In February, I was told officially that I had been assigned to the project, and Margeet and I planned a trip to look for a place to live. We took the kids out of school (they brought along their homework) for a few days. We checked with real estate agents in the Indiana and the Armstrong area without finding anything we liked, and returned to Oswego.
On March 12, 1964, the movers packed our goods, we packed the station wagon, and started driving down about the middle of the afternoon. This was our ninth move in our eleven years of marriage! We drove until about 10 that night, stopping at a motel between Tyrone and Altoona.
We arose early, had a quick breakfast, and started off because we wanted to arrive in South Bend before the moving van, and we passed it between Ebensburg and Indiana. We had to stop at the temporary Ragnar Benson office to get the house keys, and Margeet recalls that she was getting anxious because I took so long.
Margeet had not seen the house, and wanted to get there early enough to decide where to place the furniture. She got out of the car with a measuring tape in her hand to find a clear wall wide enough for her credenza. The moving van arrived within a half hour of the time we unlocked the front door on Saturday, March 14th.
The furniture was moved in and all the packed boxes were stacked in the dining room, leaving a clearing for the TV and some chairs. We sent Dave up to Harold Uptegraph’s Market to pick out some supplies for lunch. In the afternoon, one of our neighbors, Mrs. Dorothy Lias, came down to welcome us with cookies and iced tea.
Joan and Bobby Lee Townsend lived next door and welcomed us to the neighborhood. In the evening, another neighbor, Lawrence Omasta, walked over from his place to welcome us, bringing along his son who was about Dave’s age. We spent the weekend unpacking boxes, setting up beds and arranging our furniture.
On Monday, Dave and Karen started going to the Elderton Elementary School, Dave in 4th Grade and Karen in 2nd. The school bus stop was at Uptegraph’s Market & Garage, and at that time, about 30 kids from the neighborhood boarded it there. Mrs. Ada Uptegraph knew all of them by name.
Ted and Twila Rupert had children close to the age of ours and they made friends right away. Margeet and I were a little apprehensive about Dave and Karen entering so close to the end of the school year, but both of them adjusted well without any difficulty thanks to teacher Dorothy Mossbaugher at the Elderton Elementary School.
In early 1964, as the Oswego project finished up, I heard through the grapevine that there was a new project starting in South Bend, and that I would probably be sent there. Margeet and I started looking at maps to scout out the area around South Bend, Indiana. It wasn’t until a week or so later that we found out the job was in South Bend, a small village in Armstrong County in Pennsylvania.
Several weeks later I had to return to the area for a pre-job meeting with officials from Pennsylvania Electric Co. and Ebasco, Inc., the project managers. While in the area, I received a lead on a house in the village of South Bend, about two miles from the site. I contacted the agent handling the property and arranged to rent it. Back in Oswego, I made the moving arrangements through our purchasing agent.
All of us were weary, but were happy to see that the main bed was a vibrating one. We checked our change but found we only had one quarter. We let the three kids get on the bed and started it up. We practically had to shove them out of bed so Margeet and I could get on too.. The giggling and fun time with 5 of us on the bed relaxed all of us.
The two story house was old, L-shaped, built around 1900, with 9-foot ceilings, and oak 2x6 framing, and an old-fashioned tin roof. It had a half-cellar with a coal furnace and the windows appeared to be the original wooden-sash type. There was one outbuilding, a shed which in earlier days had been used for summer cooking and canning.