We were very comfortable settling into our new house, two years after we had started it and our time in Parma and Garfield Heights in the Cleveland area. All of our furniture and the Keller furniture we had with us fit into it easily. We set up our swingset for Dave and Karen, and we had a nice back yard for them to play in.

The back area was wooded and we would take them exploring along some of the paths. Dave soon found a place in the back to dig holes and ramps as a play place for his toy trucks and cars. We had a dog name Brownie, and I built a dog house for him in the back of our lot. We also had a cat named Muffin.

Our new house had a full basement and soon became a favorite place to play when they couldn’t be outside. They both had tricycles to ride there. I enclosed under the basement stairway as a closet, and it was a favorite hiding place for the kids. We also had an old mattress at one side for their tumbling activities. I also set up an area in the basement for some woodworking activities.

We had a fireplace in our living room (which I can never remember using), and it became a favorite cove for the kids to sit in and play. There was a large window with a view of the river and the bridge. Margeet had always wanted a Dutch Door in her kitchen and we installed one which worked very well in the summer with the top half open and she could see the kids outside.

After we moved in, I built a laundry chute so we could drop in laundry from both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. To connect to the chutes in the bathrooms, I had to build a turn in it. I spent several full weekends building it since the only access was from the chute openings in the bathrooms and the basement, reaching down and up to nail the quarter-inch plywood. The kids loved to drop the dirty laundry down the chute to land in a basket in the basement where the laundry room was located. They especially liked to be in the basement to watch the laundry fall into the container, lining up the container to catch it.

When we were newly married and living in Charleroi, I was working six days per week, and Margeet took over the handling of our checking account and finances. While in the Cleveland area, she started buying U.S. government EE bonds occasionally. From that time until now, she still pays all the bills and keeps our finances straight.

I like to tell the story that when we first got married, we decided that I would make all the big decisions and she would make all the small decisions. To this day, there hasn’t been one big decision to make in our marriage!

One day in June of 1959 when Margeet was in the 8th month of her pregnancy with B.J., and Dave was five, Lou and Carm had walked over to talk to Margeet and the kids in the back yard, when Dave went into the house to get something to show Lou. Coming back out he must have run into and pushed on the bottom glass panel, shattering it, fell onto a broken shard, and received a nasty L-shaped, deep gash in his side about waist high.

Lou wrapped a towel around it to help keep the wound closed and rushed him to the hospital with Carm. Margeet dropped Karen at my Mom’s house, and stranded without a ride, asked a young neighbor man to take her to the hospital, and she arrived just as they were going to give Dave anesthesia before stitching up his gash. I was at work at the time, and found out about all the excitement when I came home.

Barbara Joan (early called BobbyJo and later B.J.) was born about a month later at the Monongahela Hospital in New Eagle, Pa. on July 13, 1959. Margeet’s Dad was visiting us at the time, and he and Mom Tosi took care of Dave and Karen during the day until Margeet came home with B.J. Margeet’s Mom got there soon and her Dad went off to visit Bob Keller and family in Montana.

That fall, Dave started Kindergarten at the same Williams School that I had first gone to in 1930. Fortunately, Lou and Carm’s son, Lonny, was still in the Elementary school there and Dave walked to school and back with him. Dave also went to first grade there before we moved to Oswego, N.Y.

While living on Hill Street, Margeet again started attending the Presbyterian Church in Monongahela. At that time, I hadn’t started attending church and Margeet took Dave and Karen with her for both the service and Sunday School. Margeet also joined a church social group of young wives, their Bridge Club, and she later became a member of the Monongahela Young Women’s Social Club. During this stay in Monongahela, I worked on projects at various steel mills in the area, Duquesne Works, National Tube in McKeesport, Armco in Butler, and the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock.