Abstract

Vince, Gloria and Richard are siblings from the Delgado family, a Mexican-American family that lived on near Rockside Road and the Willow Station. Their father, Edward (Erasto) Delgado and Epimenia (Anna) Delgado were there parents. Their family fled the Mexican Revolution and settled in the Cuyahoga Valley in the early 1900s. Vince worked on the railroad with his father Edward in high school during World War II. In this oral history, the siblings discuss their childhoods in the Cuyahoga Valley, Vince's work on the railroad, their parents, Richard and Gloria's hobbies and how wildlife near the Cuyahoga River has changed across the years.

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Interviewee

Delgado, Vince (interviewee); Delgado Brinkman, Gloria (interviewee); Delgado, Richard (interviewee)

Interviewer

Rosser, Arrye (interviewer); Schnack, Erich (participant)

Project

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Date

7-28-2022

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

121 minutes

Transcript

Arrye Rosser [00:00:00] Listening in on the recording. And I think what I'll do to get started, I'm going to introduce myself, and I'll have each person introduce themselves, and I'll just sort of give the date and everything for the future historians. So this is Park Ranger Arrye Rosser speaking. It is July 28, 2022. I'm working with Erich Schnack today, recording an oral history with the Delgado family and at Canal Exploration Center. And I'm going to start having everyone. There's three family members here. These are the siblings of Josephine Delgado Moss, who we interviewed in 2017. And we're kind of adding to the family memories. So I'm going to have everyone just state their full name. And we'll start with you, Gloria.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:00:50] Gloria Delgado Brinkman.

Vince Delgado [00:00:53] Vincent Delgado.

Richard Delgado [00:00:55] Richard Delgado.

Arrye Rosser [00:00:57] Wonderful. And you want to say your name, too, just in case of get it pipe up.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:01:04] I'm Cheryl Delgado, Vince's wife.

Arrye Rosser [00:01:06] Vince's wife. Cheryl Delgado is here as well. So let's go and just get. What year was everybody born? And where were you guys born? We'll start with you, Gloria.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:01:20] I was born in 1936 in Cloverleaf- On the cloverleaf, what is now the cloverleaf.

Richard Delgado [00:01:29] Independence.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:01:29] Yeah, Independence.

Arrye Rosser [00:01:31] In the Willow area.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:01:33] Willow area, yeah. Okay. Yes.

Vince Delgado [00:01:35] Okay.

Arrye Rosser [00:01:36] So you were born when you were in the boxcar house?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:01:40] Probably, I think so. Was I-

Vince Delgado [00:01:41] In the suite? Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:01:43] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:01:44] And then how about you, Vince?

Vince Delgado [00:01:47] [...] 1930. 92. And I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.

Arrye Rosser [00:01:56] So you were 1930?

Vince Delgado [00:01:57] Yep.

Arrye Rosser [00:01:58] Okay. And so you were born before the family moved to the Cloverleaf area.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:02:04] All right.

Arrye Rosser [00:02:04] And how about you?

Richard Delgado [00:02:05] I was born [...] 1934. And I was born when we in Cleveland.

Arrye Rosser [00:02:15] Okay. Yeah. So you guys, that helps me a little bit with just getting that in my head. And then how. Who are the other members of your family from the childhood period?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:02:27] We only had one younger brother, Peter. Peter Delgado, but he was killed in automobile accident in '63. No. Yeah, '63. Because Janine was just born. Yeah, she was about three months old or two months old when he was killed.

Arrye Rosser [00:02:47] And I'm forgetful of what year Josephine was born. Is she one of the older siblings?

Vince Delgado [00:02:52] Yes, she said she was two years older than I was.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:02:56] I think that would be what, you

Vince Delgado [00:02:59] know, I had on 1930. Attention. '28.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:03:04] Oh, Vince, I think Nick was born in '26.

Richard Delgado [00:03:08] And Sarah, then Joe, then Joe, then Vince, then Hope.

Vince Delgado [00:03:15] Hope. Hope was after before you.

Richard Delgado [00:03:16] She's two years younger than you.

Vince Delgado [00:03:19] Yeah, she was two years younger than me.

Arrye Rosser [00:03:21] So there's eight of you children, right? Yeah. And you guys are on the younger at or what transition in the field. You're the oldest. That helps me just put it together. And your parents, you want to. Maybe I'll start with you. Just state the name of your parents. I know what they are, but-

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:03:51] My mother's name, Theodore, birth name was Epimenia Ambriz. My dad's name was Erasto Delgado.

Vince Delgado [00:04:03] So the name. They cut the name down for the purpose of using it.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:04:06] Yeah. How should I say? When they came to the US They. How do you say that?

Arrye Rosser [00:04:13] They Anglicized.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:04:14] Anglicized the names to Edward and Anna.

Arrye Rosser [00:04:17] Yeah. And I was going to. Do you know how your family came to live in Independence?

Vince Delgado [00:04:27] My dad had various jobs before he brought the family over from Mexico and made all those arrangements. In the process, he worked his way through Colorado on the peat ranches. And slowly but surely he made his way north. I think he held a job for a while in the steel mills. Gave that up because he burnt his leg. Steel that splashed out of one of the cauldrons. Burnt his legs. The reason I know that is because I worked with my dad on the railroad. But getting back to that, after that he migrated up to Cleveland, got a job on the railroad, the B and O Railroad. And that's where he stayed. He worked in- We lived in Cleveland for a while, in Tremont, in the Tremont area, overlooking. I remember as a little boy looking over the side of my fence and seeing the trains down below going back and forth. How he existed there. Well, during the wintertime, this was during the Depression, he would bring coal home on his back on a sack so he could keep our stoves going. He never asked for anything from the government. We subsisted on what he used to earn and what we made at home. From there he continued working for the railroad. And they transferred him to Willow, the Willow station. And he had a gang of other railroad workers that would meet there. Then they would maintain the tracks from Cleveland to the Akron line. And they were the maintenance workers. And they maintained a line to keep it in good shape. That was during World War II. They had a shortage of people to work on the railroad. While I was in high school. They hired three or four of us high school boys to go out and cut weeds along the track. So we worked alongside the railroad workers. Occasionally, the people that were strong enough, we'd help them lay the track, put the ties under the rails. And I was amazed that I could swing a 15 pound spike hammer and spike along with some of the men. My dad was pretty proud of that. So I worked with him for a while. And then that would keep us in shape because most of the kids that worked with me were on a football team. When we got back for football training, we were already in shape. They worked ourselves to the point where they put us in shape. From there, my dad stayed at South Park Station. That's where we would meet. We would walk from Rockside Road to Stone Road, where South Park is at the moment. And there was a railroad station there. The train would stop. That was one of their stops. We'd walk from there in the wintertime to go with my dad. I would. And then we'd work all day long and we walked back home up the tracks. He stayed there for, well, until he retired. Now went on to do whatever I did personally. But it comes back. When I applied for the job as a trainman for the park, that was, in a way, a tribute to my dad. So. I'm sorry.

Arrye Rosser [00:08:02] Take your time.

Vince Delgado [00:08:07] From there I went my separate way. I was in the service for five years. So we take it from there. And then it was up until then.

Arrye Rosser [00:08:15] Yeah. I think you've given me more information than Josephine remembered about your dad. I'm really curious to understand, just like how the family got here, because it's in my understanding there wasn't another Mexican American family. So I think it's quite remarkable, the whole journey. And if I'm understanding, did he go to. Was he recruited? Do you have any sons, like in Mexico, by the B and O railroad?

Vince Delgado [00:08:53] No. He got. I don't know how he got the job. Probably through friends, previous people who were here.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:00] What Sarah said, the way I told. When Sarah told me a story of it, she said that Uncle Henry.

Vince Delgado [00:09:07] Yeah. Sponsored him.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:08] Yeah, when he was away living in Colorado. He got the job through Uncle Henry who was up here, who told him there was a job on the B&O if he wanted it. So that's what got him up to Cleveland, to the railroad. And that's the last I know about it, but I think it was Uncle Henry. Uncle Henry was a distant relative.

Arrye Rosser [00:09:27] And was he already living in Cleveland?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:29] I don't think so.

Richard Delgado [00:09:30] Who's that?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:31] Uncle Henry?

Richard Delgado [00:09:32] Yes.

Vince Delgado [00:09:32] Yeah, he lived in Cleveland.

Richard Delgado [00:09:34] He lived in Cleveland.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:35] I don't remember.

Vince Delgado [00:09:36] He lived in Detroit for a while, too.

Richard Delgado [00:09:37] Yeah, he was in a steel mill. So he worked for the steel mill.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:41] Okay. That was.

Arrye Rosser [00:09:43] So he came. So you think maybe he came up for a steel mill job first? Not coming in for the railroad job, do you think?

Vince Delgado [00:09:53] I don't know.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:09:53] See, I didn't know that he lived-

Vince Delgado [00:09:55] Here in a steel mill.

Arrye Rosser [00:09:56] Yeah. So when he came. Did he come because of his uncle's job in the steel and then he was. Forget the steel mill job.

Vince Delgado [00:10:03] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:10:03] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:10:03] Worked on the railroad.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:10:04] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:10:05] I think that's what happened. He used to tell me a lot because in the walks between where we would start the railroad work, we'd have a lot of conversations. And he told me all kinds of stories about his youth. And I think he and I got closer together than anybody. He tell me more than he ever told the rest of the kids. Because we were always together when we worked. And that would occupy our time as we want. And there were some real tales.

Arrye Rosser [00:10:39] Why did the family leave Mexico? I had done a little research that it was during the Revolution.

Vince Delgado [00:10:45] Right, right. My mother was having problems with these soldiers running through. And that when they were purging the Catholic. The nuns, they would take the nuns, rape them and block them in walls. And they're brutal. And she was anxious to get out. In the meantime, my dad had come into the States and kind of situated himself, got himself solid. He went back to my mother. I don't know how long he stayed. I know Nick was born there.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:11:16] No, he was born. Nick was born in Colorado Springs.

Vince Delgado [00:11:18] Okay. Sarah and you.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:11:20] No, Sarah and Joe were the only two born in Mexico.

Vince Delgado [00:11:24] That's what I meant. Joe.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:11:25] Yeah. The rest of us all here.

Arrye Rosser [00:11:28] Yeah. And I think it was like the family had gone to Colorado, came. Went back to Mexico. Joe was born and then got two girls.

Vince Delgado [00:11:38] Then that's what started the sequence of us coming up this way.

Arrye Rosser [00:11:41] Was he working for B and O in- I had the impression from Joe, but it might have been wrong, that he was working for the B and O railroad in Colorado.

Richard Delgado [00:11:50] I don't know about that.

Vince Delgado [00:11:51] I don't know.

Richard Delgado [00:11:51] I don't think B and O went that far.

Vince Delgado [00:11:53] No.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:11:54] No, I don't think so.

Arrye Rosser [00:11:54] Well, maybe I shouldn't have said B and O because obviously. But the railroad, 

VD He never mentioned that.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:12:03] I know Sarah mentioned that he had got the job from Uncle Henry. So if Uncle Henry was living here already, that's probably how he connected with the steel mills, too.

Arrye Rosser [00:12:15] That's interesting, because I'm glad to clean that up. Because we were kind of curious about how the railroad drew people in from other areas. We have some African American family that worked for the railroad down in Everett. And so the Harris family. And so we were kind of. And they came from Virginia. We were also trying to, like, piece together, like, was there this sort of labor recruitment going on.

Vince Delgado [00:12:42] During the war they did recruit a lot of people. I remember working with some of the gangs that were brought in when we were laying fresh track into Akron. And that was a big project. And we'd have gangs coming in from other places. I know there was a lot of people coming in from West Virginia.

Richard Delgado [00:12:59] Oh, that's where all the coal was.

Vince Delgado [00:13:01] That's where the train used to bring the coal up and all those gravel stuff for the rail bedding. So most of them were coming from the South. As history will tell you. They were all moving up here for work. And those gangs were. Some were black, some were. It was just a conglomerate of different people. The Italians, Irishmen, just like you've seen in the movies. I mean, everybody was. It was during the Depression. They needed work. And that's where the railroad was. The fastest way you could make some sort of existence.

Arrye Rosser [00:13:32] Yeah, it seemed like it was one of the few jobs that people.

Vince Delgado [00:13:36] Exactly, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:13:38] And so that. So your memories, Vince, what is the sort of time period that you were working at the railroad? Just from the years. Can you say?

Vince Delgado [00:13:48] Well, let's see. It was from 1916-17. I know I was in sports then. I say 1946, '47 and 40- In the '48 when they graduated from Independence. That was part time on Saturdays and during my vacation.

Arrye Rosser [00:14:17] When did you finish? What was that year?

Vince Delgado [00:14:19] Where are we?

Arrye Rosser [00:14:20] It was 1946. So how many years were you doing it?

Vince Delgado [00:14:24] I figured I did it for two years.

Arrye Rosser [00:14:27] Okay, so about '48, something like that.

Vince Delgado [00:14:30] Because I have a railroad security number. I had a Social Security number. And every time I show it to someone to apply for whatever, they say, where'd you ever get this number? And they look at me. Did you retire from the railroad. I said, no, as an 18-year-old, 16-year-old or a 17-year-old. When I got- They signed me up to work, I mean, I automatically got a Social Security number and it was through the railroad. So I carry a railroad Social Security.

Arrye Rosser [00:15:00] That's crazy. I've never even heard of that.

Vince Delgado [00:15:02] Yeah, you can tell by the numbers.

Richard Delgado [00:15:04] I mean, that looked like a union card, wasn't it?

Arrye Rosser [00:15:06] Yeah, yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:15:07] They look at the card number, say, you're a railroad.

Arrye Rosser [00:15:10] So you were kind of a high school kind of part time in the summers. Tell me a bit more about what your dad's job was. Because Joe didn't. She didn't have a lot of memories of that. But you're going to.

Vince Delgado [00:15:27] It was a conglomerate of things you did as railroad worker from either laying track, which you'd have these big cranes come along, and they'd lay the rails down, and then there were crew. First of all, they'd lay a bed of gravel. Once the gravel was laid, then they would come along and they'd lay the ties down. Then you'd have this big work train come along with, like, a derrick to pick up the rails, or if they were stacked alongside the rails, the railroad track, the bed itself. We had tongs, like you pick up ice cubes. These were giant ones. One man on each side, and did maybe have two- Depends on how long the rail was. And you pick these things on your side and pick the rails up, put it over on top of the ties, and then from there they had what they call a gauge. The gauge would measure how wide the tracks should be for the engine. And they put this gauge down, push the rails together, and it would stay there. Then two people would get up there, one on each side of the rail with a hammer, a spike maul, and lay the spikes into the tie through a plate that held the rail. And then you work your way all the way down. So that was a process, and it worked pretty. Pretty cool.

Richard Delgado [00:16:43] He used to grab candy dinosaurs.

Arrye Rosser [00:16:45] Yeah. Ranger Rebecca, who she's tied up, but she would love hearing all this. She's really into railroad history. And she was saying there sometimes were songs or things that would help people, like kind of work.

Vince Delgado [00:16:58] You know, where that came from. I know, I know. I heard it myself. And it was the Black workers that work, like, in rhythm. And I'd get into a rhythm, and you did work all day without stopping, you know, and that helped them get to work, you know, faster. So they each have their own group, like my dad's group was. He'd mix us up. It depends how many kids he had. We had four of them, usually working together. And when we got efficient enough to do it ourselves, can you imagine two high school kids on each side of a rail, holding on the rail in these tongs, putting rails on ties. I can't imagine the kids now were doing something like that. And that's an experience I'll carry the rest of my life.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:17:46] You know, I remember the railroad cars. They used to go up and down that section of railroad from Rockside to Willow. When the work train used to go through, you're talking about. I was wondering why they called that train the work train. It used to go so slow down the railroad tracks.

Richard Delgado [00:18:02] Yeah, the local.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:18:03] Yeah, the local. Yeah. For the longest time, when I was little, all I could hear was loco, you know. And I thought that was the name of the train.

Arrye Rosser [00:18:10] Like it was crazy. Yeah, like loco.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:18:12] The loco. That's the loco. Until I realized that they weren't pronouncing the L. I wasn't too smart.

Vince Delgado [00:18:19] There was a spur that came through where we had our built recreation home. And it went in through Cuyahoga Heights. And they would take whatever was there they needed, Harshaw Chemical. That was back in the Cuyahoga Heights area. Then they would bring the cars and haul the cars and they would swing around and go into the main line. There was another line that came right along the side of our railroad home. And I don't think we remember from here to the other side of the room, away from the tracks as kids. The engine would stop to make the switch and you could back out and then go off into the main line. Well, they would drop sand so the wheels could turn. Because generally you hear an engine rev it's engine and the wheels would spin. So they wouldn't do that and wear the steel down, which they would leave marks in the rail. It would be dips. That's what they wanted to prevent. So they dropped sand that would let steel on steel and would grip. So as kids would go along and. And we gathered this fine sand that was our play sand. Then we put it in boxes and bring it home. I don't know if you remember this or you remember it when we used to get the sand.

Richard Delgado [00:19:29] Sand. Yeah, I remember.

Vince Delgado [00:19:30] So we had our own play sand. Just go along the track and collect it.

Arrye Rosser [00:19:37] And this is. How old were you when you were living in the boxcar? Basically.

Richard Delgado [00:19:46] In Willow.

Arrye Rosser [00:19:47] In Willow. In Willow, which is now where the cloverleaf is at 480 and 77.

Vince Delgado [00:19:52] I must have been six because I remember starting the first grade from there. About six years old. Six, seven years old. And then. Yeah. And then from there to Catholic school and high school. And then I had these two tagging along behind me constantly. And in the intro, you know-

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:20:18] I don't remember. I remember Willow very-

Richard Delgado [00:20:20] I was Washington.

Vince Delgado [00:20:21] I always remember her as a little kid. She one piece dress. It looked like a nightgown. Barefoot, just following us around. You just get home, get back to the car when you get lost. Especially if we went on down the tracks to pick up blackberries along the railroad tracks because she'd want to come along. We'd have to tell her to go home because she didn't have any shoes on. He never wore shoes all summer long. And when it came school time, we had a heck Of a time getting a pair of shoes. His feet got like leather. And I never saw anybody run from a blackberry bush barefooted, as he used to do.

Arrye Rosser [00:20:53] That's crazy. What was it like in- Now the Willow area's all been ripped up, you know, for the highways going through. But back when- 

Vince Delgado [00:21:03] We lived there? 

Arrye Rosser [00:21:04] When you were living there, what was the surrounding area like? 

Vince Delgado [00:21:08] Mostly it was- [crosstalk]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:21:09] That was before the-

Vince Delgado [00:21:11] Tracks and wild bush. I mean, well, you know, trees and stuff. I remember the main line, the feed line would come in in front of us because we had a spot where we grew our own vegetables. We had two outhouses. That's good in the wintertime. Running out in the middle of winter will be outhouse.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:21:30] Did they switch trains?

Vince Delgado [00:21:30] And another car next to us. They had a watchman there. I don't know what he was watching. I can't remember what he was doing there to begin with. And I think. I guess it was the watchman. We had equipment there, railroad equipment. Shovels, picks. And hand cars. The old pump hand cars. We had those stored there. So, I mean, if they wanted to, they could pick. They had handles on each side. Two men could pick it up, put it on the tracks. And the way they'd go, they were locked up with chains and stuff. And I think that's what he was watching before we got there. And he was there by himself. So we moved into the vacant motor home. And that's where we lived. It wasn't bad living, if I remember right. Did you enjoy it?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:22:14] I don't even remember it. I remember living down there, but I don't remember what it looked like. 

Arrye Rosser [00:22:19] What the house?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:22:20] I just remember you just mentioned that the trains came in. I remember that one train. Remember that conductor, the conductor on the caboose who used to throw that newspaper with candy or sandwich in it to us?

Vince Delgado [00:22:35] To the little kids on it alongside the train.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:22:38] Yeah, we would watch the train come in. That was we were down there doing. Watching the engine and the cars come in. And here's this gentleman in the uniform. He just saw us there. And he just. One day he threw his candy. I mean, he threw the newspaper down to us. And he thought. He. I thought, pick it up, you know. He threw a newspaper at us. And when we picked it up, sure enough, there was a rubber band around there. And there was a little bag of candy in it.

Vince Delgado [00:23:03] So it was like clockwork.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:23:04] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:23:05] Did he do that all the time?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:23:06] He did every time he was on that train or the train that came in. I never knew which train it was. But every time-

Vince Delgado [00:23:11] That was our treat.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:23:12] Yeah, it was just. He threw us a treat every time he saw us.

Vince Delgado [00:23:15] We didn't have anything else around us. Just further on the other side, going towards Independence, there used to be a bar called the Willow Inn. They had a giant pear tree and talk about pears, to us, they're the most delicious thing. We used to cross the tracks, run over there behind the barn and watch. Maybe they would chase us. Or you get a bunch of those pears and run back home. That was another big treat.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:23:44] Now, was there a trestle down? I remember a trestle. A bridge.

Richard Delgado [00:23:48] We used to walk across. We had a bridge like the one here. They used to go across. And it was.

Vince Delgado [00:23:52] That was between. Yeah, going towards Cog island because the

Richard Delgado [00:23:56] main line went this way. And then they had another. Well that was on the main line.

Arrye Rosser [00:23:59] There was a split, though, because I was looking at the maps, trying to understand it.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:24:04] I remember walking across it. Yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:24:06] Yeah. That rail, like I said, went into Cuyahoga Heights to Harshaw Chemicals with these cars loaded with whatever they needed for their chemical mix. And then the train would come back out with them. And like I said, the one that was along SARS was like the main line. It wasn't the main line. We didn't have the big main. Big heavy load of cars come through. That was over on the other side towards where the bar was. It was like a. Yeah. Say we were here. There was a. Reels came in here, wound around here, headed for a car.

Arrye Rosser [00:24:42] You can do a little drawing too, if you. If that makes sense.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:24:45] Flip it over.

Vince Delgado [00:24:46] Hang on a minute.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:24:47] Oh, it's got. There we go.

Vince Delgado [00:24:56] If I remember right, here's a pic.

Arrye Rosser [00:24:58] I had a picture too, of the willow.

Vince Delgado [00:25:00] Okay. There's a railroad track coming here and headed into Harshaw. There was a spur here. The main line was out here. That was freewheeling. There used to be a coal yard over there in one corner. But if we would have continued, if this track would have continued straight, it would have been going like up towards Independence. But it stopped. Okay. It stopped just part way up there. That would keep the cars here until they got whatever they wanted out. The engine would come back, pick these cars up and then haul them away to Cleveland. This would go to Cleveland. This would go to Cleveland. They would join down further down the road, maybe about half a mile. Here there was a bridge. You remember Willow Creek? We used to go down there and slide around in the water.

Richard Delgado [00:25:51] Used to cross the Cuyahoga River, too.

Vince Delgado [00:25:53] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:25:53] The trestle went across the river.

Vince Delgado [00:25:55] Oh, back here is where the trestle was.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:25:57] I used to be scared of that trestle.

Vince Delgado [00:25:59] And it had on each side, in the middle of the trestle used to be a walkway, a big square place where you can get off the tracks in case you got caught by the train on the trestle. So you have to stand on this platform.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:26:14] It wasn't a big wide one. Let me tell you, that was the scariest thing you ever saw. 

Vince Delgado [00:26:17] If you got crossed the whole bridge would shake and you'd be in terror. I was always just scared to cross the bridge because I always figured you'd fall through the ties and into the Cuyahoga River. So my dad had to grab me by the neck and keep me going. And if you stop, you're going to fall in. That just added to my terror, you know. So we were forced to go across that bridge. That's another story.

Arrye Rosser [00:26:41] So you guys were. And you were little kids doing this too, so-

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:26:46] I often think of who would allow a three year old to stand beside a railroad for some candy. And I'm thinking [crosstalk] following these two.

Vince Delgado [00:26:56] Well, I was taller than the rest.

Arrye Rosser [00:26:58] How old were you at the oldest of the time?

Vince Delgado [00:27:01] Six or seven.

Arrye Rosser [00:27:02] Yeah, which isn't exactly a responsible party.

Richard Delgado [00:27:11] We were street wise.

Vince Delgado [00:27:13] Yeah, we were streetwise. Bushwise.

Richard Delgado [00:27:15] Bushwise. [crosstalk]

Arrye Rosser [00:27:18] That's crazy. Where was the house relative to the station? I found this historic. I think this was one of our maintenance workers. He collects train images off of eBay.

Vince Delgado [00:27:32] Where the station is Willow where the station is now?

Arrye Rosser [00:27:36] No, this is where the Willow station is. Where was the house, your house?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:27:41] I vaguely remember a structure down Willow

Richard Delgado [00:27:44] Station was up though way down independently.

Arrye Rosser [00:27:47] Were you close? Was your boxcar house close to the station or how far? But it was in the same general area.

Vince Delgado [00:27:55] Well, from our Rockside home going towards South Park is where they had the station, the railroad station that was in South Park. When we were in the car, there was nothing there except two cars. One, two cars and then a big shed with all the tools for my dad's work crew. Beyond that, you come to the big trestle to cross over the Cuyahoga River to go up into Cuyahoga and Cuyahoga Heights where my dad had to walk up the hill to get the groceries. When he'd go shopping, he'd have to cross the bridge with two bags of groceries. Well, of course he was used to it working under here all his life, but that's why he used to bring the groceries in.

Arrye Rosser [00:28:39] So he was walking north, you guys, towards Cleveland and then was Willow Station.

Vince Delgado [00:28:46] Yeah, that was, that was in South Park.

Arrye Rosser [00:28:51] Willow had its own station. Because that there. There was a station there. I've seen it on the old maps. But you may. You were young, so it must not have been next to your house or you would.

Vince Delgado [00:29:01] No, well, no, I don't remember that.

Richard Delgado [00:29:02] I don't think that station was there-

Vince Delgado [00:29:04] Anymore when we were there.

Richard Delgado [00:29:05] Yeah, when we were going up.

Vince Delgado [00:29:07] No, no. The only thing was the workhouse, the spare car next to us. Nothing but distance to the right and-

Richard Delgado [00:29:13] Broglio's across the head the other way-

Vince Delgado [00:29:18] To where they were starting to build the new Route 21 or whatever.

Arrye Rosser [00:29:23] Yeah. There were some roads being realigned. I'm forgetting the names of the roads, but Josephine was kind of also describing

Vince Delgado [00:29:32] Old Brecksville Road used to wind down and around and across the back. Remember the back of the cars over on the other side. It was like a gully. The roadway was up there. That was before they made the freeway.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:29:46] Why did the train slow down to come into that yard? That's what puzzles me. Because if we were standing there, these trains weren't going fast. They were almost like pulling into a station. And the caboose, of course, was at the very end. The train was almost at a standstill, but going very, very slow. By the time this-.

Vince Delgado [00:30:05] Before they got to the main line.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:30:07] Oh, okay. That they were heading to the main line.

Richard Delgado [00:30:09] Yeah. They weren't on the main line then.

Vince Delgado [00:30:11] And the curve. Made a curve there and they were headed for. They joined the main line.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:30:15] Because I can't imagine us standing near a railroad track with the trains going by so fast.

Vince Delgado [00:30:19] So in that space between this conglomeration of tracks going one way and one going, stopping here and then the old 21 here, the tavern. This is where we had our garden.

Richard Delgado [00:30:35] That's, remember, in between the tracks. Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:30:38] Label that photo there. Your sketch. I'll never remember, but that's kind of like where you were at the junction, which I think I saw. Like I looked up from the time period, some old maps. You can find the old city.

Vince Delgado [00:30:56] There was a junction. You're right. There's a conglomeration of tracks, some going this way. The dead end here, the main line going across. And that came from Akron all the way to Cleveland. I remember at night seeing these trains bringing in coal and stuff to Cleveland for the steel making. I remember looking out and seeing nothing but the firemen shoveling coal into the engine to make it and the sparks flying off the top of the engine. There's smoke pouring out. And that's something you never forget. So it's all mixed up. I mean, Confusing, but I see it in my mind.

Arrye Rosser [00:31:34] You're bringing a lot of it to life. Let me ask a little bit more about your dad's job. Did he change his jobs over the course of his career? Were there crew leaders? Was he a crew leader?

Vince Delgado [00:31:49] He was a crew leader, and he knew he was working on the railroad. He knew every inch of the railroad. In the wintertime, there was lamps to take care of on the switches. That was the day they designated to the high school kids who worked on the weekend. They give us an oil can and a torch. Now we had to go to find the next junction where the trains would turn off. Oh, key to unlock it, throw the switch, make sure it worked. And then you took the lantern that was there, opened the top of the lantern, the oil you carried, you had to pour it in there and light it, put the lantern back down. Now you got an operating switch. Now you had to walk, maybe. Depends on where the switches are. Sometimes you walk a half a mile, sometimes a little less. But big old rubber boots. Here's this young kid going down the tracks looking for the next switch to pour the oil and light the lamp, make sure the switch worked. And they gave you a lot of responsibility that you got to do it. Fun job.

Arrye Rosser [00:32:53] And was the. I was interested, like, because we'd also heard that Mr. Harris, who worked in Everett, they lived in Everett down kind of where Everett Road crosses the train tracks. Basically at that junction, the Harris family lived in what the Park Service calls the Hardy House, behind where we have our. We have a big red barn there. That's kind of next to it. That's where our archives are. But anyway, I was trying to think. We were trying to understand just how the work crews were. And was everybody. Did people have different sections of track that they were responsible for, or did they have the crews moved all the way up and down the track? Depending on how many people they needed to do different things?

Vince Delgado [00:33:44] You would be assigned, I guess you get from headquarters that other inspector come on a motorized cart, and he'd inspect the tracks all the way to the next. Any place where they needed work, he'd bring it in. They'd fill out a report and give it to the people who were responsible for that area. That was your work schedule for the day. Whether it was tamping ties, putting dirt under the ties, replacing a rail or ties, or if it was weeded along the side of the right of way that went to the kids that they hired, which weren't too often. There were just a few that they would because there was a liability there, you know, and everything was. It worked like clockwork. But the thing I always remember, the station at South Park. Every time you see a movie, it was just like you see in a movie the old gentleman behind with the telegraph. They were still using telegraph at that time, punching away on his telegraph, letting you know which schedule, which train was coming to. So you could stop work or resume your work as the train went by. Because there'd be a lot of coal trains coming through and going back to Akron and back and forth. They had what they call torpedoes. Little square pieces of, pieces of.

Richard Delgado [00:35:00] Strapped upon a rail.

Vince Delgado [00:35:02] Yeah. With little lead. Lead handles on the side. You take a torpedo, put it on a track and bend the lead down. That would hold it on the rail. You'd put it far enough away from the work crew so in case there was a mess up, the train would hit those torpedoes and warn the crew that was working on the rails, there's a train coming. And each the number of torpedoes you put on the rail. See whether he was stopping or he was going to progress forward. I mean, it was like a comb. And if you only heard one, you better get out of the way because he's coming. And just said, you should have had your machinery off the track. Because we'd have like a-

Arrye Rosser [00:35:42] Was it like a sound? It made a sound when the train hit it.

Vince Delgado [00:35:45] Bang. A loud bang. Like a shotgun. [crosstalk]

Arrye Rosser [00:35:46] So it was like an alarm.

Vince Delgado [00:35:48] Yeah, that was their alarm system. That was before they had walkie talkies. Primitive, but it worked. And then we used to have a flat car with just the handles that we'd pull with the. If we were using the hand car, we're pulling this hand car. Two guys on the handles. And if you had extra guys, they'd sit along the side with the legs dangling out the side. Or you'd sit on a little trailer. We'd haul all our equipment in that to the work site, take the carts off the track, then go to work. You finish your work, you put it back on the track. Of course, finding out what schedule the train was coming. Because you got to make sure to be on the right of way. And it's all by the signals of the. At least we call them torpedoes. In later years, when we realized what we could do with them, we'd go and when we leave work, we'd put maybe two or three in our pockets. When we go to a movie or something to Cuyahoga Heights. Hike up to Cuyahoga Heights. We'd put them on the streetcar tracks. You want to see a movie. Here comes the streetcar. It used to make a bend just before you got into Cuyahoga Heights and Denver, Cleveland. The streetcar would come around, make a curve and head into Cleveland to pick up passengers like the bus does now. We'd line them up. Not allowed to put one or two there and go back and hide behind some of these yarn. We didn't even belong in the area. Here comes the streetcar. The streetcar hit those torpedoes and you hear the bang. The guy would come running out, the conductor and he'd jump off the thing, looking around, pulling down on the electric connector to the car to make it go. You thought that was it. And then he'd go around looking around after a couple times. Then he'd look around and just shake his fist. He knew who was doing it. Amusement.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:37:42] You're lucky you're not in jail.

Arrye Rosser [00:37:46] That was hilarious. And do you think, did your dad like the work? Do you remember, was there a sense of camaraderie in the crew when they worked together?

Vince Delgado [00:37:58] I mean they did. I mean it was like a machine. They worked together often, like spiking to track, moving the ties, bringing the rails on board. They had a system, you know, there's no waste of time at all. That's right. I mean they worked. I remember my dad would come back after working all day long and we used to have a tree across from where our portable home was. And he'd just lay there for a while to catch his breath because you know, he'd have to walk from the work site but after they unloaded all their tools and to catch his breath. But I remember him being so whipped. He wasn't a big guy, big mustache, bald headed. He had like a brother, Jupiter hair around his head. And he laid it for all my mother go out there and give him some water. She said don't bother, let him rest before he'd go in and she'd have supper for him. But he used to work hard. He's wiry. He wasn't very tall, but for his size he was strong. So he just kept right on work until the very end. He retired.

Arrye Rosser [00:39:14] Who were his co workers? Did he have a small group that he was always working with and were they close friends?

Vince Delgado [00:39:21] Yeah, he had a couple of Italian buddies who worked with him. And I remember he had this one black guy, they called him Pork Chops. The reason he called them Pork Chops is because every time he'd have lunch he'd pull out this giant pork chop and he didn't know how to think. That's all he'd bring for lunch a couple of pork chops and a piece of bread. So from then on his name was pork chops.

Arrye Rosser [00:39:47] Do you know where pork chops came from? I'm kind of wondering if it's Mr. Harris.

Vince Delgado [00:39:52] He came from Cleveland. I don't know how he off to work, but he'd be at work. He lived in Cleveland.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:39:56] You might ask him what he had for lunch.

Arrye Rosser [00:39:58] Yeah, I know, that's crazy. And so there was like a little small crew. And then did your dad go farther down the line for other bigger projects?

Vince Delgado [00:40:09] Yeah, we had projects all the way, like I said, from Cleveland to Akron. And the inspectors that would come through would designate what section you're going to work for work at that designated day or that week, depends on what it was. Or if they're laying new track. Then they'd bring crews from all over. I mean there was a big mass of people working rails, moving big engines puffing and blowing. And that's where we, I got a chance. The younger kids that were there, like part time workers like to use for weed cutting and etc. We had a chance to take a break because we did want us out of the way because these experienced guys swinging hammers and moving rails so we had a chance. The engine would stop. We could crawl up. I'd be sitting up there where the engineers sat and watch the rest of the guys work. Either they had to go back in a caboose and sit in a caboose until they blew a whistle and told us to get out of there and give us a chore to do before the big project was done. But we weren't allowed to work with the men when they had a big project like changing a whole series of rails and tires because they were synchronized. They would really go to a job and do it fast because they had trains to come through and they had trains to be taking coal and sent back and forth to Cleveland. So it had to be done fast and efficiently.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:41:31] When you're saying they came through and fixed the rails. I remember one time, I don't know whether it was an accident. Your dad was walking on the railroad when we lived on Rockside. And either there was a car accident there or something happened to the rails because when he was walking, he came back home and he said he had to go down to the depot because there was something wrong with the track. It was off. Either off kilter.

Vince Delgado [00:41:56] Right.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:41:56] He walked all the way down to that willow thing and the next thing you know there's a train coming by and a work group. And they changed that rail. They changed the whole rail. And within, like you said, it didn't take them long at all. They were in there, they were out. They had these men pounding those spikes in and they were gone. And they fixed the rail track.

Vince Delgado [00:42:17] Without the machinery that they use now. They work on the park rails. You know, everything's mechanical. These people did it by hand and they did it fast. You know.

Arrye Rosser [00:42:28] It's just. It's remarkable to me. Were there other Mexican American workers that he had?

Vince Delgado [00:42:38] One person used to come. He was an older man then, and he was old then. I think he worked with him for maybe about a year or so. And I remember my dad and him speaking in Spanish to each other, you know. Then after a while, there was the Italian workers coming in. And my dad was able to talk. He could speak almost perfect Italian. After he got used to it, you know, it was so close to Spanish. But it wasn't the influx of all one nationality that worked on the tracks. You had a mingling of southern people, black people, Mexicans, you name it, you know, but not like I said, there was such a flood of people, but just enough to keep the workforce going. But they were coming from all over constantly because they were looking for a job and a better opportunity. And like, as the years went by, it just got worse and worse and everybody wanted to come here.

Arrye Rosser [00:43:43] Let's switch a little bit and talk a little bit just about Anna, your mom. What did she enjoy most doing?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:43:53] She usually stayed at home. I just remember her being at home a lot.

Arrye Rosser [00:43:57] That's what Joe said.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:43:58] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:43:59] Making sure we had proper clothing to go to school.

Arrye Rosser [00:44:03] Eight kids.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:44:03] Yeah, exactly. Well, I think when we lived at Willow, I remember walking across that trestle, walking with her, going to the grocery store, which was on 71st Street.

Vince Delgado [00:44:15] Yeah, the Italian store.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:44:17] Yeah. So I was very little, but that trestle looked like it was huge. And those. All I could see was a Cuyahoga River underneath it with no wiring or anything between the ties. And here we are walking from ties. Can you imagine a three year old, My legs were only this big. How I was afraid I was gonna miss a tie.

Vince Delgado [00:44:36] You- But you had to show your dad that you weren't afraid. The boys especially.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:44:41] But I remember the walkway. But at that time, when I looked at that. Look at that walkway. To me it looked about this narrow. And I'm thinking I was always afraid we were gonna get caught in the middle by the train coming. And mom would say, no, look, you can get off there. And I'm looking at this little piece of steel that you have to stand on. I'm thinking it's a good thing I'm not fat.

Vince Delgado [00:45:03]You'd be amazed though how if you walk the rails long enough, you know how to skip a tie and you can really motor. And my dad was good at that. Now here I'm a little kid trying to follow my dad in the early years and I'm stumbling over one tie, grabbing on the back of his pants so I wouldn't fall through the cracks. And he'd look at you and give you a disgusted look. How come you can't keep up with me.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:45:26] When you got older, he'd walk down the tracks and try to balance on the railroad track. I remember when we were living on Rockside. I was walking down to the pond. I had one of your rifles. I think it is one of the boys rifles. And there were a lot of bottles. When the river overflowed, it overflowed into this. We called it the sand pit because they pulled out topsoil and left gouges in the river would overflow into these sand pits. And when it would go down, we had the best fun because as it went down it left big puddles that you could walk in. But there were goldfish in the those puddles. The fish couldn't get back to the ponds after it went down. And we used to love to grab, you know, we used to pull them out and put them back in the pond. But I was walking down the railroad track and I was balancing on the tracks trying to see how far I could go to get to the pond because there were some glass bottles down there. And I like to target shoot these bottles. And all of a sudden I hear this big whistle behind me. I turn around and there's the work train. It must have been maybe 500 feet behind me. And the conductor is just pulling that whistle to get me off the tracks because I never heard it. Never heard that train. That's how silent those drawn trains were. And as he went by, he just went like this to me with his finger, you know, told me to get off the tracks.

Vince Delgado [00:46:46] Your mother would have killed you if you [crosstalk].

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:46:48] Yeah, she would have. But I was at that point, I was about 10 years old already. 10, 11 years old. Should have know what I was doing.

Vince Delgado [00:46:54] We used to pick blackberries. They were abundant in that area. We never short on fruit or anything. Apples, pears, they grew wild, you know.

Arrye Rosser [00:47:03] And Josephine said there was some old orchards near your house at Rockside.

Vince Delgado [00:47:08] Somewhat?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:47:09] An old orchard that used to Be the Kurtz pastures. They were like, up the hill when the riding horses, they used to have put out the pastures, you know, and they. There would be horses, you know, feeding on the grasses and everything. And there were all kinds of apple trees and things up there.

Vince Delgado [00:47:25] I'll never forget. My mom had a quince tree. We lived on Stone Road. I didn't know what it was, big orange shoot. And I thought, oh, they were like pears. You go, did you ever eat a quince? Just-

Arrye Rosser [00:47:35] My grandmother liked them, but I don't have a memory. They're sour.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:47:40] They're bitter.

Arrye Rosser [00:47:41] Bitter, yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:47:43] And anyway, she'd make jelly out. She had a good idea how to make an apple pie. She'd kind of skin it, chop it up, throw it in some tortilla dough, covered both ends, throw it in the oven. That was an apple pie.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:48:00] It never tasted like a pastry pie.

Vince Delgado [00:48:02] We didn't know the difference. That was good. We ate a lot of oatmeal and rice and milk, you know.

Richard Delgado [00:48:08] Blackberries.

Vince Delgado [00:48:09] Yum, blackberries.

Arrye Rosser [00:48:10] What did she make pies out of the blackberries or jam?

Vince Delgado [00:48:13] Yeah, she'd make jam, the same thing. Forget the seeds.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:48:15] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [00:48:16] Once in a while you find stem in there in your jelly.

Arrye Rosser [00:48:22] What kinds of things? She was a gardener, right?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:48:25] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:48:25] What kinds of things did she grow?

Vince Delgado [00:48:27] There was corn, tomato, corn, carrots, radishes, cilantro. All her favorite we had. She ran the gamut of vegetables. And she used to buy these little packets of seeds. And she started from seeds.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:48:45] The whole vegetable garden I remember a big vegetable garden she had.

Vince Delgado [00:48:47] Yeah. And we used to hate it when she'd call you because you know what you had to do? Get out there and start hoeing in that house. We used to hate it. We got on Rockside Road. We had another farmer. Of course we had animals there. When she'd call, some of us would kind of disappear. We'd be out swimming in a river. But you paid the price and you got back because she had this little stick, little whippy stick. That hurt.

Arrye Rosser [00:49:13] So did you have an. You had animals at Rockside?

Vince Delgado [00:49:16] On Rockside. We had goats. We had chickens, ducks, goats. A pig, and we had a pig when we were on in Willow.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:49:24] On Stone Road. Was it?

Vince Delgado [00:49:26] No, in Willow? Because I remember the Italian man coming-

Richard Delgado [00:49:28] In was a guy who lived up on the hill.

Vince Delgado [00:49:31] Yeah. One time he hung him up by his feet and he had a long steel pole, like a poker, sharp end. He had this pig strung up. And this pig is squealing like that. He went underneath and he killed. Put it right through his heart. And then he- The reason he did that, he'd have a bucket and he'd catch the blood so he could make blood sausage. So he bled the pig out. I mean, I think that'd be cruelty to animals, what he did. But kill the pig that way so you can catch his blood. He says if you shot him, the blood wouldn't be good. I couldn't believe that later in years, but when I saw him do this, plunge this thing into the hog and sit there with a bucket catching the blood, my mother didn't like that either. That was the last time he killed our pig.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:50:16] I thought that happened on Stone Road because I remember.

Richard Delgado [00:50:19] Yeah, we had one on Stone Road

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:50:20] too, because I was little and they said, don't come in here.

[Crosstalk]

Vince Delgado [00:50:23] That's where they shot him. They shot the pig there?

Richard Delgado [00:50:26] Yeah, yeah, he shot that-

Vince Delgado [00:50:30] On Stone Road we had ducks and rabbits.

Arrye Rosser [00:50:32] Did your mom prepare all the meat or did some. They hire someone to prepare the.

Vince Delgado [00:50:37] She would, you know, the main part of the meat, somehow she'd preserve it. But the skin itself, she'd make cracklings out of it. She'd have a great big kettle, throw all the pig skins in there and let it boil down. Then you had lard. She packed the lard up in different cans for her. And then she had all the cracklings, which were good. We'd grab one and you could chew on it all day long, you know.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:51:03] Well, at Stone Road. I remember the basement at the home on Stone Road was. It had that stream running through it, a creek running through it.

AR In the basement?

GDB Yeah, it's still there. I mean, the.

Richard Delgado [00:51:16] It's still there.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:51:17] Yeah. And. But the basement was really, really almost cooler than it is down here. I don't know if there's air is on, I think, but that's where she used to store her. The stuff she used to can and the jellies. And I remember her having some meat down.

Vince Delgado [00:51:32] We go down there and catch salamanders out of the steel.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:51:35] Yeah, but it ran right through the side of the basement.

Vince Delgado [00:51:40] Truly, when you want to sleep.

Arrye Rosser [00:51:42] Is that where, like I've heard people would, like, put milk and things down? It was almost like your refrigerator, basically, before.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:51:50] Yeah, basically. But we never. I don't ever remember having anything like that.

Vince Delgado [00:51:55] People would draw, dig caves or cellars.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:52:00] Yeah, it was almost like a root cellar.

Vince Delgado [00:52:02] Like a root cellar. That's not-

Arrye Rosser [00:52:04] Where was the Stone Road house? I sort of drove by after the-

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:52:09] Do you know where the baseball field is? The Independence High school baseball field. The old high school, not the brand new ones you would. The baseball field was. There was a football field behind the high school, and then there was the baseball field behind that. And then behind that there was like a big cliff in woods. And that's where the house was down off that.

Vince Delgado [00:52:28] That house was abandoned on Stone [crosstalk].

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:52:30] Just as you go down the hill on Stone Road.

Arrye Rosser [00:52:32] Yeah. By- There's an intersection.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:52:37] Yeah. Let me see. What the heck is the name of that street? Tulip Trail.

Arrye Rosser [00:52:40] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:52:41] There's a street that goes back to the Nike site. It's right there on that corner.

Arrye Rosser [00:52:47] Is the house right on that corner?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:52:48] Yes. And there's a. People living in there.

Arrye Rosser [00:52:51] I think I went by and saw the house. I think I-

Vince Delgado [00:52:54] As you come over the top of a hill on Stone Road, when it goes down steep, look over to your left, you'll see it.

Arrye Rosser [00:53:00] Just after that road, intersection turns off, and then the house is next.

Vince Delgado [00:53:06] That's another house there.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:53:07] It's before the. Before the street. Before the street that goes out to the site.

Vince Delgado [00:53:13] Now they got a house. They built a house in that area.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:53:15] It's the original house. They've remodeled, they've modernized it. But there's a couple who lives there. 

Vince Delgado [00:53:21] Above it there's a couple houses.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:53:23] Oh, yes. They've built houses up the street from there. Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [00:53:27] Yeah. And did you guys go down. I'm kind of curious about just how far you guys ranged when you were little. If you remember the river and just what it was like, you know, to be a kind of kid poking around in those different areas.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:53:45] We were always down.

Vince Delgado [00:53:46] I would remember we would go fairly long ways down the river, just exploring.

Richard Delgado [00:53:49] From Stone Road?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:53:52] Yeah.

Richard Delgado [00:53:55] Rockside wasn't that far. No.

Vince Delgado [00:53:57] Willow.

Richard Delgado [00:53:59] The Willow.

Vince Delgado [00:54:00] Yeah. We didn't go too far there.

Richard Delgado [00:54:01] No, that wasn't that far.

Vince Delgado [00:54:03] So when we got to Rockside Road, that's what we did. We used to go hunting. We'd hunt the whole Valley. You know, you'd go out for a half hour, 45 minutes, you'd come back with your rabbit or your pheasant. It's funny, during that time, we very seldom saw deer. Later on we said-

Richard Delgado [00:54:21] No, we never did. 

Vince Delgado [00:54:23] It was a big treat when you look out the window and see a couple of deer feeding with your goats out in the back, that was a big treat. Now you run over them. 

Arrye Rosser [00:54:32] Yeah. Is it- What time- What would have been the time period? Is this the '50s that you were hunting?

Richard Delgado [00:54:38] Yeah, more or less.

Vince Delgado [00:54:40] More or less, yeah. '50s. No, I was in the service that was back in

Arrye Rosser [00:54:46] The '40s.

Vince Delgado [00:54:46] Mid to- '40s. In the '40s because we had your brother Nick's Old Blue, the shotgun. Single shot. Old Blue.

Arrye Rosser [00:54:55] Is this when you were a high school student working in the rail? Sort of that time period?

Vince Delgado [00:55:01] I was on long because after I graduated, I was gone. I joined the Air Force. That left the legacy to these two and the others.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:55:11] They all left. He went to the Air Force.

Arrye Rosser [00:55:15] What year did you go into the service?

Vince Delgado [00:55:18] 1948, as soon as I got out of high school. Then I didn't come back to 1951-52, during the Korean War.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:55:27] I remember when Nick left when he was drafted to World War II.

Vince Delgado [00:55:30] Yeah.

Richard Delgado [00:55:32] He went out of high school too, didn't he? About '41 or something? Nick?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:55:35] No, he got drafted.

Vince Delgado [00:55:36] He got drafted. Then he left after. I was home early when you left. 

Arrye Rosser [00:55:43] When did you go, Richard?

Richard Delgado [00:55:44] I went '54 right after school.

Arrye Rosser [00:55:48] And what part of the service were you in?

Richard Delgado [00:55:51] Air Force.

Vince Delgado [00:55:52] He didn't want to work and he stayed for 30 years. I'll tell you one thing he did, though. He may not be the smartest guy in the world, but he sent two sons at the Air Force Academy.

Arrye Rosser [00:56:06] Amazing. So let me ask a little bit more about. Your family's giving me the most information that I've heard about this section of the Cuyahoga. And just it's so many people in the Peninsula area. I think because it was downstream from the sewage treatment plant, it was really stinky and like nobody, it seems like in Peninsula and Everett were ever playing in the river. The river smelled a lot. What was it like in the places that you were living? Like, was it smelly? Was it clean? Were there fish in it?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:56:43] I don't remember fish, but it was running. It was constantly running. We didn't see any fish. The swimming hole we had right by our house, I just remember you guys swinging off lines into like a deep area. And my oldest sister, I think it was. I think it was Sarah who was down there swimming. She was. 

VD She didn't know how to swim.

GDB She didn't know how to swim and she tried swimming off that vine. And what they used to do is they swing off the bank into the river, let go. But when they swung out, by the time you got here, it was shallow and they let go at that point and you would end up in water up to your waist.

Vince Delgado [00:57:19] She let go too soon.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:57:20] She let go too soon and she ended up in like the eight foot water and she couldn't swim. I just remember sitting in the stream, playing with my pebbles and these crazy people saying, Sarah, Sarah, just let yourself flow with the current, get to the shallow part. And she did. She finally let current take her to the shallow part. And she was able to stand.

Vince Delgado [00:57:42] See, that's because you weren't with your big brothers.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:57:45] Well, I didn't follow your lead. I stayed where I was safe. I was smarter.

Vince Delgado [00:57:49] But we used to- We used to go up and down-

Arrye Rosser [00:57:51] This was on Rockside? [crosstalk]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:57:51] This was on Rockside. Yeah. I would step out when we first moved there, I think I was about five or six.

Vince Delgado [00:57:56] When we moved down there when it flooded. Our house there on Rockside was built on higher up than the regular surrounding. Say maybe about- Oh, I'll say about four feet to three feet. You could see, remember the wall and the house sat on top of that. Well, it would flood. It would flood all the way around us. And if you sit up in your back top bedroom, look out, you could see stuff floating down river headed for the lake. I saw a couple of pigs one day. I saw a cow. And then all kinds of balls. All kinds of. We had toys like galore. Balls would roll up on our property.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:58:34] When it went down. All the driftwood would be there. It would be so much.

Vince Delgado [00:58:37] You find all these treasures. So we'd go scooting up and down the river looking for treasure, you know.

Arrye Rosser [00:58:42] Oh, that's crazy. Was it like- Do you remember any, like really serious floods in that timeframe?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:58:48] They all were serious. We couldn't [crosstalk] get out of the house because it was flooded. There was a bridge that- Before you got to the bridge that went over the river, there was like a little concrete bridge over the road, and that's where the river flooded. It used to flood that whole area.

Vince Delgado [00:59:04] The riverbed. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:59:05] And then when it went down, it caused like a riverbed. And it was like a little U. A pond here and a pond here with a little bridge. And we used to go ice skating on that and fishing. There were a lot of fish in there, once it went down. 

Vince Delgado [00:59:17] We had our own pond to fish in.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:59:20] Because after, when it flooded, we couldn't get across that first bridge because there were a few times when they were gone. They were in the Air Force already. And I was working at Breck's drugstore in Independence. And when I'd get off work, I'd try and go home. And I couldn't. I couldn't walk across the bridge. I couldn't get to the house. I'd have to call my sister Joe or my sister Sarah. Who can I spend the night? I can't get home.

Arrye Rosser [00:59:45] That's crazy. And did the water come up into the house.

Vince Delgado [00:59:51] Not that I- [crosstalk]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:59:52] In the basement. But the basement was an old basement, one of these, like-

Arrye Rosser [00:59:56] I lived in one of these houses.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [00:59:58] Root cellar basements. And it did. It just came, I think, about from this for the first floor. That's how far it came. I think I was.

Richard Delgado [01:00:06] I used to flood the furnace out.

Vince Delgado [01:00:08] Yeah, I was just thinking the furnace was out of. And it was like the Black Hole of Calcutta, because we had one section where they had a coal chute, and you shoot the coal in there. And then my dad would have to go down there and get the furnace going. And before he'd go to work, he'd make sure he'd be going to keep the house warm. It didn't keep the house war. It only kept two rooms warm enough. Like the kitchen and- 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:00:30] The downstairs rooms. 

Vince Delgado [01:00:31] Yeah. Downstairs, upstairs in the bedrooms, you have to have sleep with double blankets. And if you had overcoats, you threw the overcoats over yourself to keep warm.

Arrye Rosser [01:00:41] And was the- This was the house that was a tavern, was it? Maybe it was. People were living there during the tavern period. Did you know anything about the whole tavern time period?

Vince Delgado [01:00:53] No, no, we just knew. It had various names. Happy's H House and other names they used to sell during probation. You know, they used to make booze, and they had a front door when you got up, went up the stairs onto its little porch, and the front entrance had a little door, had a knock on the door, and the guy had opened up the door and said, who was it? [01:01:16] You know? But throughout the whole house, it was wired. Every room in that house had a bell. Had a bell, an alarm system. So.

Arrye Rosser [01:01:24] Was it for raids?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:01:27] Apparently it was. Well, I guess during Prohibition-

Vince Delgado [01:01:30] During Prohibition. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:01:32] It must have been for a raid if they came looking for liquor.

Vince Delgado [01:01:33] And, I mean, the ladies were there.

Arrye Rosser [01:01:36] Was it prostitution?

Vince Delgado [01:01:38] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:01:39] It may have been, because the whole back of the house was an actual dance hall. It had a stage, and it was hardwood floor in the back. 

Vince Delgado [01:01:48] It had sconces on the wall.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:01:50] It was made up like a little speakeasy, really. I don't know if you're familiar with Mr. Gaab. He's a historian for Independence. He wrote. I don't know if it's published, but they're in the library. Two small paperback books. And he grew up. He's part of the Kurtz and the Gaab family, and he has all of that type of information about that particular house in his book. Because I was reading it when I came back from one of our class reunions, and I picked up his book and I was reading it. And he stated in there that at the time it was. Although they didn't admit it, he said it was a speakeasy. His uncle used to farm the land around the house where we lived. And he had a vegetable stand down there. And when he was in high school, he was supposed to work there to earn some money. He asked his uncle to work there and his mother said no. He got mad at the uncle because she says, I don't want him working in front of a place like that. They called it back then a speakeasy.

Arrye Rosser [01:03:01] Oh. So there's a lot of these places in the valley. Sketchy, sketchy places.

Vince Delgado [01:03:06] The old boat house. The old boat house. Another one?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:03:09] Yeah, the boat house.

Arrye Rosser [01:03:11] Where was that? I. I'm my knowledge up in this area that was a restaurant.

Vince Delgado [01:03:17] First of all, from Rockside Road to Canal Road, okay? As you pass our house- 

Arrye Rosser [01:03:24] Okay. 

Vince Delgado [01:03:25] You go over the river in the corner. Well, the mash was down before you got to the bridge, but you get out over the mash part. Then there was a garage. They're called Old Eddie's Gas. I mean Garage. Across the street was a tavern called Sarnecki's. You went further down Canal Road, you hit the boathouse, you went across. Well, Rockside Road wasn't there.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:03:50] It was less than a mile between Stone.

Richard Delgado [01:03:52] It was between Stone Road and Rockside.

Vince Delgado [01:03:54] There was the port. There was.

Arrye Rosser [01:03:55] It was. Yeah. It was north of what we- Of this building here. So it was on the east side of the road, just to the north.

Vince Delgado [01:04:03] Let me see, on the west side.

Arrye Rosser [01:04:04] On the west side.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:04:05] On the west side, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:04:06] On the canal side.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:04:06] If you're heading from Rockside here, it was on the right side.

Vince Delgado [01:04:10] They called it the old boathouse. That's where the boats used to stop. The canal was right behind it.

Richard Delgado [01:04:14] They had a regular lock there.

Vince Delgado [01:04:16] There was a lock there. So that was on the creaky floors.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:04:22] It was a big old bar with a dance floor that, you know.

Vince Delgado [01:04:25] That was there when I came out of the service. That was a good watering hole.

Arrye Rosser [01:04:28] Yeah. I think Joe was talking that your dad liked to go there.

Vince Delgado [01:04:32] Yes, my dad used to like his wine and beer. One day, when I was old enough, one day I finished work. I worked for a while driving building truck building material. So I had to stop for a beer. My dad was in there. He just got off work and he's sitting on the corner and he's got a glass of beer and a glass of wine. I saw him finish his beer when I walked in the door. Then he took the wine, threw it in a glass and ordered another beer. So he had his wine and beers, and then he'd have the barmaid already had his little package ready in a package. And it didn't look like he was carrying anything disguised. So my mother wouldn't know when he got home that he was bringing beers or wine home. He had his own stash in his bedroom of wine. And my mother couldn't figure why he was always happy. And after a while, in Spanish, he used to call his bed. He slept downstairs and my mom slept upstairs. And all of us were or someplace. She found a place to sleep in that house. And after a while she called his room the room of the bottles. In Spanish is the church of the bottle. Of the bottle. English, which means because he'd hide the bottles under his bed. Now he had a problem. He's got to get rid of these bottles. And you knew it when you hear the clinking in the backyard.

Arrye Rosser [01:05:59] Were you then collecting them in the river?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:06:02] I probably was the one that was shooting out of the river. We used to find all, you know, things to do when we were growing. There was never a dull moment as far as there was always something to do when we were kids. Oh, I imagine never in the house.

Vince Delgado [01:06:19] We didn't have television, fights between us, rocks, orange, stuff like that I got you one day.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:06:25] What? Oh, well, forget about that one. But they are bad boys.

Arrye Rosser [01:06:30] Did you. I remember hearing Joe talk about who's the ones who were hunting turtles and making turtle soup.

Vince Delgado [01:06:38] Oh, my brother.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:06:40] That was the oldest brother.

Vince Delgado [01:06:42] When he got back from the service, he used to have the VFW was just on top of the hill on 21. And all the vets would be congregated there. You know, every once in a while they'd come up with an idea, have a raccoon dinner. They'd go out shooting raccoons and come back, skin them. And they'd have the older ladies, the old Polish ladies come along, cook them with sauerkraut and everything else, and they'd have a raccoon dinner. Don't turn your head up. I had a dish one day and a little dark meat, but it's good. So then he had his buddies, they'd get about four or five, and they'd go out and catch a turtle along the river, bring it back, take it apart. They have this big tub. Well, kettle.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:07:25] Yeah, black. I remember the black kettle.

Vince Delgado [01:07:27] Threw all kinds of spices in there, corn, you name it. Everything was in there. I wonder if they put shoes in there and let it boil. They'd all sit around drinking beer. Well, by the time the turtle supposedly soup was ready, they'd get in there and they'd be sloshing around putting it in their bowls or cups and whatever, saying how great it was. I don't know, because they're so drunk, they could have been drinking something else.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:07:49] They used to do that every year, I remember, in the backyard on Rockside.

Arrye Rosser [01:07:52] So, like the Home Day?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:07:54] No, this was their own little ritual. [crosstalk] And they were mostly the guys from the VFW. They were mostly guys in VFW and they used to hang out a lot. But when we lived on Rockside, we had, of course, a big yard and they used to put this big black kettle under the tree and they'd sit around and that's when the turtle soup was cooking. You could smell it and everything, but- 

Vince Delgado [01:08:16] Smelled good. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:08:17] I mean, maybe this is the, years later when you were in the Air Force, they still had that ritual down there with their. I remember the VFW guys.

Arrye Rosser [01:08:25] This is a big snapping turtle?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:08:27] Yeah. I don't know what kind of turtle. I think they were snapping turtles.

Vince Delgado [01:08:29] They were snapping turtles.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:08:30] They were snapping turtles. I know that.

Arrye Rosser [01:08:31] How on earth did they catch the snapping turtles?

Vince Delgado [01:08:34] Well, they throw a line on it with a piece of meat on it. Turtle come along and snap it and it won't let go. Once each got in its mouth, your finger, your foot. They're not going to let it go unless you cut that part out or cut his head off. So then they'd haul this big monster out and grab it by the tail and bring it in. Then they'd give it a whack in the head or something. Then they split open the shell.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:08:56] I remember him showing me or telling me the difference between a snapping turtle and a regular turtle because we used to have. Living by the pond, there used to be a lot of turtles that used to cross the street and stuff. And they were just ordinary turtles. We used to pick them up with our hands. And one time he told me, be careful. He showed me the difference between a snapping turtle and a regular turtle.

Arrye Rosser [01:09:18] What were the other. What was the other wildlife down there?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:09:23] The pond. We were there. We used to fish a lot for catfish and bluegill and there were a lot of carp, but they were. They turned gold. I just. They were just amazing to us because they were goldfish. As far as we were in a

Vince Delgado [01:09:35] canal, that's where you get the goldfish out of the canal.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:09:39] Was that what that? Yeah, I can see that now. They would.

Arrye Rosser [01:09:43] What time period was that? Is that the 50s?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:09:46] 50s? I was in high school.

Arrye Rosser [01:09:49] So more of the 40s?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:09:51] Yeah. Yeah. I guess maybe around 49.

Arrye Rosser [01:09:54] Yeah. Was there bubbles? Do you remember? Bubbles in the canal? Was the canal. I mean, this section, I've heard. But that, I think, was later when there was the detergents that created all this foam.

Vince Delgado [01:10:07] The foam?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:10:08] The foam, yeah.

Vince Delgado [01:10:09] I think.

Richard Delgado [01:10:09] I don't know.

Vince Delgado [01:10:10] They claimed it came from Akron.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:10:12] I remember it running clean all the time. It may be a little greenish, but there was always a lot of water in the canal. I remember that.

Vince Delgado [01:10:18] So you'd see the stuff floating down. Everything was going to Cleveland and. Yeah, that was. I never knew how they found out or what it was, but it disappeared after a while. You didn't have it, but I guess it was just chemicals that they were putting in there, dumping in the canal. Also in the river.

Arrye Rosser [01:10:36] I think it was laundry detergent. It was back when they. Before they got the phosphates out of the laundry detergent.

Vince Delgado [01:10:44] Talking about color, I remember working with my dad on the railroad. We were in the Cleveland area, down around the flats. And I remember riding up there and I saw these streams of blue, greenish yellow stuff coming from pipes, from the factories, pouring into the Cuyahoga River. I understand, you know, when they say how polluted it was. Tell me about it. I saw the stuff being poured into the river and the river itself just multicolored as it slid towards the Lake Erie. And we were working on the railroad tracks right next to the river. And it was something to see. You know, I think that they had photographs. Somebody took photographs of that.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:11:23] After the polio scare. I think a lot of people then. We never swam in the river. We weren't allowed to, really. I didn't think. I can't remember.

Arrye Rosser [01:11:33] What time period is that?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:11:35] Was it in the '50s of polio, when polio was here? Yeah, because Joe was a traveling nurse. Yeah. And that was during the polio epidemic. After that, very few people swam in any of the swimming holes. Right down here on stone, there's supposed to be a big quarry. They used to call it the Blue Hole. Yeah, it was a stone quarry. They kept warning the kids. The kids, the high school kids used to go down there to swim. And there's no guards or anything. And it's a very, very deep quarry.

Vince Delgado [01:12:07] The quarry was used for water for the haydite plant to manufacture the blocks. They had been quarried, had been filled in by this water, and it became a lake, like Gloria was saying. Kids would go down and swim. We would go down there and swimming. But if you dove and you went beyond three or four feet, the water turned ice cold. And if you went down deep enough, I mean, if. I mean, you'd come out, your [inaudible] would have just, you know, and then you have head up towards rolling water.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:12:39] I thought there had been one drowning there. That's why they kept warning the kids away from it.

Arrye Rosser [01:12:44] And this is. I think this is all this property that now is the Hemlock Creek trail ends up. Because I know it runs along.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:12:53] Yeah, they talk a lot of quarries, but.

Arrye Rosser [01:12:55] Yeah, maybe it's the same one.

Vince Delgado [01:12:57] You know, what amazed me was that bridge, the hemlock bridge that they have there. It was in existence when I was a kid, and we used to take our bikes and then hike down. It was just weeds by the time we there. All of a sudden, here's this beautiful bridge and the stream running throughout the [inaudible]. A bridge to nowhere. You know, they went nowhere. And then just not just recently, the last few years, they remodeled the whole trail. It goes over that very same bridge and ends up down by the haydite plant and then on into Canal. The haydite plant had residents living alongside. It was a company store. They had a company store there called Stebbins. Stebbins grocery store. We used to ride our bikes and swim in the river across the street. From there, there was a bridge which is destroyed now. It used to cross the Cuyahoga River. We'd bike down there, and if we had enough money from collecting bottles on the hill in Independence, we'd have enough money. We waited till after we got finished swimming in the river, Go to Stebbins store, and I'll never forget to sit on the porch there and get Dixie cups. That was our street. If you had enough money, we used to jump off the bridge into the river.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:14] What's a Dixie cup? Is it ice cream?

Vince Delgado [01:14:17] Oh, yeah. Where are you from?

Arrye Rosser [01:14:20] I'm from Massachusetts.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:14:23] They're little paper cups- 

Vince Delgado [01:14:25] With ice cream in them. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:14:26] And then they were about this big and this round.

Arrye Rosser [01:14:27] Did they have like a little paper lid?

Vince Delgado [01:14:28] Yeah. 

Arrye Rosser [01:14:29] [crosstalk] Like a little wooden spoon or plastic spoon? [crosstalk]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:14:33] With a wooden spoon. And they've had ice cream. Vanilla ice cream in it.

Vince Delgado [01:14:38] Dixie cup. 

Arrye Rosser [01:14:39] Yeah. I don't know what we called them when I was a kid, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I remember Joe referring to a store that I didn't realize. It was the Haydite company store. That's interesting. And was it next to the train station?

Richard Delgado [01:14:52] Right across- Across from the track, across the track.

Vince Delgado [01:14:55] There are houses back there behind the station itself. That's about four. Four houses back there.

Richard Delgado [01:15:02] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:15:02] Yeah. And I never kind of worked out in my head like where the station was compared to everything else down in there.

Vince Delgado [01:15:11] There were houses along Hemlock Road, along the haydite plant, too. I know. I went to school with a few kids that lived there.

Arrye Rosser [01:15:19] Were they houses associated with the plant? Were they workers kids?

Vince Delgado [01:15:24] Yeah, that was a plant property, and they paid rent to the plant. And also, like, you heard the company store, and you could charge your stuff and it'd be taken off to pay from the Stebbins store. Yeah, that was an old time.

Arrye Rosser [01:15:37] Yeah. But you guys in the neighborhood could also use the store if you work in.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:15:43] I- I barely remember our store there.

Richard Delgado [01:15:45] But I don't know, we just wandered down. We used to wander down there once in a while.

Arrye Rosser [01:15:49] Yeah. How long of a walk was it down for you guys from your house?

Vince Delgado [01:15:54] From Stone Roadhouse?

Arrye Rosser [01:15:57] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [01:15:58] Oh, Lord. I don't know. It could have been a mile from where we lived on Stone Road down to the. About a mile.

Richard Delgado [01:16:05] Yeah, about that. About a mile and a half.

Vince Delgado [01:16:07] Because it was easy going down with our bikes. We had to push our bikes back up the hill.

Arrye Rosser [01:16:11] Yeah. Yeah. So that was your dad's commute to work back in the day.

Vince Delgado [01:16:15] Yeah. When we lived in Stone Road, he'd walk that distance back down to that station after we moved.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:16:20] On Rockside, he used to walk down the railroad tracks straight down. I remember him leaving in the morning.

Arrye Rosser [01:16:27] Yeah. Let me just see if there's any else. I was just going to ask what each of you guys were like in your personalities when you're little kids. And if you describe Joe, too, because I have her memories. But you know what?

Vince Delgado [01:16:48] We were different in a way. A lot of us. He was stubborn. Stubborn.

Arrye Rosser [01:16:52] He was Richard being the stubborn one.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:16:54] He was outdoorsy guy. He didn't like to go to school.

Vince Delgado [01:16:59] Gloria follows around like a puppy dog.

Arrye Rosser [01:17:03] Says the older brother.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:17:04] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [01:17:06] Hope and I used my brother, my sister Hope. We could never get along.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:17:10] No, never get along. We used to fight, too, with Hope, because he always used to stick up for me when Hope would pick on me. You would stick up for me so Hope would get mad at me, think I was, you know, spoiled.

Vince Delgado [01:17:23] My sister Joe was quiet all the time. I remember her sitting there and my mom braiding her hair in a pigtail. It had her just so. And after all, I think she did it herself later to cut her hair. But I always remember sitting out there in the back of our mobile home. [01:17:41] And braiding her hair.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:17:44] Yeah, her and Sarah were just. I just remember people thinking they were so beautiful. There was this Spanish community from Cleveland. I think we were the only Mexican family here. Later on, there was a family who moved in Independence.

Richard Delgado [01:17:56] But that was in the late '50s.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:17:59] Yeah, that's when Peter's- Peter's age. But I remember the guys from Cleveland that used to come visit mom and dad, the ones that spoke Spanish, they always used to talk about Joe and Sarah. They wanted to come out and see the Delgado girls. But, you know, we live way out here.

Vince Delgado [01:18:17] You know, Sarah was my mom's partner. Would sit in the kitchen and making tortillas. And they used to have to make a pile of them. See, they kids don't eat the tortillas. She used to have a big kettle and she'd pile them. You'd see the pile of tortillas. After a meal, you'd scrape the bottom to find them. Everybody fought for the last tortilla. It's fun time.

Arrye Rosser [01:18:50] What were some of the kind of elements of your parents Mexican heritage that kind of carried to your family living in the U.S., talk about eating the tortillas. Was there other things that were kind of cultural things that you remember? 

Vince Delgado [01:19:08] Cooking.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:19:09] They used to talk about the ancestors from the- You know, I think my mom had. I don't know me. One interesting one was I always found very interesting is my mom had a younger brother and he came over to work in Arizona. I think there was a copper mine. Says this is a story my older sister Sarah told me. And while they were over here, the person he came over, whether he was a cousin or a relative, became ill and he passed away. Well, this young boy, he was only like 12 years old when he came over with the man. And when he died, they notified. It took him a long time to notify the family back in Mexico. And they couldn't get over here right away because they couldn't afford to come over to the U.S. So by the time the relative came over to claim the young boy to take him back to Mexico, he had disappeared into the system and they never heard from him again. And that was their younger brother. 

Arrye Rosser [01:20:16] Wow. It would be a DNA match sometime you'll find- [crosstalk]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:20:18] Yeah, it's- [crosstalk] 

Vince Delgado [01:20:21] He's probably a millionaire. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:20:23] [laughs] But that and the gates, those iron gates. There's supposed to be an iron foundry that I'm not sure whether I think it was on mom's side.

Vince Delgado [01:20:37] The gates in the cathedral.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:20:38] Yeah, there was a foundry that formed and made the gates for the cathedral in Leon, Mexico. And we have pictures of that, too. And we went down to see them. Apparently the mother. It was a great, great grandmother that was from France, and the grandfather was from Spain, and they had this foundry. But when that revolution hit, the government took over all of the iron foundries in Mexico and they took over that foundry, too. So we tried to trace it back. And I think Greg has found some history on all these foundries and what happened to them. And there's a place, I think, in California that an existing building from one of those foundries still stands. And I just got that article from Greg and Sharon.

Vince Delgado [01:21:30] It's funny, you check your history back and you hear all kinds of stories. I remember that you're talking Uncle Paul.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:21:39] Yeah. I think we still have a picture of him. I don't know exactly the connection. Yeah, that's mom's brother.

Vince Delgado [01:21:43] He was my mother's brother. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:21:45] Brother. Yeah, that I know. 

Vince Delgado [01:21:48] Going forward a little bit. When I applied to become a U.S. Marshal, they did a full record check. I passed everything. And one day one of the supervisors came by and said, you have an uncle by the name of Paul or Pablo? I said, yeah. He said, did he ride with Pancho Villa? I said. I said, I heard rumors. My mom said he went back to Mexico and during the revolution, he was involved with those gangs. I said, gangs? So they kind of smiled and said, oh, there goes my job. They kind of laughed and they walked away. Said, we better watch them carefully.

Arrye Rosser [01:22:32] But they hired you anyway, right?

Vince Delgado [01:22:33] Yeah.

Richard Delgado [01:22:37] And Joe had a picture of him, too.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:22:38] Yeah, we have a picture. [crosstalk]

Vince Delgado [01:22:45] I saw one with him without it, though. He had a mustache, too.

Arrye Rosser [01:22:49] Let me ask a little bit about you, Richard. With. You were the outdoorsy ones. What are the things that you like to do outdoors when you.

Richard Delgado [01:22:57] Actually, I had a low profile. I never really. I just watched everything or whatever. I'm going along with the crowd for a long time.

Vince Delgado [01:23:06] Come here, Richard.

Richard Delgado [01:23:07] I would-

Vince Delgado [01:23:09] Stay out of my way. You don't wear shoes.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:23:12] In the high school yearbook. His prediction. You know how they gave the prediction on where you'll see him in 20 years? He said, you're going to see Richard walking the swamplands in Independence and Valley View, leading the people through all the swamps. That's exactly. He was always in the woods.

Vince Delgado [01:23:31] I think something happened to him in his younger years. Oh, across from our built home at the rail there, next to the railroad tracks. Across the railroad tracks, we had like a bin.

Arrye Rosser [01:23:43] This is a Rockside?

Vince Delgado [01:23:44] No, this is an Independence. Okay. When we lived in the cars. Oh, up in the back to Willow.

Arrye Rosser [01:23:53] You were a little, little Boy.

Richard Delgado [01:23:55] Yeah I was about seven years old.

Vince Delgado [01:23:56] So they had it good. And they stuck furnish us with coal for the company because it was a company home, supposedly. Well, right in the middle, there was like a big pole, and they had the big railroad ties. They dumped the coal in. When they were out there playing, and I said, Rich, let's do something, okay? So I said, get that oil can. We put it on the pole, and we'll use the coal and throw it and see if we can knock it out and who's the better thrower. So we're throwing it back and forth. So Richard threw. I remember this. I said, Richard, hold it. I got to throw mine. About that time, he's going forward to pick up his piece of. His piece of coal to throw another shot at the can. I hit the can, came down and hit him in the head. Now he's sitting there wailing away, holding his head. And then the blood starts going out. That's all my mom had. She was watching out the window. Well, I got a thorough thrashing. It wasn't my fault because he's too dumb. When I told him to wait, that's what I kept telling her in Spanish, whap, whap, whap. And that's why he slowed down, I guess. I don't know.

Arrye Rosser [01:25:05] Did you, what did you, did you hunt and fish?

Richard Delgado [01:25:07] Yeah, Mostly I stayed in the woods, more or less. I used to go out. We'd go all the way up, and I used to work at a greenhouse. Right on top of Trickers. Yeah, right off of Brecksville Boulevard.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:25:24] Yeah, huh. There was a- Yeah, there was-

Richard Delgado [01:25:25] Used to be a place called Torch Greenhouse and used to have tropical fish. And I worked there for a while when I was going to high school. And I used to cut down through the woods, down into the Valley, down into the valley and go home at Rockside Road. And I used to spend a lot of time. Time doing that.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:25:46] We went to St. Michael's School. We were both in St. Michael's School together. And I remember when the nuns used to call roll call. They used to call the names and does anybody know where Richard is? Does anybody know where Richard is? And one of the boys popped up and he said, he's probably down at Clark's, meaning that's where he would be, down with the fish. And woods or-

Richard Delgado [01:26:09] Yeah, I spent a lot of time in it. I didn't do too much- [crosstalk]

Vince Delgado [01:26:13] He was always really quiet. He'd follow us, you know, Richard didn't say too much. We have company. He was bashful. And the company left. And my mom's trying to gather where all of us were, to get ready to go get to bed, you know. And she said, where's Richard? Nobody knew where Richard was. And everybody panics. We're out there yelling, Richard. Richard. Around the woods, can't find Richard. Finally, I think Sarah or something went opened up to underneath the sink. Who's hiding there like this? Richard. He was so bashful. He was afraid of the company. He hid underneath the sink, and he's sitting there all the time. These people were there.

Arrye Rosser [01:26:53] Is this at Willow?

Vince Delgado [01:26:56] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:26:56] Oh, yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:26:57] You were a little boy, didn't like crowds.

Richard Delgado [01:27:02] I think I had trouble. If I remember right, I had trouble walking, too. They used to carry me a lot because I think something. My mom. I don't remember, my mom massaging my legs all the time.

Vince Delgado [01:27:14] Oh, yeah.

Richard Delgado [01:27:15] She always got cramps and stuff in her.

Vince Delgado [01:27:17] When we lived in Tremont area, he was just a little guy. And I remember my mom taking him up in the back and let him play in the dirt in the sun. So he's playing. He's getting like a heat treatment is what he was getting. And, yeah, you'd be there cuddling dirt, playing with your toys. I said, oh, there's that kid out there playing in the dirt.

Arrye Rosser [01:27:39] This must be where the towpath goes now. I don't know if you've been up where they built the towpath right along the edge of the valley, but on the high ground in Tremont. And you look down in there, right?

Vince Delgado [01:27:50] You see the rail all down there. That's our house. I remember that distinctly because I remember seeing these monsters going back and forth down there.

Arrye Rosser [01:28:03] I have a few other questions. I was wondering if your family or you guys as young people were involved in any local community organizations or the church. Were there things- Were you mostly hanging out with each other.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:28:15] We were teenagers now.

Richard Delgado [01:28:18] Well, she- When she was going to St. Michael, she started going to church.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:28:23] They used to have a group called CYO, Catholic Youth Organization or-

Vince Delgado [01:28:27] I made an attempt to become an altar boy when I was at St. Michael's for reward, the sisters would let us cut one of the class to go to the church. And they had these little brooms, and we'd have to sweep between the pews and get everything ready for the priest. But you said maybe three or four of us in there. Leave four boys alone. We find out trouble. One of them finds the priest's wine. It came in little bottles, the cherry wine. If I remember right, we got in there and one of them says, hey, look at this cherry wine. It looks like pop, he goes, you want to try it? No, we don't want to try it. All open. The open. Hey, it's good. So we pass it around. Lo and behold, who walks in to check on us? The Sister Superior. Well, there was a lot of beating and yelling and calling us heathens and everything else. We used to play guns once we get up on top of where the organ was and we'd shoot at the other guy behind the altar. We're supposed to be cleaning. We were heathens. So she hunts.

Arrye Rosser [01:29:35] That's a crazy.

Richard Delgado [01:29:37] Yeah. Anyway.

Vince Delgado [01:29:40] It was fun.

Arrye Rosser [01:29:42] What were the other kinds of activities that you guys did during your childhood? Did you do organized sports?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:29:49] They didn't have that in Independence. When we were growing up, they didn't have organized sports.

Richard Delgado [01:29:52] No, we used to. I know when I was hanging up, I used to actually break into the school because I had a bunch of other guys that was with us. We didn't have nothing to do at nighttime. So we used to go over to the old school and used to have the first. They had the first grade and second, they had all 12 grades there. And we used to go into the first grade side and they had the windows that you could slide up and they were never locked. So, well, about four or five of us would go over and get some kid get up there and he opened the windows, we'd crawl in and everybody, he'd run around and open the main doors, cause they were locked. And so we used to go in the gym and pull the shades down and play basketball, turn the lights on and play basketball. And one day we were in there playing and we heard this rattle on the door. I said, oh, gosh. So everybody took off and they went out the back way over the fence. And a coach Scoshan was the one that, you know. And by the time we ran over the fence and we were outside, I had the basketball in my hand. So I said, man, we gotta do something with this basketball. So we went back in there. I said, well, we got to give it back. So we went back into the school and we met Mr. Scoshan and we told him. I said, here. I said, basketball. We were. I know, I said, that's why I rattled the door. So you got to get out of there. But he was pretty nice about it. I mean, we didn't. What happened was they had a PTA meeting and they were late because we always waited till about 8 o'clock or something. And they had a late meeting and they were down there. Good thing I caught you because somebody else would have done something. But that was part of our things we could do at nighttime sometimes.

Arrye Rosser [01:31:44] Did your parents belong to any organizations or. Your mom was a churchgoer?

Vince Delgado [01:31:51] She was, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:31:53] Yeah. Were there other people. Were there other little kids around that you guys played with?

Vince Delgado [01:32:00] Not down there. We were.

Richard Delgado [01:32:02] They most lived uptown.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:03] Well, one.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:32:04] Remember that bar on Canal? The couple there had two sons, and the youngest one was our Clifford.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:13] This is the boathouse?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:32:14] No, this was Sarnecki's bar, which is right across on Rockside. And my brother Nick was in there and knew them. And he saw this little kid there, and he said, you know, I have brothers and sisters who want to go play with somebody. So he used to, like, walk across the bridge and come play with us every once in a while.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:32] Which. Where's it relative to where Thornburg Station area on those restaurants is like, I was trying to picture.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:32:41] Sarnecki's bar was. There's the Lock Keepers. The Lock Keepers bar is here. If you look directly across the street, Sarnecki's used to be right on the corner.

Arrye Rosser [01:32:49] Was it on the northeast corner of-?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:32:52] I don't know. Is that the northeast corner? It was

Vince Delgado [01:32:58] The innkeepers. There was nothing. But the garage was over on the corner by Stone Road. And there was nothing there. There the Lock Keepers were.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:33:06] Years later, she. She was killed. She was shot. That's the young. She was shot to death. And they never found out who shot her.

Arrye Rosser [01:33:12] This is a woman who ran.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:33:15] A woman and her husband. And the bar was downstairs, and they lived upstairs. The two sons and the mother and father lived upstairs. And I think I was already out of high school and working downtown. I was waiting for a bus there one in the morning, and that evening or during the day, someone came in and shot her. And they never found out. They thought it was a domestic type of thing, but they never found out who shot her.

Vince Delgado [01:33:44] They had an older son called Ronald. Son. He went to school with him. He was in the same class I was.

Arrye Rosser [01:33:51] Let me ask just a little bit about adult life. So what did you guys, each of you tell me a little bit about what you did when- when you moved to. You kind of grew up and became adults, what your careers were and if you stayed in the area or did you come back to the area at some point?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:34:10] Well, after high school, I wish I stayed in the area. I stayed in the area and I worked downtown for a little bit for a publishing company, and then I got a job for a steel company that was right on Schaaf Road. It's called Trisop Steel Company or something. I worked there for a while. Then I married someone from Brecksville. We moved away in, I think '66. In 1966, we moved away. We lived on Dora Boulevard after we were married. And then at that time we moved away and just came back two years ago.

Arrye Rosser [01:34:49] Yeah. And you moved to New England and that.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:34:51] We moved to St. Louis, to Atlanta, to Chicago, and ended up in California.

Arrye Rosser [01:34:57] Gotcha. So, yeah, you've been all over the place. Yeah. And so like, Joe, who kind of. You came back in your retirement.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:35:04] Yeah, she was in Arizona. She was still living in Arizona when we were in California. And our kids just. Well, they grew up all over too. And they ended up in the service. One ended up in the service.

Arrye Rosser [01:35:21] How about you, Vince?

Vince Delgado [01:35:22] Well, after high school, I left. I joined the Air Force. Spent five years during the Korean War. Ended up in a photo squadron taking photographs of territories, making maps for the artillery for the Army. Flew a couple missions in Korea, came back to Florida, stayed in Florida. From there, well, five years later, I come back and I worked for a building supply company in South Park. There was a company there called Ollie's Building Supplies until I could find myself at [inaudible]. Anyway, I ended up applying to become a police officer. Became a police officer, spent 30 years as a regular as a police department. Then they asked me if I wanted to join when I retired, I wanted to join the Marshals Service if I could pass the test. So I figured, well, what's the issue? I'm not doing anything else. So I went in and that's where they really did a lot of record checking. And I passed it, and I became a U.S. marshal. From there I retired. I married Cheryl. Cheryl was teaching at Cleveland State and ultimately became Professor Mayor Mary. And so she told me, she said, you're not going to hang around the house. You got to do something, come back to school. So I applied for the call and the Project 60, which meant anybody over 60 years old got a free education. You could get a diploma if you wanted to, you know, but you had to pay for it. Would I have paid it? No. Anyway, you know, I didn't want a diploma. I didn't want to teach. But I floated around, took a few courses and ended up in the archaeology department. There I stayed and joined Philip Wanyerka. And I said five, almost six years as a lab assistant doing all the digs around Ohio. And after that, what else did I do? Oh, I joined the Park Service. I became a trailblazer for three years. From then I saw the train going by. I said this hiking up and down the trail and riding a bike is just a little too taxing. So I'm going to ride. So I applied for trainment. I became a volunteer on the train, spent another three years and I would have stayed. Then this virus came up and I was going to drop out temporarily, but I let it go. I haven't gone back since. I can still go back. I got the uniform and everything. And I know they're always begging for help.

Arrye Rosser [01:38:16] I think it's. It's just like amazing to think of you volunteering on the train that your dad worked as a child. That is just remarkable.

Vince Delgado [01:38:22] That's one of the reasons. That's one of the reasons I went back. And every time we'd come down this way, we'd stop at the Rockside station and I used to tell the rest of the train. When I said, you're on my property, I says, what? I said, yeah, this is where our farm was. I said, you're on my property. It was a fun ride. Christmas to Santa train, the whole nine yards.

Arrye Rosser [01:38:49] I've been an elf for many years, too. And when were you a trailblazer? Like, what time period was that?

Vince Delgado [01:38:59] Where were?

Arrye Rosser [01:39:01] What time period were you a trailblazer? I was trying to get the.

Vince Delgado [01:39:05] Oh, Lordy. When was it Cheryl gone?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:39:10] Probably the late 2000s, early teens.

Vince Delgado [01:39:15] 2000s, something like. Yeah, 25.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:39:18] You and Vicki were doing it together?

Arrye Rosser [01:39:21] Yeah, late 2000s, early. So about 10. Stopped around 10 years ago. Does that sound about right?

Vince Delgado [01:39:30] When I stopped being a-

Arrye Rosser [01:39:31] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [01:39:32] No, it hasn't been 10 years. Since I dropped out. No, since a virus started.

Arrye Rosser [01:39:36] When that was the train, though.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:39:37] That was the train.

Arrye Rosser [01:39:38] Did you overlap a little bit with the-

Vince Delgado [01:39:40] With the Trailblazers? No, no. Once I left one unit, I joined the other.

Arrye Rosser [01:39:45] Gotcha. Gotcha.

Vince Delgado [01:39:46] I remember waving at Vicki one day when she's on a bike as I went by and said. And she screamed, ah, my dad.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:39:54] That's crazy.

Arrye Rosser [01:39:55] How about you, Richard? What's your life story?

Richard Delgado [01:39:59] Well, after I went on, I never graduated from high school. So after I got out of my last year of school, I joined the Air force. And from there I went to New York and went to my training. And then I went. I got in. They put me in the crash rescue, more or less fire departments for airport. And I went from there, I went to school and they sent me to Topeka, Kansas. So I was there for four years and I volunteered to go overseas. So I went to England and I was there for five years and got married and came back to the States. Got stationed at Clinton county out towards Cincinnati. And then from there I crossed cross trained into jet engines and they sent me to. I went to Florida there for a while and then they sent me to school in Illinois and from Illinois after I graduated from there I'd been married and everything. I had to leave my wife actually with Carol, I mean with Gloria because at that time I couldn't take them with me. So I went over to France. So about six months or later she came over, my wife came over and we had. I stayed there for four years, but I had three boys while I was over in France. And from France we came back to the states and we got stationed at Wright Patterson. Not Wright Patterson, it was Lockbourne in Columbus. And from there I got sent to Vietnam. From there I was there for four years or so, got sent to Vietnam and I sent my wife and kids England. When I got my tour in Vietnam I went back to England and spent another four or five years there and then came back and retired and then went worked for Wright Patterson working with aircraft engines, you know and build ups and compressor research and stuff like that. And I retired from there again too. And I, I moved back. We were living right outside of Dayton and I wanted to move back to Independence. So we came back up here and we were going to. I looking for a home but they just not could see. So we moved out to Olmsted Falls was the closest and that's where I'm at. And then that's where we're living now.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:42:35] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:42:36] Have you done things with. There's Dayton Aviation probably interested in your.

Richard Delgado [01:42:41] That was a researcher on a big company like Pratt and Whitney and those used to send test articles tests and we used to run the test cells there.

Arrye Rosser [01:42:51] This is. You're testing out the engines?

Richard Delgado [01:42:53] Yeah, to make sure before the government bought them I guess.

Arrye Rosser [01:42:59] As part of the contracting process or something or whatever.

Richard Delgado [01:43:02] Yeah, it was kind of also in the area B where they got all the Air Force Museum and everything.

Vince Delgado [01:43:12] Getting back to my sister Joe, I had to interject a little. When I was stationed in my home base in Florida, I got a call from Joe, she's in Arkansas. She went down there. What was it? They had a polio epidemic.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:43:27] Polio epidemic?

Vince Delgado [01:43:28] Yeah, she was in the nursing program, she was a nurse. So they shipped her down there and she went down there and then. And I get this phone call from her. She says when you got a couple of days free, I said why? She says I'm going to come down and see you. I said, oh man. So she took a bus, I guess, and met me in Pensacola, Florida. So we spent a couple of days there. I got leave from the base and we toured Pensacola. And then she went back to being a nurse in Arkansas. But that was. So we were together for a little while. I was in her service and she was doing the nursing.

Arrye Rosser [01:44:06] Was it like you guys spread out? I'm sort of struck by how much your family was on the move. You think about your parents leaving Mexico and going so far away. And yet you guys are still so connected too. So how did the family kind of keep all those connections?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:44:24] When we moved around, we used to come back every year for a high school reunion. The class I graduated from Independence was led by our homeroom teacher, was Mr. Gaab, the historian here in Independence. But there was only 23 of us that graduated from that class. So whenever we came back for a reunion, it was more like a family reunion than a high school reunion. Because most people come back to classes of 200 and more. So every single year we had at our five year reunion, we decided that if we're so small, we're going to have a reunion every year. So every year our family came back for that reunion. So we stayed in touch with the whole family.

Vince Delgado [01:45:08] It was an experience when we were all together, growing up together. I mean, there was never a dull moment. Somebody was fighting, somebody was crying, somebody was blaming somebody else for doing something you didn't do. And my mother would be sitting there with a switch. My dad would be sitting there just looking, shaking his head.

Arrye Rosser [01:45:29] No wonder you guys were outside a lot, because they must have been like, straight out of this house.

Vince Delgado [01:45:34] We just exploded.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:45:36] And my sister Sarah, after my mom died, she more or less was turned over like head of the family. She was the oldest, but they always put together a family reunion at the park in Independence. So that's how all of our kids would come back and they'd meet their cousins. And even now. 

Arrye Rosser [01:45:57] some people still feel tied to the valley.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:45:59] They do. 

Arrye Rosser [01:46:03] Particularly to Independence. Did you guys ever go to any of the Metro parks that were sort of forming in the Cuyahoga Valley or some. Do you have memories of visiting so you wouldn't have been gone. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:46:18] when we were little, I remember my oldest brother when he was drafted into the service, World War II. I just remember one day my younger brother and I were outside the house in Stone Road, and here comes Nick, my brother, anyway, was driving one of these Ford, one of these old fashioned Ford coupes. And this man gets out and he's got a uniform on. Well, we never saw him in a uniform. And that was the day he had reported for duty. So he came back. But before that, when he got his car and he used to come home every once in a while when he wasn't busy and we would be playing out in the yard, he'd come up to us and say, does anybody want to go for a ride? Well, of course we would go for the ride. He would drive us all through Metropolitan park in Brecksville. We used to love this. And the biggest thing I remember about Metropolitan park, there's a stream or a ford in the middle of that park that he used to drive back and forth over it because we liked the water. But we were like three and four years old at the time. But he. He used to take us through all the park system, drive all around Independence.

Arrye Rosser [01:47:30] What years was that?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:47:32] Oh, lordy, that was in the '40s. That's before he left for the war. He must have been about '40, what, '43 when he was drafted. He was in three years before he came back. So by the time he came back, I didn't even recognize him. We were living on Rockside at then, and I remember coming home from school one day, and here's this man again in his uniform. And I'm walking back to the house, and he says, hey, aren't you going to give me a hug? And he goes like this. And I stop, and I'm thinking, who is that guy? But he was gone for three years before he came back again.

Arrye Rosser [01:48:07] So going for, like a ride, even though we think of the distance of going for Brecksville to Independence, like, no big deal. It seemed like a big deal.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:48:17] Oh, it was like we were going on a trip or a vacation. We never. We didn't have any cars other than Nick. Nick was the only one who had a car. Yeah. So wherever we went somewhere. Oh, no, he didn't even drive or anything.

Vince Delgado [01:48:31] He never learned how to drive.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:48:33] Walking everywhere we went. Even as a teenager going to Independence High School, I used to walk from Rockside to Brecksville Road, meet my friend. And then we'd walk from. I mean, from Rockside up to the library. And there used to be a bookmobile up there that was the biggest library they had until they opened the fire station. up to the library.

Arrye Rosser [01:48:54] And did you guys take the train just to go into the city or things like that? Joe didn't remember you guys doing it, but could you have done it for free?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:49:04] I didn't know that.

Vince Delgado [01:49:05] Yeah, we could have because he had a railroad pass if we would have taken a trip on a train, it would have been free because he had his railroad pass. Yeah, he had a railroad pass. I remember that.

Arrye Rosser [01:49:15] But you guys never, like, went down to.

Vince Delgado [01:49:17] No, we didn't have enough money. The only thing we rode on rails was the streetcar when we got to 71st Street.

Arrye Rosser [01:49:24] Yeah. I don't know if you went to go and look at the. You know, like the Christmas windows. Because sometimes people in Everett remember going down.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:49:35] We would never.

Arrye Rosser [01:49:36] Akron and looking in the shop window.

Vince Delgado [01:49:38] I remember for Christmas in Cleveland. Cleveland.

Arrye Rosser [01:49:41] Yeah.

Vince Delgado [01:49:42] You seeing the animated minutes on twice.

Richard Delgado [01:49:44] I think Joe. Joe used to take us. Me. Anyway, I remember that. I took you to down to Cleveland every once in a while. See a picture show or something. Yeah, but that was it. I mean, it was. That was very few and far between.

Arrye Rosser [01:49:57] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:49:58] You know, my older sister Sarah took me when. I think it was what- [crosstalk]

Richard Delgado [01:50:01] Yeah, we- Serious. Who worked on spaghetti?

Vince Delgado [01:50:05] New York, New York spaghetti.

Richard Delgado [01:50:07] Oh, yeah, spaghetti. And she had. We went to the movie. We used to stop there, and she used to wait and she used to give us, you know, a meal or something. But that was a big treat.

Vince Delgado [01:50:18] Oh, that was a big thing. We had to come home and leave. I'd go down and visit Sarah and get a nice spaghetti dinner.

Arrye Rosser [01:50:24] That was. Was it a restaurant?

Richard Delgado [01:50:25] Yeah, Chef- Chef Hector Boiardi.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:50:28] No, Chef Boiardi.

Vince Delgado [01:50:29] Chef Boiardi.

Arrye Rosser [01:50:31] Then it became the cans. Yeah, I think I read about that. Starting in Cleveland.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:50:35] It was down- A restaurant down below- I think it was on near Ninth. Ninth Street.

Richard Delgado [01:50:40] Yeah, Ninth. That's what I remember. Ninth Street.

Vince Delgado [01:50:42] I think back in the alley. You have to go down the alley.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:50:44] Yeah, exactly. Because it took me to- One year, she took me to a circus that was in town.

Vince Delgado [01:50:49] Sarah was like another mother. She kind of tried to watch over us, you know, but we were too many.

Arrye Rosser [01:50:57] Yeah. How old? How much older was she?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:01] She was 11 years older than me. Joe was 10 years older.

Richard Delgado [01:51:06] Yes.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:06] You're nine.

Vince Delgado [01:51:08] Nine.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:08] Nine years older, yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:09] So about what year would she have been born?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:14] I don't know. 20. 

Vince Delgado [01:51:16]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:16] Joe.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:17] That was Sarah. What was Sarah's-

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:18] Sarah was born- Let's see, Nick was born in '26, I think.

Vince Delgado [01:51:22] He was 10 years older than I am. Nick was 10 years older.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:26] He was born in '26? And then what would that have been?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:30] Well, no, no, he couldn't have been born in '26. [crosstalk] I was born in '36. So that would have been- And he was 16, 17 years older than I was. 

Vince Delgado [01:51:40] All right. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:41] Okay. So I was born in '36. Figure it out. I'm not good at math. [laughs]

Vince Delgado [01:51:44] Neither am I. [laughs] None of us was good at math. I used to shiver with algebra.

Arrye Rosser [01:51:53] She was born in the '20s, though. Okay. Yeah, we'll get that time period. Okay. So that kind of helps a little bit. What did she do for Chef Boiardi?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:51:59] She was a waitress. 

Arrye Rosser [01:52:00] She was a waitress, yeah. It must have been something. Did you guys come back for family reunions like you came back for your school reunion?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:10] Oh, yeah. Like on Home Day they would have a family reunion the same weekend.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:15] Was Home Day a big deal in Independence?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:18] Oh yeah. I miss the parades, and they used to have all these parades-

Richard Delgado [01:52:224] And concerts, and- [crosstalk]

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:25] We used to bring the kids back when they were little just for the parades and stuff.

Vince Delgado [01:52:29] Here in another sister we had was Hope. We never mentioned Hope.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:32] Poor Hope.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:33] Poor Hope? Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:34] She's the one you didn't get along with, right?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:36] She used to fight all. We used to fight a lot.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:39] What became of Hope?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:41] She passed away about two years ago. Three years ago.

Vince Delgado [01:52:44] Hope and I were bitter enemies. You always had one there. You always fighting. We were always fighting. Never agreed on anything.

Arrye Rosser [01:52:52] What did she go on to do? Did she stay in the area?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:52:55] Yeah, she did. She worked for what company she was. She went to school for a-

Richard Delgado [01:53:02] Some sports club in or something like that.

Vince Delgado [01:53:05] The men's sports club?

Richard Delgado [01:53:06] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:53:08] She started out as a Kentamera operator.

Vince Delgado [01:53:11] Yeah.

Arrye Rosser [01:53:11] What's that?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:53:12] Well, see, that's- It's an old-style computer. It's a machine that like accountants use. She's been working accounting firms and all you do is use your fingers for the numbers. I think what that was almost like

Richard Delgado [01:53:27] add subtract and all that junk.

Vince Delgado [01:53:30] She used to walk. She used to work in the theater there in Independence when Independence had a movie theater. Anyway, she's walking home one day, I guess I was in the service and I find out that she got hit by a car. Broke her leg, you know, and she was left laying in the snow. The next motorist come along found her and she told them where she lived down the street. So she had problems with that leg the rest of her life.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:53:55] Well, you said other people lived on Rockside. There was a family that lived down in the name of Gable.

Vince Delgado [01:53:59] Gable.

Richard Delgado [01:54:00] Gable, yes.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:54:02] Vera Gable was her friend and that she was walking up. What she was doing. She was walking up Rockside. It was dark, it was wintertime. She was supposed to meet Vera and they were going to go to a movie or someplace. And as she was walking up the street, just before she got- And Vera lived back in the woods, maybe two, 300 feet back into the woods. She's walking up to the street and she got hit by a drunk driver. And he stopped, but she was laying by the road, you know, and he couldn't do anything for her and there's no homes around. So he drove to that nipple factory and got the watchman to call the police. In the meantime, Hope is laying in the street and she's afraid that the guy left without stopping. So she start calling Vera, who lived, you know, hoping she would hear her, because Vera was expecting her. She just called and called. She said she was laying out there. She didn't know how long, about 15 minutes or more. And Vera happened to hear her calling from the street. She heard somebody and she thought she heard voices outside or something. She opened the door and heard Hope calling. So by the time she got back to the street, the. I guess the police came or somebody answered the call. He took her to the hospital. But she was in the hospital for what, six months it took her to get out of there.

Vince Delgado [01:55:17] I wasn't gone.

Arrye Rosser [01:55:18] Oh, my goodness. How old was she?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:55:21] She was about 18, 19 years old.

Vince Delgado [01:55:24] But she made up for later on because she got a settlement and the first thing she bought was a brand new car. And she. She spent all her money. I don't know how much you got.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:55:35] Well, being that young kids do.

Richard Delgado [01:55:37] Right.

Arrye Rosser [01:55:37] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:55:38] She wasn't old enough to handle it.

Vince Delgado [01:55:40] Yeah.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:55:41] But anyway. Yeah. And she. That was it. Yeah, she. She got married. She married someone from Cleveland, too. They lived in. Up in what, 14th Street, up near Garfield Heights. That's where she ended up. But she stayed around too, and her children.

Arrye Rosser [01:55:57] Yeah. So you still had sort of this cluster of relatives that you could come back to.

Richard Delgado [01:56:00] Within visiting range.

Arrye Rosser [01:56:03] Yeah. Well, that's all the questions I had for you. You guys have been wonderful. If you have any other things. Did I miss anything that you wanted to talk about?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:56:12] No. All right, I don't think.

Richard Delgado [01:56:14] Did you mention about that family that used to live down off of Rockside Road that lives back in the back I was telling you about that lived in that home and they ran their home with kerosene. They used to cook with kerosene stove and kerosene lights. And they were an older couple I hung around. They had a- where the [inaudible].

Vince Delgado [01:56:39] Yeah.

Richard Delgado [01:56:39] They used to live down to Mecca.

Vince Delgado [01:56:42] Down from the station. 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:56:44] Or down from the nipple factory on that side. 

Vince Delgado [01:56:46] Where the station is now. Where? The railroad station.

Richard Delgado [01:56:49] Back in the back.

Vince Delgado [01:56:50] You go back down the tracks towards south park about Maybe a quarter of a mile. And off to the back there used to be like an old homestead. And that's what Richard's talking about. Yeah, he worked on the railroad with my dad. I remember.

Arrye Rosser [01:57:04] Oh, that's interesting.

Vince Delgado [01:57:05] Jimmy the Greek, we used to call him.

Richard Delgado [01:57:09] And they didn't have any electricity or nothing. They ran on kerosene lamps.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:57:13] I think they're all gone now, I would think because they were older, wouldn't they?

Richard Delgado [01:57:18] They were- That was his sister, I think. The kid, I don't know. That was his sister and her uncle.

Arrye Rosser [01:57:23] So it was like parent. Was it parents or.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:57:27] It was a sister. And Charlie was the brother. Was it her brother?

Richard Delgado [01:57:31] No, no. Yeah, I think it was her brother.

Vince Delgado [01:57:34] Yeah.

Richard Delgado [01:57:35] Yeah. He came from. He used to live up in town somewhere and I guess he used to get in trouble and, you know, whatever.

Vince Delgado [01:57:41] No, Charlie the Greek.

Richard Delgado [01:57:43] Charlie the Greek.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:57:44] The woman was. I don't know how she met my younger brother, my youngest brother, but he was still a tiny little thing. And I think she fell in love with him because she used to make, what do you call them, pierogies by hand. And every once in a while she had this little tin bucket. She'd walk down the railroad tracks and she'd give my brother Peter. She'd bake them for him, you know, and bring him down to the house. So every time we would see her walking down the street, I think you were one of us, too. We would start teasing Peter, saying, oh, here comes Mrs. Temeco. She bringing you that pierogi is. She's going to keep you. She's going to give us the bucket of pierogi and she's going to take you back with him. He used to get so scared and it was so mean. Well, we would sit and laugh. This poor little kid would break out into the tears and going, 

Vince Delgado [01:58:37] That's what you were doing to poor Pete. when I was gone, huh?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [01:58:40] Well, that's when he was little, but he's hung around too, Independence. He went to Kent State for about a semester. He used to work a semester and then go to Catholic college because he couldn't afford the tuition. So he got onto the Independence. One semester he was working on the garbage company for Independence, and he got his finger caught in the garbage truck somehow. And so he was off and his hand was all bandaged. This was between semesters. So the crazy kid decided that he and his friends, he couldn't work. He had this time off. They were going to take a raft down the river or a canoe down the river. They used to like to do that. They took a canoe down Cuyahoga River. They tipped a canoe, the wound got infected. So now he's out again for another semester. He went back and he decided that he wanted to go see. He wanted to go see. Going to go to Mexico. There was some land in Mexico that had been left to my dad, but they never got back to claim it. And some relative took it over. So he wanted to go back and check out what this land looked like. So he hitchhiked from Ohio to Mexico, hitchhiked all the way over there, got the sick in Mexico, spent a week being sick there, and then came back. And we have relatives in Texas. So they stayed with the relative in Texas and wired home that he had run out of money. So he wanted money. So by the time my mother wired some money to him to get back to Ohio, he couldn't wait that long. He hitchhiked back from Texas to Ohio and he had 50 cents in his pocket.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:31] Wow. Your mom must have been ready to kill him, right?

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [02:00:35] I mean, you know, it's funny, maybe not how she got through all of this stuff.

Vince Delgado [02:00:40] Oh, my goodness.

Arrye Rosser [02:00:40] That might be wonderful. Vicki's trying to reaching out.

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [02:00:47] Oh, can I. Excuse me.

Vince Delgado [02:00:50] My mother was a disciplinarian. I mean, she. She held a ship together. You know, my dad would just sit back and if one of us needed a strapping, he very seldom hit him. I think he only hit me once with his belt. But the rest of the time, my mom was a little willow whip. Oh, God- 

Gloria Delgado Brinkman [02:01:10] That's just- The civic center trying to get a hold of me, I don't know why, but-

Arrye Rosser [02:01:15] Anyway. Well, you guys have been a total delight. I am very gripped by all those stories. And so.

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