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How did your mother meet your father?
How did she get acquainted? Well you got me.
But you remember how you met your husband
Oh yes! I met mine in church and I was asked to join the choir, I sang
alto and this young man was the cross bearer and it twasnt long before
he paid attention to me and he came to the house and got acquainted. And
he used to take me to the Bronx (?) house where there were basketball games
and to the Franklin club in Westchester village.
Was basketball a big sport then?
Oh yes and they had dances and card parties. My sister went too. She
had a beau and we had good times together.
What did your parents think of your boy friend?
Who? Oh your grandfather! Oh they liked him very much. I had other
beaus too, but my mother said he was very serious and that I should think
seriously about him and whether he wanted to marry me. But I was getting
to the point where I was going to be appointed teaching and my mind was
more on that than getting married.
Would you have taught if you had gotten married then?
Well my mother wanted me to teach until I'd gotten my permanent license.
We had to teach three years before we'd get the permanent license and so
at that time I guess I was more interested in doing that, teaching. Then
he brought two beautiful diamonds and showed them to me and said that he
wanted to marry me. This was on the shortest day of the year, December
21. Which did I prefer? Well the one I chose was not the large showy one,
but the smaller one, a blue diamond and very finely cut and a deep stone,
so that was set and I became engaged.... I think it was a year and a half
and then married on the longest day of the year, the twenty-first of June.
I think my husband did that so he'd remember the dates.
Oh we had a wonderful honeymoon. My husband worked for a Japanese concern (?) and Mishimura and they planned our honeymoon for us and gave my husband three weeks. We went up the Hudson mostly by boat, one of the day liners I think, then we went to Lake Champlain and then to Canada, Toronto and Montreal and everywhere we went we bought a little coffee spoon, Stirling silver, as a souvenir of our trip. We came down then and spent quite a few days in Lake George and there we met a family and they had twin boys and later we got twin boys.
It was a tea concern. And they saw the opportunity there during the war to buy steel and sell it to Japan and they over stocked in steel and went into bankruptcy. Then of course they began to lay off people and the secretary to one of the bosses told my husband that they were going to keep the married men as long as they could. Then they started letting the single men go and then they started letting the married men go. And then we got twins, so then they let the married men go , but they were keeping the married men with children, so we got them just in time! Then my husband was given a responsible position with subsidiaries of the concern, they made him president of one subsidiary and vice president of another. Then they began to pick up and things were all right. We had started to build a house and we didn't know what was going to happen, but my husband was very optimistic and he felt capable and he said "if the worse came to the worst, I could sell apples or pencils on the corner or do something." But he didn't have to do those things and we started the house and were able to keep on. We had it in the building and loan.
I remember the house, it was a Tudor house, big sloping...
I liked it because it kind of looked like a church in front of it and
the fireplace was in the front....
One of the twins was left handed and the other right handed so they
fit in the breakfast nook . Always the same way and they didn't interfere
with each other. They sat opposite us.
The first four months I was all right but for the last five months on the doctor put me on the strictest of diets. All I could have was milk, fermilac, buttermilk, spinach, peas... these had to be fresh...wheat thins, whole wheat and graham crackers, no meat. My husband wanted to be on a regular diet. I just longed for orange juice or something. All this time I was cooking puddings and whatever my husband wanted and meats and everything.
So I was very very ill and the doctor thought I would have to go in the hospital and they would have to take the babies at seven months. We went down to St. Bartholomews church for the beautiful music and I began crying. I couldn't stay in church I was so ill and I said "If I die, you won't marry again, will you?" . Oh no, he wouldn't marry again. So we had to go home. Oh, I couldn't lie down at night. I had to sit at the foot of the bed by the window so I could breathe, I had a terrible time. And my doctor didn't know there were twins. At that time........ so finally the morning came and Rob had gone to work and lo and behold we had to call for the doctor. We had a telephone in the hall of the apartment house, we didn't have private phones. My neighbor came up from downstairs, she was an old friend of mine, and she used the telephone, got the nurse.
And the nurse just got there in time and the doctor got there just in time and Bob was born. And he laid him down aside of me and he said " Mrs. Morse, you've got a lovely baby boy" and he (Bob) put his thumb in his mouth. He began sucking his thumb right away and you could hear him smacking away. And he said "he weighs about seven pounds." "So," I thought " That's fine."
And the doctor hung around and hung around and hung around and he finally said," You have a wonderful baby, but things are not going right. You may have to go to the hospital. I'd just like the advice of another physician."
I said "Any one you say, doctor" because the doctor was familiar with the other physicians in the neighborhood. He said Dr. Pinkus. He was a Jewish doctor and was delivering babies all the time because it was a Jewish neighborhood. And so Dr. Pinkus came in and said "Well I think there's another baby here, doctor" and my doctor says "No I couldn't feel its heart" "Well," he says," we'll put her under ether." They gave me something to smell and away I went.
Pretty soon I came to and it was a funny thing. I thought I was whirring around in space and thinking "this is America, this is the United States, this is the Bronx this is 918 181st street..." By this time I was coming to and they were holding Frank up and they were spanking him for all they were worth, holding him up by his heels. And they said "It's another boy but he won't amount to much."
And they slapped the poor little fella until he was exhausted, They lay him down along side of me and he had a cute little round face and auburn hair Your father had a light fuzz, It was about the color of Gareth's only it was curly. So there I was And I had the two babies. .... and my friend said I'll have to go telephone again so they telephoned Rob and they ...
Did you have a name for Frank?
Oh I had names. Of course my grandmother had two sets of twins. My
brother had twins. But my husband didn't want the names I chose. I chose
Cherry Francis for one, and I forget the other.. Anyhow Rob didn't like
those, and they gave him the message that there were twins. Well he was
getting ready from the first time they called him and he was getting ready
to leave. He came home... and we had lost other babies and I wouldn't buy
any clothes or make any preparations. I didn't think anything about having
a baby, I thought I'd lose it just like all the others and my friend said
I can't think of you, she was pregnant too, so she took the little basket
with a dress for one and a nightgown, a slip, and a petticoat binder like,
all there was, she said in case it's twins, because I was an enormous size,
and she says one can have the nightgown and one can have the dress and
so on, so she made sure there was something to put on them. So when my
husband came home , he went out to this Jewish neighborhood and all the
different stores and he went from one to the other and what he wouldn't
buy and what they didn't give him! because he had twins. Oh it was some
time. But the babies, they got along fine.
How did you get along?
Well I was all right and the kidney trouble left me.... I say they
got along fine; they didn't. Frank cried and your father vomited. So we
went to a specialist in New York City. Twenty-five dollars and that was
a lot of money in those days and my father wanted to give me money and
I said no. I was the only one that wouldn't take money. So we worked it
out and the specialist said that Bob couldn't have any fat, the milk had
to be skimmed.
Were you nursing?
Oh they said that was poison, I shouldn't give it to him, but Frank
still wanted to nurse and my friend said "Oh give it to him maybe it will
come better and better as you get to feel better. You lost the others because
you didn't have mother's milk and now." So I let Frank nurse the old poison
stuff, but Bob, he didn't want it ... they began gradually to gain a little
bit and the formulas were increased. First they got little bottles with
only a little milk in and my father said "Can't you fill the bottles up?"
He thought they weren't gettin enough. And I had to go by what the doctor
says. But by the time they were a year old they were normal weight. But
what a time I had with them. And cry. I don't know how my husband stood
it.
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