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A Tribute to The Cornwell Family I don’t know when Bob and Alice Cornwell moved to Williamsport. When I was in high school, they lived next door to John Smith on Water Street. Bob worked for the Dunlap Company. He was a husky, red haired man and Alice had a jovial personality and laugh. Jerry was their oldest child and Doris came next; then David and Johnny were born. They were all good looking with beautiful eyes. The boys were strong, silent types like their Dad. Doris’s personality was like her mother and she did a lot of giggling. Jerry often walked to basketball games with me and I stopped to pick Doris up for church. One evening, I stopped for Jerry to walk to a basketball game with me. He had not quite finished his supper and came out of the house with a piece of fried liver in his hand. It looked delicious and must have been because he stuck it in his shirt pocket. They lived in Williamsport all of their young lives. I saw Jerry for the last time when we were cleaning out my mother’s house. He had worked for the Dunlap Company until he retired. He didn’t remember the “liver incident”. Doris and I found one another in recent months through Facebook because her married name was Ferguson. There was no Ferguson connection but she sent me a card hoping to get together. Jerry and Johnny were already gone. Doris passed away last week. It is hard to see childhood friends go. However, it is nice when you have nothing but good memories! Please uphold and support the Cornwell, Stone and Ferguson families in every way possible during these difficult days. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck
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 My Aha Moment When I was in the sixth grade, I had what teachers call the “aha moment”. I wasn’t doing well in school. I wasn’t good in sports (softball in particular) and I didn’t think I was popular. Every young person wants to be popular. I decided that I had to remedy these problems. I worked hard to get better grades. I sat alone in our cold dining room at the table and did my homework. At one time we had a fishbowl setting on the table and I had to cover it up with a table cloth so I could concentrate. I wore one of Daddy’s oversized sweatshirts to keep warm. My grades started to improve. The fact is, I continued this practice through my Freshman year in college because I lived at home until I was a sophomore. It was an exercise that never failed me. I had always liked sports and had some talent for them so that was not hard to improve on. I didn’t have the flexibility to be a cheerleader so that was out. While being a cheerleader is wonderful, I have told all of my granddaughters, “Don’t be a cheerleader if you can do the sport and be cheered”. By the time I was in the eighth grade, I was fairly satisfied with myself other than hungering and thirsting for God. When I became a Christian, I no longer cared if I was popular or not. All I wanted to do was please God. I am still trying to do that today. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck  Cake Baking and other Chores I think young people wouldn’t get into so much trouble today if they had to do the work that we did back in the day. And yes, I know every old person says that. : ) Some of Betty’s and my daily chores were to go to the garden and gather/pull whatever we were eating that day and wash them off at the well. Mama also asked me to set the table for meals and dust furniture, just to name a few. I hated dusting the furniture. A lot of chores had to do with food preparation. My mother was a laid-back person and never complained about me being in our small kitchen. I made my first cake from cake mix at the age of eleven. They didn’t taste like cake mix cakes today. They had a strange texture and taste. My Dad’s favorite cake was spice cake, so he always seemed happy about me mucking around in the kitchen. A lot of the cakes that I made split in the middle and fell apart. I would be grieved about that but my Dad said it just meant they were fresh and they tasted better that way. I just thought he was desperate for cake. Recently, I made the Kentucky Apple Cake featured in this blog. It fell apart when I took it out of the pan. My Dad was right. It was the best cake I ever baked. It is strange how our chores, eating habits and food preparation change over the years though I am still baking cakes….and I still hate to dust! ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck  The Blizzard of 1950 Everyone who lived in Ohio in 1950 remembers the blizzard. No one could get out of their houses. We had to hunker down, try to stay warm and figure out what to eat. The gas was low on our stoves, so both of the latter were questionable. My mother toasted some soybeans on the top of the stove for us to have for a snack. I have never really liked soy beans….they are not peanuts but you do what you have to do. If you remember, we still didn’t have indoor plumbing. My mother asked Betty and me to take the chamber potty to the outhouse to empty it. We had a sled, so why not? We took it out of the front door, put it on the sled and pulled it around to the back of the house. When we got there, we were faced with five-foot (or more) snow drifts in front of the back porch door and sidewalk to the outhouse. I was twelve and Betty was ten and the drifts were taller than we were. What to do? We abandoned the pot on the sled on top of a drift because we could go no further. I don’t know how that story ended but I suppose my Dad had to take care of it because Betty and I couldn’t. My Dad was out all day and night for days running a road grader (or some such) scraping snow all over town. I don’t know if the road grader was owned by the town, the Dunlap Company, or some other entity. We were not a family that wore sunglasses at that time, so when my Dad finally came home, his eyes were blood red from the glare of the snow and lack of sleep. Remember that I told you my Dad was “a man for all seasons”. And by-the-way, he didn’t get paid for his magnificent job. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck |
Marilyn Francis FergusonGrowing up in Williamsport, Ohio is a blog by Marilyn Francis Ferguson which describes small town life in the 1940s and 1950s. Blog Categories
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