The summer between my third grade and fourth grade years, we moved from 2202 Main St. to 2220 Meridian St. We seemed to stuck on addresses with twos! The picture above shows our family at a family picnic that summer. Notice that brother Jack is not in the picture. This was 1945, and as soon as Jack graduated from high school that spring, he was drafted into the army.
If you recall history, then you will recall that the war ended in Europe later that summer. Jack did go to Germany, but saw only peace time service. When he returned home after serving his two years, he went right to college. He was only home for vacations thereafter, never really lived at home again.
In the front row in this picture, from left to right, you will see my cousin, Darlene, me, Darlene's grandma (she is my Great Aunt Loretta), cousin Loretta (named after her Grandma and always called Sis), my Grandma Lininger, ( all 4' 10 of her), Mother, Mother's cousin, Faye , and my cousin, Diana. Darlene, Sis, and Diana are Faye's daughters, so they are actually my second cousins, but we have always been very close.
In the back row from left to right are brother Dan, Bob Spearman, Clyde's good friend, Clyde, Daddy, Faye's husband, Bill, and David. Bob Spearman is probably 83 now. He still lives at Dewart Lake, Indiana, is very fit and healthy. He was a state champion track star from AHS. And Clyde and Bob both played on the only state championship basketball team from Anderson. They were only juniors, but it was the most exciting event of my childhood.
We had so much fun at the picnic that day. It was a family picnic at Shadyside Park here in Anderson. Faye and all her family came from Indianapolis. You can tell that Darlene and I were having a blast by how dirty and suntanned we were. I'm surprised that I still had shoes on. I spent that entire summer going barefoot. In fact I spent most of my childhood summers going barefoot. I could hardly stand to have shoes on when school started in the fall.
We moved to Meridian Street because the house was quite a bit bigger than the one on Main. We actually had three bedrooms, all upstairs, 2 for the boys, and Mother and Daddy's. I still had the gosh awful cot in the corner of their room. In fact, I didn't have a room of my own until we moved to the next house. But more about that another day. And in this house, we actually ate dinner in the dining room. Mother painted a lovely floral painting that matched the drapes on the corner cupboard that Grandpa Lininger made. It held the pretty pink flowered dishes that Grandpa and Grandma bought for Mother on her birthday.
This house also had two living rooms. No, EXCUSE ME, It had a living room and a PARLOR with french doors. Ooooh, we thought we were really living. We rented the house from the Hodsons next door. They owned all three houses from the corner of 23rd North, and lived in the third one from the corner. They would, in two years, sell our house and the one on the corner to Shell Oil Co. They were torn down and a gas station was built there.
Because of the parlor, we could have a piano, and Daddy taught voice lessons in the parlor. Besides his full time job at Guide Lamp, our dad taught voice lessons, directed a church choir, the American Legion Chorus, and the Anderson Community Chorus. He really wasn't home much. Instead of regular heating going to the second floor, this house had holes in the ceiling of the downstairs rooms with heating registers installed in them. David and I would recline on the floor upstairs and watch the vocal lessons going on below. Do, do do, do, do do, do, do - fa, fa,fa,fa,fa,fa,fa,fa, etc. With our Dad interrupting to demand that they breath from their diaphragms. Yes, it was pretty funny. We were in trouble more times than I care to recall for giggling overhead.
Clyde was gone with school and jobs all the time while we lived here. It seemed like Dan and David were always on their bikes. All the time we lived here, they also shared a paper route. They delivered the afternoon paper, The Bulletin. This was good, because no Green was ever good at getting up early in the mornings. Dan did one side of Fletcher St. from 23rd to about 15th St., and David did the other. They also spent a lot of time at John's drugstore on 23rd, a terrible place where the main attraction was a pinball machine. But, I think their paper bundles were dropped there, so it made a perfect hang out until the papers came.
I would have been very lonely except that the Windsors lived across the street. I spent all my time with their daughter, Claire. She was a year older and very brainy, but she could think up the BEST ways to pass the time. In fact, the entire Windsor family was very brainy. Her older sister, Prudence, made marionettes. Now, I don't mean hand puppets. I mean the paper mache kind with strings and all. Their whole back porch was her studio, and was filled with puppets. Of course, we weren't allowed to touch, but we spent a lot of time watching Prudence. Also, that summer, Mrs. Windsor let us take over the attic. We arranged all their stored attic items into a very artistic gift shop. At least we thought it was artistic. It was impossible to have any customers, but we would have hated to part with our treasures anyway.
The real highlight of the summer was the stage show we presented. It was a real collaboration with Dan and David. Our house had a big garage out back. The boys loved it because it had a basketball goal over the garage doors, and a large paved area for a court. That is where all the boys were when they weren't on their bikes. But Claire and I persuaded them to build a stage in the garage. Claire wrote a show. I really don't remember the show itself. It wasn't a play, but more of a variety show. I think there may have been some singing. All I remember was that Claire was dressed as a scarecrow and stood through the whole show in the corner of the stage, doing monologues. I don't remember doing anything but being in awe! The boys sold tickets to all the kids in the neighborhood, we had the show one evening, and actually a pretty good crowd came to our garage. What fun that was!
During these years we also listened to a lot of radio shows in the evenings. We would take our places on the carpet in front of the big cabinet radio and listen to The Shadow, Jack Armstrong, Fibber McGee and Molly, and my all time favorite, One Man's Family. I think One Man's Family was an hour show and was on Sunday evenings.
Mother listened to the radio during the day while doing her work. She especially liked the Arthur Godfrey show. Sometimes she got so wrapped up in her shows and her projects that she would forget the time. I remember coming in from school for lunch and her looking up and saying, "No, it can't be noon already!" I think she was painting pictures that day. She also liked to do ceramics. One day I came home and she was sitting with her feet propped up in front of the oven ( the house was cold that day), and she was writing a program to give for her club.
Mother always enjoyed her Home economics club (It was called the Golden Rule Club), and a club called The Twentieth Century Club. The Golden Rule girls were mothers good friends for all the years I knew my mother. Mother was one of the charter members of Twentieth Century. These ladies started the club when they were in their early twenties before they were married. It seemed to me that all the rest of them had a lot of money and fine houses. But Mother always put on her best duds and went off to that club one Monday afternoon a month. I know our house always got its very best cleanings when it was Mother's turn to be hostess! And Mother was known for the programs she gave, and she often painted the covers of their year books.
Besides listening to the radio, David and I liked to makes snacks in the evening. I remember our making cookies called Hermits, and making Mother's Never Fail Fudge recipe. We also made a lot of popcorn to eat during the radio shows. We must have made terrible messes, but our patient mother put up with us.
The saddest thing that happened at this house was that our Grandpa Lininger died that first winter. Because Grandma was so lonely, and because she lived right across from Central Ave. School, David spent a good part of the winter with her. I know that he was one of her favorites, and she one of his. She fed him whatever he wanted, he took care of her yard, and she taught him how to crochet! He was the only Green kid to learn that skill. He never made anything with his crocheting, and I think he promptly forgot it when he quit staying with Grandma.
The most memorable moment came at Halloween. We must have had a fuse box or something on the outside of the house, and Halloweeners kept turning off our lights. Guess what! We heard our mother say a swear word - damn - for the one and only time in our lives!
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