This is an interview with Ruth Schoenly for In the Age of Steel: Oral Histories from Bethlehem Pennsylvania. The interview was conducted by Stephen R. Falken, Jr. on August 7, 1978 in Boyertown, Pennsylvania.

Falken: I’m here at the home of Mrs. Norman H. Schoenly, 14 North Monroe Street, Boyertown, Pa. 19512. The date is the 7th of August, 1978. My name’s Steve Falken. Posey (sp?), when were you born?

Schoenly: January 29th, 1904.

Falken: And where?

Schoenly: I was born on East Philadelphia Avenue [Boyertown, Pennsylvania], but I don’t know the number of the house.

Falken: Was the house a single?

Schoenly: It was a double house, and I don’t know when we moved to Chestnut Street [Boyertown, Pennsylvania],, ‘cause, well, I was just a baby. So then we lived on Chestnut Street. That’s when Boyertown Opera House fire1 was. So we lived there for awhile. I remember looking out the front window and seeing the flames, but other than that, I don’t remember just what people told me about it.

Falken: How many times did you move in your lifetime, do you remember?

Schoenly: Let’s see. Third Street [Boyertown], to, well, we moved to my grandmother’s then after the fire, that’s three times, and then we lived there awhile, and then we moved up in Reading Avenue [Boyertown],in a little white house. And that was four, then we moved to Third Street. No, then we moved to Washington Street [Boyertown],, and then to Third Street, and then to Monroe Street [Boyertown], where we’ve been ever since.

Falken: Do you remember what it was like living with your grandmother? Do you remember how long you lived with her?

Schoenly: Not too, just a few years. And then we moved to this little house in the—the miners had lived in it before. There were a number of houses on Reading Avenue where the ore miners had lived, but that was closed.

Falken: Where did they mine ore?

1 Refers to the Rhoads Opera House located in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. This was the site of a famous fire that broke out in 1908 in which people were trapped on the second floor due to a lack of exits.

00:00:00

Schoenly: Oh, it was on, let’s see, what street is that? Well, it’s over towards Englesville [Pennsylvania], and there were fields from Reading Avenue, that’s where we lived all the way over to the mine you could see that. And they did start up working again, but there was too much water in, and it cost too much, so they stopped trying to mine it. (Interruption in recording)

Falken: Do you remember when the mines started up again?

Schoenly: No, I don’t. I don’t remember that at all. And it was all open field across from us, and above us there was a great big field, kids used to play baseball there, and there were some small homes up above it the miners had lived in, too, but they’re all torn down now. But now it’s built up and there’s a garage across the street, and a large home, and a store, and a double home, and then the firehouse is up at the corner.

Falken: Do you remember seeing the miners coming home from work at all as a small—?

Schoenly: No, they weren’t mining when we moved up there. Just when they started up again, then there weren’t too many working their neither, because they were just getting it ready. And I think that a man was killed in the elevator, something didn’t work, so then they just, well, they just didn’t work it anymore.

Falken: Now you had said about moving into your grandparents’ house after the opera house fire, which grandparents were they? Were they your mother’s parents?

Schoenly: My mother’s mother, my grandfather was dead. And then a couple of my aunts lived there, too, and my mother worked. Then we moved up in Reading Avenue, across from the mines and we were there until 1919, then we moved down to my grandmother on Washington Street. She had moved in the meantime, and we lived there then until we moved on Third Street. That’s where I was married then. Then after that, we moved down here and now we’re down here. I forget how many years, 29?.

Falken: I think you said 1949 you moved down here. Well, what did your grandmother do? Did she work outside the home or was she a housewife?

Schoenly: No. Hm-mm.

Falken: And your aunts?

Schoenly: Well, they worked.

Falken: Do you remember what they did?

00:05:02

Schoenly: The one worked in the casket factory and the one worked in the cigar factory. And then the one was a cripple so she couldn’t work. She worked at home, but she didn’t go out to work.

Falken: Could you give me your mother’s name?

Schoenly: Katie Moyer. She was Katie Coleman.

Falken: What about your aunts, what were their names?

Schoenly: Aunt Agnes, Aunt Mamie, Aunt Sally, Aunt Clara, Aunt Edith, and then I had three uncles, Uncle Sam, Uncle George and Uncle Bill, but they’re all gone.

Falken: Were they all Colemans?

Schoenly: Yeah, they were my mother’s sisters and brothers.

Falken: What about Mrs. Moyer, when you moved in with your grandmother, did she work, did she always work in her life outside the home?

Schoenly: Well, after the opera house fire, yes. Well, then when we moved to Reading Avenue, she made suits for men at home for the casket factory. That was very hard on her eyes, because they were black, but she’d done that. And then when we were old enough, why she went to the factory though, and worked in the factory.

Falken: When were you old enough?

Schoenly: Well, we were in high school. At that time, they didn’t let little kids stay home alone.

Falken: But then from say the opera house fire until you were in high school, she just made the suits at home, she didn’t work in the casket factory at all?

Schoenly: No. But she had worked at another—I don’t know where she worked before we moved to this little white house. She worked somewhere but I don’t remember where. I was just four years old and my memory isn’t too clear.

Falken: Since we’re on the subject of the opera house fire, you said you saw the flames coming out of the windows.

Schoenly: Mm-hm.

Falken: What have people told you about the fire and can you remember anything else in regards—

00:07:36

Schoenly: Oh, I know there was a lot of commotion, but I was too little. I was four. But they got money from other states and one man came he wanted to adopt me and take me back to New York, but my mother wouldn’t permit that at all, but—

Falken: Do you remember him coming to the house at all?

Schoenly: No. She just told me that.

Falken: Do you remember the fire engines coming to put the fire out at all?

Schoenly: Well, see we didn’t live on Philadelphia Avenue Boyertown, Pennsylvania], we lived on Chestnut Street.

Falken: But you couldn’t have heard the bells?

Schoenly: You could hear the bells, yes. And they had brought some engines over on a flatbed; I guess that’s what they called it from Pottstown [Pennsylvania] by train.

Falken: Oh, your father was in the opera house.

Schoenly: He was. Mm-hm.

Falken: But you and your mother and your brother stayed home.

Schoenly: Yes, we would have been there, too, but my grandmother was going to keep us, and she took sick, so we didn’t go. We were going the next night. But we didn’t.

Falken: What did your father do? Was he in the play or did he operate one of the machines?

Schoenly: No, he was in the play, and they said that, someone told her that he was out, and went back to help carry the cooler lights out, but she doesn’t believe it. She thinks he would have come home instead of going back again, so I don’t know.

Falken: Was your father identified?

Schoenly: Yes, he was. My aunt identified him.

Falken: Which one was that?

Schoenly: Aunt Agnes.

Falken: Where was the temporary morgue?

Schoenly: In the Washington School Building2. Yeah, it was close to where we lived.

Falken: Do you remember the lines coming in and out of the building?

Schoenly: No, I don’t remember that.

Falken: Did you go to his funeral? I know Unc said he didn’t go to his mother's.

Schoenly: I suppose so, but that I don’t know either.

Falken: What kind of childhood experiences, now you were four years old when this happened, do you have any better memories of childhood?

Schoenly: Oh, yes. We had lots of fun. There was a little girl that lived next to my grandmother and we were pals for years. And one day I remember her father was a plumber, so we got in his shop and we painted our hands, the two hands, each of us, then we took a walk. So I was losing my hair ribbon, well, we couldn’t fix it, and we couldn’t pick it up, so some lady came along and she fixed my hair ribbon. That I remember. And then I know I fell out of the hammock at their place and I had a hole in my head that time.

Falken: Hole in your head?

Schoenly: Yep. But they didn’t take me to the hospital. They didn’t take you to the hospital at that time. So my mother dressed it and it got, well, there’s a little lump there yet, but that’s all.

Falken: You say you didn’t go to the hospital; did the doctor ever come to the house?

Schoenly: Oh, there was a doctor that lived across the street and they took me over there, so he dressed it, Dr. Borneman3 (sp?).

Falken: What about your mother, did she have any home remedies to fix you up?

Schoenly: I don’t remember what she used anymore, but it was all right then afterwards. 2 An elementary school located in Boyertown, Pennsylvania.

3 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

00:10:19

Falken: Who was this little girl that you—

Schoenly: Hester Camille (sp?).

Falken: Is she still living?

Schoenly: Yes, she’s living in California now. She had lived around here, but they moved out there. Her parents are dead and her brother.

Falken: What about games that you played as a kid?

Schoenly: Oh, Run Sheepy Run4, and hiding and jumping rope, what else did we play, well, the boys played ball in that big field above us.

Falken: Did they let the girls play?

Schoenly: I guess the girls didn’t play it at that time. I don’t think so. And I know we had a great big cherry tree at the end of our yard. Our yard went from Reading Avenue to Walnut Street and this tree was in the back, and that was just loaded with black cherries and they were good, so a lot of people came to pick cherries. Some asked, but some didn’t ask.

Falken: Oh, so it was on your property.

Schoenly: Yeah. Mm-hm. It was ours. And we had banded chickens.

Falken: Chickens in town?

Schoenly: Oh, sure. That was good many years ago, Stevie. (chuckles)

Falken: Did you raise any other animals?

Schoenly: No. Our neighbor had a cat, and we had a lot of fun with that cat.

Falken: I don’t think that story got on tape, would you tell it?

4 A children's game in which one team, called the sheep, are taken on an elaborate path and hidden. The second team, called the searchers, were then to follow a map to find the sheep. The goal was for the sheep to return home without being found.

Schoenly: Oh, didn’t it?

Falken: No.

Schoenly: Oh. He was a miner, and he lived three doors from us. This cat came to their place, and well, we started playing with it. We’d dress it up in our doll clothes and put it in the go-cart and take it for a ride. And it stayed in. It seemed to enjoy it. So one Sunday morning, it was over at this rail fence, and it was trying to catch its tail and it just went around and around and around, so a lot of people were entertained before they went to Sunday school that morning.

Falken: What was the cat’s name?

Schoenly: Oh, we just called her kitty. She never got a name. And then she disappeared, we don’t know what ever happened to her. So we were sorry that she disappeared.

Falken: Going back to some other games, though, what was Run Sheepy Run? I never heard of that one.

Schoenly: I don’t remember, Stevie, but I know we played it. And then we played with dolls and jacks and things like that.

Falken: Did you have your own doll?

Schoenly: Oh, my yes, I had a whole lot of dolls.

Falken: What kind were they? Not like today’s dolls.

Schoenly: Well, no. I do have one that I got when I was, oh, I don’t know, about six years old. She’s all apart, but I have, and her hair is still pretty. And then I had rag dolls and other— other dolls.

Falken: Could you describe some of the dolls like what they were made of?

Schoenly: Oh, no, I can’t Stevie.

Falken: Were the dolls made for you? Did people make dolls around there or did you go to buy them in the store?

Schoenly: Well, I didn’t buy them, they were given to me.

Falken: Do you remember for what occasions?

Schoenly: Oh, birthdays and Christmas and oh, they’d give them to me any time. So I had quite a family of them.

00:14:45

Falken: Do you remember any special doll that you got on a special day?

Schoenly: Well, this big doll that was the prettiest one I had. And then there was one that had hair, and we used to fix this doll’s hair, oh, lots of different ways. So finally she was broken, and we kept the wig and played with the wig. (chuckles) We’d spend a lot of time doing that.

Falken: Mrs. Campbell and you?

Schoenly: No, no. Well, Hester, yes, and Dot Hartman (sp?), she, uh, lived near us. We played together a lot. And then there was a farm down, oh, just about a half block away from us. They had a farmer and the people lived in a big house and in the back was a farm house.

Falken: Did they raise animals or just crops?

Schoenly: They had cows and chickens, and he farmed the land, because all of that ground down in there was vacant. That just started being built, oh, a long time after we had moved away from there. It was all open country. Not like today. And then we had a good candy store up at the corner, and you would have liked the penny candy.

Falken: What could you buy for a penny back then?

Schoenly: Oh, my goodness, you could get anything. And they had lots of different kinds, too, but then they had good candy, too. But that we didn’t get until we were older, until we were in high school.

Falken: Can you describe some of the candy?

Schoenly: Oh, spearmint sticks, and then we’d stick, cut a piece out of the orange and stick the spearmint stick in it, and, uh, oh, peanut butter candy, I don’t know, yeah, they had some chocolate drops, I think a penny a piece, mints. I don’t remember all the different, Jujubes. I didn’t like those though.

Falken: Did they have licorice?

Schoenly: Licorice, yes, they had that. That I liked. And that was good and soft.

Falken: You say you got one chocolate drop for a penny, could you get more than one item for a penny or is it just one piece of candy for a penny?

00:16:32

00:17:37

Schoenly: Oh, some things you got more than a piece for a penny, but some, some you didn’t, some were a penny apiece. And then there was a big grocery store just catty-corner across the street from this candy store, and they sold a lot of different things besides groceries, so that’s where we’d done most of our shopping, except for meat.

Falken: What other things did they sell at the grocery store?

Schoenly: Oh, they had some clothing, buckets and things like that.

Falken: Do you remember the name of the store?

Schoenly: That was Sheeler’s (sp?) Store5.

Falken: What about the candy store?

Schoenly: Hoof, well, we called him Hoofy (sp?), his name was Huffman (sp?). They were there a long time.

Falken: Where did you go to get the meat then, if you couldn’t get it there?

Schoenly: Well, there was a butcher back on Reading Avenue where the post office is now. And they’ve done their own butchering, so we got it back there. And then the butcher came around those days. You didn’t have to go to the store if you didn’t want to, because I think he came Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. They had a lot on their wagon.

Falken: What about the flies and everything, was it encased?

Schoenly: Well, no, it wasn’t encased. I guess you took the meat with the flies and all. Oh, yeah, I don’t, as I remember it it wasn’t too bad, because even then we lived down here we had a butcher come and it wasn’t bad at all with flies.

Falken: What about the candy store, did he just sell candy?

Schoenly: No, he had ice cream, too.

Falken: What a soda fountain?

Schoenly: No, ice cream and peanuts, that was a specialty of his. It smelled great when he was making peanuts.

5 Project staff were unable to identify this place.

Falken: Did you ever get free hand-outs over at the candy store?

Schoenly: Oh, once in a while. Not too often. I think there was a milliner’s store up a little farther. Then there was another store where his specialty was fried oysters. And he had some candy, too, but on a Friday and Saturday there were a lot of people there eating fried oysters. I wasn’t there, because I didn’t like them.

Falken: Did your mother like fried oysters?

Schoenly: She liked them and Paul liked them, too.

Falken: Now something I forgot, your brother, his name was—

Schoenly: Paul. And he graduated in 1919, and he went out to Carnegie Tech6, so he lived in Pittsburgh ever since then until he passed away about, oh, I guess about four years ago.

Falken: He went to college though?

Schoenly: Mm-hm. Carnegie Tech.

Falken: What did he do after he graduated from college?

Schoenly: He worked with the electrical companies. That was his line of work.

Falken: How did he get to college? Did your mother send him through or did he get a scholarship?

Schoenly: No, he borrowed the money, and then it was paid back. No, she didn’t have the money to send him to college. And that time, you didn’t get any grants or scholarships either.

Falken: Just a loan.

Schoenly: Mm-hm.

Falken: So your brother lived in town 19 years. Do you have any remembrances of him? Was he a good brother to you?

6 Originally started as a technical school for the sons of local steel workers, this university, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is regarded as one of the best engineering schools in the United States.

00:21:46

Schoenly: Oh, sure. We have our scraps, and one time, that’s the worst thing I’d ever done to him, he had a nice ball and I stuck a pin in it. I was mad at him.

Falken: Why were you mad at him?

Schoenly: I don’t remember. Like brothers and sisters do, they have scraps. And I was awfully sorry I had done it, and I still think about it sometimes.

Falken: Nothing happened to you because you put the—

Schoenly: Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I was punished, but I don’t remember what was done, so— (chuckles)

Falken: What else can you remember about him?

Schoenly: Well.

Falken: He was how many years older than you?

Schoenly: Two. So he was like the brothers are. He was bright in school. He was the president of his class in high school. Well, he sold bread.

Falken: He sold bread?

Schoenly: Someone made a box for him about this long, and he’d put the bread in that, and put it on an express wagon, and it was delicious bread, because he’d get it when it was hot. It was good. And then he sold peanuts for this Hoofy (sp?), the one that had the candy store. He’d go to the casket factory on a Friday and Saturday and then sell it as they came out, so he sold a lot of peanuts that way. I don’t think we went from door to door, just to the casket factory.

Falken: Did he have any job before that? How old was he, do you remember?

Schoenly: Oh, I don’t know, I guess he was in high school when he’d done that.

Falken: But that was his first job?

Schoenly: As far as I remember, yeah.

Falken: Who did he tag around with in town, what did he do for entertainment?

Schoenly: Oh, well, there wasn’t just too much to do, so he’d play ball. There were some boys that he used to go around with, but I don’t remember what they done.

Falken: Did they ever take his baby sister any place?

Schoenly: Oh, I suppose. We went to Sunday School and church I know. At that time, I don’t think we went to the movies. Well, as we got older we did, but not when we were real small.

Falken: Going back to you—

Schoenly: Oh, yes, I must tell you this, too, and then they’d bring droves of cows through town, and they’d come up Reading Avenue and there was a high bank where we lived, and these cows would even come up that bank and go in this empty lot, so when we saw cows coming, we scooted in the house, because I don’t like cows. (chuckles)

Falken: But you like horses?

Schoenly: No, I do not. At a distance they’re all right. Mm-hm.

Falken: I guess the last story we talked about was the oyster store. I’ve heard people talk about the Greeks.

Schoenly: Oh, well, that was down on Philadelphia Avenue near the railroad, and they had a very nice store, large, and they had a restaurant and in the front they had candy galore. It was a long shop, and oh, your mouth surely did water when you walked through that store. And then they had fried oysters. That’s where Norman used to go to get his oysters. Three for 10 or 25 cents, I forget which it was, but it was cheap at that time.

Falken: Did the Greeks move into town say after you were born or were they there?

Schoenly: Well, some had been there quite awhile, a shoemaker shop, but these I think had just come over, because they spoke very broken English. The man’s wife, I don’t know whether she could speak English. The daughter and son could, but they were children and I guess they had learned in school probably, but it was a very nice store.

Falken: What about say Saturday nights when you were small, did you do anything special?

Schoenly: Oh, everybody went up town then. People would be sitting out, then you’d stop at one step and talk, and stop at another step and talk. That’s how we spent Saturday night. And then a lot of people went shopping, too.

00:26:07

Falken: Were all the stores open in town?

Schoenly: Yes. Mm-hm. That was a big night.

Falken: What about say could you go grocery shopping Saturday night? Was that better than any other day?

Schoenly: Well, we just went Saturday night. I don’t know why.

Falken: Did you get bargains Saturday night?

Schoenly: No. Hm-mm. No, they didn’t have sales like they do now.

Falken: I meant in terms of like refrigeration?

Schoenly: Well, we had no electric refrigerator. We had ice in our refrigerator. At that time, there weren’t so many electric refrigerators.

Falken: Were the movies in town then?

Schoenly: No. First they had an open air movie, and I don’t know when they built this theater, but it wasn’t when I was real small. It was built when I was in high school, I know that, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you.

Falken: Did the church sponsor a lot of activities for (inaudible)?

Schoenly: No. Hm-mm.

Falken: Just went to Sunday school.

Schoenly: Sunday school, mm-hm.

Falken: Did they have picnics, Sunday school picnics?

Schoenly: Oh, yes, that was a big event. We had them over in the where the community park is now, and each church would have a real long table, and then each one was supposed to take some band members for their supper, and there was food, believe me, loads and loads of it. Then the band would have a concert in the afternoon and in the evening, and they had a booth there where they sold candy, a lot of candy. I think they had watermelons, too, if I’m not mistaken, but I don’t remember that they had hotdogs.

00:29:58

Falken: No ice cream?

Schoenly: Yes, ice cream. Mm-hm.

Falken: Did all the churches have their picnic at one time?

Schoenly: Yes, mm-hm.

Falken: The tables were really—

Schoenly: Real long, yeah.

Falken: And each of you took something along?

Schoenly: Each one took, well, they took a good bit of—we’d take it in a wash basket, that’s how much food each one would usually bring.

Falken: What would you bring?

Schoenly: Oh, potato salad and meat for sandwiches and pickled cabbage and red beets and cake and, well, fruit. They had a good supply of food and they always had a lot left.

Falken: Any particular thing you liked best?

Schoenly: Oh, I liked potato salad and sandwiches and ice cream the best.

Falken: Let’s talk about your education. Before that, what about church? Did you go to church every Sunday?

Schoenly: Yes. We went to the Methodist church that, was down on Philadelphia Avenue, but then I joined the Reformed Church, because, oh, the girls I went out with belonged to the Reformed church so I went up there. Then the Methodist church closed some years later because it didn’t have enough members and they merged with the Evangelical church at New Berlinville [Pennyslvania]. But I guess Paul, he joined the Methodist church, he didn’t join the Reformed. It was just a little, old church and not many members, so it became too much for them to keep up. That’s why they merged then. And people were dying that had belonged to it. There weren’t many Methodists in Boyertown. The miners had been, most of them had been Methodists, I guess that’s the reason they built the church.

Falken: Were you confirmed in the Reformed Church?

00:32:02

Schoenly: Reformed. Mm-hm. Right.

Falken: Did you always listen to the sermons on say Sunday mornings?

Schoenly: Well, sure, Steve. Except when my mind started to wander. We had one preacher that he preached about an hour, so that of course became quite boring, but he was an elderly man and I guess they were used to preaching that long. He was Methodist.

Falken: What about—did they have fans in church back then?

Schoenly: Fans? No. They had the windows open.

Falken: No hand fans?

Schoenly: Well, you took your own.

Falken: Oh, you took your own. That was permitted, you could fan yourself?

Schoenly: Oh, sure. And there’s a garage where that church had been.

Falken: Did they have any special events say at Thanksgiving or—?

Schoenly: Oh, they had a Christmas service, the children had, but not at Thanksgiving, I don’t think. I don’t remember any.

Falken: Were you in the Christmas service?

Schoenly: Oh, yeah.

Falken: Do you remember what you played, what part?

Schoenly: No. We either had a recitation or I used to sing with some of the kids, too.

Falken: You were in the choir?

Schoenly: They had no choir. It wasn’t large enough for a choir.

Falken: Did they have an organ or a piano?

Schoenly: It was an organ, but it was no electric organ. It was one that you have to manipulate yourself. Then they got a piano in later, years ago.

Falken: What about your education? Did you go to kindergarten?

Schoenly: We had no kindergarten.

Falken: So neither of you went to kindergarten?

Schoenly: No, and I went to— they had just built a new Lincoln School7 and it wasn’t quite finished when we moved on Reading Avenue, so I had to go to the Washington School for a short time, I think up until Christmas, and then we went in the new school, which was very nice, and it was close to where we lived. So, then the high school was in the Washington Building on the second floor.

Falken: Oh, second floor was just high school.

Schoenly: Just high school. Four rooms. And then they had the lab in the basement, so we didn’t get in the new high school.

Falken: What kind of classes did you take in high school? Could you choose what you wanted or—?

Schoenly: Well, different years you were to choose certain branches. I took German and French, of course, English, not algebra, commercial arithmetic, typing, things like that, history.

Falken: Do you remember any of your favorite teachers? Did you have a favorite teacher?

Schoenly: Oh, yeah, Miss Becker. She was a good teacher, very good. And then I had others that I liked too, of course, some I didn’t like, but—

Falken: What about Ms. Becker, was she tall?

Schoenly: Very tall and thin. And she wore real full skirts and they were long. They were down to the floor, but she was very bright. And everybody liked her.

Falken: When you say full skirt, she didn’t wear a hoop?

7 Built in 1909, this public grade school was located on West Philadelphia Avenue in Boyertown, Pennsylvania.

00:35:11

Schoenly: No, not a hoop skirt, but it was gathered at the waist and very, oh, should I say plain waists they called them that time.

Falken: Did they have big collars?

Schoenly: Yeah, high collar and long sleeves.

Falken: Even during the spring months?

Schoenly: Mm-hm. I think she always wore a long sleeve.

Falken: What about shoes?

Schoenly: Oh, she wore high shoes as I remember. Well, we wore high shoes, too, I believe at that time.

Falken: You didn’t have shoelaces, did you?

Schoenly: Sure, you had shoelaces, or button shoes.

Falken: What’s a button shoe?

Schoenly: What’s a button shoe? That’s a shoe that has buttons all the way up. It’s high, and well, I don’t know how many buttons are on, but there were enough. And the nice part was when they’d come off and you’d have to sew them on.

Falken: Who did that? You or your mother.

Schoenly: I don’t remember if I’d done it or if she done it.

Falken: Was Miss Becker say old when you had her or was she younger?

Schoenly: I really have no idea. She wore her hair in a big knot and she was an old maid. But I have no idea how old she was. I think she died sometime ago.

Falken: What did you do in the lab downstairs?

Schoenly: I didn’t take that.

Falken: You didn’t take lab. Did you have art at all?

Schoenly: Oh, yeah. We had art and music, but well, the group just stayed together. We had the singing in one room, that was it. We opened the school by singing a couple selections, and then he read the Bible, and then they dispersed to the other rooms.

Falken: What was your favorite subject?

Schoenly: Hm. I wouldn’t know. To tell you the truth, I didn’t like school too good. (chuckles)

Falken: Okay, that tells me a lot then. You didn’t like it. Did you have any unusual classmates in school?

Schoenly: Oh, yes, we had one that hunted skunks. And he sat in front of me in French class. And one day he came in and he must have been hunting skunks. Anyway, the teacher told him he could go home; it smelt terrible. So he was home a couple days I think that time. I guess they couldn’t get the smell off of him.

Falken: Do you know why he hunted skunks?

Schoenly: Well, I suppose to sell them. That’d be the only reason. You certainly wouldn’t keep them as a pet, although, some people I guess did.

Falken: When you were small, did you have any other pets besides kitty?

Schoenly: No.

Falken: Just her.

Schoenly: No, we had no dogs. Just the one we had after we were married.

Falken: What about graduation? I know Unc had an unusual graduation, but was there anything eventful about yours?

Schoenly: No. They had the class play at the theater, and we had graduation, oh, back in the Lutheran church, that’s where it was.

Falken: How many were in your class?

Schoenly: Twenty-seven. That’s all.

Falken: When you say you had the school play—

Schoenly: The school play was in the theater.

Falken: The movie theater.

Schoenly: Yeah. And let’s see where—class night was back there, too. But then the commencement was in the Lutheran church.

Falken: Were you in the class play?

Schoenly: Yeah, I was in it. I was secretary of the class, so I had to make a speech at commencement.

Falken: Were you nervous?

Schoenly: Well, yes, of course I was. It was a big church, so I was glad when that was over. Then I went to work after that at the casket factory.

Falken: Then this was 1919?

Schoenly: No, 1920. I graduated in ’20 [1920]. So after that, why we lived on Washington Street at that time, and then finally we moved over to Third Street. Then I started going out with Normie, and we were married over there. And we lived there then until ’29 [1929] when we moved down here.

Falken: You gave me a lot of questions. Was Unc your first suitor?

Schoenly: Oh, no, I had other boyfriends, too, but he was—I went with him steady then. But going to high school, I mean, different ones.

Falken: Where did they take you on dates?

Schoenly: Oh, sometimes the class had a picnic or they had bazaars in school. I never went to the movies with any of them not while I was in high school.

Falken: Did some of your boyfriends have cars?

Schoenly: No.

Falken: You didn’t go out in cars?

00:42:10

Schoenly: Hm-mm. One of the fellows, Earl Reeves8, you know him, he used his father’s car and the time we had a tornado he took us up to Amityville [New York], see it had blown the church over, so he took us up there, but he didn’t use the car to go to school. The kids walked to school from back in Bally, not every day, but they often walked. They walked on the railroad tracks to get to town and that was shorter that way. But now, of course, the kids are all bused to school and they drive just about a block, if they live a block away, they’ll have to drive to school.

Falken: Your boyfriends, did they ask you for a date in high school during classes or did they come to the house and ask?

Schoenly: No, uh-huh. They’d ask, you know, if we had a bazaar or anything. They’d ask if they could take you home. So that’s what you did. And we had to be in early.

Falken: Unc was your first real serious— Do you remember your first date with Unc?

Schoenly: Yes, we had been roller skating and a roller rink at Fourth and Madison [Boyertown, Pennsylvania], and he asked to take me home, so he always took me home after that. But then we had a tornado and it blew the roller rink over, so that ended the roller skating down there. Then we went to the Legion, but we didn’t like it there as well, so we stopped going.

Falken: Where did you get your roller skates? Do you remember? Did you always have a pair?

Schoenly: Yeah, we had, oh, yes, when I was a kid, I roller skated in the street and a guy was on a bicycle and he was going to get married and he was coming down on the wrong side of the street and he hit me and my face was very sore from it over here. See it was brick, and there wasn’t traffic like there is today or we wouldn’t have been in the street and the sidewalks were all brick, so we couldn’t go on there. So that’s— I'd skated before.

Falken: Now I know Unc liked to dance quite a bit. Did you go around with some of your girlfriends to dances like he did?

Schoenly: Hm-mm, never, I didn’t dance. No. So we went— Then another time he took me boating up at Spring Forge [Pennsylvania]. I guess that was really the first real date, because down here, well, he just took me home. And I remember he brought me a nice box of candy, so we went canoeing and that was nice, but I think it started to rain then, if I’m not mistaken So we were married then in ’25 [1925] and then six months after we were married he broke his arm and didn’t work for about a year and a half. And I worked in a store. It was my Sunday school teacher’s store and I helped her out for awhile.

8 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

Falken: What did they sell?

Schoenly: Mostly lingerie. And the lady she had working for her she had to go to the hospital, so I worked while she was out. So he had a badly broken arm, and he didn’t get back to work for quite awhile.

Falken: But before he broke his arm, did you work at the casket factory you said?

Schoenly: I worked at the casket factory, but I quit then before I was married. Then they did want me to come in though and help out, they were so busy, so I helped out at different times.

Falken: Do you remember when they were so busy?

Schoenly: I don’t know what year it was. I think it must have been around ’30 [1930] or ’31 [1931].

Falken: So Unc moved in with you—

Schoenly: On Third Street.

Falken: You and your mother?

Schoenly: Mm-hm. And then we lived there until we moved down here, which was ’29 [1929]. He had a nice big garden on Third Street. He had lots of beans and potatoes, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, it was a long yard.

Falken: Could you describe the house, was it single?

Schoenly: It was a single brick and it had one, two, three, four rooms downstairs, three were very large and one, two, three, four bedrooms upstairs and then a big attic, front stairway and a back stairway.

Falken: Like in the kitchen, do you remember what was in the kitchen? Did you have an icebox?

Schoenly: We had an icebox, yes. Well, it was a refrigerator that you put the ice in. See there were iceboxes, they were just like a box, but ours was a regular refrigerator and then they put the ice in.

Falken: Was this regular refrigerator electric?

Schoenly: No, no, you put the ice in it, and you had to watch so the water didn’t run over. You had to put a pan in the bottom, and of course, sometimes, you forgot to take that out, and the water ran over.

00:48:02

00:49:13

Falken: What else did you have in your kitchen, did you have a—?

Schoenly: Just a sink and the stove was in another room in back, and we had a table in there and a cupboard, but where the refrigerator was that room was very large there was a sink in that.

Falken: What type of stove did you have?

Schoenly: Coal range.

Falken: A coal range?

Schoenly: A coal range, yeah. Burned coal. You carried it up from the cellar and took the ashes out. Lots of fun.

Falken: It was better than wood, though?

Schoenly: Well, sometimes we had to use wood when the fire went out, but ordinarily we used coal.

Falken: Now, did you do most of the cooking and cleaning and stuff or did your mother help you?

Schoenly: Oh, she helped, but she worked, too. But she would do some of the cooking, especially over the weekend. But the cleaning, I done.

Falken: What about the sewing and the washing?

Schoenly: Well, we had the washing done. We had no washing machine. A neighbor washed for us. And at that time, I think we only paid a dollar for our wash. Understand, she didn’t iron it, we ironed it, but she washed on the boards sometimes and she had a washing machine, too.

Falken: But that’s what she did?

Schoenly: Uh-huh. And if we wanted to wash anything that was real soiled we used a board, too, which I didn’t like, that was hard on the knuckles.

Falken: What about sewing? Did you do the sewing?

Schoenly: Oh, yeah. My mother sewed and I sewed, too. We made most of our clothes.

Falken: So you learned most of your housewife skills from your mother?

Schoenly: Oh, yes. Mm-hm. Definitely. Just like you should. (chuckles)

Falken: You said your mother did a lot of the cooking on the weekends; did you have relatives in on the weekends?

Schoenly: Oh, quite often. Mm-hm.

Falken: Was there any special dish she liked to make more than others?

Schoenly: Well, I don’t know, I know she made delicious potato filling and filled noodles and pies. The cakes I usually made. Of course, the first cake I made was a mess.

Falken: Why was that?

Schoenly: I used a tablespoon instead of teaspoon for the baking soda, so it really raised, it came up and it went down in the stove, so you know it was a mess.

Falken: Was this after you were married?

Schoenly: Yeah, this was after. That’s the only one that I had to throw out though, so that wasn’t too bad.

Falken: That’s a pretty good record. In the house, did you have carpeting on the floors?

Schoenly: We had rugs and linoleum in the kitchen, but we had carpet over the rest. And the stairways had carpet on it, too.

Falken: What about, say, electrical things? Did you have an electric telephone in the house?

Schoenly: No. We had no telephone. We didn’t have a telephone I guess until we moved down here.

Falken: Did you have a radio?

Schoenly: We had a radio, oh, a couple radios we had, but I’m sure we had no television. Oh, no, we lived here quite a while before we had television.

Falken: The outside of the house, was this the little white house you had lived in or was this later on?

Schoenly: This is the one on Third Street, this is the brick. And we had a porch downstairs and one upstairs. Yeah, there was a store just below, two stores below our place. The one was a grocery store and the other, he didn’t have too many groceries. We could get ice cream there.

Falken: What about the cellar, was that—?

Schoenly: That wasn’t all cemented, some of it was ground, and when we raised celery, we put the celery down there.

Falken: And it would stay nice?

Schoenly: Mm-hm. We had a big shed in the backyard, too, and oh, one year we had so much celery and it was a warm fall, so we put it out there, and one night it got terrifically cold and all our celery froze. We could salvage the hearts, which was fortunate, but the outside leaves were frozen.

Falken: Could you keep a lot of stuff down on the dirt part, I mean—

Schoenly: Yeah, it was quite large.

Falken: Did you do a lot of canning?

Schoenly: Yeah, we canned.

Falken: Did you keep that down there?

Schoenly: We canned and we dried corn. I don’t think we dried beans, I don’t think any of us liked those very much. And then finally, the owner of the home put a furnace in the cellar. Well, I guess she put it in when we moved there, because we had no heater upstairs. Yes, she did. She put it in before we moved in.

Falken: You rented from somebody?

Schoenly: Yeah, we rented it from Mrs. Schlegel9. She lived right next door.

Falken: The house was a double house?

Schoenly: No, single. I forget how much we paid rent there. I don’t believe it was more than $16, but the little white house, that my mother only paid $4 rent a month.

Falken: A month?

9 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

Schoenly: Mm-hm. (chuckles) Yeah, well, but the wages weren’t high then either.

Falken: Do you remember how much she would get a week for working at the casket factory?

Schoenly: No, I don’t.

Falken: How long did you live in say Third Street? Until you came down here?

Schoenly: Yeah, until we came down here.

Falken: And then you—well, I know, you and Unc moved in and then you brought your mother along, too.

Schoenly: Yes, she was here, too. And she worked then until she was almost 65. Then she wasn’t well. So, just about a month before she was 65 why she quit.

Falken: Did she like her work or would she have rather done something else?

Schoenly: Well, she liked, she liked sewing very much.

Falken: Oh, is that what she did?

Schoenly: That’s what she’d done. Well, you get tired of anything that you do. So then when she was home she crocheted quite a lot, made rugs, so forth. Oh, and she made those covers for on the—that I have on the buffet, they’re made of rings. She made a lot of those for on chairs and for all the furniture.

Falken: But she would just do this for the household or did she sell the stuff, too?

Schoenly: No. No. What she made, she gave away. So we had pieces on chairs for a good many years. Well, then we took them off, then Ethel wanted some of them, so she got some of them.

Falken: That’s your brother’s wife?

Schoenly: Mm-hm.

Falken: Do you remember anything about say World War I? I know this is backtracking, but—

Schoenly: Not too much. I know we were rationed and the flour was no good.

00:59:49

Falken: This was World War I; they had rationing back then, too?

Schoenly: Yeah. I think it was rationing at that time. I know you had trouble getting things. And one time I remember the coal was getting all that we had and that was very scarce, so one of my uncles said, well, if we couldn’t get any, we should just come back there, but we got some so we didn’t have to go back.

Falken: You were in school during the war. Did you go over any of the headlines in the papers to know what was happening day to day?

Schoenly: Oh, I suppose so. I don’t know—that was World War I that we had had rations, must have been, because I didn’t go to school World War II. Yeah, they just to save the coal; they’d close the schools certain days. I think we went awhile in the morning, but then in the afternoon we didn’t go. I think that’s the way it was.

Falken: Do you remember when the Germans signed the Armistice?

Schoenly: Oh, indeed I do.

Falken: What did you think?

Schoenly: Well, our class paraded and we went back to Bally [Pennsylvania] and a parade that afternoon. And in the morning you should have seen all the people that came out as soon as we heard it. And I think Mom went along in the parade. I don’t know that she went the whole distance, but I’m sure she went a greater part. Well, everybody was out, we were so glad.

Falken: Was it a cold day?

Schoenly: Yes, it was.

Falken: And you paraded all the way back to Bally?

Schoenly: No, we didn’t parade to Bally. I don’t know how we got back, I think someone had a truck and took us back. I’m not sure.

Falken: What was so special about going back to Bally?

Schoenly: Well, it was a parade. That was in the afternoon. See ours was in the morning, so we had to go in theirs.

Falken: Oh, there were two separate ones.

Schoenly: Sure.

Falken: I know Unc said the he knew you before, well, after the war, but he said you were just a little kid. Did you know him?

Schoenly: I just knew who he was, but I didn’t know him. Not until we went roller skating. That’s the first. But then I knew him after that for a good many years. (chuckles)

Falken: Did they have a big victory parade for the soldiers coming back home?

Schoenly: Yes, they did.

Falken: Did you go out and see that?

Schoenly: Sure. We were in it. And we helped at banquet then, too, I think we were waitresses, I’m sure we were. Yes, we were. And that time the meat was scarce, you know, you didn’t get much meat with your ration stamps, so there was, it was Freed's Store, not the one they have now, this was another one, and we heard that he sold soup bones, and you could get those without ration stamps, so we went down and boy did we get nice roasts. They were supposed to be soup bones, but I don’t know where he got all the soup bones he was selling, but we used to go to Pittsburgh then and well they had trouble getting meat out there, so we would always get as much as we could to take along out there for them.

Falken: This was during the Second World War, though?

Schoenly: Mm-hm. Yeah.

Falken: Do you remember how you got ration stamps say during the Second World War?

Schoenly: No, I don’t.

Falken: Did you have to apply for them?

Schoenly: I really don’t know. I don’t remember that, how we got them.

Falken: Say did you do most of the shopping? I know Unc gave me three ration books, there was one for you, your mother and him, so did you take the coupons and go shopping or did Mrs. Moyer?

Schoenly: no, I usually went shopping or Normie did.

Falken: I thought he said he didn’t go shopping at all during the war? That he can remember.

Schoenly: Now, wait. Heck, no, we weren’t married then.

01:04:05

Falken: No. Well, in World War II.

Schoenly: Yeah, World War II. Well, maybe he didn’t go shopping then. And you’d have to get in line. We’d hear it through the grapevine that they had butter, and then we’d go and stand in a long line and sometimes you’d get there too late and the one store we heard they had Jello, but I went for Jello, no, they didn’t have any. I said, ‘Don’t you have any under the counter?’ Then I got some. I knew that’s where they kept it.

Falken: What about sugar? Did you have to stand in line for that, too, or could you get that fairly easy?

Schoenly: That I don’t know. I don’t remember about sugar.

Falken: Where did you do your shopping besides Freed’s?

Schoenly: At Trott’s (sp?) and the Acme. They were about the only stores, well, we had a butcher, too.

Falken: And he accepted the—

Schoenly: Now, I don’t know about having the butcher anymore. Maybe he wasn’t going around by that time. I think he must have gone—surely if we got from him, well, he certainly took the stamps.

Falken: Say you didn’t have newspapers or radios during the war, from just looking through Boyertown, could you tell there was a war going on at all?

Schoenly: Hm, you’d see the fellows with their uniforms on, but other than that, you couldn’t tell any difference.

Falken: No posters, no real big posters?

Schoenly: Not that I remember.

Falken: What about the flags, in-service flags?

Schoenly: Oh, they had, yes, they had those, that’s right. They had those in the windows.

Falken: Now, during the war, did you work at all, steady job?

Schoenly: No, I wasn’t working then. Not in the Second World War, well, I wasn’t the first war, I was too young then.

Falken: Do you remember how the World War II ended, did you have a big celebration, for VE10 and VJ11 day like you had for World War I?

Schoenly: They did have one very nice parade; I guess that was the one they had for the soldiers. They had beautiful floats. I’ll never forget those floats.

Falken: Do you remember some of them?

Schoenly: Mabel, you know, Mary Lou’s mother, she had a beautiful one then. She had the prettiest hats, because she was a milliner and she had beautiful hats on that, this float. I don’t remember just how she had it arranged, and I don’t remember any others either as far as that is, but I know they were very pretty. It was a long parade, too. It was during the week, so we knew it was something special to take off from work to have a parade.

Falken: What , everybody had—

Schoenly: Yeah, evidently. Because there were loads of people in Boyertown then.

Falken: Did General Spatts12 (sp?) ever come back to Boyertown?

Schoenly: Yeah, I think he was here the time they had the celebration. I’m sure he was. I knew his sister quite well. Normie knew his brother very well.

Falken: Since we went a little bit ahead, we might as well to go back to the Depression. Now most people say the Depression started with the stock market crash. Do you remember anything about that? Did you have stock?

Schoenly: No, we didn’t, but one of our neighbors, she lived with a brother over here, Helen, and now that Helen’s (inaudible) and I remember her coming out and going out the alley and she said she had to go to Philadelphia, because it was a crash and she had bonds, so she was quite worried after that. She was an elderly woman.

Falken: How did she get to Philly? Did she have a car?

10 Stands for Victory in Europe day which celebrates the day when the Allies of WWII accepted the surrender of Nazi Germany.

11 Stands for Victory over Japan Day that marks the day Japan surrounded and thereby ended World War II.

12 Project staff were unable to identify this person.

01:09:07

Schoenly: Well, she went, that time I guess they still had the trolleys. Either trolley or bus. I don’t know.

Falken: Did she lose her money then?

Schoenly: I don’t know, I never heard. She didn’t say anything. She did lose some, but whether she lost all or not I don’t know.

Falken: Seems like you were a housewife during the Depression, you didn’t work during the Depression; did you work at the casket factory at all?

Schoenly: No.

Falken: How could you make ends meet?

Schoenly: Well, we made it meet.

Falken: You did?

Schoenly: You just had to, because he had to take some time off and wasn’t paid for it every week. And they weren’t paid then like they’re paying them now.

Falken: He was able to keep his job, he had still work, but—

Schoenly: Yeah, then he carried mail then.

Falken: In comparison to before the Depression, could you still buy as much since the prices were lowered or did you have to go without meat at all?

Schoenly: No, we didn’t, we didn’t starve. We had plenty to eat. Well, you just had to watch, that was all. We got along all right, much better than in other countries, I’m sure.

Falken: What about Mrs. Moyer?

Schoenly: Well, she worked. She was still working.

Falken: Did you have any people come begging for food to you since you had—?

Schoenly: Well, we had tramps. You don’t see those anymore, but they must have had our house marked, because if any were around, they would come here. Now one Easter an old man came and mom gave—we had rabbit for dinner, I think, and she fixed

a plate for him and she gave him some colored eggs and he was tickled to death. He said, that takes him back to his childhood days. Now he was a nice hobo. But then, one day, we made an egg sandwich for some kind for one, and they found it later on. When we lived on Washington Street, they would come there, too, and the one was there, and here they found the sandwich under the washing machine after he left. I don’t know why he came if he didn’t want to take the sandwich along, but we stopped giving them, if we’d see them coming by, I wouldn’t go to the door anymore. But, oh, we used to have them a lot. I’m sure they say they do mark the places.

Falken: You never found any marks?

Schoenly: No, we never found any marks, but every one that was around would come here. But that fellow, he was nice, the one that was here at Easter.

Falken: What about other people, could you help other people in the Depression, that didn’t say have as much as you?

Schoenly: Yeah, I guess we did if they needed help. I just don’t remember it at all.

Falken: Could you notice when things began to pick up at all, when times started to boom again say in the late Thirties [1930] in comparison to the early Thirties [1930]?

Schoenly: Oh, well, yes, and then he worked full time again, so that made a difference, too.

Falken: What about the stores around here, could you notice say an increase in the prices of goods?

Schoenly: Well, I suppose so. It seems to me they’ve been going up ever since. (chuckles)

Falken: What about the stores in town? Did a lot of them close because of the Depression?

Schoenly: No. I don’t think any closed. Hm-mm. They were open every Saturday night and they had lots of customers at night. Well, most of the stores did, but now I guess if they had them open, you wouldn’t have much business, but they had.

Falken: You said you got along during the Depression, but you couldn’t go out and buy, go splurge your money.

Schoenly: No.

Falken: What about clothing? You bought that from town? Did you buy anything special during the Depression do you remember?

Schoenly: Oh, I don’t remember. If we got—if we needed any dresses, well, we made them.

Falken: Oh, you made your dresses?

Schoenly: Sure, we made our dresses.

Falken: You never bought already made ones?

Schoenly: Oh, maybe occasionally, but my mother even made my graduation dress. The wedding dress, that was bought, though, but no, we made our own clothes. And she made her own until, well, until she wasn’t well, after she was retired.

Falken: What about Unc did you make him his clothes, or did he buy his?

Schoenly: (chuckles) No, he bought his. I didn’t do any sewing for him.

Falken: Just thought you might. Going back to your wedding. You were married in your house. Did you have a big reception?

Schoenly: No, just those that were there. We had a girl play the piano, the wedding march.

Falken: Do you remember about how many people?

Schoenly: Oh, I guess about maybe 25, something like that.

Falken: Did you go on a honeymoon?

Schoenly: Oh, yeah, we went to a cottage. And we were there a week. And the night we were married, it was stinking hot! We had a thunderstorm before the wedding, and it was very hot. My uncle married us.

Falken: He was a minister?

Schoenly: Mm-hm. He’s gone, too.

Falken: Was he a minister in town?

Schoenly: No. He had been at Ardmore [Pennsylvania] at the time I was married.

Falken: When were you married, the date?

01:15:56

Schoenly: June 27th, 1925.

Falken: Now, do you remember when Mrs. Moyer retired. She was 65?

Schoenly: She was almost 65. She was ill when her birthday was, so she didn’t go back to work and then she lived till, I think she was 87 or 88, either one or the other.

Falken: I know she died in 1965, but I forget when she was born.

Schoenly: I don’t know either.

Falken: What did she do around the house then when she retired? Did she help with the housework?

Schoenly: Yeah, as long as she could. She always helped. Mm-hm.

Falken: And she did a lot of cooking then?

Schoenly: Yeah, she’d done cooking until she wasn’t able to anymore and then I done it. And when we moved here, that house over there wasn’t here. The high school was here, but not the new one, and the house on the other corner wasn’t here, so it’s been built up over the years.

Falken: What about our house—my house?

Schoenly: Your house was there.

Falken: It was?

Schoenly: Not too long, though, before we moved. But that was there, but there were, no there were open fields down on Fourth Street but then it was built up, too.

Falken: Now this garage next to you—

Schoenly: Well, that’s, that’s new since—there had been one here, but they tore that down and this is a new one.

Falken: But the other garage, where the guy keep—

Schoenly: Oh, that barn. Yeah.

01:18:05

Falken: Was that in use when you moved here?

Schoenly: No.

Falken: It wasn’t? It was just like a storage bin?

Schoenly: Yeah, but one family, well some fellows rented and they had horses in it, but they weren’t there very long. It smelled, so Normie went to the Board of Health and he came down and he said, ‘Well, they’re going to get out right away,’ so they did. It was too close to the house. So they had them down at Margaret’s, she had a barn at that time and they kept them in there, but I don’t think they kept them very long.

Falken: What about the streets here, were they paved?

Schoenly: Yeah, they were paved.

Falken: Even the alley here?

Schoenly: No, that wasn’t paved.

Falken: That wasn’t?

Schoenly: No. There was a wild cherry tree here and they cut that down and then they macadamed it. I don’t know what year that was, but it was very dusty at first. We’d put oil on, but—

Falken: That didn’t help?

Schoenly: No, it didn’t help too much. It helped some, but then we didn’t have the traffic we have now.

Falken: How did you keep the dust out of your house, I know you’re an immaculate housekeeper?

Schoenly: Well, I guess it wasn’t that bad probably. ‘Cause we had our windows open. Now I don’t open them anymore.

Falken: You had the windows open?

Schoenly: Sure.

Falken: Screens?

Schoenly: Mm-hm.

Falken: I’m sure the dust must have came in then.

Schoenly: Well, as I say, there wasn’t too much traffic when we moved here.

Falken: What happened say if you had a day of rainstorm, would you have big gulleys in the road then?

Schoenly: Well, there’d be some puddles, yes. And we’d fill them up with ashes. Well, the borough didn’t fill them up so we did it. Now it’s their responsibility. And it’s now a street, too.

Falken: Things have changed in this block since you moved quite a bit in comparison?

Schoenly: No, not too much.

Falken: There’s one question I forgot to ask you: What did your father do before he died?

Schoenly: Oh, he worked in the casket factory.

Falken: Did he and your mother work together?

Schoenly: Oh, no. She didn’t work until after the opera house fire. Yeah.

Falken: Do you remember when he was born by any chance?

Schoenly: No, I don’t, but I think they were about the same age.

Falken: Do you remember your grandparents at any great length?

Schoenly: Well, yes, my father’s parents, we knew them well. They visited us, and we visited them in Allentown. And my mother and father lived in Bethlehem for awhile, they had a store there, and they came back to Boyertown and he worked in the casket factory, I think he was a boss there.

Falken: Do you know where the store was in Bethlehem?

Schoenly: No, I wouldn’t know. We have a picture of it or we did have.

Falken: What did they sell in the store?

01:21:48

Schoenly: Groceries. I think they had some dry goods, too.

Falken: I never knew that.

Schoenly: Paul was born there in Bethlehem.

Falken: What about your grandparents? Do you remember anything special about them? Your father’s parents, any special memory you have of them?

Schoenly: Well, he worked for Arbogast & Bastian13, that’s meatpackers and he worked there, well, I guess all his life. And she worked at home. She was a small woman, and he was a tall, heavy-set fellow. I’d spend a week or two up in Allentown.

Falken: How did you get to Allentown [Pennsylvania]?

Schoenly: Oh, well, for awhile a bus ran and then sometimes they would come and fetch me in a car, but then other times we’d go to Reading, then you had to go to the outer station and get a train there to get to Allentown, but it was much better when the bus started running, so then when we were married we went up in the car. And then my other grandmother, well, I didn’t know that grandfather, because he was dead before I was born, but she was—she was heavy too, and she wasn’t too well, so she did a lot of cooking, but I don’t think she done too much cleaning. I think Aunt Mamie done that.

Falken: Did you have a large family?

Schoenly: Well, yes. My one uncle had—I don’t know how many children. They lived in Reading. And they had one girl and the rest were all boys, I think they had about five boys. And another uncle had one son, the other uncle had two girls, and let’s see, one aunt had one daughter. Well, I didn’t have too many cousins on that side, that’s right. On my father’s side, I only had two, three, three cousins.

Falken: Then your father really married into a large family.

Schoenly: Well, he had three sisters and one brother.

Falken: Did you ever have family reunions?

13 A slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Schoenly: No. I don’t remember having family reunions. Of course, when we’d go to visit in Allentown, they would always come to see us, but not like they do around here, have big family reunions. My great-grandparents lived, I don’t think that was Bethlehem [Pennsylvania], she was blind, but I was there several times when I was a youngster, but I didn’t know them very well at all.

Falken: What side of the family were they on?

Schoenly: On my father’s side.

Falken: This question is always asked: Did you always have indoor plumbing at all the houses? You lived in so many different places, but—

Schoenly: No, we did not have indoor plumbing! (chuckles) You had to walk about a half a block when we lived in the white house. And one of the other places, well, two of them were pretty far because we had large yards. And in fact, I guess this is the first place we had a bathroom, sure it is. So we didn’t have a bathroom until 1929.

Falken: Was that a little bit unusual?

Schoenly: No, because a lot of people didn’t have bathrooms at that time. Of course, when they built new homes they had, but—But it sure was nice. (chuckles) I’ll tell you when it was real cold and windy; it wasn’t too pleasant to go.

Falken: Would you go out to the outhouse?

Schoenly: Why of course.

Falken: When did you use that thing you gave my mother, that little chamber pot?

Schoenly: Oh, that was during the night, not during the day.

Falken: Oh, you would use that at night. You wouldn’t go out at night.

Schoenly: No. Oh, no. No. Not at night, Steve. It was sort of lonesome out there. I would have been afraid. So we were very glad to get indoor plumbing.

Falken: Now you are I guess a housewife practically all your life. Could you say, describe a typical day, what you do in one day?

01:26:55

Schoenly: Oh, well, today I cleaned upstairs and the dining room, because, oh, the end of the week I have other things I do. So now tomorrow, I’ll clean the living room and Wednesday I’ll probably finish the kitchen. I must do the floor yet in here. So the porches, I’ve been sweeping. These seeds are still dropping from that tree.

Falken: But you usually get up around five o’clock right?

Schoenly: No, about quarter after five. Oh, occasionally, it’s 5:30 or quarter of six.

Falken: Did you always like to get up early or how did that come about?

Schoenly: Yes. Well, he went to work early, so then I got up to make his breakfast. I got in the habit and I’m awake so I might just as well get up as to lie in bed and not sleep. Because we go to bed earlier than most people do.

Falken: What time is that usually?

Schoenly: Well, usually—it used to be at ten, but I don’t know, this summer when it’s been rainy, we go to bed earlier than that.

Falken: But now you get up at five.

Schoenly: Quarter after five.

Falken: Quarter after five. You make three meals a day.

Schoenly: I do.

Falken: You usually clean how many rooms, one or two?

Schoenly: Well, I cleaned three, four today.

Falken: Four. You do wash.

Schoenly: Wash—I wash a load and iron. Well, I guess that’s all I done then today. Oh, sure I had the interview this morning.

Falken: That’s an exception.

(end of recording)