My father, Roy Benson, was born in 1879 in Centerfield, New York, and
my mother, Frances Lorraine Gulvin, was born in 1880 in Sittingbourne,
England which is about fifty miles southeast of London. Sittingbourne
is approximately thirty miles from Rochester, England. She came to the
United States with her parents when she was three years old and
settled on a farm in Seneca Castle (which is thirty miles from
Rochester, New York).
When my father was courting my mother he would walk to Canandaigua
from Centerfield and rent a horse and buggy from a livery stable on
the corner of Chapin and Main Streets. He would then drive to Seneca
Castle, a distance of some ten miles, to see her. on the way home,
late at night, he would sleep in the buggy and the horse would find
its own way back to the livery. He would awaken when the buggy rolled
to a stop, then walk back to Centerfield.
They were married in 1901 and went to one of the beaches in Rochester
for a honeymoon (perhaps Charlotte). At that time such a trip was an
all day affair. They traveled from Canandaigua on the trolley that ran
all the way to the beach and carried their picnic lunch, I was told.
After their marriage, my parents made their first home in a house on
the corner of Bristol and Mason Streets. In 1903 their first child,
Clarence was born. A few years later they moved to a farm on Route 5
and 20 about one and a half miles from Canandaigua. My father worked
for a painting contractor in Canandaigua at the time and Clarence has
told me that Dad used to ride a bicycle to work, wearing a derby hat
and carrying his paint buckets on the handle bars. there was a big oak
tree on the road, about half way from home to town and the children
would walk as far as the tree and wait there each day for my father to
come home from work. They would all then walk on home together.
My brothers and sisters were: Clarence, Gordon (born 1904), Leon (born
1905), Adelaide (1908), Mildred (1910), Dorothy (1914), and Helen
(1916).
The family moved to the first big house on the West Lake Road and I
was born there July 23, 1917. I remember only a few incidents during
the time we lived there. One time I rolled a Croquet ball off a high
front porch and across a lawn to where it went over a bank and hit my
sister Dorothy on the head. I recall sleeping in a downstairs bedroom
with the window open (there were no screens at this time). We kept a
cow for milk and early in the morning it stuck its' head in the window
and gave a loud moo next to my head while I was still sleeping. We
also had large barns and did some farming. We grew potatoes for home
use and my brothers raised cucumbers to sell. My older brothers used
to catch rides to school on passing farmers wagons whenever they
could. They went to the Palace Theater on the corner of Saltenstall
and Main Streets for five cents. We had a horse that would refuse to
pull the hay wagon up the hill to the barn and I remember standing on
the wheel spokes to push the horse and wagon towards the barn.
In 1922, when I was five years old, we moved to the house on Chapin
Street where my father lived until his death. I attended the Adelaide
Avenue School for grades 1 to 3 then went to the Union School, which
stood where the YMCA is now. My father bought the house, almost new at
the time, for $1400. During these years there were nine of us children
(my brother Robert having been born in 1919) and our house was always
the center of activity for the neighborhood. All of our friends would
come to our house to play and we had childhoods filled with love and
good times. My father had horseshoe beds in the backyard with lights
above them so the men could play at night. All my uncles and the
neighbors would come often to play.
It was about this time that my father opened a wallpaper and paint
store on South Main Street. He intended to run the store with
Clarence, Gordon, and Leon and also do the painting and wallpapering
for his customers. I don't know how many years he had the store, but
it was not a success. He then built a large addition to the two car
garage at home and moved the paint and wallpaper there for storage.
There was plenty of wallpaper he was unable to sell and we kids used
to have pieces to cut flowers and patterns with. We would glue the
small pieces to bottles and shellac them to make vases. Raymond Smith
was my buddy then and was at our house most of the time. They lived a
couple of houses down the street and our mothers attended church on
Sundays and Wednesday night prayer meetings together. I recall that
our Sunday night suppers were always cornmeal with milk and brown
sugar. We had a large dining room table, a cherry drop leaf, that
would seat ten. I always sat next to my mother at the table. She would
make large sugar cookies with a seeded raisin on top and put them on
newspapers on the dining room table. We would eat them there while
they were still warm. You can imagine what it must have been like
cooking three meals a day for ten or more people on the old coal
stove. I believe we had gas on one side and coal on the other. We kept
the coal fire going to heat the back part of the house. My mother
would wash my hair by having me lay on the ironing board with my head
hanging over the sink. We took our Saturday night bath in a large
washtub by the kitchen stove. We had no bathtub until I was about
eight years old.
We always had baseball equipment to play with due to my brother's
interest. We would play ball in the street and in a lot at the corner
of Chapin and Thad Chapin Streets. The trees, High banks and uneven
ground helped me to become a good center-fielder when I played on a
flat baseball field. That was easy after running up and down those
hills and I could catch anything. The only toys that Ray and I had
were very simple. We took the wheels off an old baby buggy and nailed
them on the end of a stick. We would run around the house pushing it
by the hour.
At Christmas time we were allowed to open one toy when we got up in
the morning. My favorite, which I asked for every year, was a wind up
tractor with rubber treads which we would try to make climb over
stacks of books on the floor. We would also roll marbles down the
groove in the bottom of skis to knock down houses made of cards. My
older brothers and sisters who were married would arrive around noon
for Christmas dinner and there were usually about twenty there. After
dinner we would open the presents in the parlor. There were so many of
us that we would draw names for the person to whom we gave gifts.
My brothers and I slept in an upstairs bedroom with the window open a
couple of inches in the winter time. When we woke up in the morning
there would be snow in a pile on the floor under the window. We had
one floor register about four feet square in the living room and we
would sit around it for warmth. I remember the babies would sometimes
crawl on the register and wet their diapers. My mother would sprinkle
sugar down the flue to the hot furnace dome to get rid of the smell.
Above the register, on the wall, was a shelf which held my mother's
chime clock.
There was a small room upstairs where we had a library. My brothers
had about three hundred books there and there was an army cot there on
which I slept for several years. The library contained the Zane Grey
westerns. These were all lost later when my father moved out and
rented the house for several years during the war. All my possessions,
except for clothes, were lost at that time. After my father remarried,
he and my stepmother moved back into the house.
My brothers built a wooden platform in the backyard and we had a tent
on it for several summers. We would sleep out there when the house was
too hot in the summer time. There were three army cots in it. Dr.
Behan lived on Thad Chapin Street just around the corner. He had
several large farm horses which would get loose and come running down
the street in front of our house. If we were playing out in front and
heard the horses coming we would run for the front porch. Sometimes
the horses would run across the front yard and barely miss us. We were
so small that the horses seemed twenty feet tall. That is probably the
reason I never cared much for horses. During this time my father got
his first car, a second hand 1917 Ford. I can just remember that the
tail lights were small kerosene lamps that you fill up and light for
night driving. On one car that Clarence had, the windshield would tip
out from the bottom for ventilation and the windshield wipers were
worked by hand. I can remember pushing it back and forth while
Clarence drove.
In 1926 my grandfather, Peter Orson Benson, would come up to pitch
horseshoes with me. He lived with my uncle Jim across the street and
down the hill a little. I would see grandfather coming and would have
plenty of time to get ready for him because he was 96 years old and it
would take him about twenty minutes to walk up. He would toss the
horseshoes and I would bring them back to him. He was an active man
and had a good size garden until he was about 95 years old. I remember
that he had a long white beard that came down to his belt.
My mother did not get to take very many vacations in her lifetime. One
time we went up along the St. Lawrence River and another time we went
to Buffalo and took the boat trip across Lake Erie to Long Point Park.
Another time we went, in two cars, to Pennsylvania. She spent all of
life cooking, washing, sewing and caning. Saturday night was the big
night of the week for everyone. to make certain we got a parking place
downtown, my father would take the car down in the late afternoon and
after supper we would walk down to shop and watch the people in town.
I can remember sitting on the front fenders of the car and watching
the shoppers. There was a popcorn wagon by a building on South Main
Street and I suppose, if we had the money, we would get some popcorn
or candy. I can remember walking down Chapin Street with my mother to
see a movie in the evening.
The Playhouse Theater on Chapin Street had what they called Bank Night
on Wednesdays. They would announce a person's name in the theater and
by loudspeaker, outside. You did not need a ticket to be eligible and
I guess they picked names at random from the phone book or a list of
city residents. There would be crowds outside and you had several
minutes to answer, so if you were not there someone could come to find
you if they hurried. The prize would build up if there was no one to
claim it. I remember the time Ray Smith and I were inside and they
called our number. We won two bags of groceries. There was also a dish
night when they gave away dishes.
One Fourth of July we had a bushel basket of fireworks and were to set
them off after dark. I was sitting on the steps with the other kids
when someone threw a lighted punk (used to light firecrackers, etc.)
into the basket. The whole bushel went off at once! You never saw such
a sight; kids running in all directions with Roman candles and
pinwheels swirling around them. The house did not catch fire, but the
event charred the siding and the porch floor. Nobody was blamed for it
because no one was quite certain how it happened. It was probably the
fastest celebration of the Fourth that I ever had.....and the most
exciting!
Ray and I went to the movies every Saturday afternoon to see the old
western movies. We would run all the way to the theater and the first
one there got the corner seat in the first row of the balcony. After
the movies we would go up to my house and my mother would make each of
us a slice of bread and butter with sugar on it. Next we would run up
to Arsenal hill and play cowboys. We had a cave dug out of a mound of
dirt and we would defend it with spears made from long goldenrod
stalks sharpened on the thick end. In the winter we nailed a wooden
box on two barrel staves and would sit on the box sliding down hill
trying to dodge the trees. In those days they did not plow or sand the
streets and when we finally got sleds we slid down Chapin Street. One
friend had a bobsled which held about ten kids and we rode that from
Brigham Hall, down Thad Chapin, down Chapin Street to the Sucker Brook
bridge. The only dangerous intersection was at Chapin and Pearl
Streets and we would take turns watching for cars. There were very few
cars in those days so it didn't bother us very much.
My brother Robert was two years younger than I and he was sick for a
long time before he died at age eight. He was in a wheelchair for
quite a while. He had what was called rheumatic fever and the doctor
had to drain fluid from his back. The wheelchair was one of those old
large ones with a wicker seat and back. I would go to the corner store
where VanBrookers is now (Pearl and West Avenue) for groceries for my
mother. Robert would sit in his wheelchair by the window and time my
running to the store and back. I ran as fast as I could and it must
have been good practice because, by the time I reached high school, I
was the fastest runner there. The only boy who could keep up with me
was "Horse Face" Johnson from Cheshire.
One of our favorite times of the year was when we had the family
reunion. In those years we would have from 50 to 100 people. Some of
the games we played then were fun and would be even now. There was a
pile of sand and they would bury hundreds of pennies in it then let
the kids loose to find as many as they could. There would be a ten (or
more) gallon container of ice cream from Johncox Ice Cream Plant.
After dinner we were allowed as many ice cream cones as we wanted. I
remember we could only eat two or three before we were full, then we'd
feel bad that we couldn't eat more. Our favorite reunion was the one
held at my Aunt Alice's down on Seneca Lake. She was such a nice
person, everyone loved to go there. Her husband John was a huge man
and just as nice. They lived on a farm and raised food for Lakemont
Academy, a school for boys. Their farm was next door and owned by the
Academy.
Sometimes we would go to the farm the night before and stay over,
sleeping in the house, on the porches, even in the hay in the big
barns. The older boys used to drink beer and play cards all night out
in the barn. The house was on a hill about one quarter mile from the
lake with a lane running down to a boathouse on the shore. In later
years I can remember going down with Clarence and Gordon to sleep in
the boathouse which was out over the water. It was a wild spot in
those days with no cottages nearby. The hill from the house to the
lake was all grape vineyards and there was a railroad track right
through the vineyard. When we heard a train coming, we would run down
and toss big bunches of grapes to the train crew as the train went
very slowly due to the up hill grade.
In 1925 Clarence and Gordon went to Florida for a couple of months in
the winter. In those days the roads were not very good and the cars
undependable. While in Florida, living in a tent, they worked on the
road repair gang and also picked fruit. I remember they picked apples
all that fall on a farm near Geneva in order to earn enough money for
their trip. I recall their return from Florida late one night during a
bitterly cold snowstorm. They came in the back door with bags of
oranges.
In 1926 there was an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Rundel, from Omaha,
Nebraska, who were traveling through Canandaigua when they had a
serious accident. They were hospitalized and their car was in a garage
being fixed. Due to their injuries they did not feel up to driving to
Nebraska so they advertised in the paper for someone to drive them
home. Gordon answered the ad and drove them back. They all got along
so well, they asked him to stay with them and he did ... for three
years. He bought himself a pickup truck and started a painting
business there. He sent us pictures taken of the tornado damage in
that area. I remember one picture he took of a wheat straw that was
driven into a telephone pole.
In 1927 Clarence and John Timms started for California on motorcycles
and they got as far as Kansas when they could no longer ride the
motorcycles due to the bad roads. The roads were all red clay and when
wet they were worse than ice. After falling off them too many times,
they pushed the motorcycles into Kansas City and sold them. They took
the money and went by train, to Omaha where Gordon was living. They
talked Gordon into going on to California with them in his truck. The
roads were very poor, dirt mostly, and it took them a long time. In
California they picked grapes, then they came back to Omaha, where
they left Gordon, and returned home by train. When Gordon finally came
home in 1929 he drove all the way without stopping and it was several
years before he got over it. He developed car sickness and could not
ride in a car for some time.
I was in the Boy Scouts for several years and really enjoyed it. I got
all the merit badges up to the one for swimming and that was when I
quit the Scouts. I found that the friends you make in Scouting are
sometimes your friends all your life . . . ones like Ray Smith and
Skip Dewey. We had a lot of good times at Camp Woodcraft near
Cheshire, New York. One of our favorite games there was "Capture the
Flag". The lane through Camp Woodcraft was the line between sides and
the flag was on a pole way back in the woods. Some would guard the
flag while others would circle around, try to get the other side's
flag, and return across the center line with it. If you were touched
by anyone on the other side, you were out of the game. It is similar
to the game they play now with those dye guns. I was in the Beaver
Patrol and can remember the meals that we used to cook. Some patrols
did fancy things, but we always ended up with Campbells soup. We were
known as the "Soup Patrol".
Every year we used to plant pine trees at Camp Woodcraft. It would
take all day and we carried the seedlings around in a pail. When noon
came, we would wash the pail out in the creek and heat our soup in it.
There was a small cabin with a dirt floor, loft and an old cook stove.
One time Ray Smith and I went up to stay overnight and it was cold. We
were quite young at the time and got scared as it grew dark so we
tried to sleep in the loft. We had a wood fire going in the old stove
to keep warm and it made so much smoke that we coughed all night and
didn't sleep much. We were still too scared to come down from the
loft. L. Ray Stokie was our Scoutmaster and he ran a chocolate shop on
Main Street. We would go down to the store and he would let us go down
in the basement to watch him make chocolates and pull taffy.
Most of my possessions during these years were bought for me by my
brother Clarence. My most prized possession was a pair of leather high
top boots with a pouch on the side for a jack knife. He also bought me
a hatchet, which I still have today. It is the only one I've ever
owned and it must be sixty years old. It is getting dull, but it's
never been sharpened. He also bought me my first bicycle and it took
me forever to learn to ride it. I don't know how many years I had it,
but it was my only bike. My mother and father had little money in
those days, especially during the Depression in 1929 and 1930, so if I
had anything at all it was bought for me by my older brothers.
It was some time during these years when I was in the little corner
store on West Avenue and I stole a five cent candy bar. I was scared
for months that I would be found out. It affected me so much that the
feelings have remained with me throughout my life. It was a great
lesson because I never did anything like that again. Jack VanBrooker
ran the store and when he had bananas that were too ripe to sell, he
would tell Ray and I that if we could eat them all we could have them
for free. We would sit on the lawn by the store and watch the cars go
by while eating bananas until they came out of our ears. We never did
have to pay for any.
We had many other enjoyable pastimes outdoors. We would cut the cover
off a golf ball and unwind some of the miles of rubber bands inside.
By putting half on each side of the street we could stretch it across
and when a car came down it would stretch the rubber about a quarter
mile. We would also go to the top of Arsenal Hill and hit golf balls
with baseball bats. They really go a long ways. We found our golf
balls in the bottom of the creek down by the golf course.
On the west bank of thad Chapin Street there was a row of black oxhart
cherry trees belonging to Doctor Behan's widow. When they were ripe we
could not resist trying to get some. As soon as we got in the trees,
"Old Lady Behan" as we called her, would come running down the street
yelling and waving her arms. Guess she watched those trees all day
long. One night Ray and I went over and filled our pockets with
cherries and ran through the tall weeds back to the tent in our
backyard. To our utter dismay, we had run through the weeds where a
skunk had just sprayed and we had to throw away all the cherries and
change our clothes.
During the harvest season the wagon loads of pea vines passed up Thad
Chapin and, when we saw them coming, we hid along the road until we
could run up behind the wagon and pull off a big armful of pea vines.
Sometimes we would get enough to take home to our mothers. You
understand this was not like stealing candy from a store to our way of
thinking, so we were certainly not doing anything wrong. There is a
big difference between stealing and mere survival. Besides, we had to
have something to do to keep us out of trouble.
There were many sheep pastured in the open fields around Camp
Woodcraft in the summer time. They were taken to the farm barns north
and east of town during the winter. The herders drove the flocks down
the road by our house every spring and fall. They were driven down
West Avenue and up Main Street. There were so few cars at that time
that traffic was not a problem.
The ice truck came around in the summer with ice for everyone's ice
box. Mother would put a sign in the window for 25, 50 or 100 pounds
and they would chip off a piece and weigh it. While the driver took
the ice into the house, all the kids would run up to the back of the
truck and get loose pieces of ice. The ice man would yell and chase us
away when he came out.
During the Civil War there was an arsenal built at the top of what was
thereafter called Arsenal Hill. Weapons were stored there in the event
that the city had to be defended. Of course the buildings were gone by
the time we played there as kids, but we found the old foundations by
digging down a ways. There were a lot of old red bricks. The gully
down the other side of the hill had a creek running down it. Ray and I
would dig in the mud looking for cannon balls and one time we found
one, four to five inches in diameter. It was very heavy. We eventually
took it to the Historical Museum as a donation and I believe it is
still on display there.
Arsenal Hill (West Avenue) was a steep and dangerous hill. There were
many accidents at the bottom and near the corner of Pearl Street. We
could hear the crash of accidents from our house on Chapin Street and
the kids would all run down to see them. One time a truck load of
prunes tipped over and there were prunes everywhere. Another time a
load of butter in wooden crocks tipped over and the crocks rolled down
people's lawns. People were coming out and carrying them into their
houses, but we didn't know enough to get any. Once a car hit a tree
and the driver was thrown through the roof and landed on the sidewalk.
When we got there, he was sitting up and asked us for a cigarette.
Probably he wasn't hurt because (he looked like) he was drunk.
My grandfather, Peter O. Benson, was born September 12, 1831 and died
in 1931. Sometime in the 1920's there was a full page article and his
picture in the daily paper. It told of his attending the Ontario
County Fair for 90 consecutive years. The Fair was held in September
then so all the farm products were on display. The fairgrounds were
off Fort Hill Avenue where the present High School stands. There was a
grandstand, barns and a race track for harness racing. It was a big
day for us, as kids, as a picnic lunch was packed and we would park
the car in the center of the race track and stay at the Fair all day.
I remember one day when we were playing in the front yard a big black
car, with a Philippine chauffeur, stopped. Inside was Ada Kent, from
California, a cousin of my father. Her husband had helped finance
George Eastman when he founded Eastman Kodak. She came to set up an
annuity for my father and all my uncles. They cost $45,000 each and my
father received $100 a month for the rest of his life. I remember that
he was able to get a better car and buy my mother a new coat (which I
recall was blue). When I was in the service, Ada Kent died in Carmel
by the Sea, California and left two million dollars to the old woman
who cared for her.
We had a big garden and in the fall I would build a little house of
sod, sticks, boards and anything else I could find. It was just large
enough for me to squeeze into. In one side of it I made a little
fireplace out of clumps of dirt and I would break up the sticks to
have a little fire for heat. We had a large prune tree next to the
garage and my mother would can a lot of them every year. My father
loved them. We would take the pits out of some and put them on the
flat garage roof to dry in the sun. We covered them with wire screen
to keep the birds away. When dried, they were stored in large bags in
the bottom of a big kitchen cupboard. In the winter I would get into
the cupboard and sit there eating prunes. We had a large sweet cherry
tree in the side yard and mother canned nearly 100 quarts every year.
I helped her with all the canning--cherries, prunes, peaches, and
pears. when she did the cherries she always left one cherry with the
pit in it per quart. The person who got the pit when the cherries were
served was given a dime. This was a big treat for us.
Our house was always the gathering place for kids and we were likely
to play games like "Red Light", "Hide and Seek", and Holly Golly". We
used to make guns out of old tire tubes, sticks and a half clothes
pin. We would cut loops of inner tube to shoot as bullets then play
cowboys and Indians.