State College

(from MERRIMENT AND CHAOS WITH FIVE YOUNG ‘UNS
by Lois Myers Harris)

We always enjoyed our visits to State College when brother Vernon was a physics professor there. It was especially nice to call on our good friends and next-door neighbors, Vance and Elaine Sprague. Upon one occasion, right after dinner, Mum, Deezee, Nippy, and I started over to their home and asked two little boys, Al and Bucky, to come with us. Both hung their heads and refused. They said they were being punished and were not allowed there. Why the punishment? We learned later that the Spragues had picked several quarts of their luscious, big, red raspberries and had put them on the back porch. Two little boys had gone over with their sandpails and shovels and had worked havoc with the berries, spilling them over the porch.

Al and Bucky had their eyes on some scrap lumber left from a new house being built in the area. They got their hands on it before their rivals. What a wonderful ladder Bucky made! A boy can do many things with a ladder, such as climbing trees, reaching a treehouse, etc. After the ladder was completed, they didn’t have a place to store it. They were afraid to leave it outdoors lest it be taken by a rival gang. Each night, they trudged indoors with the cumbersome ladder and took it to their room. I wonder where that ladder is today?

Grandfather Dan often chuckled over the occasion when Al was sitting beside him on the porch swing under the apple tree at our Duck Run home. A car drove into the driveway. Dan felt Al grow tense and he made a fist – ready for a fight. Young Billy McCombs had come for a visit.

To see the two of them many years afterward, December 28, 1984, to be exact, at Betsy and Hamied’s wedding – Billy now a major in the Marines and Albert, a Naval commander, engrossed in earnest, friendly conversation, one would never think they had disliked each other as kids!

We will always remember the evening that Dr. and Mrs. Buchheit arrived with you two boys from Park Ridge on the B&O wearing a new Homburg hat. He had planned to go from PA to Washington, D.C., where he would visit his old friend, J.J. Davies, our ex-Ambassador to Great Britain. Mr. Davies had grown up as a boy near Dr. Buchheit’s family farm in Wisconsin. Since his mother was an itinerant preacher, she was away from home a great deal. Mr. Davies (as told by Doc) spent many hours and had many meals at the Buchheit home. Doc wanted to look his very best when in Washington and bought a new hat to wear. There happened to be a sky dome on the B&O from Chicago and the two boys were given permission to go to the “upper deck” while Dock and Honey remained below. At one point, he looked up in time to see his new hat rolling down the steps. The boys had taken it and thought it was a lark to roll it down the steps. As soon as Dock entered our Duck Run home, he placed his hat on top of the high mantle and just shook his head.

Honey Buchheit had gone to Marshall Fields before they left and outfitted the boys in beautiful, bright red sweaters. We were sitting in the living room talking and not paying any attention to them. They finally came in from the kitchen, faces and hands covered with black soot as well as splashes on the sweaters. At that time we had a coal stove and they had discovered the “soot scraper” and the little compartment in the stove where the soot could be scraped out.

That evening after mother had gone to bed, she could hear them opening drawers and searching all over the kitchen. She had made cinnamon rolls for the next morning’s breakfast, and they were looking for them. They were never successful, as she had hidden them in the oven.