"Here is George!"

George: Now this would take you back into the thirties, probably 1931. In any event, I was playing in a dance band from the University of Michigan at Forest Gables in Dayton and it suddenly occurred to me that my brother-in-law, Robert P. Gennett, would be able to do some recording with us and we'd come over to Richmond which was some thirty five miles west, so we did. We arrived in the early morning on the last day of the year and we recorded all day long and we were really exhausted by the time the day was over. In fact, I was the trombone player...had a blood blister on my lip. But the record turned out pretty well and I still have the record if I can find the record and give it to Dr. Judith Gennett.

JG: Do you remember what you played?

George: Oh golly, I can't remember what it was...but we'll find out...yeh, I don't remember.

JG; You talking about the arrangement...

George: Oh yes, a very peculiar arrangement. In those days the music stands would not dare be put on the floor for the vibrations that would be created, so they were hung from the ceiling and had clips for the music on them. Then we were arranged so that the more obnoxious instruments...the blaring kinds...would be back farther than those that were softer and more agreeable. The drummer was not allowed to use, I believe, well, maybe it was the bass drummer, that couldn't use anything on the drum but brushes and he was up on an elevated platform way to the back of the room. So we did all that recording and were exhausted by the time...is there anything more to be said about that? I would think that that would be adequate but as a matter of fact I gave one of those records..a photocopy of one of those records...to a friend of Professor Garret Boone out at Earlham College...He is in charge of the revival of the river area where the Starr-Gennett people are and I thought he would enjoy that as we had correspondence and was keeping me up to date on it. 'Cause it happened that my masters thesis at the University of Michigan was on the Whitewater River Gorge and a little silly one on that. They invited Nancy and me down there to a meeting when they were inaugurating the program and they had invited the mayor and the president and the councilmen and so on and it was not a formal affair. And all of sudden they turned to me and said wouldn't you like to say a few words and I was caught with my words down so to speak and all of a sudden I got up and I said "I'll make a deal with you folks...You call this the Whitewater River Gorge. My father's name was George Hayward and so was one of my sons' and my name is George. So I would like you to change it from the Whitewater Gorge to the Whitewater George and..." but they didn't do it. So that concludes the conversation.

J.G.: Thank you.

J.G.: You want to say who you are?

George: Where's the microphone?

J.G.: You don't need one.

George: Is that right?

J.G.: Yeh, you can just talk.

George: Am I supposed to introduce myself?

J.G.: Yes introduce yourself.

George: I'm George C.--for Curtis-- Hayward...I live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, although born in Richmond, Indiana, an uncle to Judith Day-Gennett, now they are visiting with us right now. That is the reason for this particular recording, and now, um...

J.G.: What's the date?

George: It is November the seventh 1994.

J.G.: Can you say when you were born and who your parents were?:

George: I was born June sixth 1909. My parents were George Homsher Hayward and mother was Laura May sometimes Belle Horner before she was married. She came from Dublin, Ohio [Indiana]. George Homsher, my father was born and raised as the family, much of it, originated in Fairfield, Indiana, which is south of Richmond, or was, some 20 miles, but now the town was moved because of a reservoir having been created where the town was. They were very thorough and accommodating by moving the whole town practically...of course it was very small...across the border into Ohio and it's known as Fairfield, Ohio north of Cincinnati. Richmond is by the so-called Old National Road which is now an original highway and they, um, what was I going to say, 65 miles north of Cincinnati and by coincidence I spent much of my life in Cincinnati, working there, but I'm retired, having been retired since 1974. That makes me now 85 and 5/12.

J.G.: You're not really retired though, are you?

George: No not quite because I was delighted with the development of something that was largely to be credited to my second wife Nancy who was so cooperative. I wanted to be in my retirement a music teacher, because that has been an important part of my life to the extent that it paid my way through college to the extent that the first time home during the first college year I was able to hand my check back to my mother and saying to her, "You don't have to send me any more money," and she didn't either. Didn't need to because I was so very fortunate in having been able to play in dance orchestras all the way through, summers included especially, so that was it. But then I've always had in my mind becoming a teacher of music in my retirement. I've up to as many as 29 students who are basically piano students but I've also had a wide range including organ and clarinet and saxophone, oboe, cornet, trombone, tuba, guitar, violin, everything practically except drums and harp, which I would refuse to teach, not only because I don't know anything about them, but I don't think I would enjoy. Students range from...I've had them and do have one now six years old, then I had one who was seventy two years old at the time. He was president of the Kroger Company, Joseph D. Paul, in Cincinnati.

J.G.: OK I'm gonna check this and see [if the recorder is working]...what can you tell me about your mother?

George: Oh...I'd be glad to. My mother was a very talented person and was not inhibited about showing her abilities, except that there was not that much opportunity. But by the same token she had a range of abilities from acting to playing the piano. She could play it by ear and I loved it so well when she was going to the hospital for an operation and we all gathered in the living room to have a good-bye ceremony and she sat down and played some old-timers on the piano. And so then she was also in plays at the school and in fact she was the first president of the Parent Teachers Association...PTA. She was a good challenger for our learning things. For instance she and I always had games about remembering the names of the capitals of the various states in the country. Now we might be stumped because back in those days there were only 48 states. Now we've got 50 so those were the kinds of games that we'd play. Now Dad was not that much of a student but he certainly must have had a lot of abilities from the fact that he came up from this little bitty town south of Richmond and although he started out as a streetcar conductor he started his own business finally, or bought a business of the Crane Electric Company and managed it very well. But in the meantime, mother was a fine stenographer- bookkeeper and that's what she did for the operation of the Crane Electric Company...never changed the name of it even though it bore the name of the former owner, but they...uh...

J.G.: When did they buy it?

George: It was in the very early twenties and that coincided with the invention and beginning of the promotion of the Frigid-Aire...the electric refrigerator, the very first one that was ahead of Kelvinator and the rest of them. It began in Dayton, Ohio about 35 miles to the east of Richmond, and Dad got the franchise for that and he hired the then-current mayor of Liberty, Indiana south of Richmond and put to work about half a dozen salesmen and two servicemen. Then it was very successful, in fact he practically and really did sell everybody that was available and eligible financially and so on in the City of Richmond with electric refrigerators and I was employed by him too. I don't remember what he paid me but I'm sure he did because he was very fair. It was my job to clear the basement of the store to receive the shipment of Frigid-Aires in the basement that then would be unwrapped so to speak, uncrated, ready for installation the next week. Every week, that basement was filled with refrigerators and emptied...a very successful operation and when he retired, it was remarkable...there'd been so many people, other electrical contractors who were after his franchise...he was not at all reluctant to give it up because after all he'd sold the whole town. Anyway, I think it was the Richmond Electrical Company who got the franchise but with that they had the obligation of servicing all of these refrigerators he'd sold so that they didn't have any possibilities of selling any but they had the responsibility of servicing all of these refrigerators. That was very remarkable. Father and Mother lived to be just about 85 years old...84 years old and I thought that I was doing very well until I found that my folks father lived to be 85 and I had to work hard to keep up with him. But he died of a cancer of the intestines and I've forgot what mother died of...

J.G.: I think she had pneumonia.

George: I guess so...and I remember something about her being even for all of her artistic ability being a very hard core sort of person too that when I had to go over to ...[?]...for meetings every week...every other Tuesday...one time I came back and found she was not at all in good condition, very feeble, and she said, "I wish you would get me a gun and she went through the motion of holding it as though she had one up to her lip...ready to go. It wasn't very long after that that she did go, and my Dad ended his life down at your place in Alabama as he was visiting down there. I remember something of his good sense of humor as I, when I found out that he was in bad shape, I drove down, I flew down on the plane and then drove back in his car, which he had driven down. He was very proud of it. It was a 1950 Pontiac, one of the first 8-Cylinder Pontiacs. So anyway, I visited him at the hospital and he said, "I've got one last request, if I'm gonna have to give up on this deal, is I want you to get me a casket in Richmond, bring it down here and strap it on the top of the car, but put me in it first and put me up on the top of the car." And he did it just to be silly. But that was his kind of macabre sense of humor. One of the most memorable things with him was the fact that I started piano lessons when I was six years old and at the end of six months we gave a piano recital and I did all right. And I came home and I put the music on the couch or someplace and so I kissed it goodbye and they said "What's this all about?" And I said "Well, I don't need any more lessons, you heard them all applaud me after I played my piece. I know how to play." Well, they looked kind of griped about it, but they didn't complain. Until I started on them. I wanted to learn how to play the violin. And with that in mind, it meant that there had to be a purchasable violin and I had to take the lessons and all that sort of stuff and my mother thought that would be alright. My dad was the one to make the big decision. So we, uh, she said talk to your father so I sat down with him in the living room and we had a nice bay window at the end of the room and we sat there. And I explained the whole thing to him. And he listened patiently and he was mostly just a fun guy, but he was being very serious and he said "OK," finally, "We'll do it, but if I ever hear that you want to play another instrument or don't want to practice you're going to go right out that window and it's going to be closed when you go through it and the violin's gonna go right with you, too." I figured he'd meant it to the extent that after I had lessons for about three years and I also wanted to play the trombone but I didn't dare ask them about that. In the mean time I had been teaching some other people how to play, so I had saved up my nickels and pennies. And finally in the Sears Roebuck Catalogue, which they used to have in those days, there was a trombone for a nickel plated Marso for $9.85 with instruction book included, but no case, and I bought it and carried it in my newspaper bag whenever I had to go anyplace until I could afford enough money to buy a case for it. But I enjoyed that very much and that was a very good investment, by golly, because it paid my way through college playing in dance bands. I remember that so well by only identifying him as the cause, but also the fact that it meant so much to me in my subsequent life and still does. Because I'm still teaching as a result of that largely and enjoying it, probably as much as I enjoyed my professional life as an urban or city planner which I practiced after receiving a masters degree in it at the University of Michigan.

J.G.: OK, I'm gonna change the subject. Do you remember anything about your mother's family...your Grandfather Horner?

George: Yeh, I do! Her father, Philip Edward Horner was a big fellow and I remember his height involved a ceiling fixture in our kitchen. He was in the Civil War in the United States Army and was very active in it and they did a lot of marching to the extent that he had foot...feet trouble and he couldn't sit very long. He had to walk a lot. And I remember him walking in the kitchen. Of course he, after his wife died, my grandmother, he came to live with us in Richmond. He would pace through the house and through the kitchen and every time he went through the kitchen, he would bump his head on this fixture that was hanging from the ceiling. He was a successful businessman, too, he finally, after he got out of the army, I think he was only about 18 years old when he was in the army when he joined, and he was tall. He was 6 foot 2 and he would enjoy telling things about his army experience and I got a big kick out of it too because I was about 6 years old and I was very much impressed with it. He went into the roofing business and my dad joined him in it as a junior partner and roofing and metal work...different kinds of flashing for roofs and so on and then my grandmother, I don't remember too much about her but her name was Mary Suits. [This is his paternal grandmother now] She was kind of a little woman but a most remarkable thing and I have pictures to evidence this. It's a fact that they became engaged to be married when he was six and she was four years, so he proposed to her. They were next door neighbors and it was of enough significance that there was an Associated Press story about it and their pictures occurred in it. Somebody from Memphis, Alabama sent me...is Memphis in Alabama?

J.G.: Tennessee

George: Huh?

J.G.: Tennessee

George: Tennessee, yes, sent me that and I had a clipping with their pictures in it...a front page interesting article. And they were a delightful couple. She was the president of the WCTU Womens Christian Temperance Union opposed to alcoholism and she was quite a talker. She would talk by the hour on the telephone and it seemed as I would witness it that she wouldn't give anyone else a chance to talk! She'd do all the talking and when she got through talking she'd just hang up, that's all there was to it. But they lived in Richmond and he was successful enough that he built the building that housed their grocery business on the first floor and they had an apartment on the second floor and then when he retired he sold the business but not the building. And it kept him going and very ably and so on and he then rented it out to a medical group of doctors on the first floor in Richmond, at the corner of West First and Main Street. Then something else that related to that...what was it? Is there anything else? Have I covered that pretty well do you think?

J.G.: Probably not, but I can change the subject if you want...

George: Well, they had three sons and two daughters and one of the sons was of course my dad. He was in the middle of the family, but Uncle Paul, he was the youngest son. He was born quite a bit later than the rest of them to the extent that he was born in 1900 and I was born in 1909, so he was only nine years older than I. Which is unusual my father being some 25 years older than I. But he now is now living and in reasonable health...he'll be 95 in January and he lives in Birmingham, Alabama [Ft. Worth] and we hear from him quite regularly. We had a coincidence of a thing that was quite interesting to us. We had a preacher at our church when we first came who's no longer there; his name is Pennepacker. And one of our Christmas letters came from Uncle Paul and he said "You know we've got a new minister down here in our church," which is the biggest individual church of the Disciples of Christ in Birmingham and he said "We understand that we came from the Cleveland area. And maybe you may have heard of him and his name is Pennepacker. Well, this was the same preacher that we had and he went down there and became their preacher...huge place, beautiful church. I'm sure it's still there because it was very successful. The Disciples of Christ sort of monopolizes the Corn Belt area...

J.G.: OK, can you talk about your aunts and uncles?

George: Sure. Uncle Tom, who was the eldest of the children of my grandparents, the Haywards, was associated with my father in the grocery business with the grandfather. He was a little fellow and played the drums in the town band in Fairfield. My grandfather created it, as he played the cornet and they used to play for funerals and all kinds of things, sometimes even horse drawn vehicles. And then I told you about Uncle Paul who was the youngest son. Then there were the two sisters and Ivy was one sister and the other one was Lafe and they married and had children and in fact one of Aunt Ivy's daughters is still living in California, Maxine. Maxine married the Jones family. Dave was one of the brothers, anyway, we got to visit with her in California in about seven or eight or nine years ago and were delighted in seeing her and...story here which I hope is admissible to the tape. But we congregated at our grandparents house on almost any occasions especially Christmas of course and Thanksgiving and I was about six years old at this particular time. She was a beautiful child and still attractive...was then two years older than I, I guess, and having been up there since we were babies practically I was with her...we were together all the time, in fact whenever she went to the bathroom or the toilet I thought nothing of just going along. And so one day I started following her in and Uncle Tom stopped me and says "Your getting old enough to do that you don't go to the bathroom with girls." so I remember that so well...

J.G.: That's quite some story....

George: I told that to Maxine and she remembered it. She had forgotten it but was delighted to hear it. Now her sister, Virginia was a remarkable person. She was a student of public health nursing and did very well in Richmond and {?} until. Then she retired she thought, and moved to Hawaii. But of all things this was the outbreak of the war with the Japanese and their attack on Hawaii and so she after the United States got in control of things...she had retired...she created at the University of Hawaii the public health nursing operation. And so that was quite a name for her. And then MacArthur, General MacArthur appointed her to be in charge of the recreating of the nursing facilities in the various cities throughout the Japanese controlled area, so she was not in retirement very long. A very fine person. Then there was Curtis. And Curtis never married. He was quite artistic in fact I had some place one of his paintings. And he had died just a year or two ago I think in California. But that was that part of the family. Then Aunt Lafe had two sons Donald and I can't remember the other fellow's name. But...and a daughter, and the daughter lives in Columbus, married to an urban planner there.

J.G.: Do you know what the daughter's name is?

George: Oh, it slips me, and I should remember because we exchange Christmas cards every year. But I can't remember right now. But her last name as her mother of course changed names when she got married, changed to Dubois...oh, her name was Patsy, this girl, and Patsy Dubois, D-U-B-O-I-S which in French would be of course Doo-bwa meaning "in the forest." But she was a delightful girl who visited us a couple of times...working for the Shillitos Department Store operation. That was most of it.

J.G.: How 'bout the other side?

George: The Horners?

J.G.: Yeh.

George: Well, now that's a story too, because there was Uncle Ed who was the brother of my mother and Aunt Lizzie. In those days everybody's name was abbreviated. There was Aunt Lizzie and there was Aunt Linnie and Uncle Ed but they didn't make Eddie out of it and they had seven children and a very fine family: two boys and five girls and he was a farmer and they lived...had a farm south of Eaton, Ohio which is not far from Richmond, Indiana. And we used to go down there in the summertime and spend a couple of weeks and get to be on the farm and ride on the horses. And one time we were out after the cows and I was just a little kid but they fashioned a saddle for me after a burlap bag with straw in it and the rope around the belly of the horse. And we were after the cows which were allowed to feed on the roadsides. My cousin Ben and I- Benjamin- his brothers were Walter and Clem, yeh, there were three sons- and on the way back, however many miles it was, probably three or four, it started to rain. And the horse took off with me and I was hanging on for dear life because the saddle ended up twisting around so it was on the underside of the horse and I was hanging on the horse's neck and he of course run right into the stable and I dropped off. How was that?

J.G. You must have been glad to get that one over with!

George: Oh boy! And I got a blister from that...you know where. My mother discovered it because we were down there with seven kids and having two of us and our parents and so on, I slept on a tickwork thing like you folks here on the floor in the living room. And my pajamas slipped or something or I guess I wore a nightshirt and she discovered I'd gotten the blisters from riding that horse without a saddle. I remember that just like it happened yesterday.

J.G.: How about the Parkers?

George: Oh yeh...now how do we get the Parkers in this? Horace Parker...

J.C.: Aunt Linnie...

George: Yeh, yeh there we go. Thank you. Aunt Linnie, whose name was really Malinda, was the sister of my mother and so her name was Horner also. She married, however...um...Anyway she had Oran Parker and Horace Parker as the two sons, and I guess they're both gone by now. But they moved to Chicago and Uncle Orie, yeh I guess his name was Oran and they named the son Oran, we called him Uncle Orie, he died and my aunt Linnie then in Chicago. They lived near the University of Chicago, bought a apartment house and made her living by renting out these apartments, mostly to students. And we went up to visit them one time and in the days of Al Capone the famous mobster, an Italian. I was so impressed we never had...I guess we had keys to our house in Richmond but we never locked the doors and but there we not only had to...locks but they also had chains like we do now on our doors and I was quite captivated by seeing this safety arrangement. And then I must have been around fifteen years old by then because I was so delighted my dad let me drive most of the way home from Chicago. In those days we didn't have driving licenses so it didn't matter and but boy I was thrilled to be able to do that. We had an Overland sedan and it was a nice trip and a nice visit to a big city for a change. It was quite a jaunt because I think it must have been around 250 maybe 300 miles.

J.G.: You mother had a couple other brothers?

George: Yes, there was Ed, then there was a younger brother, but I don't think he lived a full life by any means, to the extent that I don't remember anything about him. But Uncle Ed was the one who was the farmer...and Aunt Lizzie.

J.G.: Can you tell me what kind of foods your mother would cook...what kind of dinner you'd have?

George: Yeh, we always had quite a celebration on Sundays, I think we always had roast beef or something like that but we were...She was intelligent enough and on the ball and concerned and responsible enough that we had good vegetables and of course meets and good distribution, enough to drink and so on so that we were treated carefully and maintained good health. Your mother was...it's so sad that she had to have her later life so unhealthy because she was a very healthy girl. And very attractive and very much liked, but I don't remember details specifically beyond the point of just having said about the foods that we...

J.G.: Did you eat noodles back then?

George: Do what?

J.G.: Homemade noodles.

George: Probably. Sounds familiar to me. We had pies and cakes and everything. Course back in those days the kitchen equipment wasn't comparable to the microwaves or whatever. In fact, this is hard to believe, our kitchen stove was operated with coal or wood and it had to be in operation, because you didn't have electric stoves, even in the hot summertime, that stove had to be in operation and of course outside of meal time it was warm and we weren't so used to eating cold meats and so on. But I remember on one side of that stove, and I can picture it so well, there were stove lids that you...you had a handle that you had to put in the holes to set it aside to put that fuel in, then along side of it was a tank for hot water. To make the water hot, and of course that was another reason they had to be using it in hot weather, to make the hot water for bathing, because that's where we got our hot water for the tub. And then in our house, in our room my dad being in the electrical business, they came out with a kind of a gadget that you could put onto the faucet and I don't remember, it must have had an electrical connection that would heat the water. And, gosh, that was a very primitive arrangement, but that's what it was. That's how we had our hot water. And even when our part of town was developed, Dad had his house built by...took great pride in myself in having been in charge of building two houses by myself for my own living and family But he had, when they built that particular area, they had no sewer facilities momentarily so every house had to have with it a kind of outhouse, privy or whatever thing you want to call it. I don't remember having to use that as a kid because it was very shortly after that they installed sewer lines so that we had inside toilets and the house was built with a bathroom and toilet facilities too. But then we converted that outhouse into a workshop. It wasn't very big, but it was big enough to accommodate a vise, workbench and so on, but that was in the back yard of course. In fact the people next door to us they still retained that outhouse at their place. I remember there was an oldish woman and her son who lived there and she was forever going back and forth...Meissner was her name, Freddy and Mrs. Meissner.

J.G.: Did you do a lot of stuff with my mother or did you mostly go out with your friends?

George: Yeh, I don't know that we...well, yeh, we did a lot of things together, come to think of it. Mary was just two years younger than I...born in 1909, she in 1912, so it was 2 1/2 years younger and she must have had some athletic ability because I leaned on her. We'd go out to Earlham College very frequently in the early morning before school and I was on the track team. I was needing some practice in hurdling and she would very nicely go out with me and time me on the hurdling and then we'd play tennis together. It was just like my father was on the faculty, I was so easy and free with using all the facilities...The Trueblood ...remember the Trueblood Athletic Building? And then Mary was a good, a very good piano player. She was in a line with Nancy, who is also my wife, plays and she would accompany me on the piano on my playing violin and I remember very well playing at least one time for a kiwanas meeting once...a meeting. We played popular songs while they were eating and during an hour. She played so well, she read well. She couldn't improvise but she just didn't need to. Neither does Nancy. I can't play as well as either of them but I can at least improvise cause I have to do something. But she was quite a woman again. She had quite a good build on her, so the evidence of her being athletically inclined probably even better than I. I was not...didn't have the height nor the weight comparable to my two sons who both became excellent athletes, but they were bigger, both over 6 feet and over 200 pounds. Football and basketball...

J.G.: The pictures that were in my mother's album...you were over at the Rickles'...went with the Rickles...

George: Yeh, you can remember the Rickles family? Well, they lived up the street from us in Richmond and they had 5 daughters...4 or 5...and I don't know what, maybe he was in the roofing business too, Jim Rickles and I don't remember her name but...Minnie, Minnie Rickles...And we went on summer vacation trips, so there was a place south of Centreville, which is 6 miles from Richmond and they had a summer cottage at the back of their property which was also on a kind of a little cliff...went down to a nice stream which you can swim in, or wade at least. And we'd go...Dad would rent from a funeral company one of their limousines and which accommodated all of their 4 or 5 kids and our 2 and adults and so on. Then we'd go down...I remember the first time we went down there it...we got caught in an awful rain storm and the roof leaked on this cottage and most of us or some of us crawled underneath the dining room table to keep out of the rain. Then we also had an outhouse there and it was my assignment to make a sign for it, because that was a busy place with all these kids and so on. And there was a pathway back to it with woods on either side. It was a two-holer and so I had to stretch a string across the passageway from one tree to the other. Made a sign, on one side it said "occupied" and then you could flip it over on the other side "Unoccupied" and it was a very essential operation, because you could run all the way back there without that kind of a sign and find it occupied, it was a wasted trip and maybe you didn't have the time or whatever to waste like that. Then I built steps coming down that incline to the creek, I remember that too, cutting steps into the soil and stones and so on, a picturesque place. Someplace I think there was a picture you may have seen in which I'm sitting on the ground and my mother was sitting at a chair having gotten her hair all wet and sitting in a bathing suit I think...having a discussion about something. I was doing something like wiping the water off my feet.

JG: Was there a swimming pool in town, did you ever learn how to swim formally?

George: Well, at the YMCA, that's where I learned how to swim. And was a member of it and that was very appropriate because Uncle Paul who now lives in Birmingham and is 95 years old practically, he was a YMCA man, I mean that was his profession. And he was prominent enough so that he was...they have an international organization and he was secretary of it. And I've got something that proves that, too, something that was a report he sent me, I kept a copy of it. He kept the minutes and so of the meeting, but I remember so well one time he...his first job he went to Chicago Y College, Uncle Paul did, and I guess his first job was in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, which is 100 miles north of Richmond. And it was there that we visited him shortly after he got his job. We took along our grandparents and I remember so well that my grandfather and Dad and I and Uncle Paul went to a YMCA like a Sunday afternoon. He was able to get into the place of course cause he was the boss and we went swimming. And in those days, they didn't wear swimming suits...you didn't swim except in a private place like that and the men...I don't know what the women did...maybe they didn't go swimming...the men didn't wear a swimming suit they just were naked and I never thought anything about it, but here I was exposed...this doesn't happen very often...to your father and your grandfather, going swimming in a swimming pool. But I remember that so well. Then after that Uncle Paul was...got a promotion I guess by size of town to being in charge of the YMCA in Muskeogan and then from there...was promoted to being in charge of the Ft. Worth Metropolitan area YMCA operation. And the YMCA was not just a place to swim and play ping pong, it was also like a hotel. So it was quite a job that he had and it was quite a building and what not that he had there in Ft. Worth.

J.G.: Can I change the subject?

George: Yeh.

J.G.: OK. Your grandmother Hayward, you said she was raised by her aunt and uncle, can you talk about that?

George: Well, my grandmother was born Petersburg, I think that's the name, a little town across the river from Cincinnati, out by the airport. In fact, I think the airport occupies that town site now. And her parents had died and so she was taken care of by and lived with her aunt and uncle and I can't remember their name for some reason or another...

J.G.: Stage...

George: Stage! That's right! You're so good. Yes, but I don't remember much about them in particular, but I think she had a good life with them because there was evidence of it.

J.G.: Did she seem to have much education?

George: Probably went through high school, but I know she didn't have any after that. I'm not sure about it. But she was very learned person, probably about as much so as your mother. But comparable...

J.G.: Was she good at math? Did she do figures?

George: I expect so, because after all she must have done bookkeeping and so for Grandfather's business which was a very going concern. I don't remember any other person, I mean, in that kind of an operation for doing...for taking care of that part of the business, so she must have done it herself. She was quite a little person, but she was kind of hefty, but sharp.

J.G.: And she liked to talk...

George: Oh boy! She was the one who always monopolized the telephone conversation and hung up when she got through talking.

J.G.: Was she nice to you?

George; Oh yes! Yeh, I liked her. See, their place was about halfway from, between our house and my father's electrical store on 5th and Main on the other side of the river. So I would...it just seems to me that I would stop at least one time going and coming to school which was also on the other side of the river. It was on 8th Street, just 3 blocks beyond the store. But I would stop in. In general, she'd have something, candy or something for me to eat. We'd talk and talk and talk. And again, she'd let me talk, though.

J.G.: Was she generally a good humored person?

George: Oh, yeh. Delightful. I don't remember he being ill or sick or ill-humored. He was of a more serious nature, but he had a good sense of humor and she was delightful. J.G.: They didn't panic about things?

George: Yeh, they had some hardships, I'm sure, but they enjoyed them and didn't let them visit or anything...visit them on other people, took care of them...we had more fun. My gosh when we'd sit at those Christmas tables, it...there were so many people, Uncle Tom and Curtis, and Pearl...that was his wife's name, Pearl. She was from, oh, a fine family, a moneyed family in Richmond. I can't think of their last name, but she was a very attractive woman, too.

J.G.: What kinds of presents would you get for Christmas?

George: Oh, I should remember, but...

J.G.: How 'bout Halloween? Did you guys go out trick or treating?

George: No, I think trick or treating came in later. The big deal with kids, bigger kids in any event, was to go out in the evening and upset outhouses or privies. That was the fun. You can imagine, that was quite a deal 'cause they were like little houses, I mean they were just small. They were tall, at least they were tall enough for people to stand up in. At least then. They would tip those things over and that was supposed to be a lot of fun. Kind of ornery. I don't think that I ever done it but, but I can remember seeing some of it. No, the trick and treat I think was invented to overcome the problem of kids upsetting outhouses. So...and the idea would be that if you didn't treat them, you were tricked like upsetting your outhouse. It probably was the basis of it.

J.G.: Do you remember anything about your great-grandfather Hayward...he had a store...?

George: Yeh...the picture I had of a store. My father and me in front of it.

J.G.: I think this was an earlier picture, back in the nineteenth century, you had a picture of Thomas Hayward's store in Fairfield...do you remember anyone talking about your great-grandfather Hayward.

George: That's peculiar. I don't remember much about him at all, I've forgotten when he died. Maybe that was because I was so young.

J.G.: I think he maybe must not been alive when you...

George: Yeh, but that store was a General Store really, not just a grocery store. In fact it also had a post office in it. So that it was quite an operation. And it must have made some money because I don't know how in the world my grandfather could have afforded the move up to Richmond and built this two story building without having some sort of at least security in the way of either having inherited it or taken it over. But it's peculiar, I don't remember.

J.G.: Can you remember your living room when you were growing up, can you remember what was in it?

George: Well, of course I remember there was a Starr piano in it. I remember that bay window that I...yes, I remember the layout of the house. It was peculiar, my dad had that built, as I told you, and...but put off doing anything about the second floor. And it was a problem with that because of having to create a stairway. And I remember that you went, of course, from the living room through a little vestibule into the kitchen or to a bedroom or to the bathroom and a bedroom to the front of the house off the living room, oddly enough, too. Only one bathroom, of course, but that little hallway between the living room and the kitchen was so small that it was a problem of being able to create a stairway. It was almost like you'd have a fireman's pole, something to get up there. I remember going up there, we'd just use it as an attic. But you had a step-ladder to get up to it. But...so it was never designed...as a matter of fact, my folks were very generous. Uncle Ed had two of his daughters, Ada and Sarah, who were ten years or more older than I, and they came up to Richmond to work as secretaries, and so the folks housed them and that put me out of the bedroom and I had to sleep on a couch in the living room and that didn't bother me particularly, I just accepted it. No, it was in the dining room. It was a roll away bed. But then after they left, got married, then Uncle "Dutch" Snyder, who was from Fairfield came up...

J.G.: Who was he?

George: You remember that?

J.G.: I remember you writing about that, you couldn't remember who he was, and I never heard of him, so...

George: Well, he was just a family friend. He came up to work in Richmond and they housed him in our little house which just wasn't that big. It was big enough but I don't know what we'd do like today with you folks visiting us. I guess they would have put me out in the garage or something. Then we built a garage too. Come to think of it, two car garage and oh I was so proud. In high school, I was in high school and I elected for our final project in metal work class was to build a basketball goal. Had to take a steel rod and shape it on an anvil so that it would make a circle and then I had the 2 support things for it and had to weld those on to it and put it up onto the garage. And that was really an accomplishment. But it was a crowd because we also had a flagpole going up on there. It was always in the way of the shots. Couldn't very well bank the shots because it was no backboard to the thing. But that was what the house was like. It had a nice front porch on it and I used to peek when Sarah was dating with Raymond Erk, E-R-K, and finally married him, but they would date and sit in the swing. It was right outside the bedroom window there and I would spy on them. I don't know that I ever saw anything particular but at least I got a kick out of being able to be part of the show. Ha.

We had rules. I think it was general too. That you didn't go out in front of the house as a kid to play until after lunch, after noon time. You had to do your playing or whatever out in the back yard. But come noon and after that kids were playing baseball, hopscotch and mumbletypeg and everything else out in the streets. And the mothers would come out to the front and knit or sew or whatever and the swing would be on the front porch, but I remember playing marbles on the sidewalk on which we'd have a...an agate is a shooter and pumpies[?] were clay marbles that were lined up on a crack and then we'd try to shoot those off and you could keep the ones that you won. We were in the gambling business, practically.

J.G.: So what would my mother be doing then?

George: She'd be sitting on the front porch knitting or sewing and sorta watching everything...

J.G.: Your mother, or my mother, Mary?

George: Oh...well, I don't know what the girls would be doing...they may have been doing hopscotch or something.

J.G.: You weren't watching them, huh?

George: Yeh, cause if we weren't playing marbles, we'd be playing ball out in the street. And of course there wasn't much traffic.

J.G.: You were saying...did you have a garden or something across the street?

George: Yeh! Yeh, that was an interesting thing. My dad, he was a pretty good entrepreneur. Across the street but down about 4 or 5 lots he bought another lot besides having the lot on which our house was. A vacant lot, and his idea in buying it was to finance at least my start at college. And I think he paid like $90 for it or something and it was a good sized lot. Probably, well, at most it was 50 feet wide and 150 feet, just about comparable to this property here, but not quite as wide. And so I had developed gardens over there and I raised even potatoes as I got older and tomatoes and carrots and...it was pretty profitable because the soil was very good but he finally sold it because he got a good sale. Oh, between that lot and the house across the street, the Daggats lived. There were these three or four other lots and on all of them I developed a baseball field and installed bases and a sand pit for high jumping and pole vaulting...did a lot of that over there. But it was a good playground. It became a playground for the whole neighborhood.

J.G.: You were talking about my grandmother knitting, did she do a lot of knitting and sewing?

George: Yeh, she was quite a seamstress. In fact, I think before she was married, I think she worked in a seamstress place, a dressmaking establishment. She and Aunt Linnie together I think. She was very good at it.

J.G. So she would make your clothes then?

George: I guess so. Maybe something like sweaters, I don't know whether she did things like shirts and pants, but she could well have done it, I'm sure.

J.G. Was she working? When did she start working at your fathers...did she start working when your father went into business or was she working before then?

George: Oh, yeh, she was a telephone operator. And I told a huge story. At the time he was a motorman on the streetcar. And the offices were at 8th and Main Streets and the streetcar went up Main Street. And he...regularly, every time he came to 8th and Main, he would signal to her by beating the foot bell. You hit your foot on the floor, ding, ding, ding, ding and signaling to her, and she'd always get the message. She was a telephone operator for quite a while I guess, before they were married.

J.G.: And she graduated from high school in Dublin?

George: I guess so. Must have been. Dad did not finish school. The family, living in Fairfield, decided to move to Richmond and he didn't want to go. He stayed with his grandparents and so, OK. But he would go to school there, but he didn't stay in school. In fact he got a big kick out of dropping from the second floor window down to the ground, to the floor, so that he could cut school. So, then he finally did go up to Richmond, but he didn't go into school, so he never, I don't think he even...I guess he barely got into high school, but he quit. And got a job. He didn't like school; didn't like it at all.

J.G.: What's the story about the church where he had something fall on his head or something?

George: Oh yeh. You got a good memory. See, we...to make this as complete story as possible, when we lived momentarily with the grandparents there on 1st and West Main Street, there was a church nearby they called the English Lutheran Church. And on my own, I went to Sunday school there. The folks didn't go and then when we built the house on SW 3rd, we were close to Earlham College, and I went out to the Quaker church there for Sunday school and from the time I was six years old, I never missed a time. Then, however, and my mother, it bothered her that Dad wouldn't go to church. The reason he wouldn't go was that as soon as he got related to the First Christian Church, the Disciples of Christ denomination, he got a...they hired him to do some work at the church and by golly the first time he went there to do some work, the paneling in the doorway all fell in, in the vestibule of the church. And he took that as an omen that he wasn't supposed to do anything in a church. So he not only didn't take the job, he left it hanging. He also didn't go to church at all. That was his story. And mother was provoked, she gave money to the church, and the preacher would come around from the church and spend some time discussing things with her. She invited me to get interested in the Bible, in fact, she contended I didn't recall that I did really that curiously I as a kid read all the way through the New Testament. And I may have very well because she wasn't given to mistruths, but I didn't remember that much about it. I've always been impressed with The Bible because how in the world hundreds of years ago they could have written something that has stood up so well all these centuries and in fact being a model for lots of stuff.

J.G.: Let's go back to your grandparents, your Hayward grandparents. What sort of things did they like to do when they were not working?

George: Oh, golly...

J.G.: Or did they work all the time?

George: They must have worked all the time, I don't remember ever seeing my grandmother outside of that apartment that they lived in. She must have gone out, but it just seems that every time I saw her, I'd drop into the house which was practically every day, but she would be there. That's all there was to it.

J.G.: What kind of stuff would they carry in their store?

George: Oh, it was a very complete store, it was called a General Store...wait a minute, I'm not sure about that one. The one in Fairfield that my great-grandfather had created was really a general store. They even sold clothing in it. And hardware materials and so on. But I think this one of my grandfather's, Hayward and Sons, was just groceries. I think that's what it was just groceries. But very complete.

J.G.: What was their apartment like?

George: It was nice, and it was commodious enough, so...you see I got a collapsed lung when I was working down south and came back and in the mean time the folks had sold their house and moved into an apartment above their store which wasn't big enough to accommodate me, so I stayed with them for about six months in their apartment house and it was nice. They had a big living room, nice kitchen, dining room and two bedrooms. And a nice bathroom and so on. But it was a very nice place. Not a rich man's place, but accommodating. I remember the fireplace because, you know that picture of my grandparents that I have standing in front of the fireplace. It had a steep staircase going up from the first floor and right next to it was a automotive... Rodefeld's garage, by golly, right behind it on First Street and I stopped in their many times, even I think Nancy's been in the place. That was right at the end of the Main Street Bridge.

J.G.: What did your parents do during the forties?

George: In their forties?

J.G.: No, during the forties. When the war...

George: Oh. Well, Dad was, oh, past age for being into the war, but I just can't remember much cause I wasn't there, I was on my own.

J.G. Did he still have his electric...his refrigerator company then?

George: Forgot, let's see, we could probably go backwards...find out approximately the time it happened. He sold that out, but I think he was...

J.G.: Did he work for the Palladium for a while?

George: Yeh! He did, I almost forgot that. The Palladium newspaper for which cousin Horace, son of one of my sisters...my Mother's sisters, was in charge of circulation I think for the Palladium-Item newspaper. And so they employed Dad. I think he had done a lot of work installing electrical equipment for them as a part of his business and so it was a natural thing for going to get to him for repair work after he retired and then it just came very natural to hire him to be in charge of all their equipment. So that was what he busied himself with. He played golf with me a few times, but he...there wasn't much extra time apparently, he kept busy.

J.G.: Did you say that he liked to go hunting?

George: Oh yes! And...he took me along many times. Several times, I remember going hunting. And it was mostly rabbit or squirrel or sometimes quail. And he had an array of guns that were very good, in fact I've still got a rifle. He had a .22 Remington rifle, and a shotgun, he had a nice pistol, and he would take me along. I don't know that he would put me on the gun as I was too young to be allowed to do that, but he was a good shot. And we'd always bring home stuff to eat.

J.G.: Where would you go?

George: We would go down south of Richmond into the Garfield Woods areas, but I don't know that...I guess they were just farms that people he knew and would allow him to do that. And we had...always had a pick-up truck as opposed to a car because the pick-up truck was with the business, the company, I remember that so well. That was before the days of automatic, electrically controlled windshield-wipers. And you had to open up the windshield and wipe it off from the inside sometimes.

J.G.: Did you have that job?

George: Yeh, on my side.

J.G.: Did you ever travel to see any relatives, when you were little, when you were young?

George: Well, I told you about the time I went to Chicago. Other than that, of course we...it seemed like most of the people were right there. Or somebody in the family lived in Dayton. We would go over there once in a while. But most of the time we were adequate by either having people at our house like the grandparents or going up to their house you see or Uncle Tom lived in town, or Uncle Ed, mother's brother, had this farm south of Eaton in Sugar Valley was the name of the place, the little bitty town that they lived close to. Sugar Valley, I know how they named it. There were a lot of maple trees in the area that they got the sugar from. Sap. At the proper time, I guess it must have been fall. They drill a hole in the trunk of the tree and they attach a little spigot thing with a pail and collect the juice from the tree and then they have to put it into big vats and kettles...iron kettles and produce sugar from it. Sugar maples.

J.G.: Do you remember how my parents met each other? Did my mother work for the Starr Piano Company?

George: No...all I can remember is her having worked for the phone company....

J.G.: My mother, Mary...

George: Yep. Seemed to me that somebody worked for, or I guess the girls, Sarah and Ada worked for the casket company, making cloth interiors for caskets.

J.G.: Do you remember, I think my mother might have had a second hand wedding gown?

George: Oh? Huh!

J.G.: I thought she borrowed it from someone...Are you getting tired?

George: No!

J.G.: OK.

George: Are you?

J.G.: Hmm...do you remember any humorous stories when you were young about your parents or your grandparents?

George: Well, I should because we had a lot of fun. But I can't remember.

J.G.: Did you ever play cards?

George: Yeh, I think so. I think my grandmother played solitaire quite a bit, do you know about solitaire?

J.G.: Yeh, I think my grandmother played solitaire too.

George: I think I sort of remember that. I remember, they had a piano, too and Uncle Paul played his cornet and Mary would play the piano or Virginia would when we would go up there at Christmas time or wherever, and Paul was so captivated by the fact that I could fake or improvise cause he couldn't. He had to read the music, but we'd stand there by the piano and play away and have more fun.

J.G. Do you remember anything about my mother's friends? Mary's friends?

George: Golly! I can remember people in the neighborhood that we, gosh we knew everybody up and down the street. I can remember their names. The Lantz family lived across the street. They had half a dozen or more kids. Across the street was an Italian, Joe La...LaSompthin, an Italian guy, he had a clothing business, I think, two houses away, next door, Mr. Sherman, he had his delivery business, he had a horse and wagon, and the Hinderbrinds who was the daughter of Mrs. Barnsner next door, and the Rickles family lived in the next block, and the Balls...gosh, isn't that something, I can remember all these people, and I can remember their houses and...but we were all good friends, no enemies, we never had any problems with kids damaging property or whatever.

J.G.: What kind of car did your parents start out with?

George: All I remember is the Overland sedan, as far as the pick-up truck for business, and then his last car is that 8-cylinder Pontiac, a 1950. Boy he was proud of that car. It was kind of sad that when Greg went away to college, he wanted to have a motorcycle and that was the reason...I didn't want him to have one, but I gave him, cause we already had, we had three cars. We had a Volkswagen, and that was supposed to have been his at home, and then we had whatever the other two cars were. But three cars and...but I was the guy who took the bus because each of the boys drove a car and their mother drove a car and I'd come up from the bus through the woods one time and Greg was so thoughtful. He built me a tent structure halfway up the hill so that in case of rain or whatever.

J.G.: That's pretty strange.

George: The hill sure was not [?] But, that Pontiac, you remember seeing the picture in my autobiography?

J.G.: Yeh, I remember the Pontiac.

George: Well, I don't know why I mentioned that in passing, but that car that we were in was also a Pontiac convertible.

J.G.: Oh that one, OK.

George: I remember so well that Dad was embarrassed, maybe I told you this story. We took an 8000 mile tour, Mother, Dad, and Mary. And we did it mostly on the upper part of the country through the Dakotas and so on...

J.G.: When was this?

George: Yeh, I think it was in 1950, right after the car was brand new.

J.G.: This was the green Pontiac? OK.

George: OK. 8000 miles and we covered so many states and we were...he was driving and I drove part...and I took my accordion along in the back seat cause I wanted to....well, I was having more fun learning how to play it, and we came to El Capitan, one of these big cliffs, wherever it is and I got out and played "Back Home Again In Indiana" on the thing, getting a delight out of the echo from these cliff sides...

J.G.: I'll bet people thought you were strange.

George: Yeh, probably so. But in any event we were...he was driving and we were going down a steep hill in Wyoming or someplace, and a cop came along and stopped us. And I remember the conversation Dad was [?} because he'd never been arrested. The cop says, "You've got a nice new car here." "Yeh." "You're quite proud of it aren't you?" "Yes." "You don't want anything o happen to it, do you?" "No." "Well, then you'd better not drive so fast." Ha ha. Cause he was going to beat the band down this hillside. But, so then I gave it to Greg and it went bad. It was about the time they inaugurated these pure air business, whatever, laws. It didn't pass the inspection, so we got rid of it. And I couldn't sell it for anything, just took it to the dump. It was too bad because it was really a marvelous car. Biggest car we ever had.

J.G.: I always thought it would have been nice to have that car.

George: Yeh, you remember it. Yeh, just imagine, it was big enough that in the back seat with both Mary and your Mother and the accordion.

J.G. Where did you get all these Bibles?

George: Well, I think, as I told you, yeh, yeh, that I in effect cleaned house of both my parents and of my grandparents because they both left, nobody else was around to help clean up, so I just picked up a lot of that stuff like the Bibles. 'Cause I couldn't bring myself to throwing a Bible in the trash. But that one particularly I like, I noticed...it's upstairs, open, and it was a gift of my great grandmother to her son, Jacob Joel, my grandfather. And it I think weighs a ton. But it's big and the lettering and wording and everything was very large case. But there were a lot of things to be salvaged, but I don't remember what I did with so much of the stuff. I guess it's probably buried around here, probably under the pingpong table.

J.G.: Do you have any old letters or anything?

George: Old records?

J.G.: Old letters.

George: Old letters. Gee you would think so. My mother had a very fine hand, writing hand. Dad didn't. His was a scribble. He could care less, but hers was fine. I think I've probably got something that she signed someplace.

J.G.: Let's see...oh, that table out there, the drop-leafed table in the dining room. Can you talk about that for a minute?

George: That was Nancy's.

J.G.: No....the one against the wall.

George: Oh yeh, that one! It's folding.

J.G.: Yeh.

George: Yeh, that was your great-grandparents', as well as those little chairs. They all came from them and when that table isn't up against the wall, you can let it down and the legs spread out so that it becomes twice a big as it is and then you can open up the top of it so that there is a storage place inside. And I think there may be something in there, but it's been so long since I looked into it. But yes, and as Nancy has said, everything in this room is what I brought. I don't know that anything was hers except the piano. She had a davenport over there that was nine feet long. That was where you are now. But we didn't need it with this one.

J.G.: Do you have any stories about your grandparents? Any particular incidents you can remember?

George: I should. I've told you some of them. Grandpa Horner and being in the Civil War and bumping his head on the kitchen ceiling. He was tall. He was 6'2 and his picture's upstairs.

J.G.: Was he a pleasant person to be around?

George: Yeh, I think that he was, yeh. He was a nice guy and a good looking fellow.

J.G.: Did your mother seem to like having him in the house?

George: I think so. Yeh. You know in those days it was so usual for people to take care of their grandparents and vice versa to an extent, but it was just the usual thing to do and my parents, as a matter of fact lived with us in Cincinnati in the lower level which was just like on those pictures over there. They were looking out on that patio over there that you see at the same level, it was the basement level. But it was complete with two bedrooms, small ones, and a kitchen and living room, and bathroom, shower, the whole ball of wax. And they must have lived with us for four or five years, before they both had died.

J.G.: Now I remember your mother as having brown hair when she died. Now did she do anything to it or was it just brown, did it never turn grey?

George: I think your right! I don't think that it did change color! Dad lost much of his, but...huh! Quite a lot of it, didn't lose all of it, but not as bald as Nancy's father. He was a husky guy. I remember one time...generally, at the ends of the summers when I was playing in dance bands, as a little vacation thing for them, they'd come after me. Whether it was at Totnabee [?} at the northern part of the southern Lower Peninsula of Michigan or up into Wisconsin or wherever, and one time then we stayed over night in...near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we went swimming. I got pictures there someplace. I can remember Mary being in that picture. She was along too. And she was leaning up against Dad with her legs crossed like this, maybe you've seen it sometime and sometime or another he and I got into an wrestling match, and got quite a crowd around us. Course he was so strong and everything that I couldn't have possibly...even though it was all fun anyway. But that's something for a father and son to get in a wrestling match. I was in my late 20's by then, was I? Yeh. But those were nice things to do. And it was a funny thing. When they came up after me in Wisconsin that one summer, and they got there ahead of where I was playing the last night in the dance band, and I saw Dad standing out there, and smiling and everything, and waving to me, after he says, "You know, outside of when you'd be in a parade, or playing in a band in Richmond, you know this is the first time I ever heard you play." And he got a big kick out of it and I was glad that...my mother, with Aunt Linnie, I think, used to come to all of my violin recitals. And that was very nice, cause she was just responsible for me. Dad wouldn't...he'd be bored by doing something like that. He had to be running things. He had to be in something. So he wouldn't sit in an audience and listen to something like that. He...I remember he complimented me one time one of the few times, though he was always so nice to me. But we had, at the end of the baseball season in which George's team had been playing. We had a family picnic and they had a keg of beer there and everything which attracted Dad, so in any event, we had a made-up baseball team divided amongst the kids, and I played short stop. And a couple of hot liners came right at me and I snagged them. Then I was very happy with that and by golly, he came around to me and he said, "You're a pretty good ball player." Ha ha. I about fell over. But we started that ball game and they decided I would be pitcher...it was softball although the kids were playing hard ball in our league. So I started pitching and I pitched a couple balls and George was playing short stop and he came over to me and he says, "This is slow pitch." I didn't know, I'd never heard of slow pitch. Do you know about slow pitch?

J.G. I don't know anything about slow pitch.

George: So I had to learn to...I gave up. I didn't know how to slow pitch. You had to make a big arch to it and so on, so I moved on over to short stop.

END OF TAPE.