My Family & Me: For the good times, Part 2

Woodlawn is no longer the deadend neighborhood it was when my family lived there in the '40s and early '50s. One of its streets has been extended to join what was the old red-dog road that led to the dam in the woods. I find myself regretting this.

It was such a connected community; its inhabitants were there for each other in both good times and bad. But does such a thing exist any longer? Even in dead-end neighborhoods?

Telephones were relatively new to blue-collar households back then; maybe one of every five or six houses had one. Because of this, each household with a telephone served as an answering service for surrounding neighbors who didn’t have their own.

Frivolous conversations, such as how someone’s day was going, never happened. Phone usage, both outgoing or incoming calls, was reserved for important events.

The strident ring of the phone after everyone had gone to bed had an urgency all its own. My dad, if he wasn’t working the night shift, always answered these calls and relayed the news to my mother before leaving to contact the affected neighbors. I always crept from my bed to the head of the stairs to listen. One memorable night, the message was for our next door neighbors, the Ambrose family.

Sadness darkened my dad’s eyes, his footsteps dragging as he pulled on his coat that November night, his reluctance to knock on their door obvious. Both Kenny’s younger sister, Minnie, and her 10-year-old daughter, Betty, had died within minutes of each other. Diphtheria was rampant that winter.

Another time, he went to the Eisenmans' house. Mae Eisenman’s car had crashed; Mae had some bruises and scratches but was relatively unharmed.

Maggie Smith, Mae’s next-door neighbor, had not survived. The Smiths had their own telephone. No need for two visits.

Six-year-old Jimmy Ambrose did not show up for supper with his siblings that summer night. Repeated calls, first from his mother and then his dad, failed to bring him home. Answers varied among the other kids as to when they had last seen Jimmy and where.

The news quickly spread. Word-of-mouth, mostly in Woodlawn,

augmented by the telephone calls to nearby relatives Every shed, Caldwell’s barn, even Jimmy’s house were searched before the hunt expanded to the neighboring woods.

Night was falling, and this time, Kenny used our phone to call the local police. What we kids had perceived as an adventure suddenly wasn’t fun any longer.

It was his dad who found him, curled up in a depression in the woods, covered with leaves to keep himself warm.

“What?” Jimmy said when his dad shook him awake. “I was just taking a nap.”

By far, one of the most exciting calls came in the evening; the phone’s shrill cry interrupted “Henry Aldrich” on the radio.

“We’re at Brookville Hospital,” my Uncle John informed Dad.

“Bertha’s been shot, not fatally, just in the arm, but they took her into surgery as soon as we got here.”

My mom tried to calm us kids down as she and my dad prepared to leave for the hospital. “It’s going to be all right, kids. Your dad and I are just going to the hospital to give some support to the others until they learn how serious it is. Listen to Grandma and Uncle Bill, and we will be back with good news before you know it."

It wasn’t "good news before we knew it"; it was hours, and hours, and hours, or so it seemed to me, before we heard the rest of the story.

Uncle Frank, Aunt Bertha and their six kids had gone to supper at Uncle John and Aunt Ora’s house.

Following the meal and the kitchen’s cleanup, the adults had settled in the living room, the girls made their way upstairs to a bedroom, and the three boys, Bob, Bud and Bobby Jim, were in the kitchen.

“Boom!” Did Aunt Bertha feel the bullet tearing through her flesh or hear the sound first? That was something I never thought to ask Aunt Berta every time I saw her over the next few years. Fascinated, I poked my finger into the puckered, inch-deep indentation in her upper arm each time we met.

Although the shot had come through the wall from the adjacent kitchen, the three boys, two of them 10 and one 12, who were occupying the kitchen, all told the same story. None of them had touched the gun, and it still sat innocently in its accustomed place in the closet.

I was amazed at the three boys’ denials of culpability, and their continued refusal to name the guilty party. I knew I would have caved immediately if I hadn’t been the guilty one.

“He did it!” I would have blurted, pointing to the shooter.

“One of the first things I’m going to ask God when I get to Heaven,” I promised myself back then, "will be: Who shot Aunt Bertha?”

Last year, at the family reunion, Bobby Jim (at 88, he just goes by Bob now) and I were discussing old memories.

“One of life’s biggest mysteries for me was always who shot Aunt Bertha,” I told him.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Bob said. “It was me.”

One fewer question for God, should I meet Him someday.

Kathy Young Wonderling is a former Spirit reporter who wrote a weekly column, My Family & Me, starting in the early 2000s. An octogenarian, Kathy is a widow, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister and aunt. With such a large family, she has too many memories not to share.