Yes, I remember the building of the second floor bedroom above the porch between the root house and the walls of the main house leading out from the kitchen. It was about this time that bathrooms and water other than the pump in the kitchen, were added to the house. The interesting thing about that upstairs room was that it was lined with wood which was varnished. Something untoward occurred during the mixing of the varnish and the stuff never set which left a sticky surface overall for years to come. The room was intended to be a sewing room for your mother and had what appeared to me to be exceedingly large pull out drawers built into the wall. I don't recall that it was used much for anything except when the weather was hot, as it can be thereabouts, at which time it was used for sleeping by the adults in the family.

Yes there was another entrance and porch in the front of the house in Brownsville. The present entrance was the one used by patients and led directly into the horsehair-furnished waiting room. I looked for the hole where the speaking tube used to be that went up to Dad's bedroom but couldn't locate it, nor could I find where the brass plaque was attached, the one I used to polish everyday.

Gone are the beautiful gardens, the side porches on the side at the back where the hammock was strung under Virginia creepers and the shed with the holly-hocks. And of course the barn at the back of the property with its generations of carriages and sleighs and hay mow with its many secrets. The outhouse disappeared when the bathroom was put in the house and so did the covered grape arbour that one walked through on route.

I do remember quite a few of the kids in the picture. Since it was taken in the summer it was probably taken at my eighth birthday party. Muriel Honsburger is the maid and she accompanied us to Whitby when we moved there. I hated those birthday parties. They were too organized for my taste as you can see by the scouts in attendance, much too much marching and embarrassing hats when Douglas and I got crowned king and queen. Most of the kids are from my fist grade class.

There was Alvin Jakobs on the far right who had had polio. It was to his house that I was sent when you were being born. And there is Joe Humphry who always had a runny nose and there is Dorothy Leach who I envied mightily during the beginning of the war because she had aviators who landed in her back field and stayed for supper or so she said.

Betty