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134

At May Memorial Church, I knew a couple of girls I've failed to mention. One was [[underline]] Marion Kent [[/underline]], a real beauty a year or so older than I. But I can see her yet. She was beautifully constructed and had a complexion like cream. Her body was soft and smooth and desirable. She was one of the first to affect me this way. She was in "The Importance of Being Ernest" in which I played the title role but I can't remember what part Marion played. The other girl was [[underline]] Blanche Swarthout [[/underline]], a dark-haired, pretty girl whom I knew well at church and Sunday school but never became well acquainted with otherwise.

During my youth, there were few large apartment houses in Syracuse but I remember well the Snowden at the corner of James and State and past which the West Shore tracks passed, and despite this, a very well-regarded place to live, and the Kasson, on James just west of McBride and across from Goodyear School. The Kasson, I suppose, was the ritziest one in town. I remember how the Browns finally sold their home on Highland and moved into the Snowden where I called on Dorothy several times. And how well I remember how I emphasized to her the great importance I placed upon a girl making Phi Beta Kappa at college and after she graduated from Vassar, she told me she hadn't made it and she kidded me that that was the reason I never fell in love with her (I think Willie and I were engaged at this point). I've often wondered what happened to lovely Dode Brown. I believe I heard that she married a man much older than she and went to live in New York, and that she married relatively late.

There was liquor store where my father traded named Loos-Kaufman, across the street from his office on Washington Street and I love that name for a liquor store, especially the Loos. I guess it's similar to the kick I get out of Loose Willie's Biscuit Company which we used to kid about, now Sunshine.

The reservoir in Kirk Park, way up high on the hill and the huge cylindrical standpipe that topped everything. To me, this was one of my earliest engineering marvels and fascinated me.

I remember Jeff Barker taking a group of kids walking in the country by starting off from the Knapp farm and heading north toward the outskirts of the city in the vicinity of Kirk Park and the reservoir, and we walked through some territory I'd never pictured as even being there, roads I didn't recognize. Which reminds me of Solvay Process Company's TNT plant located at Split Rock where their old limestone quarry had been just outside town, a place I'd stood in awe of during the war because it was said if it blew, the whole city would be leveled. But I never saw this plant. It shows how much mobility was lost when one failed to own an automobile in those days. I really didn't know just where it was or how to reach it, nor did I ever find out.