Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

The Transients and Potsie
 
As I mentioned in the last blog, in the early to mid-forties, there were a lot of transient people roaming the country. Some were young men out to find work. Since Williamsport is not that far from Route 23, some of them showed up in town.
 
The parsonage at that time had a barn on the alley behind the house. Bertha and Sam Jones on the other side of our house had one as well. I think barns may have been prevalent in Williamsport at that time. They may have been used for horses in earlier times but were now used as garages.
 
One day a blonde, blue eyed Claude Wolfe was found sleeping in the minister’s barn. My brother Bob became his friend. My sister Jean was near dating age and was attracted to these young men. Lowell Keaton was another who arrived in town from Kentucky. They all had bicycles and hung around with Bob, who also had a bicycle and later a motor bike.
 
My sister Jean was a real artist and saw a picture in the newspaper to emulate to win a free art education. She sent it in and one day a representative from an art school came to see her. She was drinking coffee in the living room when he was spied walking down the sidewalk to our house. She decided that she was not going to see him and ran into the kitchen with the coffee pot in her hand. Our kitchen floor sloped downward, and she slipped and fell. When she did, the contents of the coffee pot spilled everywhere.
 
She never saw the art school representative. My mother wrote the poem featured in this blog about Jean, who she nicknamed Potsie.

©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck