Coffee and Cupid

By Elizabeth Pulliam

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781684099580

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Coffee and

Cupid

Coffee and

Cupid

Elizabeth Pulliam

Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth Pulliam

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-68409-957-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68409-958-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

To my husband, Drewey, you helped wherever you could and pushed me to finish the book. I appreciate your persistence and your patience with late dinners and telling me not to give up. I love you.

To my lovely daughter, Elizabeth, who grew up to be a strong, independent, and caring person. You have made your mark in this life. I love you.

To my grandson Bobby, who says such funny things. I love you. I wish you much happiness. Follow your bliss.

To my grandson Sammy, who has grown up into a fine young, caring man. I am very proud of you and love you. Always be true to yourself.

To my best friend, Jane, who is always up no matter how bad things are and who is always there for me. My love and thanks always.

To my friend Shirlene, we share a lot of things: our laughing and crying, our personal talks. I will always remember. I love you.

To my friend Alice, who is always there to help, always thoughtful and caring. Love ya.

Thank you, Bobbie, who put this work into book form and encouraged me toward the end when I needed it.

And to all the wonderful people whom I have met along the path of this life that I chose. Those choices I made in my life were good for that time, whatever they were, good or bad. But when they were bad, I alone was the one hurt. I was hurt by people a lot of times, but that’s okay. I learned a lot. I learned never to do those things again and never to trust 100 percent. Once burned is enough. One learns not to do or go there again. From a very poor kid growing up to having a lot (I didn’t get the whole pie, but I do have half of it), I have had a wonderful life.

Always have fun. Enjoy life. God wants us to be happy. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone. I was always into things for the fun. Smile!

Poems, Prayers, and Promises

And talk of poems and prayers

And promises and things that we believe in

How good it is to love someone

How right it is to care

How long it’s been since yesterday

What about tomorrow

What about our dreams and

All the memories we share

John Denver

Chapter 1

Westchester

It was the Great Depression when I was growing up. I was born in 1927 in a small town, Westchester, Pennsylvania. Of course, it’s not small today in 2015. It’s like other places; it grew and grew. My father had a dairy farm with cows, goats, chickens, ducks, cats and dogs, and three horses—two plow horses and one riding horse. As little as I was at two years old, my father would always put me in front of him and take me for a ride around the farm. I loved that. My father shared his love of animals with me. My love for all animals started then and is still the same today.

We had a hired man; he lived there on the farm. Dad fixed a room in the barn for him, but he took his meals with us. My father sold milk to the local stores and people. It was a good life. Then my world changed. The crash of 1929 hit everyone. The banks closed; people were jumping off high buildings, killing themselves. My father and mother lost the farm. Losing the farm was a sad thing, but in the coming years, I would think that for me it was a good thing.

My folks moved to New Jersey, as did many others. The Depression, for me, as little as I was and growing up in it, was a great learning experience. There was no work. There was no money to speak of. We had potbelly stoves, three of them. My father came to New Jersey first to find a place to live. He found his way to Somerville and got a job at the Duke estate, the rich tobacco man. The couple had a little girl named Doris, an only child.

Chapter 2

Somerville

We lived in Somerville for a while. It was 1930. I was three and a half years old. My brother John was born in the hospital there. We lived there until I was five years old and John was three. Then we moved. We moved all around the great state of New Jersey in those years. I learned at a very early age how to pack and wrap boxes for moving. I lived in so many towns, went to so many different schools, and met so many different people of all different faiths and cultures and nationalities. But we were all helpful to one another no matter what we were or what we believed in. We all went to our own church, but we walked along together.

Hoover was president. And he didn’t do anything much to help us get out of the Great Depression. We did not have much to eat, so we drank a lot of water. I did not have much to wear—a few little dresses and a pair of shoes that my father put leather soles on when he had a nickel to spare. We cut our own hair and took a bath once a week in a big round metal tub of hot water. Mom would heat the water on a big old black wood or coal stove, using whatever fuel Dad could get. With all that, we were happy. Most people were happy—young, old, children, everyone growing up.

Then we moved again.

Chapter 3

Hopewell

We ended up in Hopewell, New Jersey, where my father got a job as a machinist in a small factory there. We lived in a semidouble house. Things were good for us there for a while. His boss would sometimes invite us for Sunday dinners. They had a big mulberry bush, and once while John and I were playing near it and the folks were talking, John got into the mulberry bush. He got blue all over his white outfit, and I got scolded for not watching him.

My sister was born in our house there. She weighed ten pounds and five ounces! The lady next door delivered her. They were talking about a big baby, and I was thinking, Here I go again, another one to watch. As the years would come, I would have three more to watch and help with, as all the other children had to do as they grew. A short time after the baby came, my father got laid off and the factory closed.

After World War I, 1932, my father found work as a singer with his two sisters. They sang in clubs in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and in Vaudeville. On the radio in the ’30s was a show with a Mr. Bows—Major Bows. He would start his evening show saying as he spun the wheel, Around and around she goes, where she stops nobody knows. Major Bows had a talent show, and my father got on and won; he got a job singing in a club in New York for three weeks. The night he came home, we were all so happy. He also got a big long bologna. It was the biggest long piece of meat I ever saw. Mom made us and the next-door people sandwiches and coffee. For the next three weeks, we could stay in the house.

One Sunday my father walked me downtown to Sunday school. I had a new blue frilly dress on. He told me he would be back to get me when they came for church. As I came out from Sunday school, there were three big boys walking in back of me. I started walking home because my father wasn’t there. He was on his way, but I didn’t know that. As I went to step off the curb to cross the street, which had a lot of water and mud in it, one of the boys pushed me down into the water. My dress got all wet and muddy. I started crying, and the boys were laughing and making fun of me. Then there was my father. He picked me up and they stopped laughing. He asked me which one pushed me. I told him I didn’t know because they were walking behind me. My father asked me if I knew where they lived; I said no. He asked some people there and they told him. The boys had taken off running away. My mother was holding my sister and brother and said, I’ll take her home and clean her up. My father said, No, I’m taking her to their house.

The boys lived on the other end of town. We walked all the way, and when we got there, a lady was washing clothes on a board in a tub. She took in washing and she had five boys. She was the biggest, heaviest person I had ever seen. My father told her who he was and that one of her boys had pushed me in the mud puddle. She wanted to know which one. Father told her we didn’t know. She said she would take care of it. Then she wanted to wash my dress, but my father told her, My wife will take care of it. The next time they want to push somebody, come and try me. They will never push anyone else when I get through with them, and we left. Father heard the next day that their mother beat them all.

Soon our three weeks were up and we moved to Mt. Rose, outside of Hopewell Town, in the country on a big farm with a big old farmhouse and big old barn. We didn’t have any farm animals. My father got two big black chow dogs, and because the lane was long up to the house, he put one chow on each side of the lane, halfway down, on chains so long, they could get anyone.

While there, my father got a job at the Lindburg estate doing yard work or whatever had to be done. A man who worked there steady was named Mr. Hoffman, and he spoke German. My father could speak German, so they talked as much as Mr. Hoffman would. My father told Mom it wasn’t much. He just worked and told my father what needed to be done. The Lindburgs had a little blond blue-eyed baby boy who was sometimes outside in the playpen. He couldn’t stand up. I heard my father tell my mother he wished he could bring little Charlie home and feed him some good potato soup. The baby couldn’t stand because he had rickets. Lindy (Mr. Lindburg) would play tricks on his wife—he would take the baby and hide him and tell her he was missing. He would hide him in the closet or other such places. She would cry and carry on, and then he would pretend he found him. The old mountain people in the area didn’t like him, but they put up with him as some of them worked in the house. Many years later, people would find out the secrets he had and what he believed in, his help to Hitler, and the war that he helped fund, even the secret family that he had in Germany and that he believed in only Aryan people.

One day Father came home early from work. Mom asked, What happened? I hope you didn’t lose your job. He told her no, but Baby Charlie had been kidnapped and the state police were there. They found a handmade ladder and took Mr. Hoffman away. Everyone was out looking for the baby. Money was paid, but no one ever found the baby or the money or who really did it. The old mountain people said Lindy did it. They said it may have been one of his hide-and-seek games with the baby, and going down the ladder, he dropped little Charlie and maybe the baby got a broken neck. The nurse, Betty, left shortly after that and went back overseas. No one ever heard from her again.

Then one day a black man started up our lane. The chows were carrying on loudly, so my father walked down the lane to ask what he wanted. The man asked, Do you have a phone? My father said, No, why? He explained that he had stopped his truck to cross the ditch and got up the little hill on the edge of the woods to pee, and there under a little tree was a baby. My father went with him to look. He told the man, I know that baby. It’s Charlie, the missing Lindburg baby. He told the man to go into town and call the state police (they were the only police available back then), which he did. My father walked back up to the house and told my mom and his sister, who was visiting. Mom, Aunt Ellen, Father, and I all walked back to the spot. While we waited for the state police, My Aunt Ellen carved her name and mine on the tree. The state police came. Soon a big trial started. It was held in Flemington, New Jersey. My father went every day. Soon the trial was over, and Mr. Hoffman was electrocuted in Trenton, New Jersey. He always said he didn’t do it, and the mountain people believed him. They all said it was a joke gone wrong and wondered at the nurse leaving right away. A few months later, I asked my father who may have gotten the money. He said maybe Lindy got it back. Soon the Lindburgs moved from the mountain.

Perhaps because Charlie wasn’t what Lindy thought his Aryan son should be, the baby paid the price because of what someone else made important, that their genes weren’t what they should be or what he thought they should be. I’ve learned that no one is made perfect. Everyone has something wrong with them. Sadly, Charlie’s rickets could have been fixed. Walking to school the day after they found baby Charlie, all the kids were talking to me, even kids I never talked to. It made me feel sort of special, but I felt it was wrong because of little Charles. A sad price to pay.

Years later, I took a ride past the school where I went so long ago, where I learned so many things. I even learned to tie my shoes on the back stoop of our house in Hopewell. The school is still there and still looks the same. The farm on Mt. Rose is still there with the old barn in the back. It looked like the people who live there now have chickens and small horses. There is no more little hill or gully. A lot of homes have been built on that road now.

Soon we moved to a small town called Rocky Hill.

.

Chapter 4

Rocky Hill

Dad had no job after the Lindburgs moved in 1935. I was eight years old. Mom and Dad found a place in Rocky Hill, New Jersey. It was upstairs over a theater that had live performances. We climbed twenty steps going up the side of the building. I was nine when my brother Charles—we called him Chick—was born at the Somerville Hospital. We lived there for a while, the six of us.

At the end of February 1936, we had a lot of snow. Then I heard my mom tell my dad, We need a bigger house. My father saw a big house for rent near the Point, across from the church, with a big field next to it. The owner was an older man, who lived in one half of the house. He was Italian and spoke some English.

At school once a year, a doctor and his nurse would come to the school and give everyone their shots. A dentist and his nurse also came and looked at and pulled or filled each child’s teeth. They weren’t very gentle with either the teeth or the children, so of course a lot of the little ones cried. I felt sorry for them and wondered why a big person couldn’t take a little more time with them and be gentle with all of us, really. But we were all poor, and I guess they really didn’t care. I imagine that’s why all my life I’ve been afraid to go to the dentist. I had a bad tooth. The needle that dentist put into my gum to numb the area was roughly given and didn’t take too well. It hurt so bad when he pulled and yanked on my back tooth. I wanted to cry, but I had heard the things his nurse said about being a baby, so I didn’t cry then, but I asked to go outside to the outhouse because my mouth was bleeding. Alone, I cried as I held a piece of Sears and Roebuck paper to my mouth. After a while, I went back into my class.

We had a big red brick school house. Each room had three different classes in it with one teacher, and it was very quiet. Grades 1–3, 4–6, and 7 and 8 were upstairs. I was in the third grade. We were taught everything, not like today where they teach only a few things. Most of the kids walked to school. It was a nice little town. We didn’t move until I