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30

I can't remember that my parents did much entertaining at home but it's possible that on occasions when they were going to have a party at the house, I got put to bed early. I can remember a few dinner parties at home but only vaguely since I was ushered up to my room early on such nights. I do remember so well that when my father would get home for dinner on a winter night, he'd immediately sit down in a favorite chair that was placed beside a hot air register in the living room, put his feet right on the register, and then settle down to read the evening paper. The only profanity I ever heard him utter was a fervent "damn" once in a while. My father was a runner in college and I recall one occasion when one of the neighborhood boys was fooling around our car which was parked in the street in front of the house and my father suddenly lost his temper and took off after the boy who fled up the hill. I don't know whether or not my father caught him, but I was quite impressed with my father's speed. He also got things done when necessary. They installed a new street light with one big incandescent bulb, right across the street from our house and it shone in my parents bedroom window and bothered them at night; it wasn't long before a shade was installed on the side of the light toward our house. One regular contact I had with my father was to go with him to his office and then get a haircut at his own barber shop which was on the second floor of his building; he'd take me down there and tell the barber how to cut it and then leave me there. When I got through, I'd either wait for someone to pick me up or go up to his office on the 5th floor where I could wait in the waiting room and look at magazines or wait in one of the little dark rooms. His office girl was Miss Keefer, a spinster in her 40s I'd say, who lived in Camillus and came in every day on the bus, or maybe on the train before they had buses. Also, in the University Block, was our dentist, Dr. Barnes, who was very bald and had a big brown moustache and awful looking teeth himself. His dental chair faced a window, 9th floor, and while he was grinding and filling, you could sit there and look at the northern end of town all the way out to Onondaga Lake.

Mother belonged to a "club" which met every two or three weeks but didn't play cards as I recall; I believe they just sat all afternoon and talked and sewed and had tea and cakes. The club members were Cousin Kate Knapp, who lived on the farm near Onondaga Hill and was quite a gal and never married (more of her later), Lillian Baird, an old friend who was married and had two grown daughters, Jessie Daboll, whose husband worked for Solvay Process, and who was quite a beauty with a son, Davis, and a daughter, Harriet, a cute girl a bit younger than I and who, I believe, was supposed to be a prospective mate for me, Madge Benedict, a very trim and attractive widow who married Mr. Smith across the street, Lucia Crouse, a cousin and wife of Charlie Crouse, a millionaire, Tillie Ellis, the X-mas cookie cooker, and Hattie Dow, a protege and sort of companion to Mrs. Crouse.