Grandma Gardner had a
sister, Ellen Sullivan who was the wife of George Sullivan.
They had a daughter Rose, who also had a daughter, Alice
Adams. Aunt Ellen thought it would be a good idea if Alice
could spend a summer with us, which she did. Thirty-four
years later I heard from Adams. which she is now called,
saying that she remembered that summer as one of the
happiest times of her life. Bill, with the help of June and
Christine and sometimes Doris, cut the wood for our wood
burning furnace. This was done in the cold weather. It
wasn't a fun job. We had a horse, who would bring the fallen
trees from the woods to the meadows so they could be sawed
into smaller pieces.
Bill took the job as
Town Assessor at the same time as Christine left home so at
that time we installed an oil burner which, to my mind, was
a great improvement. We had horses. June had a milking herd.
When she graduated from high school she thought she wanted
to stay home and make her fortune milking cows. However,
shortly after she was married, she gave up the milking herd.
We continued with the milkers for about a year during which
time we hired a neighbor boy to milk but when he was unable
to do so, I milked the cows. We then sold them and bought
some beef cattle. We kept horses and cattle mainly to keep
the land from growing into brush. We did our own haying,
first with horses and then with a tractor. Christine, Doris
and Susan joined 4-H. We were the leaders of a 4-H livestock
club.
Each summer we went
to quite a few fairs, always to the 4-H County Fair and
quite often to the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield,
Massachusetts. Christine had a Jersey cow, a pair of ponies
and the most beautiful flower garden beside our kitchen. She
built a terrifically fine stone wall for the garden. Doris
had a Milking Shorthorn, chickens and rabbits. Doris was
elected president of the New Haven County 4-H Fair
Association. One year I had charge of the refreshment stand.
Susan raised sheep. All these animals were shown at various
fairs. Susan also entered an apple pie contest at the local
4-H fair and went on to exhibit at a larger fair.
Before it was all
over I had my fill affairs. While in 4-H, we had two
International Farm Youth Exchange people. The first was
Nathan, who came from Mexico. Actually Nathan was not a farm
youth, but his father had enough influence to have him
selected. He spent a couple of weeks with us. At this same
time we had a donkey named Nathan. When we told Billy, who
was five years old at the time, about Nathan coming he asked
if he had big ears. The other IFYE was Yega from Ceylon,
which is now Sri Lanka. Yega was a Hindu. Now shortly before
this time the Parent Teacher Association in Oxford had an
International Weekend.
We had as our guests.
Rashid and Siti Anand and their son, Vera Rashid was
studying international law at Yale University. They were
Hindus. I thought it would be a great idea to invite them
over when Yega was with us. However, it was like asking a
black kid and a Puerto Rican kid to share something. Yega
was a Tamil and Rashid and his group hated Tamils. They were
gentlemen enough not to kill each other in my living room,
but it was a very long, uneasy evening. While Yega was with
us we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. June planned
a surprise party for us. Doris, who was living in New Haven,
came home for the celebration. Christine telephoned from
Oklahoma. Among the guests were my mother, Bill's parents,
Mavis and Joe Henderson, Benny and Gary Horton, Vivian and
Norman Gates, Jim and Denise Burns, Douglas and Sue Smith,
Henry and Sabrina Hill and there were more but I cannot
think of them now.
Our first son is
William A. Gardner. We called him Billy. Around Christmas,
he said that he wanted to be called Adam. So it was decided
we would call him Adam and if he still liked it when we
moved to Florida, he would be Adam Gardner. Today he is Adam
but often when I think of him in Connecticut I think
"Billy."
