Windows in Time

By Roxanne Anton

I was the youngest child of ten raised during the years of The Great Depression and World War Two. My book, Windows In Time is an overview of life growing up in the, as some call them, The Good Old Days. I invite the reader to step back in time and enjoy the good, bad, sad, happy and funny experience of yesterday. What follows is some personal background. I am married to a special man for many years. We were blessed with a son and daughter. They are grown now and we have three wonderful grandchildren. By now you probably know my major interest in life is my family. Next to them, my extended family, friends and our community.

My writing background includes publication in Outdoor Life Magazine, Outdoor Life Deer Hunter's Yearbook 1987, a magazine Michigan Woman and varied freelance business and technical writing. I retired from Xerox Corporation where I was a Senior Customer Representative; a liaison between customers and the Company, among other duties.

I retired early from Xerox to care for my aged mother and in laws. My life has been full. I enjoyed being a stay at home mom while my children were young.

I went back to pursue my educational interests the same year my eldest child began her college career and enjoyed a fulfilling career. I seem to find writing about my self the most difficult of all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499015959

Roxanne Anton

I was the youngest child of ten raised during the years of The Great Depression and World War Two. My book, Gypsy in My Soul is an overview of life growing up in the, as some call them, The Good Old Days. I invite the reader to step back in time and enjoy the good, bad, sad, happy and funny experience of yesterday. What follows is some personal background. I am married to a special man for many years. We were blessed with a son and daughter. They are grown now and we have three wonderful grandchildren. By now you probably know my major interest in life is my family. Next to them, my extended family, friends and our community. My writing background includes publication In Outdoor Life Magazine, Outdoor Life Deer Hunter’s Yearbook 1987, a magazine Michigan Woman and varied freelance business and technical writing. I retired from Xerox Corporation where I was a Senior Customer Representative; a liaison between customers and the Company, among other duties. I retired early from Xerox to care for my aged mother and in laws. My life has been full. I enjoyed being a stay at home mom while my children were young. I went back to pursue my educational interests the same year my eldest child began her college career and enjoyed a fulfilling career. I seem to find writing about my self the most difficult of all. I hope you have a pleasant day.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Roxanne Anton.

ISBN:                  Hardcover                              978-1-4990-1596-6

                            Softcover                                978-1-4931-4633-8

                            eBook                                     978-1-4990-1595-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/22/2014

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Life

The Highland Fling

Dream Music

Excerpts from the Memoirs of Ethel Fitch Ossmer-1981

Early Days at Monkey Run

Mama’s Garden

Baby Seed Song

The Old Yellow Cupboard

Taped interview by Julia Anton Wiggins with Grandmother Ossmer-1984

The Gypsies

Springtime

Sugaring Off Time

The Great Depression

Mama’s Way

Kidnapped

Family Life

Thanksgiving at Monkey Run

Gypsies Again

Troubled Times at Monkey Run

Radio

Pioneers

Goodbye to Monkey Run

Gypsy Travels My Doll

Heading South

My New Shoes

Why the Birds Fly South—an Indian Legend

Heading for Memphis

Memphis

The Final Goodbye

Moving On

A Big Old Farm House

We Move to Town

December 7, 1941

After The War

Excerpt from Ethel Fitch Ossmer Memoirs-no date

January 1981

Through a Granddaughter’s Eyes

July 21 1980

The Ancient Fitch Family

Ancestors of Ethel Louise Fitch

Ancestors of William Thomas Ossmer

We are wanderers of the earth; our hearts are full of

wonder, our souls are full of dreams. Gypsy Proverb

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to William and Ethel Fitch Ossmer and their many descendants.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been has been compiled from the efforts of three women, Ethel Fitch Ossmer, her daughter, Roxanne Ossmer Anton and her granddaughter Julie Anton Wiggins.

Julia shared here the personal interviews she conducted with her grandmother. Today they seem to provide historical glimpses of life during the middle and late years of the twentieth century. They almost makes one feel they have turned back the clock. Special thanks to my Dear Husband Bob for his patience while I wrote.

My mother, Ethel, left a treasury of handwritten wisdom, love and history which allows us to peek into the windows of her life. They are included as she wrote them.

Sadly much of the poetry written by my father, William Thomas Ossmer, has vanished over the years. Only three poems have survived to grace this book. The memories of childhood in our large and loving family are mine.

My nephew, James Johnson, has been with me all the way from the inception of this work to the end. He, above all, has kept me motivated with his interest, encouragement and help. He has worked beside me helping me find the hidden typos and corrections as needed. He has restored the few photographs from yesteryears that remain of my parents in their youth. He enhanced them with the magic of today’s computer technology to grace the dedication of this book. He also developed the cover design, edited the final draft and assisted me in too many ways to count.

My nephew, Thomas Gillette, assisted me with locating lyrics and history of the music that enriched our childhood.

This endeavor would lack much without the contribution of these grandchildren of William and Ethel.

Thanks to my dear friends, Patrice Shelton and Tammie Riess, who encouraged me and believed in my work and in me along the way.

My thanks to each of you, my family and friends, who have provided me support and encouragement along the way. You are well loved.

INTRODUCTION

My parents, William Ossmer and Ethel Lucille Fitch came together from vastly different backgrounds, lifestyles, personalities and cultures. Their marriage lasted twenty-one years. They were blessed with ten children. They nurtured their flock as best they could in shelters ranging from our beloved brown house at Monkey Run to a huge canvas tent, an old Graham Paige Sedan, even Gypsy campgrounds.

After Daddy died, December 1938, Mama raised her family alone during the dark days of The Great Depression and World War 11. In time, we each took our place beside her to help the family survive. The last forty years of Mama’s life, she shared our home.

In relating old memories, I seem to have found my childhood again. Parts of it, especially those few years with my father, I had thought lost forever.

This is written as a memorial to Ethel and William and a heritage to their descendants. It is family history with windows that provide us glimpses into the world of yesteryear, stories of love and loss, feast and famine, good times and bad. Most of all, it is the story of life in a big family in the late years of the Twentieth Century.

Some will remember Grandmother Ethel Ossmer only as an old woman. This book attempts to help the reader know of her life as a young and caring mother, always there for her family.

But where to start? Daddy’s poem, Life, seems to be the proper place and so I begin.

LIFE

By

William Thomas Ossmer

A mother’s prayer, a baby’s cry

Tenderest care, a lullaby;

Eating, sleeping night and day,

Brand new tooth and childhood play.

A new red sled, a bat, a ball;

Boyish laughter down the hall.

First lessons learned of life’s stern rule,

Nine to three in the village school.

Work and study, work some more,

Graduation, high school’s o’er.

A little girl, a little ring,

A wedding march sometime in spring.

Business built, boys of your own;

Father and mother, God’s called home.

Work and worry, going through

Same old paths the old folks knew.

A book, a chair, a fireplace wide

A time to dream of friends who’ve died

A quiet room, a shaded lamp,

Short gasping breaths, a forehead damp,

Heart sobs and tears, then quiet rest,

Thin hands folded against the breast.

The break of dawn, the setting sun,

The law of life and life is done.

THE HIGHLAND FLING

1908-1934

In 1908, one need only complete the 8th grade and pass the County Normal Exam to teach in Indiana Public Schools. That is how Mother, at sixteen, became a schoolteacher.¹ Of course, she admitted, it probably helped to have her father on the school board. She taught school for seventeen years, believing she had found her life’s work. Fate, it seemed, had different plans.

At twenty-six, an old maid schoolteacher, so she said, she met my father. He spoke at her school reciting the words of the poet, James Whitcomb Riley. The poetry came alive as he spoke, and so, said Mother, did she.

Mother’s family was old English, haughty and proud, believing they had arrived in this country even before the Mayflower. Father’s background was far different. He counted ancestors among French Canadian hunters and trappers, Potawatomi Indians and early immigrants from Scotland and Ireland. He was certainly not the type to gain the approval of Mother’s parents! They thought him a scoundrel, the proverbial handsome and suave traveling salesman. Worse yet, he was ten years older than mother, with two failed marriages and three daughters in his past.

Her father put his foot down, forbidding her to see that rascal ever again. But she did!

On Mother’s Day, May 18 1918, she watched as her mother slipped from her chair, calling, Father. It was to The Heavenly Father she called!

After her mother’s death, the warmth and love in her home seemed to vanish. Her mind was made up. She was deeply in love and she would marry. Her father was furious and frightened by her decision. He begged her to reconsider. What could this adventurer offer her? Who would protect her, he challenged? Mama ignored his dire predictions for her future.² Weary of their tirades, she moved to Chicago where she boarded with her Aunt Nellie and worked a summer job at Railway Express Company. Daddy was lecturing to schools in the Milwaukee area at that time. He was staying at a hotel there when he was struck down by the flu pandemic of 1918-1919.³ Mama rushed to his side and nursed him back to health.

A short thirteen months after her mother’s death, on June 16 1918, the old maid schoolteacher married the scoundrel in a hotel room in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her family bonds were severed, and never completely rewoven.

Daddy took her far from her world of teaching, theater, and parlor music to the little town of Somerset Center, nestled in the Irish Hills of Michigan. There they lived and loved and she bore him ten children.

In mother’s Victorian family, little emotion had been shown. Hers had been a lonely childhood. Her siblings were grown women with families of their own. She viewed her father as cold and distant. She believed he resented her for being another girl instead of the longed for son.

There were to be no hugs or kisses for her children either. She just did not know how, but there were always her songs. Mother would come to the bed of any restless or sick child who called. I almost hear her now, one song blending into another until sleep arrived. As we waited she sat by my side with her songs.

She was nearby when each of her many grandchildren were born. They too would be lulled to sleep by her songs. I sang her songs to my children and grandchildren.

Each night, her children would kneel at her side for evening prayers. Prayers over, Mama would sing to us. We were often lulled to sleep by this long ago memory of her lullaby.

Oh the little, white sheep and the little black sheep

Have all gone to sleep in the fold.

And little ones too, must do as lambs do,

They must all go to sleep in the fold.

Nothing is black, nothing is white,

When the kind old night,

Hides them all out of sight.

Nothing is hungry, nothing is cold,

When they once go to sleep in the fold.

Daddy sang to us but his songs never put us to sleep. His songs, many sung to him by his immigrant grandmother, seemed to echo down the years from across the ocean. His baritone voice filled the air with old words and melodies. Listening, we seemed transported to the Highlands of Scotland, to another world and distant days. In memory I hear him singing this old song once again. One of his favorites was Blue Bells of Scotland

Oh, where, and oh where, is your highland Laddie gone

⁴He’s gone to fight the foes for King George across the foam

And it’s oh in my heart, that I wish him safe at home.

Oh where, tell me where, did your Highland Laddie dwell?

Oh where, tell me where, did your Highland Laddie dwell?

He dwells in Bonnie Scotland, where blooms the sweet blue bell

And it’s oh in my heart that I loved my Laddie well

Suppose and suppose that your bonnie lad should die

Suppose and suppose that your bonnie lad should die,

The bagpipes would play o’er me and I’d lay me Doon and cry

But its’ oh, in my heart that I wish my Laddie well.

We enjoyed the stories in the ballads, but enjoyed even more his songs that sat our feet to tapping. Whether or not they were intended as dances, they were interpreted so at our house. I find myself smiling at the memories of daddy’s renditions in song and dance.

Did you ever see a lassie?

A lassie, a lassie,

Did you ever see a lassie?

Go this way and that and this

And this way and that.

Then, suddenly, you were in his arms being whirled around the room! One song followed