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didn't have Peg's grace and charm, being less slim with a more Irish face, square but attractive. Although she was slightly older than I, I knew her quite well and liked her but was aware she was my senior nevertheless. Jane was very pretty and promised to match her sister, Peg, in a few years -- but she was just a "kid" at the disadvantage of three or four years behind us who were emerging into our teens. John was a big, handsome, lantern-jaws Irish-looking boy who set the girls hearts afluttering from the way they seemed to be drawn to the Montgomery domicile. I was too small and light to participate in high school athletics and envied John, who was a star baseball as well as football player. In the winter, the gang gathered in the Montgomery kitchen, day or night, always welcome. The Montgomerys had a big old barn, originally for horses, which was now used as a warehouse for Mr. Montgomery's house-building operations. The Montgomery establishment was quite different from anything I'd ever known before. And while the Montgomerys were not of the Syracuse elite, many of the elite seemed to be drawn to them as I was to find out as the years passed. Helen eventually married Bill Kellogg, who was the regular fullback on the Syracuse University football team when I was in college and quite a hero; but the marriage ended in divorce -- but I was long gone from Syracuse by that time and don't know just what the whole story was. Likewise, I don't know what happened ultimately to John or Jane. I do remember some ten years or more ago, John phoning me one night here in Erie when he was spending the night in town on a business trip; I'd gone to bed and Willie, sensing John was somewhat inebriated, wouldn't get me up. I wrote him, apologizing for the incident, sending the letter via Louie Neale Persse because I didn't have John's address, but he never answered it and I've never heard from him since. Also, one other subsequent incident after I left home: In the early 50s when Bab and Tom were living in Syracuse, the Persses arranged a dinner at a restaurant during one of our visits to which they invited some of the Montgomery clan -- I think Helen, possibly John and Jane -- it is quite vague in my memory although only 20 years ago -- and their spouses. And the only thing I can recall about the affair was that one of the clan, a husband or boyfriend, maybe Helen's, after a few drinks began telling foul stories and using obscene language and Tom became so incensed that he came very close to starting a fight with the guy over it. That broke up the party and with the exception of the abortive attempt to contact me in Erie a few years later, I've neither seen nor heard of the Montgomerys again.

As I've said, in the flat above the Montgomerys, lived the Anable family consisting of the father, a retired Army officer working at some civilian job which kept him on the road a good deal, the mother, a big, buxom, flamboyant woman looking like an actress, and two daughters, Beth, Helen Montgomery's age, and Peg, a semi-Albino with weak eyes, a couple of years younger