MY LIFE
by Lena Babbitt
I was born on November 10, 1900 and my parents, Charles and Caroline Reed named me Lena Mable. I already had a brother, Eugene, who was three years older.
We lived on farms in several different places. My father wouldn't like one so he would rent another. We had just moved when I was six years old and I started school in a one-room schoolhouse about a mile from home. My brother and I walked as did all the other neighborhood children. They taught all the grades from 1 to 8. There was no kindergarten at that school. I went until I was fifteen. I couldn't afford to go to high school which must have been 20 miles away. I would have had to board somewhere.
While we lived there, the men in the neighborhood set poles from a wire in town and they all got telephones. My days in school were good. I had an accident in school. Three of us girls were sliding down hill near the school and we ran into a wire fence. One girl cut her leg on the barbed wire and the other girl and I sprained our ankles, so we had to stay at home until we were healed.
The neighbors would hold parties in the winter time at each one's house. They would spend the time playing games and eating food which they would all donate. It was at one of these parties that I met Myron, the man that I would marry the next fall. I was too young but war had been declared and he would be drafted - but not if he was married. So my father and mother signed for me. We lived with my in laws, Hadley and Addle Babbitt for two years. I learned how to take care of a baby one year later and also how to bake everything. You had to do it if you ever had anything. We moved to a farm very close, the year that Evelyn was one year old. I learned to milk cows - at least 10 or more, night and morning besides doing all the housework and washing by hand on a washboard and an old wringer that you had to crank up.
My son, Hadley, was born three years after Evelyn. My mother came to help until I could do the work, but she lived quite a long ways away.
Well, the years went by. We managed to get along but we were very poor. I went out in the hayfield to work, raking the hay with a one-horse rake. Eunice was born in the year 1926 on December 6. It was a real stormy day. The doctor got stuck in the snow so Myron went after him with our car and he got stuck. They walked to the house but the baby had been born and everything was fine. The next year Evelyn and Hadley were both in school and they caught the measles and were quite sick.
Men started to put a road through by our house with several teams and men working. One man came and wanted to know if we were taking in boarders, and I thought "why not?" as I had two beds which we had got at an auction. So he came and then another man also. That ended my milking and working outdoors as I had to do so much cooking. In the fall one of the boarders was going to work in the woods taking out logs so Myron went also. We moved to Tremaines Comers, a mile or so away and across the road from a school house.
In the spring when Myron came home he began looking for a farm to rent. He found one near Belleville and about 25 miles away. He bought a milking machine so my milking days were over for good. We lived there six years. Betty was born in February 1932. The landlady died so her son took over the farm. We moved to another farm at Robert's Comers. This farm was bigger and we had to have a hired man. There was a tenant house where they lived. The three children had a bigger school at Belleville and Evelyn graduated from there.
Cecil was born on Evelyn's birthday in 1933. He lived a little over six months and died of pneumonia and complications in February.
Hadley got to be 16 and got his driver's license. One day after supper we told him to go to a store which was a mile away for something. Eunice and Betty wanted to go too and Ronald (who was almost 2) went also. My mother-in-law and I were sitting in the kitchen when we saw this car coming up our long driveway. A man got out and he was helping Eunice out with blood running down her face and Hadley was carrying Ronald who was crying. Betty was OK but Eunice had a big cut from the windshield. The car was a total wreck. It was raining and he had hit a telephone pole. The man who owned the farm was there so he took us to Watertown (about 30 miles) to the hospital. Eunice had several stitches in her head but came home in a week. Ronald had a broken leg and was there two months.
Meanwhile the man who owned the farm wanted to move there so we got a farm beyond Central Square. Ronald came home from the hospital the day we moved. He had to learn to walk all over again. Hadley went to the high school in Central Square but the girls went to a country school. I usually took them and picked them up with the car. There was a family tenant house and the barn was on that land.
The next year on the 4th of July, Eunice was taken sick. We tried to get a doctor but he wouldn't be home until night. When he finally got there he said she had a ruptured appendix and to take her to Syracuse to a hospital. A man who was visiting Evelyn and Virgil took us. Virgil had come to work for us that summer. They had two little girls ages 1 and 2. When we got to the hospital they took Eunice right to the operating room. After a long time the doctor finally came and told us she was all right but would have to stay there a long time for it to drain. We went home but I was still worried. We went up the next morning and she had regained consciousness so we felt better. We went nearly every night for two months until she came home.
Reginald was born in November 1939. Hadley graduated from Central Square in 1940.
Myron got acquainted with a man in Syracuse who worked at a shop making war materials, so Myron wanted to go. The owner of the farm told him to move out there so we moved to Brewerton for three or four months until we found a house to rent on Midland Ave. Virgil had already got a job and moved to Syracuse.
War was declared on December 7, 1941. Hadley went to work for a construction company that was building runways for an airport. When that was done he was drafted in the army and went to camp in November. His girlfriend stayed at our house and worked at G. E.
Eunice graduated from Onondaga Valley School in 1945 and went to work for Easy Washer for a few years and then she went to Rome and got a job with the Air Force, eventually transferring to Wright-Patterson in Dayton, Ohio.
Betty and Ronald went to McKinley, then Roosevelt and from there to Onondaga Valley where Betty graduated in 1951 and Ronald in 1954.
My father was still living with us. He worked as a watchman at a garage for a while before retiring. He and my mother were separated but she came down and stayed a month in the winter. She died on December 23, 1948.
Hadley came home from Germany in 1946. He had helped in the liberation of the concentration camps. He got a job driving a tractor trailer. He and Virgil went in partnership eventually owning three tractors. In 1948 Hadley married an old girlfriend, Elaine Steele Case who was divorced with two children. They had one daughter named Christine in 1950.
Myron canceled all his insurance policies and then moved out in 1951. Eunice was still in Rome and came home every week end and gave me money for rent etc. I was doing washings and ironings for different people to make ends meet, as Myron didn't send any money except once in a while - $7.50. Ronald worked at a ice cream store and then in a bowling alley. Betty was helping with ironings until she graduated in 1951.
About this time I had to go to the hospital for a hysterectomy. I was there 13 days but Betty had done the washings and ironings for me. She then got a job doing housework for different people.
Soon Myron said he would take his name off from the house if I would give him a divorce and would also pay a little for Reginald as he was the only one under 18. He never paid a penny but got his divorce and married again. So I put a second mortgage on the house to put a roof on and other repairs.
The next door neighbor, who worked in Syracuse General Hospital, got me a job in the laundry room. I worked there for six years. There were 10 women and two men for the washers. It was hard work but not too long hours - 9 A.M. to 2 P.M. If there was less laundry to do then we got out earlier. I enjoyed it as I got out and met people. We all got along good generally. But they sold out to another place - not in a hospital - so some of us went there. That was harder work and longer hours. My legs bothered worse there so I worked a year and quit.
In the year 1958 my father didn't work any more. He got Social Security and gave me a little as well as Eunice and Ronald who were both working, Eunice at Rome and Ronald at G. E. Betty did housework and I still worked at the hospital. My father was at home alone until I got home at 2 P.M. This one day I came home and he wasn't downstairs, so I went up and he was dressed and laying on his bed. I took him something to eat and called the doctor who lived just across the street. He said my father needed someone with him all the time so I called the nursing home across from the hospital where I worked, and an ambulance came for him. He didn't want to go and I didn't want him to but what else could I do. He died shortly after in May of 1958 two days before his 87th birthday.
Soon after that I bought a house on Webster but immediately began to have problems. I had to put on a new roof and had new wiring installed. Then the sewer kept plugging up so I sold the house and rented one on Crippen. When the landlady sold that house in 1966 we moved to an upstairs apartment on West Calthrop and lived there for 28 years.
Myron died in 1959 at the age of 65. After his death my Social Security was increased. Ronald got married and built a house near Rita's parents. Eunice went to Ohio in 1965. Reginald got married 1971. Ronald and Reginald both have good jobs working with computers. Evelyn and Eunice are both retired. My son, Hadley, died of cancer at the age of 73 in February of 1995. His wife, Kate, died of cancer in 1992.
Betty and I moved to an apartment building on Valley Drive in June of 1994 where I can get around better with my wheel chair. I am now almost 95 years old and have five living children, nine grandchildren, fourteen great-grand children and 13 great great grandchildren.
PS Birthday Parties
I went to a country one-room school house and there were about 16 others (two girls) about my age in the same class. We would go to each other's houses on their birthdays. The year I was 14 there was snow on the ground. My brother was going to the store for something (about a mile away) so us girls climbed in the cutter which was a one-horse sleigh. We sat outside and it seemed as if he was gone a long time. When we got home and went inside a lot of people - or it seemed like a lot - all hollered "Happy Birthday". I was so surprised I almost fainted. The girls helped me take my coat off and change my dress. I had a good time afterwards but I said I never wanted to be surprised again, and I never gave a surprise party for my kids. Every year my daughters would say they would have a party. They would invite a few but I knew all about it.
On my 90th birthday, my daughter-in-law, Kate, and my grand-daughter Christine, reserved a room in a restaurant and invited about 35 people. Lots of my grandchildren were too far away to come, Tennessee, Texas, Florida and North. Carolina. They decorated with balloons and flowers and even had a picture of me when I was about 20 blown up to poster size. There was a meal and a birthday cake of course. I received a lot of small gifts besides $100. After all that, there was a wedding much to my surprise. My grandson, Clifford who is a Justice of the Peace, married his sister, Barbara and her friend, Mike Conn, who were both divorced. There was music and dancing and everyone had a good time.
A few of my children and grand children took me out to a restaurant for my 94th birthday.
This page was last updated on 10/08/00 12:20