Viewing page 93 of 207

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

62

Beyond the Reverend Jones next to us, lived the Carharts. Mr. Carhart owned a small foundry in town and they had one of the better homes on Douglas Street besides owning a Model T Ford, the first car I ever drove. Ev was sort of an off-and-on member of the gang. He's the one I had the fistfight with and whose nose I bloodied. But Ev and I became quite good friends although Jack Persse and the Montgomery connection didn't leave much room for Ev in my affairs.

Across from Carharts lived the Booths who had two children, Elizabeth and Edward. The Booths were extremely straight-laced and had no part of the Montgomerys. Ed was about my age and I had occasional contacts with him but without great enthusiasm. Both Booth children were famed for their scholarship and got straight A's at school. Elizabeth, who was a couple of years older than I, was particularly repugnant to me, particularly after she got me into trouble, of which I shall write later.

Across Graves Street from the Montgomerys, lived the Nurnbergers, and I know only one thing about them -- they had one child, a daughter named Helen who was two or three years older than I and a good friend of Helen Montgomery. They called her "Nooney" and Nooney was a broad-beamed, soft-skinned, exciting-looking girl with a pretty face, who wore glasses but still was very attractive. I think that at North High, one of the older Gere boys met and fell in love with Nooney and they were married in due course, the Geres being an old, aristocratic Syracuse family who lived way over on the other side of town on West Genesee. Perhaps through Nooney, the Montgomerys were well acquainted with the whole Gere family which included in our age group, Caroline, a very lovely girl whom I was quite fond of, and Donald Gere, around my age and a great football star at North High. The two older boys were Brewster (the one who married Nooney, I think) and Wendell, but I scarcely knew them.

Beyond Carharts was Wadsworths with one daughter. Mr. Wadsworth, I think, was a lawyer and they belonged to the Sedgwick Farm Club and moved in a somewhat higher social circle than the location of their home might indicate. The Wadsworth girl did not mingle with the bunch down the street -- ever. Across from Wadsworths were the Lighthalls. Mr. Lighthall, an Englishman, looked like Sherlock Holmes. They went to our church and had four grown children, so they didn't figure much in my affairs. Next to Lighthalls were the Lutz family, the only house on the street with a porte-cochere but I don't remember their having a car. They had a son, Bub, who was quite a bit younger and not one of the gang. And down at the corner, lived the DeWolfes, an elderly grass widow and her two middle-aged daughters, who were friends of Mother's. Mr. DeWolfe came from a prominent town family but was captured by the bottle and went completely to hell, being divorced by Mrs. DeWolfe at that time. I remember having