Diary of Norma Alice Carr Leonard Collins, 1912-2005
Item
-
Title
-
Diary of Norma Alice Carr Leonard Collins, 1912-2005
-
Description
-
Diary of Norma Alice Carr Leonard Collins, 1912-2005. 24 years old. Copied by her daughter, Alicia Ione Leonard McNutt Pagano
Notes from Alicia Pagano (for full commentary see attached documents):
These are partial diaries as mother didn't write throughout the year. They are all in a small beige leather "5 Year Diary" with a lock and leather strip that was removed. It was given to her by Jean Bostwick as a Christmas gift. Jean Bostwick and another young woman, Juanita, were friends of my Dad's that became friends of my mother's as well. The 1936 diary begins when we lived on Martin Brook Street over a machine shop by the railroad and documents our February 15, 1936 move to Bridge Street, one house away from the river. I remember many of the events of these years, but had not remembered the exact dates. In 1936 I was in second grade. In April 1937, Grampa Carr's son Fred by a previous marriage died in California and his body was shipped back to be buried here.
My mother was 17 and my father 20 in 1929 when I was born. Our small family moved to Unadilla in 1933 when I was four and my sister was two. We lived in two places on Martin Brook Street. First, upstairs in a lovely big house near the bridge over Martin Brook Creek. I had mastoid that winter and Dr. Heimer was our physician after I returned from the hospital in Oneonta. Fifteen years later, his wife would provide the temporary home for my mother when she first separated from my father. These links between people in our community are part of the social structure of the period.
We soon moved to an upstairs apartment over a machine shop on Martin Brook Street next to the railroad and I remember my mother, in her later years, recalling that tramps would get off the nearby train and come to ask for coffee or food. I began first grade at the Community House as the Unadilla Central School Building was in the process of construction.
When I began to retire from teaching at the University and returned home in 2004, I went to the library to get my card. I will never forget that day. It was snowing and when I got out of the car the fragrance of the fresh, cold snowy air immediately told me I was "home." I jumped back in years to the many winters my mother walked Main Street with my sister and I during the snow storms. An affirmation that, "you can never be lost when you know place by smell." I walked in to the library and again I was taken back in time. I stood in the library on the very spot where my little chair was placed during first grade. I could see Mrs. Cameron in front of me and my friends beside me. Some of these friends and I graduated together in 1946 having spent our whole childhood together.
In January 1934 my mother was sent to the Sanitorium in Mt Vision as she was very ill. I was sent to my father's brother's home in Hartwick and I finished first grade there. But that is a whole story in itself. My mother regained her health and returned home and we continued to live on Martin Brook Street until we moved down to Nubby's house on Bridge Street. This 1936 diary begins just before we made that move. My memories of our life on Bridge Street for the next four years are a highlight of my childhood. Playing with Anna Adams, Effie York, Phyllis Vought, George Silvernail, Helen Clum, Hannah Earl, Ted Fuller, Billy Chamberlin, Walter Bacon, Barbara Murphy and others in our neighborhood and beyond. My parents' garden, my father's work at York Modern as he demonstrated, helped build, and repaired the York road machines. And then later in 1948 when I finished Ridley Business School, I worked as a secretary for Mr York until I went away to College.
I remember mother baking bread to sell. She would put it in the kitchen window to cool and when it was cool enough she would cut slices for my sister and I, butter them and we would enjoy this treat while playing out doors. I remember mother digging dandelion greens and selling them. I did this too, in 1937, and earned my first money. Bought pansies for mother for Mother's Day. (Comments continued in attached document)
-
Subject
-
Unadilla, New York
-
women's history
