Ray and I went to the movies every Saturday afternoon to see the old western movies. We would run all the way to the theater and the first one there got the corner seat in the first row of the balcony. After the movies we would go up to my house and my mother would make each of us a slice of bread and butter with sugar on it. Next we would run up to Arsenal hill and play cowboys. We had a cave dug out of a mound of dirt and we would defend it with spears made from long goldenrod stalks sharpened on the thick end. In the winter we nailed a wooden box on two barrel staves and would sit on the box sliding down hill trying to dodge the trees. In those days they did not plow or sand the streets and when we finally got sleds we slid down Chapin Street. One friend had a bobsled which held about ten kids and we rode that from Brigham Hall, down Thad Chapin, down Chapin Street to the Sucker Brook bridge. The only dangerous intersection was at Chapin and Pearl Streets and we would take turns watching for cars. There were very few cars in those days so it didn't bother us very much.
My brother Robert was two years younger than I and he was sick for a long time before he died at age eight. He was in a wheelchair for quite a while. He had what was called rheumatic fever and the doctor had to drain fluid from his back. The wheelchair was one of those old large ones with a wicker seat and back. I would go to the corner store where VanBrookers is now (Pearl and West Avenue) for groceries for my mother. Robert would sit in his wheelchair by the window and time my running to the store and back. I ran as fast as I could and it must have been good practice because, by the time I reached high school, I was the fastest runner there. The only boy who could keep up with me was "Horse Face" Johnson from Cheshire.
One of our favorite times of the year was when we had the family reunion. In those years we would have from 50 to 100 people. Some of the games we played then were fun and would be even now. There was a pile of sand and they would bury hundreds of pennies in it then let the kids loose to find as many as they could. There would be a ten (or more) gallon container of ice cream from Johncox Ice Cream Plant. After dinner we were allowed as many ice cream cones as we wanted. I remember we could only eat two or three before we were full, then we'd feel bad that we couldn't eat more. Our favorite reunion was the one held at my Aunt Alice's down on Seneca Lake. She was such a nice person, everyone loved to go there. Her husband John was a huge man and just as nice. They lived on a farm and raised food for Lakemont Academy, a school for boys. Their farm was next door and owned by the Academy.
Sometimes we would go to the farm the night before and stay over, sleeping in the house, on the porches, even in the hay in the big barns. The older boys used to drink beer and play cards all night out in the barn. The house was on a hill about one quarter mile from the lake with a lane running down to a boathouse on the shore. In later years I can remember going down with Clarence and Gordon to sleep in the boathouse which was out over the water. It was a wild spot in those days with no cottages nearby. The hill from the house to the lake was all grape vineyards and there was a railroad track right through the vineyard. When we heard a train coming, we would run down and toss big bunches of grapes to the train crew as the train went very slowly due to the up hill grade.
In 1925 Clarence and Gordon went to Florida for a couple of months in the winter. In those days the roads were not very good and the cars undependable. While in Florida, living in a tent, they worked on the road repair gang and also picked fruit. I remember they picked apples all that fall on a farm near Geneva in order to earn enough money for their trip. I recall their return from Florida late one night during a bitterly cold snowstorm. They came in the back door with bags of oranges.
In 1926 there was an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Rundel, from Omaha, Nebraska, who were traveling through Canandaigua when they had a serious accident. They were hospitalized and their car was in a garage being fixed. Due to their injuries they did not feel up to driving to Nebraska so they advertised in the paper for someone to drive them home. Gordon answered the ad and drove them back. They all got along so well, they asked him to stay with them and he did ... for three years. He bought himself a pickup truck and started a painting business there. He sent us pictures taken of the tornado damage in that area. I remember one picture he took of a wheat straw that was driven into a telephone pole.
In 1927 Clarence and John Timms started for California on motorcycles and they got as far as Kansas when they could no longer ride the motorcycles due to the bad roads. The roads were all red clay and when wet they were worse than ice. After falling off them too many times, they pushed the motorcycles into Kansas City and sold them. They took the money and went by train, to Omaha where Gordon was living. They talked Gordon into going on to California with them in his truck. The roads were very poor, dirt mostly, and it took them a long time. In California they picked grapes, then they came back to Omaha, where they left Gordon, and returned home by train. When Gordon finally came home in 1929 he drove all the way without stopping and it was several years before he got over it. He developed car sickness and could not ride in a car for some time.
I was in the Boy Scouts for several years and really enjoyed it. I got all the merit badges up to the one for swimming and that was when I quit the Scouts. I found that the friends you make in Scouting are sometimes your friends all your life . . . ones like Ray Smith and Skip Dewey. We had a lot of good times at Camp Woodcraft near Cheshire, New York. One of our favorite games there was "Capture the Flag". The lane through Camp Woodcraft was the line between sides and the flag was on a pole way back in the woods. Some would guard the flag while others would circle around, try to get the other side's flag, and return across the center line with it. If you were touched by anyone on the other side, you were out of the game. It is similar to the game they play now with those dye guns. I was in the Beaver Patrol and can remember the meals that we used to cook. Some patrols did fancy things, but we always ended up with Campbells soup. We were known as the "Soup Patrol".
Every year we used to plant pine trees at Camp Woodcraft. It would take all day and we carried the seedlings around in a pail. When noon came, we would wash the pail out in the creek and heat our soup in it. There was a small cabin with a dirt floor, loft and an old cook stove. One time Ray Smith and I went up to stay overnight and it was cold. We were quite young at the time and got scared as it grew dark so we tried to sleep in the loft. We had a wood fire going in the old stove to keep warm and it made so much smoke that we coughed all night and didn't sleep much. We were still too scared to come down from the loft. L. Ray Stokie was our Scoutmaster and he ran a chocolate shop on Main Street. We would go down to the store and he would let us go down in the basement to watch him make chocolates and pull taffy.
Most of my possessions during these years were bought for me by my brother Clarence. My most prized possession was a pair of leather high top boots with a pouch on the side for a jack knife. He also bought me a hatchet, which I still have today. It is the only one I've ever owned and it must be sixty years old. It is getting dull, but it's never been sharpened. He also bought me my first bicycle and it took me forever to learn to ride it. I don't know how many years I had it, but it was my only bike. My mother and father had little money in those days, especially during the Depression in 1929 and 1930, so if I had anything at all it was bought for me by my older brothers.