Mary M Williams

Mary wrote of her life as she remembered it. I attended Sacred Heart School first grade through High School. I drove to school in a horse and buggy, or a horse and cutter in the winter time. I also walked to school many times. It seemed that there was much more snow in those days. There were high drifts in the roads, so riding to school was like being on a roller coaster. The roads were never plowed.

My teachers at Sacred Heart School were Sisters. The friends I remember the most are nine people in the graduating class of 1920.

Most of our trips were on Sundays to nearby relatives homes. We always spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with my Uncle Martin and Aunt Mame, either at their house or ours. I spent many school years staying at their house with my cousin, Renas, as she was an only child.

Every two or three years the circus would come to town and my father would take all of us to see it. That was a big event in our lives. As we grew up, we used to have parties at different homes. We supplied our own music and dancing and good food. The music was usually a violin and piano. I played the piano. We always went to the Ryan Church picnic held at Pine Lake every year. We also went on a sleigh ride parties to other schools. There were about six sleigh loads from our school and my father always drove one of them.

My father ordered a piano from a door to door salesman when I was young. After it was delivered from the train station, I took lessons for three years. I played piano in many programs held at school.

We children always worked hard in the garden and in the fields, did housework and helped milk the cows. My father paid us ten cents a row for hoeing in the ten acre field. We always had lots of animals including cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and turkeys. We made pets of a small calf and pig. They would follow us all over the farm. When they were full grown, they would frighten us, so we ran when we saw them coming.

I was 19 years old when I graduated from high school, and 21 years old when I married. In the summers I had worked in Flint, Michigan for the telephone company. I stayed with relatives, and it was here that I met Louis Williams.

I was ill many times as a child. I had all the children’s diseases like measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox. Then our family was quarantined for a month. The neighbors brought us groceries. I was the only one in the family to have it because the doctor gave all of us an antitoxin shot. Two neighbor’s children died in this epidemic. Many years later, on July 27, 1964, Louis and I were in an automobile accident. The car hit a tree and we were both injured. I was in the hospital for two months with a broken leg, pelvic and internal injuries. Then on May 17, 1966, My gall bladder was removed which required a long three month recovery.

During World War 1, I learned to knit when most of the gals in school knitted sweaters for the boys in service. We were always able to have enough food during this trying time because of living on a farm.

The most difficult time of my life was during The Great Depression from 1929 to 1936. We managed to keep the interest paid on the house and so we did not lose it as most other people did. We also received help from the government. We bought our first car in 1923. It lasted about 4 years. Then, we had no car until 1947.

All my life I was called Mayme. In 1943, when I went to work at Buick Motor Company, I discovered on a new birth certificate copy, that was my name legally Mary. I asked my father about it and he just laughed. He had been the person to register my birth and didn’t tell anyone he had named me Mary. My mother had lived all her life thinking my name was Yetta Marie.