Climbing Up in the World

IN THE PINK IN GREENHILLS

MY DEAR DAD had a myriad of jobs when I was young, including production worker for Procter & Gamble, and church sextant and janitor. Beginning in 1926, he was chauffeur and caretaker for the wealthy Harold Liddle family in Wyoming, Ohio.

Dad kept all the fireplaces lit at the “big house,” stoked the furnace, cared for the grounds, serviced the cars and drove the limo—all for $30 a month and lodging. Six of us—my parents and we four kids—lived in a four-room cottage on the estate. It was the Depression, but we were considered poor even then.

When Dad heard about President Roosevelt’s greenbelt community of Greenhills, he applied to live there. He got a job in the village’s landscape department. So in 1942, we borrowed my cousin Otto’s Model T truck, packed it with everything we owned and moved to an apartment on Chalmers Lane. It had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a utility room and a full bath. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven with that bathroom—indoor plumbing! And I swear the plaster walls were bulletproof. That’s how tough they were built.

In Wyoming, I’d been subject to prejudices because there was a caste system of rich and poor people. But in Greenhills, everyone seemed to make the same amount of money.

I think Greenhills drew people who had jobs and who wanted to better themselves.

It was a neat place to live, especially for teenagers. We could congregate at teen clubs and the drugstore.