It All Began Around The Turn Of The Century--1900 That Is!

My father's name was Harold Rockwell Hooper, but he was known all of his life by his childhood nickname, Bill or Billy. He was born at 144 Central Avenue in East Hartford, Connecticut. Over the years, he told me a lot of stories about his childhood, and I would like to commit them to print. I am going with the spellings Daddy gave me when I was writing things down at one point; I make no promise that they are all correct.

Daddy was 10^th of the 11 children born to Frank Eugene Hooper (1870 to March 1943) and Edith Mae (Gregory) Hooper (1883 to May 5, 1942). Both of them lived in Canastota, New York, and were married there. At that time, branches of the Hooper family also extended into Poughkeepsie and Salamanca, New York.

As with the spellings of towns (and even the middle name “Mae”, which might have been “May”), I am going with Daddy's memory for dates—specifically, the birth dates of the Hooper children of that generation. He was always the keeper of Hooper family information, so I'm sure he was right to the best of his knowledge and belief. Bear in mind that records were not always kept as well then as they are today. The local doctor was a busy man, and—like it or not—there were times when birth dates were written several days after the actual births.

More than one person of that era found out much later in life—applying for Social Security benefits was a popular time—that their “legal” dates of birth were a few days off from what they had always thought; some even found out that their actual names were different. My mother's mother, for example, believed her name was Charlotte Elizabeth (Millest) Ghagan; she was shocked to learn that the name on her birth certificate was Lottie Emma Millest. She firmly believed “Lottie” was a nickname!

Having said that, and after adding this one last thought, I will set forth what Daddy always called The Grand List of Hoopers—birth dates and locations. Death dates were not something my father stored in his memory. Believing that his siblings did more with their lives than die, he put those ugly dates out of his mind. The ages at time of death that are noted, or years of death referenced, are, for the most part, approximate. They are taken from my own memory, and they should not be taken as gospel.

Charles Franklin “Charlie” (lived 98 years; died of natural causes) born 09-26-1904 in Canastota, New York

Arthur Eugene “Art” (lived well into his 80s; died of cancer) born 09-18-1905 in Poughkeepsie, New York

Lydia Mae “Lydie” (lived 6 years; died during a Diphtheria epidemic) born 10-29-1906 in Poughkeepsie, New York

Kenneth Edward “Kenny” (lived to about 75; died of natural causes) born 03-31-1908 in Poughkeepsie, New York

Henry Louis Clinton “Louie” (lived 59 years; died of a rare disease that, essentially, turned his muscles into stone) born 09-08-1909 in Poughkeepsie, New York

Elena Daisy “Daisy” (lived 29 years; died of heart disease complications) born 02-02-1912 in East Hartford, Connecticut (Gilbert Street)

Geraldine Eleanor “Jerry/Mutt” (lived into her 70s; died of cancer) born 02-21-1914 in East Hartford, Connecticut (Burnside Avenue)

Ronald Gerald “Dubby” (lived 29 years; killed during WWII) born 11/16/1915 in East Hartford, Connecticut (Burnside Avenue)

Winifred Gwendolyn “Winnie” (lived 92 years; died of natural causes) born 07/07/1917 in East Hartford, Connecticut (Central Avenue)

Harold Rockwell “Bill/Billy” (lived 91 years; died of heart failure) born 01-20-1919 in East Hartford, Connecticut (Central Avenue)

Dorothy Evelyn “Sis/Dot” (lived into her 80s; died of cancer) born 08-29-1921 in East Hartford, Connecticut (Central Avenue)

Interestingly, the Burnside Avenue house where Jerry and Dubby Hooper were born, was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Emil Rosenthal, who were friends of John and Lottie Ghagan. The Ghagans would become my maternal grandparents. The Rosenthal home was one block away from the house on Bragg Street where my mother, Mary Jane, would be born on 12-17-1923. The birthplace of Jerry and Dubby Hooper stood until about 2012; it was demolished after the death of the last member of the Rosenthal family.

Fun, and possibly strange, Hooper facts:

I will preface this by saying that some of my own comments are interspersed. It is surprisingly hard not to comment on lives I did not live, when I know everyone involved. Bear with me, then, as we jump back and forth through the years.

Charlie was the oldest child. As he would put it many times in later years, “Someone had to be.” When I think about it, I realize that the Hoopers of that generation were a pretty droll lot.

The only college-educated Hooper at that time, Charlie always called his father “Guv'na.” Because my father and his other siblings went with the traditional “Pa,” Daddy would often joke that Charlie couldn't remember the word “Pa.” Like all of the comments my father made about his brothers and sisters, it was a jest made with affection. I'm pointing this out because Daddy had some real zingers; he and Dubby had nicknames for everyone—some of them I can even put into print.

Getting back to Charlie, he and his wife, Lillian (who found out much later that her name was legally Elizabeth—another victim of the crazy record keeping back then), had three children, Donald, Jean and Rose. We did not often see each other, since Charlie's family lived in New Jersey and we lived in Connecticut. In those days, we may as well have lived in different countries. Cars were not as reliable then as they are now, and forget any other means of transportation—even if they could afford it, my parents could not.

Charlie's kids were long-since grown, and had families of their own, when Charlie called to tell Daddy about a funny incident that had happened the previous night; at least they thought it was funny. Lillian had been going up to bed, but Charlie planned to stay up and watch TV for a bit longer. Very dryly, he told her, “Go ahead. I'll be up to ravage you later.” Like Queen Victoria, Lillian “was not amused.”

Art was once employed as a tree surgeon. I cannot tell you what he did later on in his life, and I think I only remember that job, because it struck me funny when I was a little kid. The immediate image I had, was of him performing gall bladder surgery on the tree in the front yard.

Art and his wife, Katie, had one child, Leslie, who was the apple of her father's eye. For years, he called her “Baby Leslie.” He had stopped by the time she got married; I am sure she was grateful.

Anyway, we saw a lot of them back in the day. They would always spend New Year's Eve with us; pizza never tasted better than it did then. Between the company being pleasant and the time so special, those pizzas seemed more like gourmet meals than quick take-out food that fed two families for a modest amount.

Throughout his life, Art was health-conscious—he took medicine for the gout for about 20 years, and Daddy teased him about it whenever they talked. Upon his recovery from a serious heart attack—not to say there are any good ones—Art was quick to tell Daddy that it was his fault, since the pair of them had been painting rooms in the Bragg Street house just before the attack. I think they loved to torture each other.

They remained close through the years; Thursdays during their retirement years always found them doing their grocery shopping—Katie was gone by then, and Ma was just enjoying a day off—and having a nice dinner together afterwards.

Lydie was a beautiful little girl. Although Daddy never knew her, he always had a picture of her in the family album. As the list of the Hooper children explains, she died at the age of 6, when a Diphtheria epidemic tore through East Hartford, Connecticut.

Ken was the brother Daddy always called “the great fabricator.” He had a rare ability to stretch the truth to a point just this side of snapping it cleanly apart. Like a lot of people, he sometimes found a bill collector at the front door—there just never seemed to be enough money to pay everyone who needed paying. He would tell such visitors that he was sorry, but Ken died unexpectedly. If Daddy answered the door, he'd say, “Oh, you want Kenny...just a second. I'll get him.” Daddy always told the truth, no matter how much it hurt Ken. I expect he told him that he was doing it for his own good.

One thing they always laughed about was the time Ken whacked himself in the head with a wrench, and told someone he'd been robbed. Daddy always said his brother had been working at a gas station at the time, and probably robbed himself. As I said with Art, the brothers loved to torture each other.

One of the last stories I ever heard Daddy tell about Ken was the tale of the scar Ken bore on his forehead.  Frank Hooper, was not a father who put up with too much sass.  Ken made the mistake of talking back once too often one night, and found himself getting whacked in the head with a small coal shovel; one assumes it was the closest thing at hand.  Ken really should have stood near some pillows. 

Ken was married twice. His first marriage—to a woman named Helen—produced Harold Arthur Hooper (who tragically died after being dropped by an aunt), Dolores and Marion. His marriage to Yolanda—better known as Yo—produced my cousin, Ronald Gerald Harold Hooper. In Connecticut, he was called Butch, but he was Ron everyplace else. Did I mention that the Hoopers carry a craziness gene?

Louie legally changed his name from Henry Louis Clinton Hooper to Louis Clinton Hooper, as he had been called Lou or Louie all of his life anyway.  

At the time of his birth, it had been quite common for male children to be given the first name Henry in honor of Henry Hudson.  It seems strange now, of course, but I've heard of children named worse things for reasons that do not make half as much sense.

Louie, and his wife, Doris, had two daughters, Nancy and Beverly.  While Daddy was close enough to Louie that he served as Best Man at his wedding, I do not recall our two families getting together at any time other than Memorial Day and family weddings or funerals...the usual things.  I do recall seeing my uncle at the firehouse around Christmas.  They set up a phone line, so kids could talk to Santa at the north pole; funny how he sounded like my uncle sometimes!  

My mother always called Louie "Chief"...so often, in fact, that as a small child, I actually believed he was the fire chief. 

Daisy, according to my father, could whistle louder than anyone in the neighborhood; she taught him how to whistle, in fact.  Plagued with a weak heart, as were many of the Hooper children, she died at age 29.  She had entered the hospital for oral surgery, but it was too late.  The poison from the bad tooth went through her system, striking her heart.  

She left her estranged husband, Adolph Berhandt, and beloved child, Edith "Betty" Berhandt.  Little Betty was only 5 years old when her mother died, and her father snatched her away from her mother's family. 

A kind school teacher would often bring Betty to her own home after school, and invite the Hoopers there to see her.  When Adolph heard about it through the grapevine, he quickly ended the visits.  

Jerry was married twice; her first marriage, to one Jack Toohey ended sadly.  Before things in their marriage began to fall apart, they had a young son, Teddy.  He would be her only child; I do not think she ever got over him, so great was her grief.  

One day after the couple had separated, Jack insisted on taking Teddy for his weekly visitation.  As Daddy told the story to me years later, Teddy was only 11 months old, yet his father took him out in the car, windows down, on a damp, dismal day.  The poor little boy developed pneumonia, which, in those days, was often fatal, as it was in Teddy's case.  

Jerry remarried some years later, and, although she and Johnny Wootton would never have a family of their own, they had friends and other family members who loved spending time with them.  My parents were very close to them, and I can remember my aunt and uncle coming to eat supper with us whenever we were staying in the Lake Hayward cottage of my mother's cousin.  The lake was in Colchester, Connecticut and there were some very nice year-round homes there, as well.  Jerry and Johnny lived in one such house.   

Dubby, as my father and my cousin, Betty (Berhandt) Longo, put it, had eyes as blue as the sky.  Daddy always said his slightly older brother was kind, patient, funny, and was also a gifted artist and a brilliant woodworker; as a teenager, he made a very-close-to-exact replica of a WWI plane, without blueprints or directions of any kind.  

Most importantly, at least in his childhood and early teenage years, he was one of the greatest Halloween pranksters of all time.  Daddy and Dubby were best friends, as well as brothers, and when their friends, "Squeeky" Squires and Johnny Dubiel got involved, things were always jumping.  

I'll start with one of my father's favorite stories.  All of the Hooper children had chores; I don't remember what everyone else did, but I do know Dubby's job was chopping wood for the woodstove in the family's kitchen. Daddy's job, apparently, was to annoy his brother; it was a job he was doing particularly well on the day in question.  

With Dubby finally having had enough, he chased his younger brother around the side of the house, being careful to keep the small axe with him, lest he get into trouble for leaving a tool unattended on the ground.  As the two youngsters rounded the side of the house, they came upon their mother hanging out the wash.  The rascal who would one day be my father, called out, "Hey Ma!  Dubby's chasing me with an axe."  

One has to wonder which brother took the more serious whooping that day...Dubby for chasing his brother with an axe (technically), or said younger brother for yelling out the famous words in the first place.  The thing I do know, because Daddy always ended the story with this information, was that the two of them laughed about it for a long time afterward.  

I truly miss having had the chance to know Dubby, and I have wept bitter tears over his fate more than once.  Wounded in the Battle of Corregidor in the Philippines, he was taken prisoner when the island fell to the Japanese.  He survived a forced march to a concentration camp and four years of torture there, before being put on a ship bound for Japan towards the end of the war.  The surviving prisoners were slated to become slaves for Japanese businessmen.  

Because the ship was flying the colors of a battleship, it was sunk by the Allies in the North China Sea in October of 1944; less than a dozen men survived.  Daddy's beloved brother was not one of them.  News did not travel as fast then as it does now.  Daddy never got the dreaded telegram until September 8, 1945, which was his and my mother's wedding day.  He told me once that the best day of his life and the worst day of his life came at the same time.   

To this minute I have Dubby's service picture, the last letter and two small pictures he sent to Daddy from the Philippines, his Purple Heart, and the long-overdue certificate "From a Grateful Nation" that was signed by President George W. Bush. I promised Daddy not long before his death in 2010 that, as long as I lived, no one would ever forget the brother he loved with all his heart.  

Toward that end, I still have the story of a Halloween prank to relay.  Daddy always said to end a sad story with a laugh, so I will.  One long ago Halloween night, Dubby, Daddy and their best buddy, Squeeky, decided to close Central Avenue off to outside traffic,  It was a dirt road then, not the fairly busy street it is today, so this wasn't difficult, but it was daring, at least in their eyes.  

There was a lot of farmland in the area (my own grandfather operated a family enterprise called: "Hooper Hatcheries, the Largest Chicken Hatchery in New England"), and so obtaining fencing was not a problem for three boys bent on pulling a prank.  

The three of them quickly used the stolen fencing to close off both ends of the street, and knocked over the outhouse belonging to a woman Daddy always referred to as "the widow Brown" for good measure.  If a visitor to Mrs. Brown's home had not been in the outhouse at the time, they might actually have gotten away with it.  Again, it was a story told over and over through the years.  

Winnie lived to be 92 years old.  She worked at the post office in Mansfield Center, Connecticut until she was 90, and also rode school buses in that town as the "grandmother" figure the kindergarten students often needed.  

I don't know how I would have gotten through my mother's final weeks without Winnie's comforting voice on the phone at night.  She told me once that, of all her many nieces and nephews, I was the one dearest to her heart.  Knowing how she felt made me stronger, somehow.  I didn't want to let her down.  

Winnie and Archie, her husband of nearly 60 years, had four children, Wilma, Ricky, Barbara and Kathy.  Their family and ours were very close, so I have a lot to say about them.  

Wilma married not long out of high school, and was enough older than me that I don't really recall knowing her until later in life; at that point, we became close enough.  I recall pleasant phone conversations with her after my mother's death.

Ricky was what, in those days, was called Mongoloid.  I think it was more severe than Downs' syndrome, but it was on that idea.  He also had several other birth defects.  To our family, though, he was always just Ricky.  He was older than Kathy and I, but he played at our level, he was always happy, and he had the greatest laugh I've heard to this day.  We adored him; he lived only 20 years, and the world was a sadder place without him.        

While Ricky was alive, but still a young child, Barbara was stricken with polio.  The truly tragic part of this story was that, because their own family doctor did not believe in the vaccine,  my aunt had made appointments for the kids with another doctor, at my parents' urging.  

They were all to be vaccinated on a Monday; Barbara took ill on Saturday morning.  For the sake of some 48 hours, her life changed forever.  I swear I can still see her in that iron lung, and hear the noise it made.  I wish I could forget both, but it has not happened so far.  

Anyway, Barbara spent the remainder of her life (a mere 50 years) as a resident in a hospital.  She met her husband, Tuffy, there, and they lived out the rest of their days quietly enjoying each other's company.  She was strong, emotionally, like her mother, and always felt that there were people who had things worse.

With Wilma married, Barbara hospitalized and Ricky finally at peace, my aunt, uncle and Kathy could turn their attention to some spooky things going on in their home.  Connecticut's own paranormal researchers, Ed and Lorraine Warren, were called in to investigate, and they called it a seriously haunted house.  Watch for more details on that later in this blog.  I must get back to the main part of this section...Daddy's family. 

Bill (yes, Daddy) was a man of many nicknames.  Born Harold, he was called Billy or Bill throughout most of his life.  Along the way, he also picked up John (his confirmation name was known by a fellow employee at P&WA...another man named Harry Hooper...who decided the guys should call one Hooper "John" and the other "Harry" to avoid confusion), Hoop, Hal, Hank, Harry and Red...he had brown hair, but was once employed at a gas station run by a man nicknamed "Red".  At first Daddy was called Red's man, but it was not long before he was simply another man called Red by customers.  

My father was a man of unshakable principles, great wit and tremendous warmth.  He used to tell the story of a woman at P&WA (Pratt & Whitney Aircraft) asking him to join her for a drink one night.  Politely, he told he was married.  When she said that didn't matter to her, he gave up being polite, and said, "What I have at home is way better than anything you think you have."  He was a good man, my father, and I will have plenty more to say about him in later posts.  The only other thing I'll include here is the story of the night he and his friend, Johnny, borrowed watermelons.  Daddy submitted the tale to Reminisce magazine, and it appeared on their site; he was very proud.  Here it is, in his words:

"When my buddy, Johnny, and I were kids in the 20s we borrowed more than our fair share of watermelons from our neighbor's watermelon patch.  Mr. Smith was a good old gent (and a lot younger an old gent than I am now, I suppose) but, finally, enough was enough; our continued insistence that his watermelon patch was a fruit lover's lending library angered him.  One night, he plugged a large melon with a laxative I have long since forgotten the name of, and, sure enough, that large, luscious looking melon was just the one Johnny borrowed that night.  All these years later, I still laugh thinking of how much Johnny wished we had borrowed the nearest neighbor's outhouse too!"        

Dot was the youngest child.  Daddy always said she was a nice little girl, who grew up with terrible luck in the area of personal relationships.  

Her first husband (with whom she had Johnny and Linda Ruth Ametro) turned out to have been not quite divorced when he married Dot.  To my knowledge, no one ever bothered to find out where he went after leaving Dot and the kids.  

Unable to raise two children alone, she put Linda out for adoption (a sad, but not unheard of event in those difficult times).  Dot did have contact with Linda in the later years of her life, so she knew that her daughter had grown up in a good family, and was always happy.  The last I knew of Johnny was that he had gotten into trouble with the law; I don't know what the trouble was, or what became of him after that.   

Daddy's younger sister remarried a number of years later, becoming Dot Richardson, and had a son, Artie, whom I got to know fairly well for a short time after his mother's death.  He was a retired cop the last time we spoke, and was starting his own detective agency.  He truly seemed to be a nice man, and I'm sorry we lost touch.  

Dot's final marriage was to Maurice Bouchaine, and he was the love of her life.  I wish they had had more time together, but cancer ended her life.  

Give me those old time Hoopers

Let me preface this section by saying it sounds like some of my ancestors were crew members on the ship of fools.  When telling me these little stories (usually to distract my attention during a card game) Daddy often said as much, and added that he felt like the captain. I always knew I would give him credit for a good line someday.

In the meantime, let's give both sides of my father's family tree the benefit of the doubt, and simply say even smart people can do some odd things.

Daddy's uncle, Bob Hooper (brother of Frank Hooper), was actually named Charles; another example of a childhood nickname that stuck.  To my knowledge, he always remained one of the Salamanca Hoopers.  Upon his divorce from his wife, Nellie, he actually received alimony from her.  As part of the divorce settlement, Nellie was ordered not to remarry during Bob's lifetime (obviously, New York was not a woman-friendly state at that point, at least in divorce cases), but she relocated to Canastota, New York and remarried anyway; her new husband was a man named Charlie Mason.  Bob Hooper never pursued any alimony claim after that, and told most people that his ex-wife had died.  

Because she dearly loved her ex-husband's little nephew, Billy, Nellie sent him a picture of herself.  I still have it on the buffet in my dining room.

This is where things start to get confusing.  It seems that Bob must have gotten custody of the children in his divorce from Nellie, but Daddy was just a kid then himself, and not always privy to adults' conversations.  He did his best to explain the things he did manage to pick up, but I think the best course of action here would be for me to tell this part of the story in his own words:

"Uncle Bert was also a brother to Uncle Bob and Pa.  He lived here in town, and he was the one who ended up raising Bob's kids after his divorce from Aunt Nellie.  The kids' names were Bea, Florence and Cecil.  I think there was another daughter, but I can't recall a face, or even a name.  I was just a kid then, Sue, and sometimes, names of people I didn't really know, but for one visit in the summer, went in one ear and out the other."

I understand his last comment perfectly, since the same thing happens to me. 

Picking up the story again, my father did see his cousin, Bea, now and then when both reached adulthood.  She lived on Tolland Street, and I have the vaguest memory of riding along one night when Daddy drove her home from our house.  Just to keep an accurate record, it was Bea who told my father that she had never known her father's name was Charles, and not Bob, until Daddy's father (Frank) told her the tale on a summer visit.  Childhood nicknames sometimes stick so tightly that it is easy to forget other people do not automatically know actual names.

Daddy's cousin, Florence, married a gentleman named Gerard Bragg (as in Bragg Street), who worked at Raymond Library in East Hartford.  In 2010, he was still remembered as a good man by the older staff members there (in the days before COVID-19, I did a lot of volunteer work at the library, and made a point of asking about Gerard).

My father did not recall much about Cecil's adult life; they simply lost touch.  He could not forget that Cecil had a glass eye, though.  Actually, who could forget a cousin who removed his glass eye so that he could shoot marbles with it, even if you did not know the entire family too well as a child?

Daddy's uncle, Bill Gregory (his mother's brother), eventually changed his last name to Burdick, which was their step-father's name.  He did this as a show of love and respect for the only father he could remember.  

With regard to my father's uncle, Bill, I need to make mention of the fact that he and his common-law wife, Laura, had no children, but they did name their pet dog Daisy, after Daddy's deceased sister.  I guess it was a tribute (think about the ship of fools comment).  

In his late teens and early 20s, Daddy worked with his uncle painting flag poles and church steeples.  While painting one side of the steeple of the First Congregational Church in East Hartford, Daddy noticed a crowd quickly gathering below.  With dread in his stomach, Daddy called to his uncle, who had been on the steeple's opposite side, "Hey, Uncle Bill, can you see what's happening down there?"  You have probably guessed that his uncle had just plunged to his death.  Daddy would refuse to even climb a ladder again for many years.        

Daddy's maternal grandmother, was last known as Rose Schoolcraft.  She married for a third time, after after her ill-conceived attempt to have Charlie "Pop" or "Gramps" Burdick declared legally dead failed, and they were divorced.  Daddy never mentioned Mr. Schoolcraft, except to say his last name.  I suspect he was out of the picture quickly (another reason to think about the ship of fools).

As it happens, Rose Schoolcraft bore a striking resemblance to George Washington (not only America's first president, but also a distant cousin to the Schoolcraft family).  That chance resemblance caused Daddy to joke once that royalty could only marry other royalty.   

Early jobs, accomplishments and happy memories

Somehow these little-known Hooper facts seemed to deserve their own section.     

Not only did Daddy's brother, Art, go on to become a tree surgeon, and later to work at a company called Dettenborn's (and I still have no idea what he did there), he also worked at the chicken hatchery as a chicken sexer.  I asked him once what that entailed, and he told me only that it was a job that required a light touch.  

He quickly turned the subject to my father, telling me, "Billy did it too, and he was better at it than Kenny.  Kenny tried to sell pullets (young chickens) to a guy one time, and told them they were females.  Billy double-checked, and, sure enough, they were males."  With a head shake and a laugh, he added, "Sometimes Kenny was all talk, but your father knew what he was talking about."    

Dubby, before his decision to enlist in the Army in June of 1941, worked at an oil company called Silent Glow.  I believe he was a delivery man.    

Daddy's mother, Edith, was the woman who thought of putting seats in old-time telephone booths.  She submitted the idea via her son, Charlie, who was then working as an engineer at the phone company; it was implemented, and the staggering sum of $20 was awarded to Charlie, who kept it!  

At this point I will note that Dubby was known to call Art "tightwad" and Louie "skinflint", but he did not have a name for Charlie...at least not one that I ever heard.  I heard plenty from my father about that $20 reward, and none of it was polite.

Another thing Daddy always talked about was the three-layer cakes his mother used to make.  He always stressed that the same woman who took in laundry to help pay family bills, never skimped on those cakes.  There were no divided layers for her cakes!  After a night of ice skating on a field next to their house (my grandfather rigged up a light outside so the kids could see after dark), those delicious cakes, coupled with hot chocolate, really hit the spot.   

Daddy and Dubby made themselves a nice camping area in the woods behind Elm Street and Central Avenue.  They had a campfire and a treehouse with stairs so the dogs, Chuckie and Popeye, could join them while they ate potatoes hot from the coals; I suspect they were already "hot" when they went into the coals.  I doubt that watermelons were the only borrowed items in my father's childhood diet!  After swimming in the river, eating their potatoes and enjoying some time in the treehouse, they would return home to a hearty meal of biscuits and...wait for it...more potatoes.

The same river the two brothers frolicked in during the hot afternoons of summer, was also the place for family baths as long as the weather permitted; I assume winter found them in the old, galvanized washtub.  The Hooper family of that era was not wealthy, but they were clean.  

"Pop" Burdick, the only grandfather Daddy ever spoke of, worked on the railroad.  One day when he was driving spikes into the ground, the head of the huge mallet he was using for the task fell off, striking him on his own head.  He simply spit some chewing tobacco into a bandana, wrapped it around his head, pulled his cap back on and finished his day's work.  

Because his grandfather always had a nickel for both Daddy and Dubby, my father firmly believed that "Gramps" had to work that day in case he and his brother needed their nickels that night.         

Frank and Edith Hooper's best friends were named Frank and Edith Purrell (popular first names in those days, apparently). They always spent New Year's Eve together at the Hooper's home, eating a good meal and enjoying a piece of fruit, if available, or a homemade cookie.

As a final note from me, I would like to add that, many years after all of these events, I joined a library group and met a charming woman named Betty Squires.  She was "Squeeky's" widow.  Each of us asked, "Did you have family on Central Avenue?" at roughly the same moment.  

Betty told me that her late husband had been very attached to his friends, Dubby and Billy Hooper, and talked about them often.  She also said he was the one who taught my father to play, "You Are My Sunshine" on the piano, and went on to say that the Hoopers were one of the finest families it had ever been her pleasure to know.  I was deeply touched.