6. Music Lessons

Next to Lee’s place was the Logan residence which stood well back from the street on an exceptionally large lot filled with fruit trees and tall maples. Mrs. Logan was an ardent worker in Papa’s church. She visited us almost every day. Mr. Logan never came to church; nor did he go anywhere else except during the fall when he would spend several weeks in Canada hunting deer. He was always successful, too. The Logans were elderly and had married children who also were good friends of ours. But to their great surprise, if not delight, they had produced a son, Sam, long after their grandchildren were old enough to go to school. Sam and my little brother, Clyde, were of the same age and constantly played together.

A couple of years after the quadrennium spent in Uniondale, my brother, who had heard nothing from Sam in the meantime, was surprised one day to have a letter from him.

“DEAR CLYDE,” it said. “How are you? Well I hope. We are alright here. Do you still have the white rat? Mind that pair of rabbits I had? I have sold lots of rabbits. School has took up again. I hate school.

Your friend,
SAM LOGAN

P.S. Pap died last night.”

The next house adjacent to the Doctor English residence was a barbershop downstairs and the barber’s home in the remainder of the building. From here on to the railroad station there were residences large and small, but no other business houses.

On the other side of the tracks there was a huddle of stores and a considerable space occupied by the Ditzler Saw Mill. The Ditzler brothers were prominent members of Papa’s church and their children were good friends of mine. I still hear from Willie Ditzler who is a retired merchant fond of foreign travel.

Scores of the families who owned the big farms of our county had migrated, a generation or two earlier, from the areas in Pennsylvania thickly populated with “Pennsylvania Dutch.” It was a long-established custom for excursion trains to carry these people to and fro. One October, a couple of hundred Pennsylvanians would arrive for a fortnight’s visit with their Indiana relatives, and the next year the Indiana people would avail themselves of an excursion fare, and go back to Pennsylvania. Always there was quite a crowd at the station to welcome the visitors. Such exclamations of joy! Such hugging and kissing and weeping! The Pennsylvania men wore whiskers, flat-brimmed hats and what appeared to be homemade clothes, and the women wore funny little bonnets that did them no good. Their dresses made them look fat and shapeless. Very few of our Indiana Pennsylvanians wore any such gear; only a handful of the very old people.

I have often wondered whether they still have these annual excursions. Perhaps someone who knows will write and tell me.

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