Akron, Ohio is a fairly large mid-west city. It is close to the eastern border of Ohio near Pennsylvania and West Virginia. At the time we moved there, the manufacturing of rubber tires was the main industry. There were three major tire factories there – Firestone, Goodyear, and Seiberling. Seiberling was actually in Barberton, Ohio, which was a neighborhood city of Akron. That is where my father worked.
So, in 1947, my family and I landed in Akron, Ohio, after my first airline flight from NYC. It was on a Boeing DC-3 prop plane. Airline travel was in its infancy. Our first destination was the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Akron. Our furniture had not yet arrived from Connecticut. This was another experience for me and my 8-year-old-brother, Bill. Living in a large hotel.
Mayflower Hotel in downtown Akron, Ohio
Bill was a lot more adventurous than I was. He would head down to the coffee shop for a meal all by himself. The hotel staff got a big kick out of him because he just seemed to take everything for granted. He even knew how to sign for his meal and add the tip. Pretty sharp for an eight-year-old.
Bill also discovered that the hotel was on the opposite corner to two very large department stores. These were O’Neil’s and Polsky’s. Coming from the small quiet city of Norwalk, CT these stores were awesome to us. We spent many hours exploring all the floors (six plus a basement, as I recall). We, also discovered new restaurants in the stores, so during our week’s stay at the hotel, we sampled them all.
It is amazing today to realize that in 1947 it was perfectly safe and normal for two young children to roam about the downtown of a fairly major city. Of course, we were expected to behave and we did.
Peerless Avenue – Akron, Ohio
Finally, the furniture arrived and we moved into our house on Peerless Avenue in West Akron. This was a typical street in the Midwest. Strings of medium-sized family houses fairly close together on both sides of a heavily tree-lined street. Our house was on the corner of the main street and a smaller side street. It had a nice size front and back yard and a single detached garage.
I mention the garage here because we learned after moving in, that a tornado had come through that area at some time and moved that garage a bit off its foundation. It was still fully intact and usable, but obviously a bit askew.
The next week, we went to our new school. I was chagrined to learn that I would be going back to a “grade” school. Ohio did not have separate junior high schools. I was in the middle of 7th grade and I would be in that school through the 8th grade. High school was 9-12. The school transfer was pretty uneventful. I didn’t have any problem catching up with the lessons being taught there. One thing I did miss was the “shop” course that I had in CT, but we did have a Home Economics course. It was in a different school, which happened to be about equal distance from my house. Both schools were at the opposite ends of that side street that ran down beside our house.
Cooking Class
I don’t remember a lot of the cooking we did in the Home Economics class except for one dish. We learned how to make mayonnaise. The rule of the class was we had to eat what we cooked. The mayonnaise wasn’t great and we were given lettuce leaves to put it on. Seems there was also a day when we made spaghetti sauce. I think in a pressure cooker, and there was some mishap with that too. But I don’t remember any of the details.
It was in that Peerless Avenue house when we got our first TV. When we were in CT, our neighbors had one. The father was one of the original TV cameramen working from NY. My brother was best buddies with the other young boy who lived there, so he got to watch that TV more than I did. The two of them watched Howdy Doody every night exactly at 5 PM.
Baseball – The Cleveland Indians
It was also in the Peerless Avenue house that my love of baseball began. In 1948, the Cleveland Indians had an awesome team. They were not yet televised, but I listened on the radio and learned to box-score the games. I do that still today – I can’t watch a game without box-scoring it. But I think it was that year that they went to the World Series. And I still remember some of the players. Lou Boudreau was the manager and also played shortstop. There was also Joe Gordon, Early Wynn, Satchell Paige, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, and more. My memory is failing me now. I’ll have to look up that team.
Orlando Avenue – Akron, Ohio
Two years later, in the summer between 8th grade and starting to high school, we moved again. The new house was in the same general geographic area, but far enough away that my neighborhood friends were lost. The new house was on Orlando Avenue and was a huge house. Best of all there were two very large rooms that had been finished off in the attic. These two rooms were to be mine.
And once again my Grandmother came to live with us. She had a nice room on the floor below me. It had a small balcony off of it. During this time that she was with us, she taught me to sew on her treadle sewing machine. Those lessons helped me make most of my clothes throughout high school. The straight skirts we wore were easy and could be mixed with the sweaters I had.
The new house was only one block over to the main road into Akron downtown, so bus transportation was available. Also, on that corner and another one block further were two drug stores with soda fountains. And best of all across the street there was a branch of the Library. I was an avid reader.
Funny Story
There is one funny story about the drugstore soda fountain. The first time my brother and I went down to one, we went to get an orange drink, which in CT we called orange soda. That is what we ordered expecting a glass with ice and the orange soda, much like a Coke. Instead, what we were served was a large glass with ice cream and the orange soda poured over it – an ice cream soda. We quickly learned that soda in Ohio was called “pop”. That was only one of the terminology of things that were different, but it is the only one that comes to mind right now.
High school was also an easy walk from home and just went along normally. Nothing very eventful in the three years I was there. I babysat and had normal dates, went to school dances, pajama parties, and sports events. We had a great football team and the games were in the Rubber Bowl, the local arena. One game in the pouring rain stands out in my memory because we had what was called a camel’s hair car robe (blanket) that we hid under during the game. It kept us good and dry. The only problem, it absorbed all that rain. When we went to leave the blanket weighed a ton and it took several of us to carry it. But I think we won the game. I don’t know how many days it took to dry out the blanket!!!
My First Real Job
Alas, the summer came after my Junior (11th) year in high school. My father told us that he had taken a job back in –- you guessed it — Connecticut!! I had taken my first job just a couple of weeks before, so I petitioned to stay in Ohio for the summer until the house sold. My Aunt agreed to stay with me, so that is what I did.
I worked that summer at my first “real” job as a cashier at Neisner’s Five and Dime Store. It was similar to Woolworth’s. The store was adjacent to O’Neil’s in downtown Akron. I caught the bus back and forth. For my department assignment, I really lucked out. I got the record counter, which also had ribbons and handkerchiefs. But for the records, I had to play them all day long. Mind you, playing records at that time was all manual. There was a turn style that you manually put the record on, fitting the hole in the middle of the record over a peg in the turn style. Then you had to start it spinning and carefully place the handle with the needle on the beginning groove. Manual or not, What a job!!
That was 1952 and the top hits were:
- Blue Tango – Leroy Anderson
- Wheel of Fortune – Kay Starr – Kay Starr
- Cry – Johnnie Ray
- You Belong to Me – Jo Stafford
- Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart – Vera Lynn
- Half As Much – Rosemary Clooney
- Wish You Were Here – Eddie Fisher & Hugo Winterhalter
- I Went to Your Wedding – Patti Page
- Here In My Heart – Al Martino
- Tell Me Why – The Four Aces
- Jambalaya – Jo Stafford
- Botch-A-Me (Ba-Ba-Baciani Piccina) – Rosemary Clooney
- The Little White Cloud That Cried – Johnnie Ray
- The Tennessee Waltz – Patti Page
- And then there were The Ink Spots with hits like If I Didn’t Care, I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire, and My Prayer. Also, I’m Getting Sentimental Over You, and I’ll Never Smile Again. Great romance tunes. Yes, these were my favorites.
Have you heard any of them?? I remember most of them and could probably sing a bit of each even today. I guess when you hear the same songs over and over 8 hours a day for around 12 weeks they tend to stick even with my old brain, lol.
Another Move from Akron, Ohio
But alas, the summer came to an end and it was time for me to move back to Norwalk, CT, and to join a new senior high school. I took a good collection of those records with me. See my page on Norwalk for what followed.
After another two years in Connecticut, the family returned to Ohio. This time they returned without me to a home in Wadsworth, Ohio. I stayed in Connecticut, worked, and got married. See the end of the page on Norwalk, CT for these details.
From Connecticut back to Akron, Ohio for me and the Beginning of being a Single Mother
About five years later, I ended up returning too, first to my parent’s home in Wadsworth, then my own apartments first in Wadsworth when I worked for Ohio Injector Valve. And then to Cuyahoga Falls, when I went to work for General Motors, Euclid Division. GM had just moved from Cleveland to Hudson, Ohio, which is where I worked.
At GM, I worked as a statistical typist in the General Accounting Department. Most of the month, I didn’t have a lot of typing work to do, so I would help the accountants with their manual record-keeping and also help in the Cashiers Office. But at month-end, my work began.
I had to prepare the monthly General Ledger statements. This was before computer reports. There were thirteen of them on huge preformatted sheets about 12 x 18” and they were done with five carbon copies. Yes, actual carbon paper between the sheets, which were thin onion skin. Erasing was tedious, so I had to not make mistakes. The “guys” would tip-toe around me because I was always so tense. When I was done, the sheets had to be proofed by another person with a comptroller. A comptroller was a strange machine, where a whole number including the decimal would be input all at one time. I never did learn exactly how they worked, but when I got a nod from the operator, it meant the sheet was okay. Whew!! Done for another month.
And Then Off to California
After about four or five years at that job, I got a letter from an old friend from Connecticut. Sandy had gotten married about a year before, had a second child, and with her new husband had moved to California. She had been married before and lived with my husband and me for a short time with her first son, who was about the age of my son. She and I worked together at Pitney Bowes when we were in CT.
And so, I planned and took my first cross-country trip to California.
#akron #ohio #drugstore #connecticut #california
