Mary Hinding shares her experiences growing up in the Tremont neighborhood from approximately 1930 to 1941. As a first-generation Ukrainian-American, she discusses her family's immigration from Ukraine and their working-class lifestyle, with her father employed in a steel mill. Hinding reflects on the close-knit community comprised of Eastern European families, highlighting the mutual support among neighbors during the Great Depression. She describes her childhood activities centered around family, church, and school, including her education at Scranton Road Elementary School and her involvement in local games and performances. The narrative also addresses her values of respect, honesty, and religious observance, as well as her transition into the workforce after graduation. Hinding left Tremont around 1940-1941 but has continued to maintain connections with her high school classmates.

Hinding, Mary (interviewee)

"Mary Hinding interview, 2003" (2003). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 223056.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1388

Interviewer [00:00:02] What is your name and can you please spell it?

Mary Hinding [00:00:07] Mary Hinding. H, I, N, D as in David. I, N, G as in Georgia.

Interviewer [00:00:19] What years did you live in Tremont?

Mary Hinding [00:00:24] From the 1970s, approximately 1930 to 1941.

Interviewer [00:00:32] How old were you when you lived in Tremont?

Mary Hinding [00:00:41] I would have been 8 through 17.

Interviewer [00:01:01] Growing up in Tremont. What ethnic groups lived around you?

Mary Hinding [00:01:10] People from Poland, Ukraine, and I’m sure there were other Slavic countries, but those are the two that I was exposed to most.

Interviewer [00:01:24] Mostly Eastern European.

Mary Hinding [00:01:26] Mm hmm.

Interviewer [00:01:29] Did everybody live in separate regions or were there enclaves or did everybody live together?

Mary Hinding [00:01:39] I think there was quite a bit about living together, but I think some of them were probably concentrated in certain areas because of the churches that they went to.

Interviewer [00:01:54] And how was this relationship with the other ethnic groups?

Mary Hinding [00:01:58] Wonderful. No problem at all.

Interviewer [00:02:01] Everybody got along?

Mary Hinding [00:02:02] Yes, yes. Yeah. In fact, we lived - owned - during that equation. Well, just before the Depression, in the late ’30s of the Depression, we actually owned a home which was fairly rare at that time. Not too many people were able. It was a big house that had a garage porch that circled around the whole front and side of the house. And every day the neighbors would come and gather there and visit. So it was a very friendly neighborhood. Everybody got long. The children didn’t even fight. I don’t remember. Anyway, them fighting. We played together with the neighborhood children do growing up.

Interviewer [00:02:47] What language was spoken in your house?

Mary Hinding [00:02:50] Ukrainian and English.

Interviewer [00:02:55] Did your parents speak?

Mary Hinding [00:02:58] Rather broken. My dad spoke it better than my mother.

Interviewer [00:03:07] Are you first generation?

Mary Hinding [00:03:10] Yes. Mm hmm.

Interviewer [00:03:12] Why did your parents come to America?

Mary Hinding [00:03:15] They never really explained it to us very thoroughly except that things were very poor there. And they didn’t, of course, weren’t aware of the fact that things were not much better here at the time, but they thought they would try and find out. And my dad came here. My dad- Actually, it wasn’t my dad. My mother’s husband came here quite a few about two years before and then he sent for her and their two children.

Interviewer [00:03:52] And what country was that from?

Mary Hinding [00:03:54] Ukraine. At that time I don’t even know if it was identified as Ukraine. It was probably, you know, I think it might have been Austria at that time.

Interviewer [00:04:07] What did your parents do for a living in Ukraine and then in America?

Mary Hinding [00:04:15] In Ukraine they did farming, basically. I wasn’t aware of any crafts or skills other than farming. And in America, my father worked in a steel mill off of 25th Street near the Scranton area and he worked there for his whole career.

Interviewer [00:04:46] What about your mother? Did she work?

Mary Hinding [00:04:48] She didn’t work. Basically she stayed at home. But for a short period of time she went to work. When things got really bad and they couldn’t afford to meet the payments on the home, she went to work for a- It’s not a clothing manufacturer, but it had something to do with clothing, you know, I can’t remember the name of the place. It was- I think it was called a- You know, I don’t really know what. It’s been so long ago. But it was just a part-time thing anyway because I recall it, she had no problems staying home if she didn’t feel well or if the children had a problem. But most of the time she was home during our home growing up period. I think that might have been a year at the most that she worked.

Interviewer [00:05:51] Where was that at downtown?

Mary Hinding [00:05:53] No, it was again in the Scranton-West 25th Street area. In fact, we didn’t have cars in those days and we had to walk to everything. My dad walked to work and she walked to work too. So they had to work pretty close to home.

Interviewer [00:05:11] When was your first car?

Mary Hinding [00:05:13] Family wise?

Interviewer [00:06:15] Family wise or for yourself.

Mary Hinding [00:06:16] Never, never had one. My dad never had one, and then I did not have one until after I got married. I bought one quite a few years afterwards.

Interviewer [00:06:27] Did you use the streetcars often?

Mary Hinding [00:06:30] Yes, they had streetcars and buses at that time, but mostly streetcars. Mm hmm. And I walked to school every day too. There was no- That I’m aware of. I don’t think they had any school bus service. We walked quite a way too.

Interviewer [00:06:51] I want to focus on the neighborhood a little bit. What was the neighborhood like? What comes to mind when you think of the neighborhood?

Mary Hinding [00:07:01] Well, in those days we were growing up in a depression and we never were aware of the fact that we were in a depression because everybody was in the same situation. And I just felt very safe, very comfortable. I think we all had a happy childhood. We didn’t have any real severe problems other than we didn’t have all the luxuries in life. But we had no problems that I was aware of. We just- Mostly it was family-based. Whatever our activities were as a family group. Neighbors and families got together and the church was a central part of it too. And most of our what we call social activities were either sponsored or by the churches and by the schools at that time too. Schools also had activities, but it was a very- Like I said, we were poor, but we didn’t know it. And we were very happy and contented.

Interviewer [00:08:14] So everybody in the neighborhood was generally working-class?

Mary Hinding [00:08:20] Oh yeah, yeah. We didn’t even know people of wealth, you know, we didn’t know that at that time. We weren’t even aware that there were people that had more than we did. And so we had nothing to compare it with. They were all basically in the same group. At one time, some of the fathers were out of work because work was cut back. And I remember when about this home I was telling you about, it was a big old house and it had been originally a single family home, but during the Depression, my parents split part of it and made different suites out of it and rented a couple suites to help them to maintain their, support the family. And one family who lived there for a while couldn’t even meet the rent payment because the husband, the father didn’t work at all. And we just let them live there without paying because what else could he do, you know, where could he go? So he just lived there until, oh, at least a year or so before he got a job again. And then they tried to pay us back. But that’s the way people lived in those days. They tried to help each other out as much as they could in a lot of ways. So it’s closer than what things are in neighborhoods now, that’s for sure.

Interviewer [00:09:53] Was your dad out of work at all during the Depression?

Mary Hinding [00:09:55] Yes, he was. Yes. I can’t say how many years. It might have been a year or two, because I remember I was very young at the time. And because my mother couldn’t speak English too fluently, she took me with her when she went to the bank or whoever it was that had our mortgage with to translate for her, to try to get them to promote, prolong the monthly- So finally we got to the point where we were just paying the interest on the mortgage and the principal was delayed until he got back to work again. So, yes, he was- Almost everybody was out of work at one point there.

Interviewer [00:10:46] TYou depended a lot on the neighbors help during rough times?

Mary Hinding [00:10:52] Well, we didn’t specifically because my dad wasn’t out of work that much. But my mom had her own garden in the backyard and she raised her own vegetables and she did the sewing. I made my own clothes even when I was able to. And let’s see, what else could I say? Well, financially we didn’t help. You know, we didn’t get much help. But as far as moral support, friendliness. Did I put that there for a reason? Oh, I know. I went to get it. I thought, why am I- But as far as the helping each other, yes, they did wherever they could. Yeah. And of course they exchanged vegetables back and forth, and even children’s clothing. When one child would outgrow her clothes, they hand them down to one of the neighbor’s children. So in that way, yes, they did.

Interviewer [00:11:59] What did you guys grow in your garden?

Mary Hinding [00:12:01] Oh, goodness, just about everything. Basically the standard carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, and just the general little things like onions and things like that. And we shopped for when we could afford to buy meat. We’d walk to the West Side Market and pull our little wagon and pick out our chickens and whatever we could afford to buy. It was a different life and most of the- And of course, she baked her own bread, she baked her own pastries and made her own pastas. So it was- We ate well, but not luxuriously. I think we had meat once a week. And the rest of it was- She’d make a lot of different kinds of soups. Cabbage soup, potato soup, bean soup, you name it, she made every kind of soup. So we lived on quite a bit of homemade soups and vegetables. So actually we weren’t deprived. We didn’t have a lot of meat, but other than that, we weren’t deprived of food.

Interviewer [00:13:23] Did you characterize that for everybody in the community?

Mary Hinding [00:13:28] I would say that was basically, yeah. The people that I knew in the neighborhood, I think there were a couple. There was one family, I lived on a dead end street and that’s whereas kids played right in the street because there was no traffic. And there was one family that we knew of where the husband drank a lot and we could see him as he was coming home. If he went to work, he’d be coming home and we could see that he was having a problem. So we used to try to get some food over there or help to them when we knew that they probably might be not having such a good time of it. So people sort of, if somebody had a problem, they would try to help without making a big issue of it.

Interviewer [00:14:31] Was drinking common?

Mary Hinding [00:14:35] No, I don’t think so. I think the fact that he drank was kind of a surprise to most of us because, well, for one thing, I don’t think he could afford to buy anything. My dad did make a root beer at home. And wine. I think he might made some beer too. But no, we never had liquor in the house on a daily basis. I think we had at Christmastime my dad would buy a bottle. And that was a tradition that we had. It was part of the Christmas tradition to have a drink before our dinner. Just the one day, you know, for our Christmas celebration. But other than that, no, the wasn’t much drinking.

Interviewer [00:15:27] Was there a lot of crime in Tremont?

Mary Hinding [00:15:30] No, not that I was aware of. You know, of course, you know, things might have gone on that we weren’t aware of because they didn’t, the media wasn’t as covered things the way they did, but from between the friends that we knew and associated with, I can’t say that I ever heard of a problem. But as far as there might have been, but people just weren’t aware of it at that time. But as far as the crime is concerned, the children were supervised so well. I mean our parents knew exactly where we were, what we were going to do. And usually our activities were either around the school or the church or at home in our neighborhood directly. So our parents were pretty well aware of where we were, what we were doing, and if anybody stepped out of, got out of hand, they were, you know, they were disciplined. So they kept the crime down pretty well.

Interviewer [00:16:46] Disciplined by the parents or police?

Mary Hinding [00:16:49] No, disciplined by the parents and the schools. If a child got into trouble at school and the parents were notified and the parents did the disciplining too when the child got home. So it was in that time the parents supported the school teachers and the principal if he was involved in it. The children were pretty well, and they had to be home by a certain time. They weren’t allowed to run around at night anywhere. And of course they couldn’t do much either because they didn’t have cars. But the only way that I could think of is they might have could have gotten into mischief was when they went to the local football games, you know, and didn’t come right home from them. And the parents didn’t know exactly what time they would be home. I imagine some of the people could have gotten into little mischief, but nothing that was major.

Interviewer [00:17:59] What type of mischief besides that?

Mary Hinding [00:18:02] Well, like for instance, at Halloween, I can remember we would get dressed up, we would dress up for Halloween, but we didn’t go trick or treating. That was nothing. I mean you just didn’t go around begging for candy. So we just got dressed up and walked around the neighborhood and you know, saw each other’s costumes and maybe sometimes we knock on our friends’ doorbell outdoors to let them see us too. But the boys would get into trouble at that time. They’d knock over some things in the yard or maybe write something on the walls. But beyond that, that’s the only mischief that I could think of. Nothing that I could think that required police intervention.

Interviewer [00:18:51] Would kids get paddled at school?

Mary Hinding [00:18:55] I think they did. I think they did paddle. I had, I was disciplined one time, if this is, this is just a story of the type of the difference between. When I moved into that school, that was at Scranton Road Elementary School, I would have been about, let’s say I’d be about nine years old, and at the end of the day they’d have a recording, play one of the marches. And all the students had to line up at the doorway and go down. There was a two-story building and go down to the main entrance, marching in a line. And I had just gotten to that school and one of my neighbor friends was coming from Lincoln High School, which was down the road a bit. And as I got downstairs I saw her coming and I broke out of the line to meet her because I was going to walk the rest of the way home with her. Well, the teacher saw me and she- I forget her name either. Called me into the building back. I came back in and she took me upstairs in the. It was kind of a- It had a balcony around the second floor. And she made me stand, she shook me so hard and made me stand in that lobby for about an hour. And that was the type of discipline that we got. But I don’t know if that. Nobody. I’m sure some got paddled, but there was no big deal about it. If there was.

Interviewer [00:20:46] By your parents, there was no telephones.

Mary Hinding [00:20:47] No, by note. They write a note and then your parents would have to respond and let them know that they got it.

Interviewer [00:20:58] And what would your parents do when they found out?

Mary Hinding [00:21:01] Well, like I say, when that incident, that was the only incident that I was aware of that in our family. What my brothers or sisters did, I’m not, you know, I don’t keep track of that. There’s quite a bit of difference in years, ages in our family. And the parents would just probably, I don’t think they ever punished- Well, I never got punished by my mother after that incident. But she knew that it was something I hadn’t done intentionally, it was just something I wasn’t aware of the rules. So she sympathized with me. But she said, well you know what the rules are, you have to do it, and that’s about it. But I don’t remember my brothers ever getting paddled at home or myself. My mother one time, yes, she got really upset with me and she took a little strap to my backside and that was about it. But that was because of something else, not a school-related thing. Probably did something I shouldn’t have done in and didn’t know I shouldn’t have done it, you know. But no, the punishment I can’t remember any arguments or fights or severe disciplining. But we knew that we could only do, you know, we can’t do this, and that was it. So they didn’t have to do too much disciplining at home.

Interviewer [00:22:37] What were some of the values your parents and your neighborhood had? What was the [inaudible]?

Mary Hinding [00:22:51] Well, I mean, most of all, respect for people, respect for your parents, respect for your school and your teachers, and honesty and- Well, they were very religious, too. We went to church every Sunday. In fact, I went to church every day when school was out in the summer. So everything was basically they wanted- Well, just what I said, the honesty and respect for their parents and for the schools and the churches and their neighbors. I know one time when I was just a toddler, not quite seven, eight or nine in that area, and I went visiting with my mother to a friend’s house, and I went out in the backyard on this place playing and saw a penny in the grass or on the driveway or something, and I picked it up and I told my mother that I found a penny in the yard. And this was after we went home. And she said, well, that- Did you have. Was it your penny? Did you- Did you drop it? And I said, no. I said, I found it on the ground. And she said, well, you’ll have to take it back. So we went back and took that penny back to the family where we were visiting. And that was her discipline making me take that penny back, because that was not honest. So these are the kinds of things they stressed. It sounds a little small now, but that’s the way it was.

Interviewer [00:24:49] Now I want to talk about school. At school, what type of classes did you take?

Mary Hinding [00:24:57] Well, at that time, we were basically in elementary school. You went all of them, you know, through elementary school because that’s basic reading, writing, arithmetic, that kind of thing. But then when we got to high school, I majored in business affairs. I took secretarial courses, typing, shorthand, business, accounting, and we had to take a language. At that time, everybody had to take a language. And that was about the- I concentrated on the business and secretariat.

Interviewer [00:25:37] Was there a difference between what classes boys and girls took?

Mary Hinding [00:25:45] Well, I imagine the boys would concentrate on the chemistry perhaps, which I did not like, so I didn’t take it any more than I had to. And mostly courses that would gear them for going out in the world and getting a job at some labor. Very few of them had an opportunity to go to college. My brother, out of the five of us children, my brother was the only one who was able to go on to College. And he must have majored in chemical engineering because that’s what he wanted to continue with his studies in college and graduated as a mechanic. Not mechanical engineer, chemical engineer. So there weren’t too many that did go to college. When they did go, it was after the war and they went on a GI Bill. Some of the fellows did with that.

Interviewer [00:26:49] Were there different groups or cliques that hung out in school?

Mary Hinding [00:26:55] Well, there, they weren’t exactly cliques. They were clubs like the Latin club, the music club, sports club. But I wouldn’t call them cliques per se. They were more just organizations that they belonged to. I’m sure some of them who lived in neighbors, like if they had neighbor, lived close. Like I had a girlfriend that lived a few houses down the street and we were close, we would do everything together. But I wasn’t aware of any cliques per se.

Interviewer [00:27:37] What did you do for fun?

Mary Hinding [00:27:41] Well, as I said, we lived on a dead-end street. Now I’m covering- What period you want?

Interviewer (00:27:48] Your entire time.

Mary Hinding [00:27:50] Okay. When I was still in the elementary grade level, we lived on a dead-end street. And there was a little field at the end. We played baseball and the girls could play with the boys. And if a girl wanted to play, the boys let them play because there weren’t that many around. And we used to play in the street, as I said, there were no cars. And we would play games that we called Kick the Tin Can and various games that we would call to each other. And we had to take so many steps to do this. Kick the Tin Can was one of them. I don’t remember the names of the others. And then when at that time, some of the- Some of the children had roller skates. But in those days there were the clip-ons where you put them on those key. And since not everybody had skates, the ones who did would share one and share it and have races with one skate on. Each person had one skate and one person had a bike. And they let us turn, take turns riding their bike. What else did we do? Oh, we had clubs, we put on shows. There was a garage in the back of our house. Even nobody had cars, but the garage was there. Excuse me, I’m having a problem. Something is draining. So we would put on plays in this garage. I can, I’ll never forget this one was The Lady in Red. And we sang The Lady in Red. It’s an old song. You never heard of it, I’m sure. But I happened to find a red dress somehow. And I dressed up in a red dress and we’d charge a safety pin as entrance and those are the kinds of things that we did. And then we’d go to Lincoln Park, which was about a 10, 15 minute walk from my house. And they had a building there sponsored by the city.

Interviewer [00:30:10] Merrick House?

Mary Hinding [00:30:11] Merrick House, you’ve heard of that then? And we met there for our girl scout club meetings and we had some dance classes. And then I belonged to- I went to a- Belonged to a Ukrainian dancing school where we learned to do the Ukrainian dances and we performed at various places. I was supposed to go to the Chicago World’s Fair. I forget what it was. 1934. 1934, Chicago. I don’t remember exact year, but I couldn’t go because I developed a strep throat. So I had to miss that. What else could I think of? Oh, did I tell you we ice skated in Lincoln Park? They would flood a certain area, make a little pond out of it and flood it and then freeze. And we could, if anybody had ice skates, we’d walk up there, we’d be frozen by the time we got there. By the time we got there we was too cold to get our skates on. But these are the kinds of things that we did.

Interviewer [00:31:23] Was there a lot of dating between the teenagers?

Mary Hinding [00:31:29] No, I never dated anybody until I graduated my prom. My prom. And it was just, it was not a steady thing, it was just somebody that I invited to come. And no, we did not do any dating. Everything that we did with the opposite sex was school activities related. Now after I graduated from high school and went to work, I finally started to date. But before that I didn’t. Now that’s not to say that somebody else didn’t. I’m sure a couple of my friends probably have. But most of us that I knew of that I was friends with did not date. We more or less socialized with each sex. My women, girlfriends, and the boys were in getting baseball games going and things like that.

Interviewer [00:32:35] You’d say they were more reserved back then than today. In dress-

Mary Hinding [00:32:42] Oh definitely. Oh yes. Even though as they say we were poor, but we were neat and clean. You know, I don’t want to criticize the present generation, but we never dressed in these crazy costumes and outfits that these young people are dressing in now. We were lucky to get clothes that fit us, I think. You know, I know the clothes that I got were hand-me-downs from somebody else and I was always on the slim side. And these clothes that I would inherit would always be about a size too large, too big for me. But we didn’t care. It didn’t bother us.

Interviewer [00:33:30] Where did you go to church?

Mary Hinding [00:33:33] St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Church on West 7th and Starkweather. Sang in the choir, went to Catholic Ukrainian studies for three years there. It was after school. I went to regular school, you know, public school. And then right from there I went to the church and we attended Bible studies for three years. And the language. At that time, I knew how to read. I knew how to read and write and speak it fluently. But then over the years, I lost all that.

Interviewer [00:34:26] Was mass spoken in Ukraine or English too?

Mary Hinding [00:34:30] No, just Ukrainian at that time.

Interviewer [00:34:34] And I presume it was predominantly Ukrainian at that church?

Mary Hinding [00:34:39] Right. Yeah. And then we had Sunday picnics that the church put on every summer. Every Sunday again, there’s where families would go as a family for the Sunday’s entertainment. Just about our Sunday activities.

Interviewer [00:34:59] Do you ever remember seeing police officers in the neighborhood at all?

Mary Hinding [00:35:11] No. The only thing that I saw coming into the neighborhood was the- We called him the paper rag man. Anybody mention that to you? A man would have a little wagon. Not a wagon, a little truck. And he would- If you had any old rags, of course, everybody. Nobody had old rags. And he used everything they had. But if you did, he would collect them and they’d, I guess, sell them by the pound or something back to the fabric stores. And then we had the iceman that came around with the ice. Big squares of ice, because we had ice boxes, not refrigerators. And what else? Who else came around? Oh, bakery. Bakery truck. So that’s the only thing that came into the neighborhood.

Interviewer [00:36:03] Milkman?

Mary Hinding [00:36:04] Oh, and the milkman. Yeah. And also the newsboy. If there was some critical, some really important, since we didn’t have paper delivered to the home, did have a paper delivered to them. Why would he- Oh, when there was some real urgent news, the boys would come around, walking up and down the street, calling out paper, paper! And then they sort of mention the headline. When we went to war, that was a big thing. Paper boy would deliver this news directly down the street besides the paper, so that- Now what else I can? Fruit. Also, the wagon would come, somebody would come in with a truck with fruit in the summer. Well, that’s about it. Yeah.

Interviewer [00:37:05] What kind of stores were there?

Mary Hinding [00:37:08] Well, right near where I lived, there was a little- Is that yours? Oh, you lost your watch? Oh, dear. I hope I didn’t break. Right now, I would call it a deli. It had a mixture of staples. And then next door to that there was a little meat market. And then down the street about maybe a half a mile there was a bakery shop. So there were a lot of little stores scattered around, and each one more or less had their own specialty touch store. It wasn’t the big supermarkets that we have now. And I liked it. I can remember my girlfriend was a, dad had that butcher shop and every once in a while we’d walk in when she and I got together and he’d give us a wiener. We’d eat the wiener down the street without the bun and the mustard and everything else to go with it. So that’s the kind of shopping, and then as I said, the market mostly for thick items like fruit, fresh fruit, and the chicken. My mom would go to the West Side Market to do the big shopping. And then you bartered too. You know, the way she would shop is if she saw, she’d walk down the fruit aisle and she’d see that she particularly liked this one stall that had the apples that she wanted maybe, but they all show their prices. Then she’d go on down the road and look and she’d come back to this man that she wanted to buy his apples, but he would quote the price and she’d say, but the man down the street, apples are cheaper, you know. And so he come down and priced him and meet that. So this is the kind of thing they had that do, you know, to get whatever they can afford and still get the better quality. Yeah, he had a wagon and I used to pull the wagon and go to West Side Market to shop.

Interviewer [00:39:33] Did you ever go downtown?

Mary Hinding [00:39:35] Practically never. The one time we did go downtown was I was telling you when my mother took me down to be her spokesman to the bank. But other than that, shopping downtown, no we did not do it. And ironically, after I graduated and went to work, I went to work at the Nickel Plate Railroad, which is right in the Terminal Tower building. So until I went to work, I rarely got downtown.

Interviewer [00:40:12] After- [tape stops and restarts]

Mary Hinding [00:40:20] As far as what we did after graduation. If we weren’t lucky enough to go to college, looking for a job was probably our prime concern. And I had applied at a few places and I got, as soon as I- The day that I graduated, we had our commencement exercises a couple days after our official graduation. And I worked that very same day, not a part-time meeting, a temporary job in an office downtown for the summer. And then when that job was over, I applied at two places for secretarial work and the first place, first place where I interviewed, they hired me right that same day. So actually I went to work before I even graduated, which was rare for some of the young people got a job for a year or two after graduation. But that was basically our main goal, was to find a job. So when you did have a job, that’s all you did. You went to work, and again we still did not do all that much dating, but when we did, it would be dancing in a big dance hall or roller skating. It would be Rollercade on Denison Avenue. And in the summer we picnic along Lake Erie and the beach, that about it. It was usually girl and girl doing something together and boy and boys doing something together. And then when that person did. There were very few people that dated during high school that I was aware of, and not too many did after either. Like I say, unless we did things as a group. We used to go dancing together, boys and girls, that would usually be one fella had a car, like this friend that I did invite to my graduation from. He had a car. We’d get together with two other couples and squeeze all of us into this car to go to the dance hall and dance and then go home. Or we’d go separately to the skating rink and skate with friends there about our way. That’s not all we did in those days, movies. We didn’t go to too many movies. At that time, we- Of course, the movies were different than they are now. That’s about all I can tell you on that subject. It wasn’t too exciting.

Interviewer [00:43:32] Did your parents want you to go on to college?

Mary Hinding [00:43:36] Well, they did, but as they said, my brother was the only one who was able to go because, for one thing, he won a scholarship to go to Ohio University in southern Ohio and the rest of us. And even then he had to stay out for one year and go to work and get some more money before he continues. He’s the only one that got to go and graduated, actually.

Interviewer [00:44:14] And when, again, did you leave Tremont?

Mary Hinding [00:44:18] 1940. ’40. ’41. Of course. In the meantime- Well, no, it wasn’t in the meantime. It was after. Okay, I made a mistake. It was about 1940, ’41.

Interviewer [00:44:34] And why did you leave Tremont?

Mary Hinding [00:44:38] Well, my mother was the kind of a person- We went through this through my whole growing up years. As I said, we owned a home. And at that time, that was kind of a rare thing. Most people rented. But my mother, she started out buying an old dilapidated house. She and I would work our tails off fixing it, cleaning it, painting it, repairing it. Then after a year or two, she’d sell it and move on to a better home and do the same thing over again. We went through that about, I’d say about six moves through that. And I think that’s what she wanted to do at this particular time. Because by that time I was doing it with home anymore. And she didn’t want the burden of all these, the two rental properties that were involved in the house. So we moved into a traditional one, you know, bungalow type house. So that’s what she moved in there. So we didn’t move too far away. We still stayed pretty much on the Near West Side.

Interviewer [00:45:50] Do you still keep in contact with a lot of people from Tremont?

Mary Hinding [00:45:53] Yes, I do. These are the names I’ll probably give you. I said. When we graduated from high school, we formed a committee to plan reunions in the future. So we started out with about 10 of us classmates and we continue getting together every year since. Even though we no longer have a big reunion. I think our 50th was our last one. Yeah. And I still see them. In fact, we meet every Monday, every Sunday, for dinner at a restaurant. And then we had Christmas. We get together and have a Christmas gathering. And then these people that are part of that committee that I mentioned their name and then I give you their names, they’ve lived in a neighborhood where there were a lot of them right next door to each other. So they, they are even closer and know more about it than I did at that time. Where I lived was a little bit further away from the Tremont area. I don’t think it was even- I don’t know if it was even considered the Tremont area. It’s off Scranton Road. And I got positive whether that was included, but I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. We went to Tremont Element- Junior High School. Some children, some of the kids went there through elementary.

Interviewer [00:47:31] Did you guys have a radio?

Mary Hinding [00:47:35] Eventually we got one. I don’t remember listening to it much until- Well, I lived at home with my parents. I don’t really remember listening to the radio much. Just a few of the old-time shows. Jack, I don’t know if it was Jack Benny at that time. But no, we didn’t have a TV, of course. My dad played cards. The neighbor men would come over and play cards in our big kitchen. During that time I didn’t even play cards. I just sat there and watched them once in a while. But that was about as far as the entertainment, I can say. Most of our entertainment was outside playing. You know? We did very little in the house besides our chores.

Interviewer [00:48:34] In conclusion, do you have any final comments you’d like to say about the Tremont area?

Mary Hinding [00:48:38] Well, yeah. The thing that I enjoyed about it was the closeness of the people. I felt safe. We never worried about anything happening to us. Our parents watched us closely. They made sure they knew where we were, what we were doing. We didn’t get into trouble. And it was a good life. I enjoyed it. I knew exactly what was expected of us. And growing up school wise, we knew that we had to buckle down and study when we went to church. We were part of that part group and we felt good about that. I think it was the closeness of the people to each other and the fact that everybody was involved and concerned about each other. And like I said, we thought we knew. We didn’t know that we were poor because that part didn’t into our life. We just knew that we were contented living there and it was a very comfortable lifestyle. That was about it. Yeah, I had a lot of good, happy years there.

Interviewer [00:50:04] Okay, thank you very much.

Mary Hinding [00:50:05] You’re welcome, I’m sure. I’m sorry I’m having so much trouble talking today, but this is hurting me. I don’t know. I hope I’m not getting an infection. It’s starting to swell up. I had my nose cut into my forehead. I was all going to call you and ask you not to come and I thought, oh dear, I don’t want to cancel again because who knows what the next time is going to be? So I just thought I’d just let you sit here and suffer looking at my face and I can’t talk too well because it’s affecting my jaw too.