Mabel Weiss Interview Dec. 2005

MEMORIES OF GROWING UP AROUND HERE

An Interview With Mabel Weiss for the Presbyterian Church newsletter (Mabel was well into her nineties at the time.)

Mabel Weiss was reluctant to be interviewed for Presby Notes because she felt she had nothing interesting to say, as if a gunpowder factory that blew itself and it's workers to high-heavens on a regular basis, during her childhood, was something that wouldn't grab our attention. - Interview by Virgil Hervey

PN: So tell me, have you lived in Yellow Springs all your life?

MW: All but one year. I won't tell you where I was born.

PN: Why not?

MW: Goes...

PN: Pardon me?

MW: Goes! Goes Station. Right here! (She points down Route 68.)

PN: You didn't grow up there...

MW: No! You know at that time there was a big powder mill in Goes. Big!

PN: What kind of powder?

MW: Gunpowder. Dynamite. It would blow up every once in awhile, too.

PN: What would happen when it would blow up?

MW: A lot of people would be injured or killed. If you were in Yellow Springs, you would know. You could hear it. I was born in 1910 and I remember the mill. A lot of German people came over from Germany to work in it. My grandparents came. My mother's parents, in fact her whole family came, I mean her immediate family. Except she wasn't born there, she was born in the United States, but her brothers and sisters were born in Germany. My mother's father was born in Germany and my father's father was born in Germany, but his mother was born here. Anyway, they came over to work in the mill. We lived in Yellow Springs after I was born. But I can remember going down there and visiting people, good friends of my parents, and they were Irish, Irish Catholics, their name was Figgins. Anyway, he worked in the powder mill. I used to go down to the Figgins. Mr. Figgins had a great big mustache and at the time we left the house, he kissed everybody. I thought, oooh, I wonder what that's like, but he'd kiss me like just like he would his wife and children. But I think he thought, you never know... We never left that house that he didn't kiss everybody. My mother and father would put me on what they called the traction, some people called it the trolley, it ran from Springfield to Xenia, and tell them where to let me off. They'd let you off anyplace.

PN: Where did the trolley run? Was that where the bike path is now?

MW: No that was the train. The traction ran along 68.

PN: Do you remember the train, too?

MW: Sure! We'd be up in Springfield, we didn't have a car then, and we'd take the nine o'clock train home. And another thing, this was a little bit later, when that train came in at nine o'clock, everybody'd go down to the station to pick up mail, and the thing I don't remember is how they distributed the mail. But a lot of people went down to the nine o'clock train. That was a long time ago. Anyway, the traction ran right though Yellow Springs, kinda along 68. And I had an aunt an uncle that lived, the house is still there off of 68, you went down a lane and across a bridge and the traction ran right by their house and I would go down there, too, and stay overnight. My aunt an uncle lived there. I did the same thing. They put me on the traction and they'd just say to the motorman, "Let her off at Sam Geiger's."

PN: Did your sisters go with you?

MW: No, I seemed to do that more than they did. My one sister is six years younger, but Mary didn't seem to do that. I don't think she liked it as well as I did. Oh and my uncle had a player piano! I think that's the reason I liked to go. After the powder mill closed, my one grandfather stayed in Goes. They had a boarding house where the workers lived if they didn't have a family. My grandfather stayed in that boarding house. Anyway, we'd go down on the traction and get off at the booster. When we got on we'd say, we want to get off at the booster.

PN: What was that, like a power station for the trolley?

MW: It boosted the energy for the trolley. They called it the booster. We would go visit my grandfather in this boarding house, down this long dreary hall... When the traction came back from Xenia, we'd be out there to get on it. The boarding house was between the train track, which is the bike path, and the traction.

PN: What is your first recollection of this church?

MW: (She laughs) Oh, let's see... I hate to tell you this story. But I can remember that, when I was a little girl, they didn't have a bathroom, like they have now. They had an outside privy. One Sunday, we came to Sunday school, and after Sunday school I had to go to the toilet, so I went out, came back, hurried to get back, came down the center aisle and my dress was stuck in my pants. My sister kept pointing to me and I can remember that just as well as... I was five years old. Isn't that a crazy thing to remember? There my dress was! At least panties covered you at that time, not like these bikinis they wear now. But I remember always coming to Sunday school. We'd come to church at 9:30. They rang the bell both for Sunday school and church. They rang the first bell and the second bell for church. When we heard the bell, we'd say, oh we have to hurry, there's the first bell. Now they're trying to ring the bell again, but over the years, sometimes people don't know how to ring it and it goes over. Then it won't come back. There was one man in the church that would say," I have to go up there and turn the bell over." He did it a lot. We would go to Sunday school, but we wouldn't always stay for church. My parents did, but we would go home. We were old enough to stay by ourselves. I was confirmed when I was eleven years old. My mother was raised Catholic. My grandfather went to the Catholic church right down the street on Phillips Street. He spoke German. He spoke some English, but he preferred to speak German. I think he went to confession about once a year. He always got up and went to early mass. When my mother married my father, she became a Presbyterian. But in Goes, the school built a schoolhouse right where the Unitarian Fellowship is. That's where my mother and father went to school and on Sunday, mostly from Xenia, I think, there'd be a minister from some church. They'd come out to Goes and they'd have a church service in the afternoon in the school building. So Mother, I think, even though she was Catholic, she had to go to Protestant services, so it wasn't hard for her to change. My father joined the church in 1900, my mother in 1902 and so we've been part of the church since then. And also his family, his two sisters. They were long time members. Charlotte Drake's mother was a long time member. And my other aunt joined, I think, the same year as my father and the man she married had joined in 1895. So we've been part of the church for a long time.