January 3, 2015
Our Early Years
My sister and I start this journey in 1953 when we remember sitting on these steep concrete steps of our mother's birth home in Price Hill. At this time of our life, our Uncle Bill and Aunt JoAnn Jones owned this nearly 80 year old home. JoAnn is holding her son Danny and we sit just below (me on left and sister Connie on right).
My grandmother Loretta Arnold Hucke (right) succumbed to a chronic disease (Polcystic Kidney disease) on October 16, 1953, at the young age of 49 that now runs in our maternal side of the family. I was only 2 years old and Connie was 4. We are thankful that we do not suffer from this disease. We only look at the old photos and know that she was a kind- hearted soul that loved her children and mostly stayed home. She was born on July 16, 1905 in Campbell County Kentucky. In 1910 her family moved to 2612 Spring Grove Ave. Cincinnati, Ohio. There she lived with her father, Philip Arnold and mother, Florence Doerner Arnold. Both parents were of German descent and Philip worked as a butcher in a Pork Factory. Since the early 1800's,Cincinnati was know as "Porkopolis" due to all the pork factories along the river. Then in 1920, they moved to 1603 Carll Street also in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, all that is left of the house are some stone steps leading up to an overgrown mass of weeds and trees. They took on a boarder named Charles Hayes who ran a small shoemaker shop. My father, Charles later inherited some of his old shoe forms.
In 1930, Loretta moved in with her parents who now lived at this old house on 325 Mt Hope Avenue just above River Road on Cincinnati's East side of lower Price Hill. There she lived with her husband, Eric Hucke and her parents. (married now since 1927). In December of that year, they had my mother, Janet Florence Hucke.
Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a genetic disorder characterized by the growth of numerous cysts in the kidneys. The kidneys are two organs, each about the size of a fist, located in the upper part of a person's abdomen, toward the back. The kidneys filter wastes and extra fluid from the blood to form urine. They also regulate amounts of certain vital substances in the body. When cysts form in the kidneys, they are filled with fluid. PKD cysts can profoundly enlarge the kidneys while replacing much of the normal structure, resulting in reduced kidney function and leading to kidney failure.
When PKD causes kidneys to fail—which usually happens after many years—the patient requires dialysis or kidney transplantation. About one-half of people with the most common type of PKD progress to kidney failure, also called end-stage renal disease (ESRD).
National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse
My Aunt Shirley Hucke Hausfeld stands far right of 3 of her friends
at the then gated pathway to the side of 325 Mt. Hope Ave.
For several years now, all is gone.
Our memories of this house are many since we visited there many times with our mom and dad. Our first memory was the house had 3 floors and an attic. We will start with the attic because it was quite creepy. The entrance was off to the right of an upstairs bedroom. As we opened the door, we remember the dust and cobwebs raining down on us and the eerie sense that something was up there to get us. Upon the top of the attic stairs, there was one lone window that looked out upon a small bricked in yard with a slight path off to its right. Just under the window was an old brown chest. My aunt told us that it had an old wooden leg from a deceased aunt. They say it still had an old sock on the foot and that our mom, Janet, would try to scare the others with tales of how the leg would walk around the attic on its own. Curiosity would get the better of us as we would peer into the chest and see nothing that looked like a leg. We wish today that whatever was in there could give us clues as to the past lives of our kin. My sister and I liked to clean and dust this musty attic which must have filled our lungs with ages old soot and dust, but we didn't care. One day we decided it needed some paint and my aunt let us paint just the hallway up the steps. Good lord... how much lead might have been in the paint can or on the old cracked walls? The roof had a latched hatch that when opened one could see River Road. An 8 foot wall ran parallel to several train tracks that followed along the Ohio River. Many an over night stay, we could hear the clang and clank of each train that passed by in the night. This noise made it very difficult to sleep.
On the second level were two large bedrooms. One room was where all of my aunts, uncles and cousins slept. The other room was the adult's bedroom. This room had 3 floor length windows. Two of the front windows looked out upon the steps and upper hill which rose to a small side street known as High Street. The other window looked out upon the yard and two small buildings that housed the beagles my Grandpa Eric had. We will come back to this part of the story later for we believe this was where we had fond memories of the care and love of animals especially dogs. The most interesting feature of this room was a door which led out to a rickety old porch. We were hastily warned to be careful not to hang from the wood railing that dropped down 20 feet to a paved but grass filled rock path and another porch below which hung out over the living room below.
Our memories of our East Pricehill family
As I write the date, I am startled to realize it is already 2015! I must keep hitting myself to think I have lived 63 years always wondering about my Mom's side of the family. I continue in this journal today about my mother's birth home off Elberon Avenue and Mt Hope Road. The house was built in the early 1900's and as I wrote in yesterday's blog it was 4 stories tall including an attic. the outside was originally wood and later covered in a brown tile that was popular around the 1930's and 1940's. The house set down in a walled depression and had to be entered by the steep steps I mentioned in last blog.
To continue where I left off, I was describing the third story of the home consisting of two long bedrooms. My grandparents, now aunt and uncle's bedroom will always be very clear in my sister's memories. Besides the rickety porches, there was one piece of antique furniture we would gladly open knowing that it held our late grandmother's old purse. Without the blink of an eye, we would reach in to excitedly open her purse to find some interesting trinkets. One most prized was her coin purse. In it she keep what ever coins she could scrape up so that my sister and I wouldn't be cold in those harsh Cincinnati winters. She loved buying us winter coats and wraps. Also, she carried a silver necklace with the sacred Mary on the front and a silver chain. Our Aunt JoAnn Jones now holds this very piece of jewelry.
My sister will have to help me here a little to recall some of the other contents but I sit here wondering where all those items today are and how much I would like to have kept them in a safe place to show my grand kids today. Loretta Arnold Hucke was from a long line of German immigrants that came to America for a better life and Cincinnati was the perfect spot that many Germans soon chose.
Today, January 4, 2015
I write this on an early morning day wanting to continue discussing our maternal roots of East Price Hill. Before going to the first floor of this old house with so many memories, I wish to share a more sensitive subject to many but I feel it needs to be shared. My grandpa suffered very poor health in his mid age. He had diabetes and I remember that he walked very stiffly and seemed in a lot of pain. There were no indoor toilets in the 1940's and 50's so one had to go down a flight of stairs to the side yard and use an outhouse structure I never recall seeing because it had been torn down by the time I was born. My Uncle Bill built a small bathroom to the front of the house for his family which had to be in the 1950's. Now since my grandfather found it difficult to climb down the wooden steps he would use a small tin bucket for his use of any kind of restroom. By morning, the upper rooms would smell strongly of old urine. I remember holding my nose as I got closer to their bedroom as the steps leading down were right next to his smelly tin pot. I often wonder if my grandmother Loretta caused some of her illness with cysts on the bladder to worsen because of the
Modern convinces they didn't have. I wonder who had the job of emptying his bucket and did they too dislike the smell which remained constant. I know this is an awful memory but was a part of my life I cannot forget.
To describe the first floor was basically two rooms matching length and width of the upper bedrooms. As I would turn to my left I came into a moderated decorated living room with an old couch, coffee table and two chairs. I didn't see a television till later in the 1960's and the screen was so tiny all of us had to gather around close in order to see. We were lucky to see a television for mos families did not or could not afford one. On the left side of the step was the kitchen. I can still see an old woo burning stove and my aunts told me that was where they would run Tobin the morning to warm their frozen fingers and toes. The floor was an old lanolin floor that made your feet even colder. One door in the kitchen led to the front steps we'd play on and then run up and down the uneven path that took you down to the main road River Road. Our aunt would let my sister and I go down to a grocery store to buy penny candy. I loved Bozooka bubble gum for the taste and their comics. I would search the neighborhood for more wrappers to send away for prizes. Sometimes we played on some concrete abutment tearing our clothes to shreds and wearing down the souls of our Ked gym shoes. The step were also fun to run up and down we preferred staying on the upper street because we would met other kids three or eventually more relatives had recently move into a house across the street. Most dangerous of all was the permission they gave us to walk down Elbron Avenue which in today term very dangerous and had faster and more traffic.
Our Uncle Eugene Hucke
In the 1960's, my mother's only brother, Eugene Hucke had been riding his motorcycle on this very curvy part of Elberon Avenue and lost control. He was hospitalized for months with multiple injuries especially to his legs. For the rest of his life, he wore a brace and over the years he had serious complications due to his onset of the disease diabetes. I am anxious to check in the newspaper of that decade to see if they had any articles in depth of his accident.
A Special Visit with our Aunt Shirley
It is a sobering thought to realize that Debbie and I are quickly becoming the “old guard” of the family. Our mothers’ side is the last of our parent’s generation. In the Eric Hucke line, our Aunt Joann, Shirley and Nancy are all that remain. This realization struck me when visiting my ailing Aunt Shirley last week. She, at 86, suffered they think from a mild stroke complicated by her 11 years on dialysis. Our visit was precious for either of these conditions could take her quickly. Shirley’s family and ours spent many holidays together. Our many Christmas gatherings in their basement with all our cousins could easily support a season of reality TV. Debbie and I were the oldest of the group so we were at the top of the pecking order. Now on those rare occasions when we get together, our cousins speak of us using words like, cruel, mean, power hungry………you get the jest. In summers I would spend two weeks with the Hausfeld family on Cleves Warsaw Pike. Shirley needed me at the ripe age of 12 to watch her six kids while she prepared their home business for their tax preparer. Their ages ranged from 3 -11. It was like herding cats. Many a day I would “crack the whip” to get their daily start on the to-do chart and then drive them up a two mile hill to have a picnic. My motives were not pure for I assumed the hike would wear them out so I could get some rest. It never occurred to the Hausfeld children that I was only one year older then they were or did it? It pays to have that Wainright bravado. My prayers go out to my aunt.
We plan to visit her throughout the winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment