When Catherine Lunt Hooverman was a young mother, she entertained her son with stories of what life was like when she was a little girl. When she was ninety-six, he asked her to tell the stories again so he could write them down and preserve them.
Catherine speaks of a girlhood spent in a simpler time, when she’d go ice skating with her sisters and later snuggle into a bed warmed by a brick heated on the coal stove. She remembers her parents’ neighborhood grocery store in Saginaw, Michigan, where her father knew every customer by name.
She speaks of her grandfather, the peace-loving shoemaker who left Germany in 1881 so his sons wouldn't have to serve in the Kaiser’s army. He worked in the coal mines of Shawnee, Ohio in return for his family’s passage to America. Catherine remembers him as a gentle old man with a long beard who took her for walks along the river. There she watched men cut blocks of ice and met old Mr. Schultz, who lived in a shanty and thought the radio was the work of the devil.
She remembers the time her mother, using a recipe from the old country, made a clamshell salve that healed a badly burned neighbor girl after her doctor gave up hope. She recalls being a shy child in a new school where she didn't know anyone until she met the girl who became her friend for life.
And she tells the story of the young man who fell in love with her older sister while they both worked one summer at an Ohio amusement park. He followed her back to Saginaw, went to work in their parents’ store—and married Catherine instead.
Catherine speaks of a girlhood spent in a simpler time, when she’d go ice skating with her sisters and later snuggle into a bed warmed by a brick heated on the coal stove. She remembers her parents’ neighborhood grocery store in Saginaw, Michigan, where her father knew every customer by name.
She speaks of her grandfather, the peace-loving shoemaker who left Germany in 1881 so his sons wouldn't have to serve in the Kaiser’s army. He worked in the coal mines of Shawnee, Ohio in return for his family’s passage to America. Catherine remembers him as a gentle old man with a long beard who took her for walks along the river. There she watched men cut blocks of ice and met old Mr. Schultz, who lived in a shanty and thought the radio was the work of the devil.
She remembers the time her mother, using a recipe from the old country, made a clamshell salve that healed a badly burned neighbor girl after her doctor gave up hope. She recalls being a shy child in a new school where she didn't know anyone until she met the girl who became her friend for life.
And she tells the story of the young man who fell in love with her older sister while they both worked one summer at an Ohio amusement park. He followed her back to Saginaw, went to work in their parents’ store—and married Catherine instead.
