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THE TIME BOOK
by Jack Loughary and Marilyn Loughary Kok Marilyn and I have spent many enjoyable hours over the years reminiscing and speculating regarding our "growing up years" with our parents, William Ernest Loughary and Margaret Geneviveve Bagan Loughary. I prepared the first draft of "Time Book" which led to more conferring and discussion between us. Marilyn is in every sense a co-author of the final piece. After several attempts at rewriting in a "we" voice, we agreed that the manuscript was more readable in its original voice and left it so. If you enjoy "The Time Book", you may also like to read "Growing Up On Jefferson Street". http://thinkpint.com/lougharylines/growing up/growing_up_stories.html jwl
***** Initially, Dad kept his Time Book on a lower shelf of the radio table in our living room. The radio, which sat on a crocheted doily on top of the table, was either a Philco or a Monkey Ward economy model. Later, when our parents purchased a floor model radio, the Time Book was relocated to a shelf on a side table next to “Dad’s chair.” Eventually it was relocated to his chair in front of the television set. The first page of Book One of the Time Book is dated January, 1943 when Dad was 40. Mom was 39, Marilyn was 9 and Jack was 12. World War II was just over two years old, as far as the U.S. was concerned. The Time Book probably started some 14 or 15 years before, just after Mom and Dad were married. I have no recollection of seeing earlier volumes, but I would bet the family farm they existed. My parents were great record keepers. I don’t mean to suggest that they kept records of great events, only that whatever event that caught their fancy on a day was recorded, day in and day out. My mother inscribed notes and dates of important events on spiral notebooks and other documents that I would uncover some 12 years after she died. But Dad was the keeper of the Time Book. Many men in those times who worked by the hour kept time books. The books were typically small, allowing for recording hours worked and amount earned and could be contained in a shirt pocket, sort of a private sort of a private ".doc" of which such men had few. Dad’s time book was larger, more like a ledger, and measured 7 by 12 inches. Book One has 225 pages; Book Two, 300. They are both cloth bound and light bile green. The cover designs are similar, designed to convey a message about the importance of their contents. The word “RECORD” is printed on the cover of Book One. Each page has a one inch left margin separating the remainder of the sheet with a printed medium wide red vertical line. Dad set up a new page on the first day of each month by entering the month and year on line one, and then entering the weekdays and dates in the left column. Now came the basic entries, namely, the number of hours worked each day. Initially, these were noted just to the right of the red line. For some unknown reason (which you will see is an observation that applies to a good many other entries in the Time Book) beginning May 1943 he switched the placement of hours to the left column, between the date and the red vertical line. The remainder of each page was up for grabs! Items include weekly hour totals, financial data, ball game scores, political events such as election results, family addresses, temperatures, automobile data, fall canning results, family stuff and in later years records of their small mom and pop nursery business (Rhodies and Azaleas). There are occasional notes regarding children's activities. The reasons for these have eroded over time, and they now seem to appear at random, but I'm certain there was a purpose for each entry. Making his daily Time Book entries was more than a clerical task. Each had a sort of metaphorical importance in that it acknowledged the end of one part of his day and the start of another. I first used the term “work day” but it was more than that because he made entries seven days a week. Life on week days began between 5 and 6 a.m. when my parents arose. Mother was an elementary school teacher in the between towns settlement of Glenwood. She was also compulsive about house cleaning. They retired at the same time, usually between 9:30 and and 10:00 p.m. Mother often arose earlier than Dad. This provided time for house cleaning and other chores. Dad fixed his own breakfast of hot cereal or pan fried, crusty eggs. Marilyn and I attempted to avoided his breakfasts, as I recall, aiming for toast and dry cereal, but sometimes settling for his hot cereal. (Dynamite, a popular brand of the time, was one of his favorites.) It was heavy, gooey and thick. He once told me it gave him energy especially on cold winter mornings. Mother, seemingly on an eternal diet, settled for dry toast and coffee. She might have treated herself to a spoon of jam on weekends. Dad was employed at the Booth Kelly Lumber Company in nearby Springfield for many years. Springfield is located several miles east of Eugene and in those days was known as a blue collar town. It has since added a middle class population and gives Eugene a run for its money. He had several jobs at Booth Kelly until the company finally sold out to Georgia Pacific who eventually closed the mill. After a couple years stay at Glenwood, Mother was employed as a elementary and later junior high teacher in the Springfield School District for many years. She didn’t drive and anyway two car families were unheard of in those days in Eugene. So the obvious solution to the transportation issue was to share a ride. They would leave home on the west side of Eugene, cross over the McKenzie River bridge to the east to Springfield where Dad would drop her off at Mill Street Elementary School and then back travel the two 1.5 miles to the Booth Kelly Mill. His was the traditional 8 to 5 work day, but he made a point of arriving at the mill by 7:30 a.m. This provided time for congeniality with fellow workers and eventually “office hours” for his series of elected union positions in the IWA-CIO local (International Woodworkers of American-Congress of Industrial Organizations). In order to meet his schedule, Mom settled for a long school day because in addition to a very early arrival, the earliest Dad could pick her up was about 5:15 p.m. I never heard her complain. She was as compulsive about teaching (and preparation) as housekeeping, and she said she had more than enough to keep her busy. She was appointed principal of Mill Street Elementary School in September, 1943 when there was a shortage of "qualified men" during The War. This entailed working until 5 p.m. or so, which worked as far as scheduling was concerned. She occasionally was required to attend an evening school function of some sort, which of course put added chauffeuring pressure on Dad. Making a Living But, I’m getting ahead of the story. Our small family began its development in Omak, a small town in Okanogan County, eastern Washington. Mom and dad must have moved there from Orient (an even tinier town in Eastern Washington) in about 1927 or 1928. I was born in l930 and my sister Marilyn in 1934. Dad worked for the Biles and Coleman mill in Omak. Mom packed apples during the season and did some substitute teaching in Omak. Prior to that, she had completed a year or more of teacher preparation and then taught at several schools, including one on an Indian reservation in Klamath County. In Omak, however, she was primarily a homemaker. Biles and Coleman was having labor difficulties and eventually the union struck the mill. Being deep in the depression, there was little other work available. Omak was about the closest to a company mill town as it could get without being one. Mom’s brother and his wife, Jim and Mabel Bagan, lived in Eugene and I suppose encouraged them to relocate. I think the motivation was more than financial. Mom told be that they wanted to live in a University (read college) town where Marilyn and I could attend college without the expense of “going away” to school. Thus, in the summer of 1936 we relocated to Eugene and moved in temporarily with Jim and Mabel and their shitty little bull dog named Vickie. One of Marilyn’s first complete sentences was, ‘Vicky bite.” I don’t know the details, but prior to school starting in the fall we moved into a small rental on Patterson Street and I was enrolled in grade one at St. Mary’s Catholic school. Jim and Mabel who were childless at that time continued to be very caring to us. I recall that they purchased the "major” gifts for Marilyn and me that Christmas. Dad was making less than a dollar an hour stacking boards in a lumber yard. Mable’s sister Irene and her husband, Jack Boyd, lived in the area. The Boyds and our parents were close friends for many years. Jack was a real operator and helped Dad obtain work. I don’t know how steady it was. I assume that within no more than a year he had obtained employment at Booth Kelly, probably on the green chain or in the yard. Booth Kelly had a retail yard in conjunction with the mill, and in a couple years Dad was transferred to “retail” as a yard man. He was a personable fellow, people liked him and was good at "figuring". Perhaps that is why he was offered the opportunity to move from the mill to a job in which he interacted with the public. By the summer of 1937 we had finished our first year in Eugene. Marilyn and I think that Mom obtained her first teaching Job in 1939 when she, Marilyn, started first grade at St. Mary’s. Neither of us can recall any details, but a woman must have been employed to watch after us from the time we arrived home from school until our parents arrived. Mom’s first teaching job was at Glenwood Elementary, a small one-school district between Eugene and Springfield. Obtaining employment was difficult, but especially so for Mom and many Catholic women. At one time, Oregon was a hot bed of KKK activity and remnants of those times existed in 1939. After fruitless searching, Mom with the help of Jim Bagan I assume, (who was in a management position with the local Oregon State Employment Office) turned up a teaching opening on the coastal town of Florence, Oregon, a 2 hour drive in those days. Like it or not, it seemed to be that or nothing and they were in need of more income. One day in mid summer she received a phone call from the Florence School Superintendent. He proceeded to verify the data on her application form. The phone interview was moving along well, as Mom told the story, when the superintendent said, “I see that you listed Christian as your religion, Mrs. Loughary. Would that be the Christian church specifically or some other denomination?” “To be specific,” Mom said she answered, “I am a member of the Catholic church.” She heard by mail a few days later that the position had been filled. I never understood what domestic arrangements they anticipated should she have been hired. Perhaps they hadn’t faced that issue. With in a year or so, Mom was hired to teach elementary grades at Glenwood School. One memorable event about Glenwood School was when some boys locked a cow in the gymnasium over the Christmas vacation. This went undiscovered for several days until the school janitor discovered the missing cow and the mess it had made. For some reason unknown to me, the school principal, Ben Adair, assigned Mother the responsibility for collecting a supply of fiction and biographical books each month from the Lane County School office that would supplement the small library collection of the Glenwood School. This was a Saturday morning chore which entailed selecting books each month from the County School office which I recall was in the second floor of a building on Willamette street, and hauling them to school the following Monday. In those days, small county schools received several benefits from the Country Districts, including library service. Dad would drive mom down to the County School office on Saturday where she selected the monthly allotment of books that would fill three or four large grocery boxes. Then they would bring the boxes home where Marilyn and I had first crack at “borrowing”. Dad also might pick out two or three for himself. Talk about kids loose in a candy store! Wow, what a great way to encourage kids to read. Glenwood School was discontinued many years ago, but the tiny community still exists, trying to decide whether to risk its fate with Eugene or Springfield. The latter currently has the legal custodial rights and responsibilities. It was probably a year or perhaps two later that Mom obtained her first teaching job with the Springfield school district which I’m sure paid better and offered more benefits. Any benefits would have been more. In the meantime, we moved one door south on Patterson Street to a larger and certainly nicer house. Within the week the Oberg family, recently arrived from North Dakota, family moved into our old house. There were the parents and four girls. I think even at our young ages Marilyn and I had our first lesson in equality, or lack of it, or just plain bad luck. They were what was known in the depression as “dirt poor”. We became good friends with them, especially Eloise the older daughter who years later after the war married a brother of one of my close friends. (Talk about “growing up small town.”) Two others were Elaine and Dorothy and I can’t recall the name of fourth girl. During the first year in the second Patterson Street house I was in the third grade. It’s a memorable year for me because first of all I transferred from St. Mary’s Catholic Grade School to Francis Willard, a public school. I was a stutterer and after a summer or two at the University of Oregon Speech Clinic, the therapist suggest that a “change in school environment” might be curative. I suspect he thought that the regimented manner in which the nuns operated St. Mary’s might be one underlying causal factor of my stuttering. That might have been true, but probably not the primary cause. The feature of St. Mary’s that stands out is lining up each recess for “team selection” in the play shed. I was the smallest, youngest boy in my grade, and to say I was physically immature would win the prize for understatement. From my perspective it was a brutal daily experience in rejection. I knew I would be the last chosen, I always was, and whatever game the nuns forced us to play far exceeded my expected frustrations. This went on for two years, and while I doubt that the speech therapy was worth much, I have always felt a sense of gratitude to the therapist for getting me out of St Mary’s and away from the nuns and eventually emancipation from the Church. Thus, the transfer was made and I began grade three at Francis Willard in the fall of 1937. That winter, I came down with ethmoiditis, an acute ethmoid sinus gland infection. The treatment was three trips a week to Dr. Diet’s office where the nurse stuffed cotton up my nose and then applied heat via a lamp for a couple hours. Dr. Diet was an EET (Eye, Ear and Throat) man, and we became close friends, or so I perceived. He even sent me a Christmas card. I was out school for two months, followed by a two week case of measles. I doubt that I could have finished grade three at Francis Willard on schedule, were it not for St. Mary’s being probably a year ahead of the public schools regarding reading and arithmetic instruction. It provided the rest of the third grade students time to catch up with me. The Hired Girls Years During the summer of 1939 when I was in grade four, our parents bought a house on Jefferson street, on the west side of town. That was the year Marilyn began first grade and I began grade 5. It was also the first year Mom and Dad employed the first of two live-in “hired girls.” They were Eleanor and Helen. Marilyn recalls that Helen was the first and that Eleanor came later after the War began. I recall it was the reverse order. We both have clearer memories of Eleanor than of Helen and that may be due to our being older when Eleanor was with us. It doesn’t make much difference so I will tell you about Helen first. Marilyn and I think we probably had a couple part time hired girls during the Patterson Street years. Someone would have had to take care of us prior to Mom and Dad arriving from work. To convey a proper sense of Helen, she eventually married and had a child, but she would never admit to sexual intercourse being part of the process, or so she told Mother. Helen’s great joy was attending the wrestling matches that were held down at the National Guard Armory on Seventh street every Friday night. The Armory was a good mile and half walk from our home at 18th and Jefferson street. I think she had to walk at least one way because the Eugene buses quit running before the matches were over. Marilyn and I recall that she was attacked once, perhaps raped. Still, she continued attending the matches. Helen was infatuated with Dad. After dinner the family often would retire to the living room to listen to the news and whatever serial or music program might be on the radio. Helen was free to join us, and she did. Mom and Dad were both smokers in those days. So was Helen. Dad had one of those smoking stands that consisted of a U shaped holder for a pack of cigarettes and matches and an ash tray. There were always one or two other ash trays (it seems such an odd word now) in the living room and Mom would use one of those. Helen, in contrast, would not think of using these, but instead would carry in the lid of a Safeway two pound can of Edwards coffee to serve as her personal ash tray. As she puffed on her Camel, or Lucky Strike or more likely Wings (they were the least expensive brand) she would gaze fondly across the room at Dad. This could last through a couple cigarettes. Dad never said a word, nor did Mom, but they were very much aware and amused at the adulation, as were Marilyn and I. It became a family joke. I do recall that some times Dad’s patience or anxiety level would reach a breaking point, and he would retreat to the garage and one his many projects. Eleanor, the other hired girl, came straight off the boat from North Dakota. Her family was German and they had relatives living near the small country village of Noti 16 or so miles west of Eugene. As I recall, Mom placed a help wanted ad in the Eugene Resister Guard, and soon received a phone call from Eleanor. Her relatives brought her to our house for an interview and soon after Marilyn and I were informed that we had a new hired girl. Apartment Living The 1832 Jefferson Street house was originally a single story two bedroom California style flat roof stucco bungalow. A prior owner had constructed a second story on top of the tar and paper roof of the original house, but the only second story amenities added were two windows on the front (east) and two on the rear (west). Mom and Dad saw the potential for another bedroom up stairs and the construction of that became Dad’s major winter evening and weekend project. After removing the original tar roof, he installed a rough floor of tongue and groove ship lap over the what had been the 30 by 60 flat roof. Then he walled and floored a space finished room at the rear of the house. It ran the width of the building which must have been about 30 feet and was 20 feet long and that became my bedroom. It was accessed by a set of stairs dad constructed from the first floor hall way. This probably would have taken the prize for the steepest set of stairs in town, but I assume anything resembling a building permit and inspection was not part of a the project. (Theresa and I were able to visit the Jefferson street house several years ago and realized that one crawled not walked upright to reach the second story.) I don’t recall the sequence of what followed, but by the time Eleanor arrived dad had installed a wall and door so as to divide the 20 x 30 foot room into two 10 by 15 feet rooms. I was assigned the room at the top of the stairs, which also served as the upstairs landing area. The second 10 X 15 room became the hired girl’s room, which of course could only be accessed via my landing room. At the close of the hired girl phase which lasted through much of the war, Dad removed the separating wall and door and added a door at the bottom of the stairs proving me in effect with a fairly large upstairs private room. This was my “room” during much of junior high school and senior high school and college. The unfinished space was used for drying clothes, and for two winters raising chickens in orange crates, but that is another story. The original two room arrangement was not a good one. Eleanor had to traverse through my “room” to get to and from hers, and only bath room was on the first floor. Sometime during her tenure with us, Eleanor married to a man who had been inducted into the Army. I am vague about the details, but the fellow must have come home on furlough or at least he took up residence in her room for several nights prior to their obtaining a place of there own. The room arrangement became particularly unpleasant at that point, especially for the newly weds, I always assumed. Eleanor was very kind and pleasant. She also was what might be described as unsophisticated. The most notable example of this occurred one winter evening when our parents were out and Eleanor, Marilyn and I were playing a game of Spin the Bottle. Players sat at a table or on the floor in a circle. Players took turns spinning until the bottle stopped with its mouth pointing to a player. When the bottle stopped spinning the spinner would dare the appointed player to some task. Someone, me I suppose, dared Eleanor to perform a Hula Dance while standing on the top of the dining room table. Eleanor was not a diminutive girl, in fact she was relatively tall and stout. She did nevertheless put on a memorable performance, we all thought it great fun. Until, of course, Marilyn spilled the beans to Mom the next day and the pineapples hit the outrigger. House Work Prior to the hired girl phase, I had some food prep responsibilities which helped advance the dinner hour. Basically, I cleaned, pealed and sometimes “put on” the veggies, casserole, or pot roast prior to my parents arrival. Marilyn recalls similar experiences. She told me only recently how much she hated coming home to an empty house and being expected to start dinner. I didn’t resent it, in part I suppose, because my parents kept tight reins on us, meaning we didn’t expect being free to roam. One aspect of this chore I hated, was working with the pressure cooker. Our pressure cooker was essentially a 3 quart cooking pan with a lid that could be screwed tight, thus allowing for cooking meat under a great deal of pressure. Attached to the top of the lid was a pressure valve that could allow steam to escape, thus returning the pressure to an acceptably safe level. The problem was, the automatic feature of the steam release value could fail. When this happened, the release pressure valve would be blown up to the ceiling with considerable force. We had dents in the ceiling as proof. The fear of course, that one might be so unfortunate as to be in the path of the missile. It could be a frightening half hour. An even more anxiety producing chore was doing the washing on Thursdays when I arrived home from school. We had a very old used electric Thor ringer washing machine. It had to be filled via a hose from the hot water faucet in the wash room behind the kitchen. Once a load of washing was “done” it was necessary to run each item of clothing by hand through the electric ringer. The concept was fine, but the problem was in the implementation. The routine required retrieving an item from the tub, pulling a lever that started the ringer rollers revolving and then feeding said item through the two rollers. The problem was the engineers who designed the brute had probably never been near a random sample of house hold dirty clothes. Sure, the whites and colored could be sorted, but not the different shapes. Hankies and hand towels were a snap, but any thing larger and of odd sizes and shapes were doomed to become stuck in the rollers. To unstick such items require pulling the lever that turned off the rollers. This involved a combination of several variables, including an electrical cord, two electric motors, a tub of water and a series of wet clothes, one end of which often was still in the tub and the other stuck in the rollers, and bare hands. The machine had several electrical shorts that produced electrical shocks. As soon as you thought you had them all located, Zap! another would activate. What made this worse that two cycles were involved, namely washing and rinsing. One of the best Saturdays in my life was when the truck from Monkey Wards pulled up with a new AUTOMATIC Bendix washer. Looking back, to some respect it resembled an invention not yet seen in Eugene, i.e., a round television screen. I recall loading the machine from the front, tossing in the detergent, shutting the door and pushing the start button and then standing there for a bit watching the load go round and round and round, and then eventually changing to rinse and eventually spinning dry. Safe at last! Upon arriving home, Mom took over the final cooking. Dad always had several miscellaneous chores that took up his time before finally washing up just before dinner. Marilyn and I were glued to the radio for the evening serials, including Little Orphan Annie, Captain Midnight, and Jack Armstrong the All American Boy, often having to be forced to the dinner table before the cliff hanger of the episode was set. Dinner was a pleasant event for me during those years. My parents described the events of their days that were enjoyable, frustrating, challenging and amusing. Marilyn and I were encouraged to contribute. I could never see what could be interesting about working in a lumber yard, but Dad rose to the occasion. The dinner dishes were cleaned by some combination of the four of us and by approximately 6:30 we each began our after dinner activities. Dad liked to sing, and it was during the washing up time that he would often entertain us by singing a selection of tunes from his youth. (You could hear him perform a whistling version of the same selections while he went about various outdoor chores.) It was then that Dad would sit down in his chair beside the radio and pull out the Time Book. The first entry for each work day was the digit 8, indicating he had worked 8 hours. Occasionally there was over time (8 ½), and one Saturday morning a month inventory at the retail yard (4 which was really 6 in wages due to time and a half for over time.) Then he would put the Time Book aside, and pick up the evening paper. Finances Eugene was strange even in those days, one manifestation of which was an evening instead of morning newspaper. The Eugene Register Guard was delivered by junior high school kid carriers on bicycles around 4:00 p.m. I suppose that was fine by Dad because he was short of time in the morning. What took place next depended upon the season. In the late fall and winter, we read and listened to the radio. Mom also did her evening house wife shift. As the temperature warmed and the days grew longer, Dad turned to the garden and a variety of house maintenance projects. Depending upon the season and the days events, he made summary entries in the Time Book. Here is a sample of Time Book entries from the early 1940s. 1942: Oregon State 20—Duke 16 1943: Georgia 9—UCLA 0 Monday: 12, Load of mill ends In 1943 we heated the house with a wood circulator stove. Mill ends were the trimmings of finished dimension lumber. Most were an inch or two thick and about 12 inches long. These pieces were each to split into kindling and they also were good “starters” for the large block pieces. Block pieces were about a foot long, unfinished, and could be as much as 6 by 8 wide on a side. Dad purchased these from Booth Kelly by the truck load. They were simply dumped in the drive way in front of the garage to surprise us in the evening. I was usually the first to come upon them. I hated "wood day", initially. It meant a few hours of packing and stacking. But, I knew my duty and so would change from school to work clothes and begin the chore a little after 4 p.m. By five 5:20 I began anticipating Dad’s arrival because that meant an increase in the crew. As soon as he arrived he inspected my stacks to see that my corners were straight and then pitched in. These were pleasant episodes to me because it was one of the few tasks that we shared. In the other chores that we did together I always perceived my role as a helper, not a full partner with him. When we were stacking wood, we were equals. It showed, too, in the topics we discussed. Sunday-17 10° above Zero Thursday-21 6½ “ snow Friday-22 3 ½ “ snow Basket Ball Oregon 48 Wash 52 Saturday-23 9°above Zero Oregon 30 Wash 31 Friday-8 Snow General entries for January were: $1.01 per hour Monthly income $192.83 Victory tax $6.40 Hours 190.25 The entries for February were not much different. Oregon was doing better in basketball, he collected $63.68 in back pay for September through November of 1942 (thanks to the union, I assume) and the total income was $198.98. March, having more work days and full Saturdays at time and one-half, brought earnings up to $233.16, less Victory Tax of $8.40. A sign of the coming of Spring was an entry on Saturday, March 6 for 3 yards of loam, $4.75. This meant a more productive vegetable garden. Such a grand expenditure also signaled greater financial prosperity. The latter was due in large part to my mother’s income. Being a two income family made a whale of a difference. Her monthly pay check was the larger of the two. These were not recorded in the Time Book. May, notes the Time Book, brought a Sunday trip to the town of Sweet Home some 45 miles north east to visit Dad’s sister, Aunt Margaret and her rich lumberman husband, Archie. They split soon and Margaret eventually enlisted in the WAVES, thus making her the only family member to “be in the service”. August 1 through 7 was a vacation at the coast (paid, I assume and again thanks to the union) at the beach in “Parson’s cabin.” My hunch is that Parson was an acquaintance who owned a cabin near Florence. I recall the experience well. A row boat came with the cabin which was located on Woahink Lake, but the real surprise was the hole in the bottom of the boat. Dad obtained some wood and tar and it seemed devoted a day or two to making the boat sea worthy while the rest of us stood around and watched. When he judged that was safe to cast off, we did. He rowed up and down the lake and the remaining four of us dutifully trolled for trout. It was at that time I began reevaluating family trips. On Thursday, August 26, a box of peaches were purchased for $3.50. This was the first of several and by mid September Mom and Dad had canned (jarred, actually) enough quarts of peaches to last us into Spring. They also did pears, jams, beets and green beans. For whatever reason, Mom believed that we should have dessert for nearly every dinner, and given the financial times, home canned fruit did its duty. All of these activities were duly recorded. September 20, School started ("Mom principal at Mill Street in Springfield") I don’t believe that she enjoyed being the school administrator. It must have seemed an unwelcome responsibility. I think she was principal at Mill Street through 1944 or 1945. An interesting change in entry titles was that Victory Tax was replaced with Withholding Tax. The amount jumped by about 80 percent. At the end of December Dad entered his total income for 1943, which amounted to $2651.92. Tax withheld was $133.20. Finis The Time Book, of course, was much more than that. It was in addition a revelation of what he thought was important to note at the close of each day. Change of address of family members, purchases, gifts to their children, list of the top 10 or 20 of this and that printed in the paper, marriages, deaths, rhododendron and azalea purchases, diner guests, trip notes, Reno winnings (never losses), garden crop notes, ball game scores, illness records, strike notes, are a small sample of topcs Dad’s final entry in the Time Book was on Tuesday, September 18, 1973. He was 71 on September 1 of that year. Mom’s first entry was on the evening of the same day. She continued to make entries in the Time Book, her final entry being on June 10, 1982 . She died July 16, 1989 at the age of 86. The day he died, Tuesday, September 18, 1973, he was working on page 168 of Book 2. There are two entries on the September 18 line. The first, in his hand writing probably after dinner around 6:00 p.m: “Rain.” The second, in Mom’s hand about 9 or 10 the same evening adds: “Dad died-7.P.M.” She added to her entry the next day, I assume. (Perhaps not, but she was so rational.) “Myocardial Infarction & Arterial Sclerosis...acute heart attack William E. Loughary”
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