I was born in the small town of Oakdale, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a Sunday morning, September 16, 1917. On the morning I was born, my sister tells me that she, along with some of my other sisters, sat on the sidewalk in front of our house and told the people as they came home from church that they had a baby brother.

My dad was employed by a railroad as a traffic manager. My mother kept house as most women did in those days, and she had five children besides. I was the only boy. Dad played the cello and was part of a small group that played for the silent movies on Saturday night. That meant that we got in free. I still remember something of the final scene of WINGS. This (going to movies) continued after we left Oakdale. Mother would dress us and take us over to see the movie.

At the age of six months we moved to the Bell Farm. Dad had accepted work there as the office manager. We lived there for seven years and loved every minute of it. I was about 7 1/2 when we moved from the farm. So everything that happened in this paper, happened before I was 71/2.

It (the Bell Farm) was located approximately 8 miles south of Coraopolis, which was located about 12 miles from Pittsburgh and the town was located on the Ohio River. The farm was a large one of approximately 1100 acres. It was principally a dairy operation of pure bred Holstein Cattle, and they sold only certified milk. Certified meant that it had a certified butterfat content. My dad was office manager ,and it was purely a 9 to 5 job. So one can see this was not like owning your own farm and working from the time you get up till you go to bed. We had an office building which was located at the end of the entry lane. North of the office was the horse barn, and south of the office was the boarding house, which housed the farm hands. South of the boarding house were located the cattle barns, and a heifer barn was located off by itself. Our house was located on the entry lane.

Our house was typically a large farm house. This house, as I remember it, was the only one suited to a family of our size. The sitting room and the living room were located across the front of the house. They were separated by a staircase to the second floor. The house was a two story one. Behind the living room was a large dining room and directly behind it was a large kitchen. The kitchen was separated from the dining room by a stairway located at the rear of the house. The house was located over a coal mine. My parents tell me that at times they could hear miners talking when we were in the dining room.

Ater we moved from the farm it was sold to the Allegheny County for the Greater Pittsburgh airport, which stands there today. They strip mined enough coal to pay for the land.

The second floor (of the house) was similar to the first floor. The rear room had a division in it ,and part to the room was taken for a bathroom. When we moved to the farm, the rear bedroom and the bathroom were separated from the rest of the house. As my mother had a door cut through from the bedroom in the forward part of the house, and this made the whole house connected. It was at that time they discovered the house was constructed with pegs instead of nails. That will give you some idea of the age of it. The sitting room was kept closed from the rest of the house, and we did all our living in the dining room and living room. In the dining room we had the only combination gas and electric chandelier that I have ever seen. Also the fireplace that we used all the time was located in the dining room, and that is where we congregated all the time, including the hands from the farm.

One evening, they sat in front of the fireplace and several of the hands chewed tobacco, and they spit into the fireplace until they put the fire out. On the outside at one end there was a cistern with a large concrete cover on it. We would lie on the cover at night and look at the star constellations and try to pick out the various ones. I didn`t know what was going on, but I enjoyed it anyway.

The area formed by the dining room and the sitting room was covered with concrete. My next older sister and I would roller skate on this.

The horse barn had a large hay mow on the second floor. This was a wonderful play area, and in the fall when the hay was brought in from the fields, we used to love it. We would climb up on the top of the piles of hay, and one would sink until we could hardly see over the top.

On the ground floor was the stable area. They had several teams of Percharons and Clydesdales for the plowing and gereral hauling around the farm. They had a Fordson tractor, but it required a lot of maintenance. One of my fondest memories of the farm is when I went out to the fields when the farm hands had finished plowing or what ever they were doing, and riding the large draft horses in to the horse barn. They would put me on one of the horses and the hand would get on the other one, and I would hold on to the harness and ride the hose to the horse barn.. They would take them to the watering trough and remove their harness. Then they would give me the rein and let me lead them to the barn. The horse had a stride of three feet, and I had a stride of 18 inches. The horse would catch up with me, and then I would start to run. The horse would start to trot, and I would throw the rein to the ground and the hands would stand and laugh.

Every so often, I don`t know whether it was every year or not, but they would hold a cattle sale. People from all over the area would come to it. I worked with a man in Findlay, Ohio, which is in the northeast corner of the state, who had attended the sale with his father when he was a kid. When they had this sale, they would bring in bedding for the cattle, and it being granular, they would get it in sacks, and we would pile them up and make forts with them and have battles.

There was another family that lived on the faarm, who had a boy my age. The two of us stayed together all the time. His name was Frank Farkes. When we got to 2nd grade. My sister was the teacher. She tells me I was far from the ideal student. Frank and I were hired for $0.25 a day to watch the sheep. We fooled around more than we worked. But we enjoyed doing it. One morning the lead sheep found a hole in the fence, and he came through it and walked across the front proch at 4:00 a.m., and of course all the sheep followed it, about 30 in all.

Further south from the boarding house, there were three cattle barns layed out in a U shape. In the center of the three barns was the creamery. All the milk was processed through here. The hands had to milk the cows 4 times a day: 4:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m.

The hands all lived in the boarding house. The cook was a friend of mine and also my dog Piker. He was an airdale, and as long as John Byrd, the cook, was in his uniform, Pike was his best friend. He disliked, for some unknown reason, black people. When John came past our house in his street clothes, Pike would take out after him. We always made certain that Piker was inside when he came past.

One evening a black man came to our house to use our telephone. We had the only telephone in the area. Dad had to put him (Pike) in the kitchen before he could come in the house. Our house was only about a 1/4 mile from the highway that cut through the middle of the farm. One day the mailman came to use our phone, and he apparently had car trouble, and he called all his customers and told them the same story. "The rear end shot off without any notice, and I can't deliver your mail today".

We had a party line, and when you picked up the receiver and turned the crank on the side of the box, every phone for miles around came on line. You had to be very careful of what you said on the phone.

They had a sparate building that housed the bulls, of which they had several. The farm superintendant, one day, was exercising one of the bulls when he turned on him and mauled him pretty bad. He ended in the hospital.

We had a reservoir for the main part of the farm. The area around the reservoir was planted with daffodils. We would go up there in the spring of the year and pick the flowers.

Of course, in the fall, they would harvest the grain from the fields. The thrashing machine, which was a monstrous thing and was moved into the middle of the field and a large tractor, were aligned with the thrasher. There must have been 50 to 75 feet separating them. They would attach a wide belt between them, and they brought the grain by wagon load and put it through the thrasher. This would go on for several days. It always meant more work for the women of the farm. I don`t know if the tractor was steam or not, also I don't know if the tractor belonged to the farm or not. It was a time I always enjoyed.

The farm had a sort of handy man that kept the truck and the tractor going. His name was Joe Louis. When he would climb under the truck to do some repair job, I would go under with him. He would hand me a wrench and anything that the wrench would fit, I would try to remove. He also would go to town for feed and farm supplies, and when he went to town my mother and several women fo the farm would accompany him to buy groceries for their families. After we left the farm, we were traveling through a neighboring town of Carnegie, and there was Joe Louis in the intersection directing traffic. We had a nice reunion then.

The area in the front of the house was a large grassy lawn that sloped to the lane. I used to love to run down this area. About half way down this slope was a large pine tree. When my cousin, who visited us quite often and was about 8 years older and consequently taller, he would climb to the top of the tree and stick his head out the top. I always wanted to do this.

From our front yard, we could see a yellow brick church, which was located out on Route 30. That was quite a few miles from us. I always wanted to see the inside of that church. You could imagine my surprise, when my nephew got married in that church.

Our dog Piker liked to get beside Dad when he was playing the cello and proceed to howl. John Bell gave us a house in which to hold church services. One Sunday out of nowhere, old Pike came to whine. Needless to say, he was not welcome.

I just got to thinking of the farm one day and decided to put this together. This was a portion of my life that I dearly loved.

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