It was a big
day for us, as kids, as a picnic lunch was packed and we would park
the car in the center of the race track and stay at the Fair all day.
I remember one day when we were playing in the front yard a big black
car, with a Philippine chauffeur, stopped. Inside was Ada Kent, from
California, a cousin of my father. Her husband had helped finance
George Eastman when he founded Eastman Kodak. She came to set up an
annuity for my father and all my uncles. They cost $45,000 each and my
father received $100 a month for the rest of his life. I remember that
he was able to get a better car and buy my mother a new coat (which I
recall was blue). When I was in the service, Ada Kent died in Carmel
by the Sea, California and left two million dollars to the old woman
who cared for her.
We had a big garden and in the fall I would build a little house of
sod, sticks, boards and anything else I could find. It was just large
enough for me to squeeze into. In one side of it I made a little
fireplace out of clumps of dirt and I would break up the sticks to
have a little fire for heat. We had a large prune tree next to the
garage and my mother would can a lot of them every year. My father
loved them. We would take the pits out of some and put them on the
flat garage roof to dry in the sun. We covered them with wire screen
to keep the birds away. When dried, they were stored in large bags in
the bottom of a big kitchen cupboard.
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