Ethyle Young Morrison & Marvin Mayes, My Parents
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She met my stepfather, Marvin Mayes while she was working there. He was from Kansas, had graduated from an “Electronic” School which would now be a two year college for electricians. It wasn’t long until they were engaged and married in early Nov.1929. I moved to Chicago with them and for the first time we had a radio in the house. Every Sunday morning a man would read all the “funny papers” as we called them on the radio for the children. I listened to “Little Orphan Annie, “Mutt and Jeff” and so many/ while we lived there, Mom and Daddy never missed “Amos n Andy” and several others. The milkman came every couple days climbing the stairs as we lived on either the second or third floor apartment; don’t remember how high up we were. He would bring Mom’s order for milk in big glass milk bottles, butter, cream, cottage cheese etc. The milk would be about 1/4th cream sitting on top, Mom would take some of it off for their morning coffee. When the bottles were empty mom would wash them, write her order for the next delivery and take them down to entrance so the milkman knew when she needed another delivery, We had an ice box and the iceman came twice a week carrying his big block of ice with tongs up the stairs to our ice box. It was a few years later that Mom got her first electric refrigerator. It stood on legs and had a motor with a lot of coils around it sitting on top
The depression was just starting and Daddy thought we should move to Kansas City near his folks as there was still work in the Midwest, they hadn’t been hit by the financial crisis as bad and the dust bowl and drought hadn’t hit the Midwest farmers as yet Daddy had a quite new Dodge coupe and so they packed it up and we drove to Kansas City Kansas. While Daddy was looking for a job, his mother Clara and her second husband Jess Silva, needed some help on their wheat farm so we moved out to their farm and daddy helped them with the wheat harvest and picking the corn etc. It was terribly hot and humid and must have been miserable out working Mom was pregnant though I didn’t know it and one night my brother Ted was born. I didn’t know what was going on and was crying in the dark laying on the cot in Jesse and Clara’s bedroom they had made up for me. Jesse heard me and held me in his arms telling me it would be O.K. I was getting a new brother or sister, Right then I didn’t want one, I just wanted the crying and noise to stop in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, but I will never forget Jesse’s kindness to a scared little girl. Jesse had no children so I am sure he didn’t know much about them as he had married after fifty years of age.
My mother didn’t get along with Daddy’s mother Clara. Clara was sort of grouchy, but mom did not offer much either, she was strange in her way. So sweet to, children and grandchildren loved her but once she made up her mind about someone there was no changing it, quite stubborn, I guess. So mom and Clara got into an argument and Mom insisted we move into Kansas City. The farm was out in a farming community called Muncie. I had been attending a school nearby called Stonybrook. Daddy found a job as electrician immediately and they rented a little two bedroom house on Riverview St. The bathroom had the old fashion tank of water near the ceiling and to flush it you pulled a chain that released the valve to let the water run down into the toilet bowl. I don’t remember any problems but now thinking back I can see a big hazard of water pouring all over the bathroom. The streets were still paved with bricks and were really rough to drive on.
We met all of Daddy’s family that consisted of his dad, stepmother Daisy, two full brothers Clarence Wellington Mayes married Irma, Clarence had one stepdaughter Phyllis who wrote verses for a Greeting Card Company, Roy Mayes married a lady names Nora, same as their half sister Nora, two sisters Hazel married to Arthur last name ? and sister Myrtle married to ? Sorry can’t remember, Know Myrtle's husband died fairly young. and she remarried. Daddy was the only of the original Mayes kids to have children. The boys all had English historic middle names. .The second family of Mayes Sr. with Daisy were Nora, Virginia, Tella (boy) ( weird Mom’s sister was Tilla and Dad’s half brother was named Tella, but I have never heard the name since).and the youngest was Calvin. The Sr. Mayes and his first wife Clara owned a flourishing ice cream factory in Kansas, but when a 17 yr old Daisy.came to work there Mr. Mayes forgot his marriage vows and immediately got her pregnant. So the Mayes were divorced the boys lived with their dad and new wife almost as young as they were and the two sisters stayed with their mother. The ice cream plant had to be sold and money divided mother Clara also got the house. Don’t know how the Sr. Mayes made a living for his new family. Mrs. Clara Mayes much later married a wheat farmer named Jess Silva. The Mayes original home was a big stone block house with a huge front porch. Very attractive.
I attended Whittier school while we lived there. The playground was totally divided; boys on one side, girls on the other, the classrooms were similar, boys sat on one side of the room and girls on the other, so different for me who had played with both male and female cousins all my life. I had a very lucky escape while we lived on Riverview. St. To get to a small neighborhood store you crossed the school playground which was across the street from our house. walked across the alley and entered a little paved path to the street beyond. The path was walled by fences about six feet high. One late afternoon Mom sent me to the store, all I had to do was cross the school playground, cross the alley Run down the short path and I would come out right beside the store Except for the time I was crossing the alley and going down the little path I was in sight of our house. But just before I got to the path I met a man who stopped me and somehow conned me into letting him see my little purse and how much money I had in it. I let him look at it and I think he saw someone around for he hurriedly gave my purse back to me and started walking away, telling me he would count my change after I had been at the store and see if they had cheated me. I went on down the path but was smart enough to know he was a bad person and I didn’t want to meet him again. So I walked around two long blocks to avoid the alley and the man getting home when it was nearly dark, Mom was frantic. She had been over to the store, to my only classmate that lived nearby and except the store said I had come and gone, no one had seen me. I think I was a very lucky little girls, that man was bad and as young as I was I knew it. Maybe my grandmother’s tactics of making me stay right by the grape arbor or in the house when Dillinger would run through Indiana getting away from the police had scared me enough. I don’t know why grandmother thought Dillinger and his band would stop and pick up a little girl when they were driving as fast as they could to get to the BlueRidge mtns or someplace to hide out in Ky I can’t imagine, but anytime he was being chased from Chicago I had to stay inside
The other thing that stands out in mu memory while we lived on Riverview was something I heard the adults whispering talking about but they would shut up if I came around. After I was older Mom told me that a young white school teacher had been raped and murdered after the school kids had left for the day and the police had a black man in custody, A mob had broken through the police and captured him, they were taking him out to the school, had him tied on the roof and were setting the little one room school on fire so he would burn with it.. Mom told me that daddy,his two brothers Roy and Clarence were going out to see what was really happening, and arrived there as they were tying him down. The police were coming with many reinforcements shooting at and scattering the mob. They must have recaptured him from the mob because she thought they took him to another jail area. Daddy had immediately left when the confrontation with the police started. As my stepfather was a very”soft” hearted guy, I don’t think he would have stayed to watch such a horror. Never asked mom what happened if the case ever went to trial while they were there. We enjoyed Kansas and mom was very happy with her home, she loved to cook but insisted on having every ingredient for every recipe. She loved cooking with butter, heavy creams, but like all her family she never gained an ounce in her 86 years.
But times were getting harder, daddy’s job ended at the factory where he worked so again we were forced to leave. Daddy started a little company and they built a small power plant for a community out near Muncie. As electrical work was hard to find, Daddy’s Uncle Roy Butcher who lived in Jackson Wyoming told him Jackson was trying to get a power plant built and there was probably work for him in Jackson. With money uncertain, he decided it was best to take mom, Ted and I back to the farm in Francisco where there would be no danger of us eating and having a place to live. So once again we packed up the little Dodge coupe and moved back with grandma and grandpa. Daddy left all the money he could with mom to pay for our stay although Grandpa said all the kids were gone from the home except Waldo so there was to much food. Anyway, then he packed up his tools little motors etc loaded in a car of some kind,and left us in Indiana, The Dodge stayed there so we could come to Jackson in it if things worked out and he got his electrical crew doing that part of the construction. The beginning of the Flat Creek electric plant about fifteen or twenty miles out of town going up to the headwaters of Flat Creek
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