Moving On
I don’t know how much that had to do with our move to Peters Creek but I think Mother wanted to get away from the place where she had lost her second son. Anyway the next year we moved to Peters Creek. Furniture was sent by rail even though it was only thirty miles and we were told it would take several weeks so it was decided I would stay at my grandparents in Buffalo Village and attend the Maple Grove Elementary School. Lloyd Mahaffey was the teacher. He later became a dentist. I was assigned to a double seat with Homer Leach of an upper grade. There were no screens on the windows and one day when Lloyd Mahaffey ignored my waving hand I jumped out the nearby window and went to the outhouse much to Elmer’s dismay. I cannot recall receiving any punishment though.
Of course, we walked the two or more miles from Buffalo Village to cool. At one place we followed a shortcut across a field. After a rain the water was high here we jumped across a small creek. The older boys jumped successfully but I fell short and landed in the water.
It may have been at this time that I told Great Grandmother that I wished she would make me one of the afghans she had made for her children and grandchildren. She was nearly blind and had suffered a broken hip but still knitted arid got around with a cane. She never got the afghan made for me but I ended up getting Grandmother’s, Dad’s, and Uncle Clark’s which we still have in our family. Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather Samuel ~. Brownlee are buried in Washington Cemetery near the entrance to the left, marked by an attractive salmon colored gravestone.
Peters Creek
My first contact at Peters Creek United Presbyterian Church was when we went to the wedding of John A. McMurray and Elizabeth Douglas. We were met at St. Clair station of the Washington Street Car Line by Miss Douglas’ uncle and walked to her home. It was too muddy to drive. They had overnight accommodations for Dad and Mother but I was to sleep with the family of Chat Matthews. Mrs. Matthews was a sister of John As. However, Chat and Maggie were in a buggy so I was sent along in a surrey with Will McMurray’s family which included three girls. At Mathan’s I slept with Mack Matthews a teacher at Peters Township High School. He had attended the wedding taking his sister Mabel. Our association with the Matthews and McMurrays was to be a close one for the next seven years.
It was early spring when our furniture arrived. At that time they were building the Montour Railroad and were hauling heavy loads over the roads so that they were axle deep in mud. Much of the work in building the railroad was done by recent immigrant Italians with shovels and picks. Horses with scoops moved the dirt from the cuts to ‘the fills. I enjoyed watching the work. The railroad passed about a half mile from the parsonage.
I had been told by Dad before we moved that there was a creek between the church and the parsonage so I had packed worms in a Prince Albert can. They were dried-up when we unpacked and the creek was too small anyway. The parsonage included about three acres with a row of apple trees across the back of the property. An oil well stood near the creek just above the footlog we walked across to the church. You could count seven oil wells from our porch. Elmer Bowers was the oil well pumper and he became a close friend of mine. He helped me rig a 10-foot derrick, and one time furnished me with a skunk to skin to sell the hide. I never did trap a skunk myself although I trapped several muskrats.
The church building had been built of bricks baked on the site in 1795. They celebrated the 125th Anniversary while we were there and Jean and I were back for the 175th Anniversary on October 11, 1970. At least fifty people remembered me. The congregation had grown to about two hundred to fifteen hundred. A new church with educational facilities had been constructed but the original building was preserved and used for adult education. The farmland had been divided into large plots and it has become suburban Pittsburgh.
Joining the Church
Pattersons were our closest neighbors and Ralston, the son became my playmate. His sisters were Hazel and Laura. I went each evening to Patterson’s with a two quart pail for milk. When I was early and had to wait for the milk Mr. Patterson sometimes would squirt milk in my face. One time whenever I was carrying the milk with one hand while riding on my bicycle I tried out centrifugal force by swinging the pail overhead. It worked but when I hit a stone I spilled the milk.
The bicycle had belonged to a nephew of Mrs. Matthews who had been trampled to death in the rush to exit a motion picture theater in Canonsburg when somebody yelled “Fire”. It turned out to have been a false alarm.
Elizabeth Froebe was my first teacher at Wrights School about a half mile from home. I remember kissing her at the end of the first term. One day Ralston (Rusty) Patterson and I got in a fight and I got a cut in my right eyebrow from a piece of rail fence he swung. Dad took me to St. Clair where the doctor put in several stitches. The scar is still visible under the eyebrow.
My second teacher was Emma Lushen who had been a home missionary at Frenchburg, Kentucky. The boys one day put a mouse in her desk at recess.
When I was about twelve Dad held classes for new members. I recall telling Dad that if I had to believe such things as God rolling back the waters of the Dead Sea for the Israelites to pass through and let the waters flow back to drown the Egyptians I didn’t think I could join the church. He told me that it was not necessary to believe everything literally that was in the Bible. He said most ministers question some of the stories which had been handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth and that very likely some of them were not completely accurate. With that understanding, I joined the church.
World War I
The First World War came. We had a flag in the church with a blue star for every living soldier and five gold stars for the five members of Peters Creek congregation who had made the supreme sacrifice. I was especially impressed with the Phillips and the Simpson boys who had served in the new Air Force. Patriotism ran high and boys often enlisted at sixteen, some falsifying papers and joining up earlier. I may have enlisted if the war hadn’t ended in 1918, one week before my fifteenth birthday. Hardly a family did not have a boy in the service. Uncle Clark suspended his medical practice and went into the Medical Corp and Aunt Rose went into the Nursing Corp.
Peters Township High School was suspended during the war. The few remaining students were sent to neighboring schools as tuition pupils. The suspension followed the “running-out-of-town-on-a-rail” of the principal. He was Mr. Long. He had punished a boy for climbing the flagpole to replace the flag. I am sure he punished him for safety reasons but patriotism was so high that some of the citizens claimed he was a German agent.
The high school was reopened with one class, the Freshmen in 1918. Our one teacher was Pat Bane from Claysville, Pa. He was more than six feet tall and became a strong influence on me. I remember the school purchased a ten volume travel library and he allowed me to take out volumes so that, I think I read the entire set.
Dad’s Lost Voice
In the summer of 1920 Dad lost his voice, which I believe had happened when he left Birmingham, Michigan. He resigned as pastor of Peters Creek and went to Albuquerque, New Mexico to live with Rev. Neil Ferguson where he helped Neil with his dairy, washed dishes in a restaurant etc., to earn a little money. He did not want to take a leave of absence. The congregation said Mother and I could stay in the parsonage until they called a new pastor. That happened sooner than we expected. Harvey McMurray, a bachelor let us have his farmhouse when his tenants left. Mother took in the two new high school teachers from Washington & Jefferson College as boarders and roomers. Neither one had a car so I chauffeured them to school affairs. Today I cannot understand how mother and Dad managed financially.
We sorrowfully got rid of Maize before moving to the farmhouse. she had been a horse of leisure and our family pet since we had gotten the car. Mother did insist on using her one winter night when there was a Sabbath School Class meeting at Charles Haas’ because there was a mud road to travel over and she was afraid in the car. I must explain that the Young Men and Young Women’s Sabbath School Classes had a joint social meeting at one of the homes monthly. Wanda Flack rode with Mother and me. Mother attended because she was the preacher’s wife. When I brought Maize around to the front of the house to go home she was cold and I had to hold back hard on the reins. She backed because I had cramped the wheels to make it easier for Mother and Wanda to get in the buggy. She backed the buggy over a sharp inclined bank and fell backward over the buggy breaking out the shafts. I jumped. Maize stood there quivering. needless to say Mother never insisted on taking the buggy instead of the Ford following that experience. I can’t remember how we got home that night.
At the close of school in 1921 they were repaving what is now Route 51 running from Castle Shannon through Library The Mestas lived on this road. They were members of the Mt. Lebanon Church but frequently came to Peters Creek Church and knew of our circumstances Henry Mesta arranged with the foreman to give me a job operating a gas engine driven pump used to supply water to the cement mixers. The wage was $5.00 a day which was very satisfactory. At the end of the first week one of the truck drivers wrecked his truck trying to “chicken out” one of the farmers along the road and the foreman came around and told me that when the truck was repaired he was putting me on as driver. This wage was even better – $7.00 a day – and helped Mother meet expenses. I stayed on the job until we left for Pawnee City, Nebraska. It was on this job I knew my first black people. Several of the cement mixer workers were black. I recall that one day when I had forgotten my lunch they insisted on sharing theirs. It was the best paying job I was to have for several years.
This road passed the home of Dr. Lake, D.D.S. whose office was in the Oliver Building in Pittsburgh. My teeth were very crooked. Dad wanted to put wires on them but I rebelled and we compromised by pulling four teeth – one above and one below on each side. It was a short time until the remaining teeth moved in to fill the vacancies and I had much straighter teeth.
Dr. Lake had a son my age named Oliver (Jake) who has succeeded him as a dentist and two twin brothers. They also took two young nephews under their care. The nephews parents had died in Mt. Lebanon during the flu epidemic
Dr. Lake had a Stanley Steamer and would go to the garage to start the steam generator before breakfast so he could drive to the streetcar at Library. The Lakes would have house parties around Christmas with some friends of Jakes from Mt. Lebanon and his cousins as guests They always included me. The boys would sleep over the garage while the girls would sleep in the house. Dr. Lake would take us ice skating and on a bobsled party. That is how Lois Boyd came to be a girlfriend. Her father, a brother of Mrs. Lake, was superintendent of the large mine at Elm Grove on Route 40 near Wheeling W.Va. Just before we left for Nebraska I slipped away in the Ford and went to Elm Grove, W.Va. to visit her. I took her a small box of candy. I wrote her once, I think. She sent word with Fans Johnston’s niece at Edith’s funeral services to tell me that “her red hair was now white but she still had her teeth”. It made me feel good that she even remembered me.
Before leaving for Nebraska I also wanted to see Pauline Graham. She had entered West Penn Hospital School of Nursing and afterward married a doctor. I recall that her address was not far from Uncle Clark’s. They lived then at Alder Street Apartments. I nervously found the address without being spotted by Uncle Clark or Aunt Rose and solemnly gave Pauline a small box of candy. Her interests had moved from Peters Township High School classmates and fully expected to keep in touch but a new adventure was opening.
Science
Early I became interested in science and read the physics and chemistry books left by Uncle Clark in my grandparent’s attic. My family subscribed for the “Electrical Experimenter” magazine and I carried out many of the experiments. I set up a workshop in one end of our barn. An early experiment was to install a doorbell. Another was to build a bell signaling device to tell me when the water storage tank in the attic needed refilling by the pump in the cellar I used a paraffin covered block of wood as a float, like in a flush tank, to make the electrical contact. It was here I made my first crystal wireless set, winding the secondary and primary coils on discarded Mother’s Oats boxes. I used bell wire. Crystals and headphones could be purchased but complete radios were not available. The first broadcasting station was KDKA atop the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh.
The large maple trees were on the parsonage property and in the Spring I tapped the trees and Mother boiled down the sap into maple syrup. I used elderberry stalks with the pith punched out for spouts which I fashioned to fit the holes I bored in the trees.
We had many visiting preachers and seminary students at Peters Creek and I came to know a great many of the United Presbyterian clergy. Often they would discuss at length their problems and their doubts. It was the custom in those days for pastors to spend a week conducting revival services in neighboring churches and the visiting pastor would spend the week at our home. Dad in turn would return the favor.
High School
While primary school had been a cross to bear for me, as it seemed to me that everyone had it in for the preacher’s kid; high school was a delight. I made the track team and took second place with a silver medal at the Washington & Jefferson College Invitational Track Meet in the 100 yard dash. The gold medal winner, a black boy from Washington, later went to W & J and then to the Olympics.
The boy who won the 100 yard dash was most likely
Charles Fremont West who went to Washington High School and enrolled at Washington and Jefferson College in 1920. At W & J he was a track star and quarterback of the football team.
In 1922 he became the first African American quarterback to play in the Rose Bowl. He did make the 1924 Olympic team, but did not compete due to injury.
He would later go to medical school and practiced medicine in Alexandria, Virginia for many years.
I won the Washington & Jefferson Oratorical Contest in the Extemporary Speaking Event. I was selected for the male lead in our high school Junior Class Play.
Girls became important to me during these years. It was apparent that I was not a homosexual. The first girl was Margaret Froebe, the youngest sister of my first grade teacher. The Froebes were good members of our church and my folks heartily approved. Margaret drove a buggy to school and I met her at Wrights School for the trip on to the high school. I would unhitch the horse named Ted and tie him in the horse sheds provided at the high school. These rides naturally continued with Margaret and Ted to school parties.
There were no driver’s license requirements in those days and after we got our first Ford in 1918, I was allowed to have the car. There followed a succession of girls: Sara, Ruth, Pauline, Margaret M; Lois, etc. One night Margaret M. took me along to a dance. Before I got up the next morning Mrs. Patterson had called to tell Mother, as dancing was not approved of – such was the life of a preacher’s son.
It may have been partly for that reason that my exploration included the burlesque theaters and even the Lafayette Bar in Pittsburgh where I couldn’t purchase anything but pop but had a free lunch. Strangely enough Dad and Mother allowed me the freedom to go by myself to Pittsburgh – a 2 and one-half hour street car ride.
The Canonsburg Waterworks Reservoir was in one direction and a pond at Library in the opposite direction and ice skating was the chief winter sport which we enjoyed nearly every evening. When there was no ice we sometimes went by streetcar to Duquesne Gardens in Pittsburgh.
At threshing time we would be invited to help. Dad would pitch sheaves, Mother would help in the kitchen and I would go along after school. The farmers were always good to give us sausage, spare ribs, etc. when they butchered. We were invited to help pick and share fruit and vegetables.
First Car
When Dad brought home our first Ford, a touring car, in 1918, he was timid about driving it into the buggy shed which was only a little wider than the car. So he went to get Will Patterson, who had more experience, to come over and drive the new car into the shed. Uncle Clark had taken me on house calls with him previously and had let me get some experience driving so while Dad went for Mr. Patterson, I surprised him by putting the car into its place. Fortunately, I did not scratch it.
I recall that soon after the radiator hose leaked and Dad attempted to tighten the clamp and barked his knuckles when the screwdriver slipped. I said, “Let me have it” and from that time on Dad let me have complete charge of the car. He never swore when something like that happened. He just said “holy smoke!”
There was a lot to take care of on a Model T and I learned to do every-thing from Elmer Bowers. It had a planetary transmission. You would hold the middle pedal down for low gear, let your foot off for high gear, hold down the middle peddle for reverse and the right hand pedal for braking. Every so often the transmission bands would have to be replaced. The gasoline tank was under the front seat. You measured the gas with a stick after removing the cap. If the gas got low sometimes it would not flow by gravity to the carburetor when going up a steep hill. Then you would turn around and back up . Running out of gas on a hill always gave you a chance to go to the station and get the tank filled.
The front wheels wore 3-inch and the rear wheels wore 3-1/2 inch tires so you had to carry two spares. Tire guarantees were for 200 miles. You couldn’t expect to go more than 25 miles without fixing a flat The tires used inner-tubes and you changed them with tire irons, then they had to be pumped up. I remember my first date in the car when we had a front go flat.. I couldn’t got the valve stem to come through the rim – we had no light – until I discovered I had failed to take off a nut on the valve stem.
Of course, the Ford in 1918 did not have an electrical starter. Many a driver got an arm broken cranking the car when it would back fire. In winter it would be hard to crank so we would jack up one rear wheel, block the others using the turning back wheel as a flywheel. The ignition and lights were provided energy by a magneto When one drove too fast the light bulbs would burn out. If you drove too slow the lights would be too dim to see the road.
I had made an observation that the car seemed to run smoother during damp, humid weather so I connected the overflow pipe of the radiator with a tap I put in the intake manifold. It did seem to improve the engine performance.
Another trick that helped get the engine started was to tap the manifold where it entered each cylinder and insert petcocks with funnel tops. We would buy ether at gasoline stations and prime the car with a spoonful of ether in each cylinder in cold weather. There was no antifreeze at first and we would have to drive with a cardboard in the lower part of the radiator and drain the radiator when we stopped for any length of time. Kerosene was tried as a radiator fluid but it tended to get mixed with water which would settle and freeze. Finally about 1925 someone got the idea to mix alcohol and water uniformly.
Working
It may have been while we were at Cooperstown that Dad took me to hear Billy Sunday. A tabernacle had been built to cover most of the area across the street from the Carnegie Library where the present Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Memorial Chapel now stands. The tabernacle was constructed of sheeting boards with sawdust on the ‘floor and heated by pot-bellied stoves placed at intervals. Billy Sunday’s text was “Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out” and he told how a murderer had been convicted by matching the nick in his knife blade with the marks on the club he used. When he called for converts hundreds of volunteers marched to the rail. Bomer Hodeheaver played the trombone and led the music.
I used some of my savings to buy a pocket watch – an Ingersole I lost it while sledding on Lushens Hill. When the snow melted I found the watch but a horse had stepped on its face with his horseshoe cleats. I had the timerity to send the watch to the company for replacement and the Ingersol Company made their guarantee good.
Of course, my folks sent me to the New Wilmington (Westminister College) and Muskingum College Missionary Conferences. While we lived at Pawnee City it was the Tarkio College Missionary Conference. Missionaries on furlough would speak in a tent and hopefully some of us would want to become missionaries.
I started working before World War I when Boy Reserves were recruited and sent out from the cities to farms. Some were placed with families in our church. Chat Matthews gave me my first job at sixty cents a day with board and room. The first year I hauled hay shocks, hoed corn, carried water and learned to milk after Dad discovered they were letting me sleep in the morning until they came back from milking. Chat had a pure bred Guernsey Bull and other farmers brought their cows to be impregnated for $2.00. I learned about animal reproduction.
Farmers could improve their herd by repeated impregnation for eight generations, after which the calves were considered to be pure bred. I often think how much more scientific animal and plant breeding is than human breeding.
While I was at Matthew’s, Rev. Ernest Clements and wife Emily, who had been Emily Matthews, with three year old son James, were home on furlough from their mission station in India. Their second son, Glen was born and my job that day was to entertain James throughout the long day it took for the baby to come.
Mack Matthews, principal of Peters Township High School wanted to go to India as a teacher but needed to take additional education courses to be accepted so he went to the University of Pittsburgh. This left no one to operate the Caterpillar Tractor, the Mogul International Tractor, Ford truck etc. so I inherited the job. I loved it and learned how to service and make repairs to the tractors. Mr. Matthews (Chat) never seemed to be able to learn the new equipment. One of our crops was sweet corn (roasting ears) which we packed in bushel baskets, five dozen to the bushel, and trucked to the wharf on the Monogahela River bank at the foot of Smithfield and Wood Streets in Pittsburgh for sale to hucksters or commissionmen. We preferred to sell to the commissionmen by the truck load. That summer Mr. Matthews and I took the corn by wagon using the Mount Washington Incline the first few trips. Then they decided to let me drive the truck and thereafter Chat and I would leave the farm about 11 P.N. and sell the first load and hopefully a second for delivery on the Wharf. If we sold the second load we would return to the farm about 1 A.M., load the second load, and I would deliver it to the commission house myself. The commission houses which distributed the corn in the mornings to grocery stores were out Liberty Street. You must remember that World War I was going on or I likely would not have been permitted to assume such responsibility. Matthews also had an ensilage cutter and when the corn price dropped below $1.00 a bushel we would put it in the silo. Sweet corn made good ensilage. After school started I went back to Matthews farm on Saturdays to do threshing and hay bailing. Mrs. Matthews had several brothers: Will, Jim, John A; Charley and Harvey all of whom had adjoining farms. They all helped each other harvest so I had a full time job operating mechanical equipment which I liked. Charley, the youngest, was the only brother who operated equipment.
One day as I was returning from a job on another farm with the hay bailer the fumes from the gallon can of gasoline we used to prime the International Tractor ignited. It was hanging too near the vertical exhaust pipe. In my panic I grabbed the can and threw it as far as possible and the grass caught fire. I threw it because I expected the can to explode. Later I learned that the gasoline fumes would not even burn in the can without air. There was an oil pumping station in the field. Luckily Mr. Matthews came along in the car in time to help me put out the grass fire before it reached the pumping station.
The summer of 1918 “Wat” Crouch, Contractor, employed me. I helped build one house, refloor a school at St. Clair, etc. I was on the roof of the house the day the Armistice was signed in 1918. We did not have school that year until later because of the flu epidemic. Many people died from that epidemic although no one from our family developed the flu.
Will McMurray and John A. operated McMurrays Mill and Jim McMurray had the general store, post office and gas company. He gave me a job after school started reading gas meters all the way from St. Clair to Donaldsons Crossroads. He provided me with a horse and buggy. I installed a battery operated electric light for him in the horse stable. They thought that was good.
I must mention Mabel Matthews. She was a teacher in the United Presbyterian Chase City (Tennessee College) for the Colored and was home each summer. She was like a big sister to me1 She had a fine influence she did, however, one thing that Mother disapproved of – she persuaded me to taste coffee.
