. Goodwrench. He could fix anything that needed fixing on the farm or the gas station.

Every year, each of us kids got a week at Grandpap’s and Granny’s farm in Altoona. Separately, though. First me, then Mike, then Ants. Those were the happiest days of the summer, for the neighbors, next door, kept ponies on their farm, that we were permitted to ride. That was a blessing for Granny-we were gone except at mealtime. Granny died in ‘36 and after I graduated from HS, I stayed there while attending the Altoona Undergraduate Center of Penn State for 2 years prior to attending the main campus. By that time, my uncle Bill had re-started farming,so my life there combined school with farm life and working at the gas station, largely under Grandpap’s purview.

I don’t recall being a toy kid, but when I started first grade at Mt. Carmel in Altoona, I walked to school at 8th Ave and 11th Street from where we lived on Dutch Hill - about a mile or so. My walk took me over a baseball field, and when one day I found a baseball, I became baseball addicted. At that time Altoona had a semi-professional league, and the teams played in the late afternoon so I would catch some of the game on my way home from school.

Though I played marbles-shooters, as we kids called it, baseball was my first love. The ‘marbles’ or ‘shooters’ game we played was called “Fudro.” The winner of the game won all the marbles. First the marbles were placed in a ring and each player from about 10 feet away was given a shot at the ring. After all the players had their first shot, the closest to the ring went first and so on to try to knock a marble from the ring. If he did, the marble was replaced in the ring and the player who had knocked it out became a ‘Killer’. That meant he could hit another player’s marble and that player would be out of the game. Once the number of ‘Killers’ was established, they busied themselves in trying to knock their opponents out of the game until eventually only one player was left. He then gathered up all of the marbles. That was my introduction to big time gambling. I played Fudro up till I went to HS and discovered Pool and became helplessly addicted to shooting pool, not only after school, but also cutting classes and playing. That lasted till I graduated. When I went to Penn State, it was pinball that did me in. In particular there was a store on College Avenue next to the Corner Room that cornered all my pin money to such an extent I didn’t have enough to buy supper but had to rely for a meal on a loaf of bread and a quart of milk. The road to hell began, for me, with one small step toward the pinball machine. Once in the Army, I straightened out, went cold turkey: no more pool, no more pinball.

Hey, Scooter: I grew up in a bunch of neighborhoods. I lived in Altoona till I was 9, going to Mt Carmel through grade 3, and then to Prospect Park for grade 4. Then my Dad was laid off by the PRR but he got a job at Westinghouse Electric in East Pittsburgh so we moved to East McKeesport, renting a house in the same town that my Dad’s parents lived in, as well as his brother, Ray, sister Viola and their families. Ray was known as Preach and was well liked by us McCauley kids. Viola’s husband, Clyde Gumbert, was an avid hunter. We best remember him for being a subscriber to Field and Stream because we got the old ones and just poured over them. My Dad grew restless in East McKeesport for we had no garden nor place to raise chickens. So he travelled far and wide to find a house we could rent that provided some ‘lebensraum.’ He did find a house he could rent in Larimer, Pa, about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. It was on Scotch Hill in Larimer with an acre of ground for a garden and plenty or room for a chicken coop and rabbit hutches. We raised both, selling eggs and rabbits plus chickens to eat. Whenever we sold chickens, my job was the cutting off of their heads, plunging them into scalding hot water and removing the feathers so Mom and Dad could ‘dress’ them, i.e. eviscerate them. Larimer had a school but we kids, Mike, Ants and yers truly, went to the parochial school, Immaculate Conception, in Irwin, some 3 miles east of Scotch Hill where we lived. We walked to school through the woods, setting weasel traps in the AM and checking them as we returned home. At the time the state of Pa paid one whole dollar for a weasel pelt, a prized predator. Larimer was in Westmoreland county where the whole county was underlaid by a vein of coal. After school, we kids would hang around a local mine to pick up a nickel or dime for shoveling coal at the tipple. When I was in Norwin HS, the school day was divided: Freshman and Juniors attended from 8 to 1 while Sophs and Seniors went in the afternoon from 12 to 5. After I was 16 I got my driver’s license, my Dad bought me a truck, and in the off time when I wasn’t in school, I hauled coal into Wilkinsburg, a fairly large Pbgh suburb.

Scotch Hill was pretty much in the boondocks, surrounded by farms, large tracts of woods, and places to pick berries in the summer for Mom to turn into Jelly. Mike and I would start off at first light during berry season. We were always afraid of being followed to the good spots we knew. The goal was to return home some 5 to 6 hours later with a full 10 gallon bucket of berries.

In grade school, Immaculate Conception, we carried lunch for all three of us. It was a big Coal Miner’s black metallic lunch box and heavy so the rule was that each kid had to carry it one third of the way. Ants, the youngest, always tired of it and to get out of his tenure would just put the lunch pail on the ground. Responsible me! I had to run way back and grab it again or we wouldn’t eat that day. Ants knew he had me!

Before I got my driver’s license and could haul coal myself, I would work for local truck drivers who went to the Westmoreland Coal mine, picked up a truckload of coal and haul it in to Pbgh or Wilkinsburg where it had to be shoveled, chuted, or carried into the cellars. They would dump a load off, leave me, and maybe another kid, to get it into the cellar while they went back to the mine and picked up another load. The pay: a dollar a load-about 3 or 4 tons. Carry it in paid a dollar a ton. Sometimes carrying it in involved going up a flight of steps from the street and dumping it in the cellar window.

Not all work, however. We played a lot of baseball, and sometimes on Sunday, one of the truckers would fill the coal truck with 10 or 20 of us kids and take us into Forbes field in Pbgh to see the Pirates play. It cost 25 cents to get into the game. I remember being amazed at the grass infield at Forbes field for our home infield was rough and stony. In the fall we played football every night after supper. I was the Saquon Barkely of Scotch Hill. Each neighborhood in the neighboring towns had a team that we scheduled on a Sat or Sun. When I was in HS, I played what was then American Legion baseball. Couldn’t hit but was a whiz in the outfield.

That was life at Scotch Hill during the Depression. You did anything to earn a nickel or dime. A lot of the Pater Familias were ‘laid off’ from their jobs or worked a reduced number of hours/week. My Dad was laid off from Westinghouse, and tramped around trying to get people to buy Watkin’s products. One day as he was walking home, he stopped in the PO in Irwin and saw an ad for a partime mailman. There was a gov’t test involved but my Dad was so intelligent he aced the test and got the job as a part time mailman in Irwin. From then on we had a steady, but minuscule income. Calloo, callay. Later, Dad was able to become a regular rural carrier before moving to Fla.

After HS, I enrolled at Pitt, just 2 classes part time, all we could afford. I hitchhiked into Pbgh every day, and hitchhiked home every day. Luckily, after the first year, Mary Grace fixed it up so I could stay at Red Hill and enroll in Penn State Altoona. Another Calloo, callay.

Easy one, Scooter: Remember that I was a Depression child. Lack of jobs kept families from taking vacations. However, as a kid, I went on vacation every summer to Granny’s at Red Hill. Granny Kirsch loved her grandchildren and took each of them, one at a time to Red Hill for a week. I was first, then Mike, then Ants. Joe was born in ‘31 so didn’t get in on it, nor did Kassie for Granny died in ‘36. When Mike, Ants, and I went to Red Hill, Tremmels still lived there with all of their 15 kids minus Clarence who was in the navy, and a couple of married older kids who lived in Altoona. Gerald was about my age, Rita, a couple of years older, and Bob, a couple of years younger used to pal around together. The Tremmels raised ponies and Mike, Ants and I would have sold our soul to saddle them up and ride around for hours. Rita used to go along and taught us how to smoke. I didn’t break the habit till I got married, was on the GI Bill at Penn, and couldn’t afford to smoke. I had bought a couple of barrack’s bags of cigarettes on the ship coming home from the war for a nickel a pack and when they were gone right after starting at Penn, I went cold turkey and haven’t had one since. Cigars, true, but no cigarettes. At Red Hill, we learned to milk cows, saddle up horses to ride, help make hay, and generally be a big nuisance to all concerned-Mary Grace, Bill, Si, Betts who was home from her teaching job in North Jersey at East and West Orange. Grosvater just tolerated us in deference to Granny who doted on us. It was a big deal to get that week at Red Hill and sometimes it was 2 weeks. Some of the happiest times of my life were spent on Grandpap’s Red Hill farm.

Scooter, I did back when we lived on Scotch Hill in Larimer just east of Pbgh. I was HS age and had an all black cat with one white spot beneath his chin. I called him Eightball. At night he’d jump up on the windowsill of my bedroom, and scratch at the window pane till I let him in to sleep on the bed beside me. He never missed a night. He was my buddy until one day, my sister, Marian, was bitten by a rabid dog. Then my dad, to play it safe, had to kill Eightball on the off chance that he, too, might have been bitten. Though it was a bitter moment for yers truly, I believed my dad did the right thing.

I also had a dog; one of my coal customers in Pbgh gave him to me. His name was Com Esta. You can guess my customer was Italian. Com Esta was just a friendly mutt, probably of a zillion antecedents. When I’d haul coal into Wilkinsburg or Pbgh, Com Esta would always ride shotgun. He died of old age when I was a Junior at Penn State.

I was nicknamed “Big Top” by my Uncle George. Whenever he came to visit when we lived in Larimer, Pa, I was usually, as a teenager, dressed in pants, naked from the waist up, and working in the yard or garden. Uncle George was reminded of the Circus Roustabouts, cavorting about, naked from the waist up and erecting their tents, the largest known as the Big Top, he gave me the name, “Big Top.”

When I was a GI soldier in WW2, my dad gave me the best advice I ever received: Eddie, don't be afraid to take a chance. Best advice to you, too, Scooter, and all the kids.

Can't recall any celebration for I was at Penn State, a senior getting ready to graduate in the class of '42. As I recall, I was already in the army but allowed to stay and graduate before heading to Ft Monmouth, the Signal Corps Post in NJ.