A few anecdotes: Kris Kringle, or St. Nicholas, was considered Santa’s helper... and a traditional German celebration. He arrived on Dec. 15 with switch in hand... told the children what they had done, both wrong and good. If they weren’t careful they wouldn’t get any Christmas gifts. When he left he always left some goodies (wrapped candies, etc. He dressed as a traditional Santa).
Christmas Eve... the tree was in the parlor, the door kept shut before Christmas... someone, usually Dad (this, in Newport), lit candles. Children were allowed into the room to see their gifts. They weren’t allowed, until that evening, to get into the front room (parlor). (Dad’s family was never allowed in and out the front door... that was the company door.)
Papa’s sister, Agnes, always took the part of Kris Kringle. At one time, cousin Ida Klaiber Babich, who lived with them (they raised her from about the time she was five years old as her mother had died and her father was so poor he asked Grandpa to take her), was very frightened because “Kris Kringle” told her she’d done something wrong and threatened her with the ‘switch’.
In Indiana, they started celebrating Christmas in the morning.
Mom and Dad (Emma Mosshammer and Richard Pfingstag) were married September 6, 1894. They went to housekeeping on Saratoga Street, the street the C&O RR went on through town, and on across C70 bridge to Cincinnati.
Shortly after they were married, Mom came down with yellow jaundice. Soon after, they moved closer to where the Pfingstag’s lived, renting from a member of Grandpa’s church (Grandpa Mosshammer). Viv was born Nov. 25, 1895, in Newport.
Later, they rented a piece of property owned by Grandpa Pfingstag, 715 Central Avenue, inherited by Dad after his father died. It was here that Stella was born, January 9, 1898 and all the rest of the family but I (Dorothy). All were born at home and Dr. Hemboldt was the family doctor and good friend of Dad’s.
Viv, Stella and Herb all went to school in Newport. The High School was on the corner of 8th St. and Columbia (Stella thought). Stella had her last year in the grades in the 9th St. school (Carl started school in Indiana). In 1911, Paul was only three months old when Dad moved the family to Northeast Indiana.
Dad had gone into a Custom Tailoring business with another man [in Newport]. Dad was to do the measuring, let customers pick samples, and they were sent out to be made. The other man was to get the customers and collect the money. He didn’t live up to his responsibilities causing Dad to have a nervous breakdown. So he closed the shop.
He went to Ft. Wayne, Indiana to look after a house owned by Grandpa Mosshammer. From there he went North to visit the Pikes... Morg and Della (they were the parents of Verl Pike whom Stella married after our parents were both gone). Della was Mom’s first cousin. Their mothers were Clark sisters. Dad and the family had often visited them.
One summer, Dad helped Morg on his farm... doing what he could. Since the barn floor was never cemented and Dad had the experience of cementing his sidewalk, he suggested he could help and they could cement the barn floor, making it much easier to clean. The floor was still there and in use in 1983. Morg’s father was staying with them at the time, as he shuttled back and forth among his children, through the years after his wife died. He got mad at “that city dude (Dad) telling Morgan what to do” and he up and left and went to his daughter’s in Michigan. Later, after we moved to Hudson, he used to stop at our house, from church on Sunday mornings, and stay for dinner... he had grown to like “that city dude”.
Dad decided maybe he’d like to raise onions so began to look for muck ground. The Hardy’s kept saying there wasn’t any for sale. (Gail Pike Hardy was Verl’s sister. they had four children: Robert, Ardell, Gordon, and Marjorie). Then Carl Hardy offered to sell his 40 acres in DeKalb County and he would buy back the farm in town (Hudson) that he had sold to another man. He offered to sell it for $100.00/acre ($4000.00). Strings attached to this deal: that Carl could use part of the 40 acres for teaching Dad how to raise his onion crop the first year.
One day one of the Clark boys who worked for Dad (some also worked for Carl) told Dad that he should get his onions pulled or they would become root bound. This was part of what Carl should have told him.
A few years later, Carl farmed some rental property next to Dad’s farm. One Sunday, Dad drove out to the farm and it was flooded by water coming from the piece that Carl had. You could see how someone had kicked part of the ridge out letting the water flow through from Carl’s to Dad’s. Later, a neighbor told Dad they had seen Carl kick out the dirt. So Dad really “cleaned his clock”.
Dad arranged to buy the farm and found a house on the street behind Stella’s present home (where I was born)... which would be vacant by the first of May. He went back to Newport to make arrangements for the move. He had a fellow help crate furniture, etc. and rented a freight car in which to ship it to Hudson. Mom took the family... all but Viv (who stayed with the Pfingstag’s to finish school. He returned again the following year and stayed with them so he could finish his senior year)... and caught the C&O in Cincinnati. Mom’s brother, John, was conductor on that train which took them to Peru (where Uncle John lived) and then to Ft. Wayne. They changed there to the connection that went from Ft. Wayne to Steubenville where Dad met them... arriving May 1, 1911. There was a horse drawn hack in which they rode from Steubenville depot to Hudson.
They couldn’t get in to the house so stayed a day or so at Hardy’s. At that time they (Hardy’s) lived in the big house (old Zongker home) now the Hudson (Kistler) Mortuary.
They lived in the house (now N. 2nd Street) for a year, then it was sold to Eliza Clay and husband and Mom and Dad had to move. Dad looked all over but couldn’t find anything to rent except where an old bachelor had lived... catty-cornered from where Viv later lived and raised his family (S. 1st., one block N. of the RR tracks). They called it the Green House because it was painted green. Mom always worried about having bedbugs... but never found any. They lived there about 1-1/2 years... when the George Strawser house came up for sale, at an auction.
Dad went down to see who bought it at the auction... so maybe he could rent it. The lot where the old tennis court was, was auctioned off first... hardly anyone was bidding... so Dad started bidding and got it for $100.00. Very few bid on the house, either, so he got it for $1,000.00.
The only other man bidding was Will Smathers and largely just to help the auctioneer. There had been only one previous owner... it was a fairly new house.
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