Abstract

The oral history interview with Olga and Paul Naugle provides a detailed account of their experiences growing up during the Great Depression and their memories of life in Cleveland, Ohio. Olga recalls the challenges of living through the Depression, including the scarcity of food and the various ways their families made ends meet, such as making homemade potato chips and doughnuts. She describes entertainment activities, such as roller skating, attending the local theater, and participating in Ukrainian cultural events. Paul adds to the narrative by discussing his family's interactions with local food distribution programs and the impact of New Deal initiatives like the WPA. The interview also touches on the importance of community during that era, with memories of neighborhood gatherings, church activities, and makeshift entertainment. Both Olga and Paul reflect on the simplicity of life during those times, the resourcefulness required to get by, and the deep sense of community that characterized their youth.

Interviewee

Naugle, Olga (interviewee); Naugle, Paul (interviewee)

Interviewer

Brewer, Shelly (interviewer)

Project

Tremont History Project

Date

3-6-2003

Document Type

Oral History

Transcript

Shelly Brewer: State your name and spell it.

Olga Naugle: OK. My name is Olga Naugle. N-A-U-G-L-E.

Shelly Brewer: I’m going to ask you to go over some of the things that you wrote down, some of the information, since we ended our last session with some open ended things.

Olga Naugle: I was only seven years old during the depression times, so these are things that I remember. I would like to elaborate on some of the things we discussed at our last interview. It’s hard to think of things so quickly. You asked what we did for entertainment. Well, besides the roller skating at Puritas Springs rollercade and Euclid Beach park, we went to the Jennings theater and we used to see a double feature, two movies. Also, news reels and a cartoon, and a serial. The cartoon—some of them were Crazy Cat, Tom and Jerry, Elmer Fudd, Goofy, Mickey Mouse, and many more. And to top it off we used to see the serial, and it was a continuation one week to another. Such as, Rin Tin Tin was a favorite with us, and uh, um, what was the one—Buck Rogers. I miss that one. I don’t know if you know anything about Buck Rogers, about the rocket ships, it’s so reminiscent of what we are doing today, with the space travel and all this. It’s hard to believe they had that at that time. We didn’t have to leave the show once— we could sit and see it over again. Can you imagine seeing this long—we weren’t shoed out like the people are now, you could see another time, which we did (laughing), many times. Of course I went to the Ukrainian dancing school as I told you, it was on West 14th street, the Ukrainian National Home. We used to go dancing in our Ukrainian costumes to different places, such as, we danced at the public auditorium. My father was a violinist, and he had a little orchestra, and he played the Ukrainian music for us at the time. That I remember specifically. We sang in the church choir, it was a Ukrainian choir. Of course we could speak Ukrainian and we could read it. And at Christmas time we would go caroling to peoples homes that wanted us to sing, you know they would request that we would come to their homes. They would serve us refreshments, cookies, they were so appreciative of us coming and singing. Then they would donate some money to our church. We looked forward to singing these Ukrainian carols. We spent a lot of time getting together with our friends, playing records like Jan Savith(), Mary James, Tommy Dorsey and all the good bands of the forties. We’d even have a—a—barns that the parents would set up for us. They were what you call sheds, but we called them little barns where we used to go and fix them up and play records in there and get together with other friends. It was a nice time, it wasn’t a drinking thing, it was nice just listening to good music. While we were in high school, we had clubs. We met at the Merrick House, which is in the area there. We cooked and discussed various things. We spent the weekend in the summer at Hinckley Lake cabins, and I think in some way Merrick House, uh, sponsored us in some way to go there. And when I was in Merrick House and we would have our clubs there—we would do our cooking, they taught us cooking and things. It was just fun getting together with some high school kids, you know and that’s where we would have our meetings. When I mentioned the gym classes that I was the gym leader. To be more explicate, the girls wore blue gym suits, they were belted at the waist, and had elastic around the legs, and they were ballooned, you know. Of course they wore the blue and the gym leaders wore the white, like I told you, with the red sweaters. Let’s see—uh—I told you I took the office course at school, the commercial course at school was what it was called at the time. Of course I took typing, bookkeeping and what they called office production, where you’d have to learn all of the machinery, like the mimeograph machine. They don’t even have mimeograph machines anymore. The ditto machine, that kind of stuff. Uh—let’s see—anything you use in the office is what we learned there. My early years I remember, everyone was so poor, it wasn’t just our family, it was everyone, you know we just—times were so bad. We used to go to churches to receive some corn meal, and potatoes so we could survive. We used to stand in line, he used to-

Paul Naugle: Over at Pilgrim Church, every Saturday they used to give this stuff out, potatoes. I used to go down and used to put two pounds of potatoes in this bag, and three— according to how many you had in the family is what they’d give you. And the big thing was cornmeal, we used to have big sacks of—

Olga Naugle: Now it’s polenta, gourmet (laughing).

Paul Naugle: They used to put it in paper bags, the same thing, five pounds, this family would get ten pounds—this went on till they’d run out, then the rest of them would just leave.

Olga Naugle: For treats we made our own potato chips, you know we didn’t have potato chips like you have now. So we used to make our own potato chips, of course we had a lot of potatoes to make it with (laughing). And we used to make our own doughnuts, I remember, yeah. You couldn’t buy a lot of the stuff that you do now. When Roosevelt became president, things changed, even—I remember singing Happy Days are Here Again. It was a song that everybody sang ‘cause they had the WPA like I told you. That stood for Works Progress Administration, I couldn’t think of it at the time. They had a lot of young men that were out of work, so what they had were CC camps. I don’t know if you’ve heard of those. They couldn’t find jobs anywhere, so, naturally Roosevelt brought this program in. It was the Civil Conservation Corporation, I think that’s what they called it, to earn money. I think they had something to do with building the Hoover damn even, not completely, but some of the menial work they did. They used to help build roads, too. They used to help build things. There was something in the flood control, I don’t remember, but there was something with that. Maybe you could look that up, but I remember that. We had a friend that was in it, if they didn’t have a job, they had to earn money somehow, so they joined the CC camps, and they worked you know. Like the WPA for the older men, this was for the younger people. A lot of the libraries—a lot of the buildings were built by WPA, weren’t they, besides the roads.

Paul Naugle: Parma was laid out by the WPA.

Olga Naugle: Yeah, it was. Let’s see, we had more home life at that time then the children do now. We listened to soap operas. I remember listening to Stella Dallas and the Guiding Light, and at night we used to listen to those spooky things on Sunday evening there was the Shadow Knows, and the Mummers, and it was sponsored by Olga Coal, I remember that (laughing). I remember having one skirt to wear to school. I used to wash it at night, and I’d wear it the next morning, and it would still be a little damp because we had no dryers like we have now a days. Also when I mentioned the bath house, we didn’t have a bath tub at home either, I didn’t want to tell you that. We used to use a galvanized round tub, and we used to put it in the kitchen and take baths in it. (Speaking to Paul) Did you used to do that too? I know we did. We didn’t have a bath tub. I remember that, in fact –

Paul Naugle: We used to do it in the basement.

Olga Naugle: Well, we didn’t have a basement (laughing). My father used to fix our shoes. We didn’t have anyone to go to. We didn’t have the money to do it, so my father would buy a piece of leather and he had a lathe, a black lathe that he used to put down on the floor, different shapes for the different sized shoes. Maybe three different sizes, you know. When we’d have a hole in our shoe, he’d fill it with cardboard till my father was able to fix it. And then he’d fix them all at one time. Then he’d cut the leather around the lathe, you know the size of the shoe, and then he’d nail it on to the shoe, and that’s how he cut around it—well anyway that’s the way they did it in those days. Everybody did it that way.

Paul Naugle: You’d bend the nails down, and then about every two weeks they’d come through and ohhh…(laughing).

Olga Naugle: We used to walk through Lincoln Park with cardboard in our shoes and you’d get to school and they were wet and you’d have to stay in wet shoes all day. But we survived somehow, I don’t—(laughing). Let’s see, when we had our children we didn’t have Pampers and that, we had to make our own diapers out of flannel. Then we’d wash them at night and hang them up, oh it was a lot of work (laughing). Then we finally got diaper service, oh that was a relief. This man would come every second day, twice a week or whatever it was, I can’t remember, and they used to have a cloth filler inside the diaper thing and he would just take that and replace it with a clean one. Oh that was so wonderful, oh jeez, what a relief (laughing)! We had no phones. And the first car I ever rode in was when I was sixteen. And that’s the truth! Well we couldn’t afford a car.

Shelly Brewer: So your family didn’t have a phone at that time?

Olga Naugle: No, no phone. Nobody had phones. I don’t know of anybody that had phones.

Paul Naugle: You went to the store, and maybe the store had a phone.

Olga Naugle: Also, some of our entertainment, I wanted to tell you was to go to the Aragon, dancing. There used to be a ballroom on West 25th street. It was a very prominent—a real nice ballroom. We used to have good bands going there. In fact, I saw Harry James there. That’s how nice it was, it’s terrible now, but at that time—

Shelly Brewer: It’s still open?

Olga Naugle: It’s just a neglected—I don’t know what. Some Spanish people own it now, and it’s just really neglected. It had a beautiful dance floor on it. Let’s see what else—My father made his first violin out of a cigar box. That’s how much he wanted to play the violin. He was a real good violinist, didn’t know notes, but any time he heard something he could play it. He played at all the Ukrainian weddings. Let’s see, what else do I have (flipping through notes). When we were real young we couldn’t afford doctors– remember we were talking about funeral homes at first. And I thought, why did we have so many funeral homes? And I told you that everyone went to their own—the Polish had their own funeral home—each nationality went to their own, Russian went to the Russian—It was because people didn’t live as long. You know we had tuberculosis at that time, we had polio, that wasn’t discovered until Sauk, then we all went in for shots. We waited in lines for shots, everybody had a shot for that. But just think about how many people had polio and died from it, and were invalids, it was terrible. But tuberculosis, so many of our friends even had it, young people had that. Then they sent them to a sanitarium, it was called Sunny Acres.

Shelly Brewer: What was that?

Olga Naugle: It was a sanitarium where these people that had tuberculosis-because we didn’t have penicillin to cure it. Now we have medications. We didn’t have penicillin or aspirin or sulfa, or any of the medications, if you were sick—

Shelly Brewer: Was there a sanitarium around you?

Olga Naugle: No, it was in Warrensville somewhere. Wasn’t it somewhere out there?

Paul Naugle: Nowadays, Warrensville ain’t far, but in them days, it was far.

Olga Naugle: So anyway, when we got sick, my parents had to use whatever they had at home to cure us. We had no aspirin, if you had a fever—I remember my father taking a—you are going to laugh when I tell you this—he would take a cloth, and then lay a slice of potato and some slices of beets on it and fold it over and put it on our forehead. And I don’t know what it did, but it helped the fever. And then if we had a chest cold, they would make a poultice—they would take some flannel and heat some grease, like lard or whatever we had, and put the hot flannel in there and then crush some garlic and lay some garlic over that. Then fold it over like you did the beets and then lay it on the chest. I’ll tell you, that would heat and really break up that congestion in your chest.

Paul Naugle: And nobody would bother you, either (laughing).

Olga Naugle: It smelled terrible! (laughing) But it worked! We had no doctors, so what are you going to do? That’s what they did.

Paul Naugle: The doctors would come to your home, too.

Olga Naugle: I mentioned why we had so many funeral homes, because of that, but also, I don’t know—you might not have known this. We didn’t have funeral homes for a while there. Before the funeral homes, we used to lay the people in the homes. The person who died would stay in the home, in their own home. They would hang a wreath on the outside. If it was a young person, they usually had a white wreath and if you past the house and they had a white wreath hanging, you knew it was a young person who died. If it was purple, you knew they were older. That was bad, that was before the funeral homes.

Shelly Brewer: Then what did they do with the people?

Olga Naugle: They buried them the same way—we had service in the house, that you served like you do in the house. Everything was done in the home.

Shelly Brewer: Oh, OK.

Olga Naugle: People would bring in some food, people were different at that time, they hung together. You know—I remember playing baseball games at Lincoln Park, where different churches played against each other. Our area had mostly the Pollocks(), the Polish, the Ukes(), Ukrainians, and Slovacks() and Greeks, Russians, and there were just a few Germans. There weren’t very many Germans. (Speaking to Paul) Do you remember many more in that area. That’s about the only German church. Let’s see— Easter was very impressive in the Ukrainian—I’m telling you more about the Ukrainian religion, because that’s what I was (laughing). We used to go to St. Peter and Paul’s in the Tremont area, on West 7th street. What we used to do after services—of course the church was just loaded with lilies, completely loaded with them. I can smell the lilies to this day. It was just beautiful. After services we would all line up in the front yard, it was all grass there, and line our baskets in a circle. We had a lot of baskets. We’d have our colored eggs, we’d exchange eggs with other people, we’d visit other people with their baskets. Of course my mother had a hand sewn scarf that she would hang over the basket like everybody else. They were all so pretty. They all showed off with their sewing. They’d have baskets full—not candy like you do now—they would be loaded with food. My mother would have kielbase() and some eggs that she’d shelled, so that when he blessed them, you know they’d be blessed without the peel on them. Then we’d put colored eggs around the thing. She would decorate butter and cheese. Little dish of butter, little dish of cheese. Some beet relish with horseradish in it. She’d make paska() bread, she’d make a big paska() bread and have that in there. She’d braid a cross on top of the bread. Do you know what that is, it’s like a raisin bread. And then the minister would come around and—take the cloths off naturally—and bless the baskets. Then we’d have some rifle shooting after that. It was really a big thing, Easter. It really was. Then we’d all come home and the whole family would say prayers and eat the blessed food. We didn’t eat before we went to church, you couldn’t eat until the food was blessed, then you ate it. That was really nice having the family together at that time. Let’s see what else I have. When I went to dancing school, my mom made me my Ukrainian outfit, which was so pretty. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of them, with the floral thing on the head, ribbons hanging down the back, velvet vest, all hand sewn. Really cute. Let’s see what else I have, oh, we used to have wooden floors, we didn’t have linoleum. We just had the wooden floors. Forgot to tell you, you did mention the beer gardens and did we have any of them around. And the funny thing is, my girlfriends mother owned one (laughing). Right at the corner of our street, on Fairfield and West 11th. They just had a beer and a wine kind of restaurant there, but she bootlegged (laughing). She didn’t have a husband, it was just her and her daughter that lived there, and she had that. It was at the corner there, on the west corner of Fairfield and 11th. It is still a place of business there, I think it’s a paint place or something now. Then Cindy’s across the street was another beer garden. I’ll explain it after we hang up. You know where High and Dry is? My sister said there was some sort of a—we used to call them beer gardens—there. Also, above West 14th drug was more or less a medical center. Did you notice where West 14th was? Well above that whatever it is now, there’s different stores there now, but above there was a dentist. His name was Dr. Allen. There was Dr. Mylong() and Dr. Urich(). They had their doctor offices above there. Don’t have it anymore, it was more or less a little medical center there. My brother started his—I don’t know whether you’ve ever gone to Booze and Burgers in Richfield—but my brother owns, he’s past away but his son runs it now. It’s a big place, Whitey’s, they started in our neighborhood there. Right across the street from Merrick House, that one little corner there on Starkweather and West 11th. I think that was () at one time. They owned it and my brother started his business there. He was always in business. He had that haberdashery first, then he opened this Whitey’s. It’s big.

Paul Naugle: Then he moved down in the flats, on Jennings road, () on one side and () on the other.

Olga Naugle: But that’s out of the area, out of the Tremont area.

Paul Naugle: Well that’s where he moved. It wasn’t that far.

Olga Naugle: But everybody kind of started from there, you know, I mean he’s got a real big place there. You’d be surprised. My sister even had a beauty shop on Fairfield. The previous owner had a candy store, where we bought penny grab bags there. When I mentioned that when we were seventh graders, I mentioned we’d call them flats, well their comment used to be, you’re not so round yourself (laughing). So funny (laughing). It’s so stupid, at that time we felt like big shots. Oh, when we started working in the forties, I started as a bookkeeper and I worked in a one woman office. I did everything. You know what my salary was? Fourteen dollars a week. Six years later I ended up with forty dollars (laughing). By the time they took out taxes it was $13.86 (laughing). I remember that! Baloney was twelve cents a pound during the depression, really. And we made our own rootbeer, we used to bottle our own rootbeer and beer. Stick it under the stove to ferment. Sure, I remember making our rootbeer. Oh we mentioned that horse drawn thing, we also had a vegetable horse drawn cart, and we’d barter with him. Oh that’s too much, too much (laughing). So he’d lower it, that was fun. I have happy memories of Euclid Beach Park, you probably have heard of that. That’s what we did later on when we were going to high school. I remember the beautiful mirrored dance hall, it was beautiful.

Shelly Brewer: Where was that?

Olga Naugle: At Euclid Beach.

Shelly Brewer: How did you get over there?

Olga Naugle: Streetcar. Where we lived on Starkweather, and Professor, that’s where the cars started from and ended. So we used to get on there.

Shelly Brewer: Did a lot of people have cars at that time?

Olga Naugle: No, you never saw cars.

Paul Naugle: My father had one.

Olga Naugle: Ah, your father—he did? You were in high school then. Not when you were real young. When you were real young?

Paul Naugle: When he used to—when I went to Buhrer school.

Olga Naugle: Well I never had a car. Nobody in our area had a car.

Paul Naugle: I had a car.

Olga Naugle: Well you lived on West 15th street.

Paul Naugle: Well it wasn’t that area, but down by Clark avenue.

Olga Naugle: Well who else had cars?

Paul Naugle: Not too many. My father was a big shot. Well he got the car for nothing because of where he was working. The guy died in the next building, and he willed it to him, so he got it in his will. So he monkeyed with it. We didn’t go no place.

Olga Naugle: Well anyway, I didn’t get in the car until he took me when we were sixteen (laughing). We had no cars. Till we were a little older.

Paul Naugle: In fact it was a Studebaker().

Olga Naugle: It was not when we were real young. Nobody had cars then.

Paul Naugle: I didn’t even know you.

Olga Naugle: I’m talking about when we were about seven or eight, nine, ten. During the Depression. I never knew anybody had cars. Other than my rich uncle, who’s—who was a (whispers) bootlegger. (laughing). Oh I remember another thing about Euclid Beach Park. You used to get a ticket, and then you were able to dance. They had a balcony, we used to stand in the balcony and watch them dance, because we couldn’t afford—

Paul Naugle: It wasn’t a balcony, a platform went around that was lower than the dance floor. We used to stand and look out at the dance floor.

Olga Naugle: I knew it was something, that we were up on something. You know it’s hard to remember. But I remember what a beautiful floor they had there and the mirrored walls. It was so pretty. And how they tore everything down. I remember their frozen custard, that was good. And the taffy, they used to make their own taffy. They made their own popcorn balls also. That’s about it that I can remember.

Shelly Brewer: You mentioned groups of people. Did you have a girl group that you hung out with like a sorority?

Olga Naugle: At school, we did have certain groups, it was a group that you—each one had different groups—kids that you liked, a bunch of children that you chummed with. Girls, you didn’t have the boys and girls. He had a band that he was in.

Paul Naugle: That was in high school.

Olga Naugle: These were high school things. We met mostly at Merrick House.

Shelly Brewer: I wanted to ask, what kind of trouble did kids get in at that time, when you were in high school?

Olga Naugle: You know I can’t remember anyone being on drugs. And if you smoked, I remember two girls in the band that smoked, and you know what, we didn’t want to chum with them. We thought they were bad girls. Oh no, you didn’t chum with them, they were bad, really.

Shelly Brewer: Were there any other kinds?

Olga Naugle: Not too much other than drinking. I don’t really remember anyone drinking, do you? No drugs, people didn’t have money to buy drugs.

Shelly Brewer: What about petty theft things, or things that kids do like that?

Olga Naugle: I didn’t—I don’t remember too many that got into trouble like that.

Paul Naugle: Not the gang I hung around. We’d cause trouble. We’d have a spool of thread and wrap a string around it and go by a persons window and it would make a sound (making sound) (laughing), just to scare them.

Olga Naugle: That’s true, because we have three girls in our family and one boy, and the boys used to come and do that on our window (laughing). No damage, nothing like that. Our good times were, the two boys that lived across the street used to call me to go to church choir, to sing in the choir. It was nothing, you’d come home, you’d sit on the front porch, we’d have the kids come and we’d talk, and laugh, that was the kind of a time we’d have.

Paul Naugle: Across the street there used to be an old man, an old crab, we couldn’t play nothing in front of his house, he used to come out and yell. There used to be an advertisement that would come for people to advertise their wares or grocery stores, so the person used to come down and throw this in their yards. So we used to go and gather those things up, and he used to have a picket fence in front of his house, and we used to jam these things on the picket fence (laughing).

Olga Naugle: It was just petty little things, they didn’t do—they didn’t steal or do—it was just petty little things.

Paul Naugle: We used to take his steps off and turn them around at night. But we used to always put something on the thing so he knew there was something wrong, so he wouldn’t come out and walk down his steps. We used to put a board or something there, so he’d have to step over it. So he got used to that.

Olga Naugle: But as far as stealing, I can’t remember—or drinking—I can’t remember anybody. All I can remember is the two girls that smoked. We just thought they were terrible at that time. Oh my goodness, nobody wanted anything to do with them.

Paul Naugle: Of course we had gangs. One of them was the Dutch Hill Gang, Starkweather Gang, they used to come down the street. They used to have knives and they used to throw them in the trees as they went down. You could tell when they went by—they fought amongst themselves, they didn’t bother the people in the neighborhood, but they fought amongst themselves.

Olga Naugle: I don’t remember that, because I was a girl, and we didn’t do things like that! (Laughs)

Paul Naugle: They didn’t bother anybody in the neighborhood, they just had things against each other.

Olga Naugle: We did have gangsters at that time though.

Shelly Brewer: I was just going to ask you about gangsters. I have it here. Tell me about it.

Olga Naugle: There was the Dutch Hill Gangsters. Paul Naugle: The Dutch Hill Gang

Olga Naugle: The Filkowskis.

Paul Naugle: Public enemy number one was caught in that area around West 7th street. What was his name. It had a ski at the end of it.

Olga Naugle: Was it Filkowski?

Paul Naugle: At that time he was public enemy number one. I can still remember the old police guys. They didn’t have any curtains looking at your house, because they were trying to find him. I remember that, and they caught him on West 7th some place down in there.

Olga Naugle: There was something on Holmden() Hill, too. That was the Dutch Hill Gang.

Shelly Brewer: And those were kids, or adults.

Olga Naugle: No.

Paul Naugle: Yes.

Olga Naugle: Those were adults.

Paul Naugle: Dutch Hill Gang. I used to live on Buhrer Avenue, right next to Holmden(). Olga Naugle: But like Filkowski and that—they were older.

Paul Naugle: Yeah, yeah. He was caught in the West 7th street, way on the other end of town. Olga Naugle: Well that was in the Tremont area.

Shelly Brewer: Did your family feel safe in that area?

Olga Naugle: Oh yeah, we’ve always felt safe.

Paul Naugle: We could walk down the streets at any time of night.

Shelly Brewer: Even with the gangster?

Paul Naugle: You could sit on your steps and the gang used to walk by and throw their knives in the trees, but they didn’t bother you. In fact I knew a couple of guys that would say Hi, Paul. But I never joined a gang.

Olga Naugle: I don’t remember anything like that. Yeah it was a boy thing. (laughing) Us girls are so good!

Shelly Brewer: I was informed that Tremont used to be called Lincoln Heights at one point. Why did they change the name, do you know?

Olga Naugle: I don’t know, but like I mentioned to you before, they were suppose to build a college there at one time. And it was a nice area at one time. Boy West 14th was beautiful.

Paul Naugle: West 14th used to be called something else.

Olga Naugle: That’s probably why they called it University Heights.

Paul Naugle: Maybe it was called University street or something, I don’t know.

Olga Naugle: Well there is a University.

Shelly Brewer: Someone had said it was called Lincoln Heights at one point in time.

Olga Naugle: It could be, I can’t remember.

Shelly Brewer: What about a place called Clarence Court? Can you tell me memories of that?

Olga Naugle: Clarence Court was a hard place to even get to, do you remember Clarence Court? I think my friend used to live there. Was that on the hill that you go down or something, it’s a real hard area to get into. What made you think of Clarence Court?

Shelly Brewer: Someone had brought it up in an interview that someone else did, and they wanted to know more about that.

Olga Naugle: It wasn’t a major street, it was one of these little side streets. It seems like it was down on a hill somewhere that you walked down.

Shelly Brewer: Maybe another group hung out there or something.

Olga Naugle: I don’t remember any problems there. I can’t remember that. It was the lower end of, I think it was the other side of Starkweather, lower down, like West 5th street, down towards that way. Could it have been down where that Russian church was, down that way.

Paul Naugle: I don’t know, but where your brother used to live with his wife. The one that used to have the projects there.

Olga Naugle: It used to go down the hill, that’s what I mean. Seems to me that’s where it was.

Shelly Brewer: Another thing that I wanted to ask you was if your families went on vacation?

Olga Naugle: I don’t think they did. We didn’t have a car, we had no transportation. Until I met him, and then we went to Pennsylvania with his parents.

Paul Naugle: First time she went out of the state.

Olga Naugle: The first time I was in a car (laughing). Well we didn’t have a car. People that had a car were very few if they did. I know my uncle had one, but he was (whispers) bootlegger. My one uncle had a grocery store. National meats and grocery on West 11th, and he had a car. Oh I know something, too, my uncle and his grocery store would deliver stuff. It’s not like it is now. You could call in like on a Saturday, they would make bags of where they had to take things and deliver all the groceries. Even in the Brooklyn area, all over, they traveled all over in this truck.

Paul Naugle: People used to go to him, because when people got their money that’s when they could pay.

Olga Naugle: I’m talking about the home deliveries.

Paul Naugle: That’s why they got the home deliveries, they used to go to the store. My mother used to do that. By Friday my dad used to get paid from the WPA and then they’d bring the stuff over and they’d pay them.

Olga Naugle: Everybody charged the stuff, I think I told you that about us having it in the book. They might have come to the store. I don’t—they didn’t have phones—

Paul Naugle: They went there and ordered what they’d like to have.

Olga Naugle: Delivered Saturday. Probably that’s what they did. You didn’t give them a tip. They just delivered and that’s it. You bought the food at the store, you ordered it from them.

Shelly Brewer: Can you tell me again about the paper rags man?

Olga Naugle: He used to come around saying paper rags, paper rags, but it was paper rags, of course he would say it so fast that you would—

Shelly Brewer: Was it just one man? A company?

Olga Naugle: It was Jewish fellow that would come around, no, it was just this one man. He owned the truck, the little cart and the horse.

Shelly Brewer: This is the man you would bring the cardboard boxes and things to?

Olga Naugle: Yeah, uh huh, and the foil, we’d sell the foil.

Shelly Brewer: That’s who you’d sell it to and he’d give you the money. Do you know what he did with it?

Paul Naugle: He must have made a profit.

Olga Naugle: (Laughing) They lived in Shaker. Probably that’s how Shaker was built (laughing).

Shelly Brewer: By the paper rags man (laughing). I think that’s all I have for you. Do you have any other—

Olga Naugle: I can’t think of anything more. Did you think of anything more?

Paul Naugle: Basically I lived further out, I lived by Clark Avenue. When I met her I went down West 11th.

Shelly Brewer: You went to Lincoln High, though. Did you go to Tremont Elementary?

Paul Naugle: No, I went to Buhrer school. I went one year to Scranton school, then I went to Buhrer.

Olga Naugle: I don’t know if I mentioned, but our classes at Lincoln, did I tell you about who some of them were?

Shelly Brewer: Yes, you did. The judges— ON; Even Joe Schultz was a physician. George Mocris() a physician. I mean there were a lot of people—Art Lambrose () was a judge. But like I said, I walked to school with John Mattis (). He didn’t know me after a while (laughing).

Shelly Brewer: We ended our last conversation and you were talking about, I think it was called open air. Is that what it was called. Tell me about that, a little bit, again.

Olga Naugle: Well it was for students who were under weight, and of course at that time we didn’t have much food. We would have one period where they would take us to this one room. First of all we had robes that we put on they were like dark gray, and you’d put it over your head. I guess it was to keep us warm once we laid down, instead of putting a blanket on us. We’d go into this one room and they had cots there, and we’d rest for—I can’t remember how long. But anyway they’d feed us we’d have a snack. Such as graham crackers and milk, or fruit, apricots, frozen apricots. They’d cook up some frozen apricots. Things that were nourishing. We just had a little extra snack.

Shelly Brewer: Is that the reason why. Did they ever tell you any other reason?

Olga Naugle: No, it was just that we were under weight.

Shelly Brewer: Oh, OK.

Olga Naugle: It was really a good program.

Shelly Brewer: You talked about having dentists in the school.

Olga Naugle: We had dentists that would fill your teeth and check your teeth out, it was a room they had.

Paul Naugle: They used to take the kids on a bus to get their eyes checked, They make arrangements to go down to this building where they had eye doctors. They would check your eyes and put drops. A guy fell down the steps one time going back to the bus, you know your vision changes.

Olga Naugle: You used to get glasses, too. Because nobody had money to buy them.

Shelly Brewer: So the government was paying for it then?

Olga Naugle: Yeah.

Shelly Brewer: Did you have to have any other testing done? You said that there was a lot of tuberculosis and different things like that. Did you have to have testing done in school? Did they do that, the government?

Olga Naugle: Somebody did. Paul Naugle: Yeah, they did.

Olga Naugle: Oh, yeah they used to test us. And if you had something like swelling or sores—I remember we were tested.

Shelly Brewer: That’s interesting to me.

Olga Naugle: You don’t know how many kids died from that.

Shelly Brewer: Did they?

Olga Naugle: Oh yeah, a lot of young people. And like I said they sent them to the Sunny Acres. I think it was in Warrensville, I’m almost positive of that. It was a sanitarium. Some of them recuperated, and some didn’t.

Shelly Brewer: And like I said, I looked this up on the internet (showing pictures). I was trying to find the waffle wagon thing, and they had these. They are covers of something, it was in the 1890’s though. It’s maybe a stamp and it talked about specializing in ice cream wagons and waffle wagons.

Olga Naugle: I don’t remember too many ice cream wagons, do you?

Shelly Brewer: Was yours actually a wagon?

Olga Naugle: It was covered naturally, it had a sliding window, something with a window there. This was a long time ago. When I was real young. They used to make everything right in the cart. They’d put the powdered sugar on it. They were in little squares. It was like a good humor of today.

Paul Naugle: The milk wagon used to come down and deliver the milk to you too. We would watch the guy deliver the milk, the horse would move to the next house, whether it would be one, two, three houses down. He was trained that way. Spangs bakery used to come out on Tuesday, they called hot cross bun day Tuesday. You’d get hot cross buns real cheap.

Olga Naugle: I don’t remember getting hot crossed buns. All I remember is Spangs doughnuts.

Paul Naugle: I remember on Tuesdays, mum would give me a dime to get buns. A bag of buns. And they were good.

Olga Naugle: Do you remember Jean Carrolls () on TV? That’s another thing we used to watch on TV. Not the television, I mean the radio. The Gold Dust Twins, remember.

Shelly Brewer: I’ve never heard of that one, the others I’ve heard of.

Paul Naugle: Jean and Glen?

Olga Naugle: Jean was the one who started the Jean Carroll Studios on TV.

Shelly Brewer: I’m not familiar with that.

Olga Naugle: My daughter took dancing lessons there, she was on the Jean Carroll show (laughing).

Shelly Brewer: OK Well we’ve spent forty-five minutes, so I’m going to end it here.

END OF INTERVIEW

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