Stow, Ohio

For some reason, I started thinking about the town where I lived the first four years of my life. Stow, Ohio, is on state route 91, just north of Akron. When my family lived there, it had a population of about 600. Our acquaintances used to say, "We passed through the outskirts of Stow on the way to Cleveland." Dad would explain that it was not the outskirts they drove through, it was Stow. It's probably a very different place today.

We lived on Williamson Road, a dirt road. Every spring, a truck came and sprayed the road with a layer of oil to keep the dust down. We had a square cardboard sign with numbers on it that we placed in the front window every few days. The number that was right side up showed the driver of the horse-drawn wagon from the coal and lumber company what size block of ice to bring to our back door, and put in our ice box. I can remember the day the ice box was replaced by a brand new Servel gas refrigerator.

Milk was delivered by a man with a truck. On the steps by our back door he would place two glass bottles with cardboard stoppers. The cream was at the top, and we had the option of pouring it off, or shaking the bottle to make the milk richer. In the winter, the milk and cream expanded as they froze, and pushed the cardboard stopper out of the bottle to a height of several inches. A truck from the bakery came by periodically to deliver fresh bread. Sometimes we children would get treated to a fresh eclair.

At the north end of Williamson Road was Marhofer Avenue, which led to the street on which was Stow High School, where my father taught English. My brother attended Stow High, and joined the Navy when he graduated. At the south end of Williamson Road was Kent Road, which had Joe Fisher's grocery store on it. Mom used to take me with her to Fisher's. She walked, and I pedaled my little red fire truck. Mom gave her list to Mr. Fisher, who stood behind a counter. Behind him, floor to ceiling, were shelves with all of the packaged goods on them. He used a long pole with a 'grabber' on it to pull the items we needed from the higher shelves. "We are all out of Clabber Girl baking powder," he would say, "will Calumet be ok?" He put all of our items in paper bags, and we carried them home. Mother used that Calumet baking powder for cakes and cookies. I remember sitting in the kitchen while she baked. The radio broadcast the daytime dramas of the day: The Romance of Helen Trent, Ma Perkins, Backstage Wife, Lorenzo Jones and His Wife, Bell, Our Gal Sunday. "Can a girl from a small mining town in Virginia find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled Englishman?'' I don't know if she did or not.

I have some dim memories of the people on Williamson Road. We lived in a side-by-side duplex. A woman named Mrs. Moon lived in the other side. I cannot remember what she looked like. Across the street lived Billy Grey and his family. I used to play with him in his back yard. Once he took me up into the attic and showed me a whole trunk full of money. When I told my Dad about it, he explained that the money was Confederate bills, and absolutely worthless. On the same side of the street and down a few doors lived Kathy Cole. She, Billy, and I liked to climb the trees in her front yard.

I think I know why I do not have many photographs from the Stow years. One day I opened the door to a cabinet in the living room. In the cabinet I found some funny little metal spools with paper wrapped on them. When I unrolled the paper, I found some plastic like stuff rolled up in it. The plastic turned sort of white as I unrolled it. Mom was very angry when she saw what I had done, and told me not to do it again.

One evening, as we sat on the front porch, a stray dog -- a white spitz -- came into the front yard. Mom said, "Come here, poochie," and he came up on the porch. We gave him some food and he stayed with us. Dad put a 'found dog' notice in the paper, but noone claimed him. Since Mom called him "Poochie," I thought that was his name, and it was his name from then on.

A few streets away lived my uncle Albert and his family. He was a research chemist for Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Akron. They remained in Stow for several years after we moved north to Cleveland Heights. At first, the lots on either side of his house were vacant. Then a house was erected on one of them. When someone began to build a house on the other side of his, Uncle Albert decided that Stow was getting too crowded, and moved to a 200 acre farm near Mogadore, Ohio.

Some time in the early 1940's, my father accepted a position at Cleveland Heights High School, about 3o miles north of us. He used to commute, staying in a room up there during the week, and coming back to Stow for the weekends. At first he drove a Ford Model T. Once, as he headed north, the forward gears on the Model T broke down. He had to make his way back to Stow in reverse gear. Next, he bought a 1928 Hupmobile. I remember that the Hupmobile had a roll-up window shade on the rear window. The next car was a 1936 Oldsmobile that we used until a couple of years after we moved to Cleveland Heights in 1944.

Rob, Poochie, and the 1936 Oldsmobile