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1931
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HOME, FAMILY AND FRIENDS
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Insofar as I can determine, there is absolutely no record whatever of our family life during the first quarter of 1931. I can only assume that because my diary which resumes in May says nothing of happenings in the first quarter, nothing of any great moment occurred to us and we lived our normal lives and were reasonably well. We had been forced by the stock market debacle to abandon ideas of buying a house but we clung to the thought that the next best thing would be to rent a single-family house where we could live alone and have full control. For some time, we had eyed the Baldwin house two doors south of us on Delaware Avenue, which had been vacant since it was built a couple of years before. We were successful in making a deal with George Baldwin to rent it and we moved April 1st. I think the rent $55 per month although it may have been $50. We were to live in this little 2-story 3-bedroom house quite happily for the next eight years and take considerable pride in fixing up the yard and making the whole establishment attractive. It was nothing fancy but we felt it was a decided step forward from apartment living and it was new and untarnished. The following photograph was taken either in 1931 or 1932:

[[image - black & white photograph of a suburban street; a hedge blocking the full view of a house; in front of it is a small lawn, one or two trees and then the sidewalk]]

Today there is a large filling station on the corner of 8th and Delaware right next door to our little house but at that time, next door was the old farmhouse of the adjacent tract in which lived Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries, an elderly couple, and I believe the farmhouse was the old family homestead. They had a fairly large yard and fruit trees and shrubbery and flowers and were very pleasant old folks whom we liked and I believe they liked us. It made for a nice location for us in that regard. In fact, one of the erstwhile Jeffrie peach trees was 

Transcription Notes:
changed two-story to 2-story as in the original