Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Thurs., Nov. 11, 1926
The weather has been too horrid to camp. After spending three nights in Massena and going through the Aluminum Plant there, we traveled about 180 miles and stopped at a wayside guest house, where the oddest people were assembled. We cried half the evening and laughed the rest.
The man of the house, after unfortunately breaking his leg in June, had developed gangrene and diabetes. Hospital, doctor and insulin bills were eating up whatever small capital they had. Luckily, his wife, who had been a nurse, was strong and capable. But my, she was funny looking! A huge head of moth-eaten, close cropped, hennaed hair was getting gray at the roots. Like a clown, her moon face was plastered white with powder, except her large pug nose, worn red and shiny by a cold.
Her brother and a cousin kept us in stitches the entire time, joking and kidding each other, sometimes being really clever. Many of their jokes were about homely people, and I never saw a homelier bunch. The short fat cousin’s skin was drawn tightly across his face and neck, and when he laughed the blood rushed to his head in such a great surge I was afraid it would burst.
The brother who lives with them was quite traveled and told many, probably imaginative, stories of his adventures out west. The only help he seemed to give was to make them laugh. Perhaps that was enough. “Oh, the people!” as Bill says, how interesting we are!
Bill wants to get a really reliable picture of the water power situation here in Niagara Falls. Upon reaching Buffalo yesterday afternoon we unsuccessfully called Ruth Shattock several times before driving to her home. The man downstairs told us Mr. Shattock had just died and Ruth had taken the body to Manchester. Poor Ruth, both her parents died so young.
As the rain had let up, we parked in the tourist camp for the night. Pools of water still remained on the ground, which otherwise looked firm. But upon stopping the car we immediately had our doubts, and tried to move to a more solid location, but the back wheels just spun, digging deeper and deeper into the mud. As it was getting dark we decided to stay put until the morning, when we could see what we were doing, and have the benefit of the night’s freeze to harden the surface.
In the morning, however, although the ground was covered with hoarfrost, it did not seem any firmer, and the wheels again spun and dug. We put brush and sticks under them but it was really Bill’s pushing that did the trick. When he pushed and I put on the power, the car crawled ahead just perceptibly, but without his mighty brawn, it did not budge.
This tourist camp was supposed to be closed for the season, but we were given permission to use its splendid facilities--washrooms, showers and lavatories, as fine as those in any club.
We found Buffalo dingy and overrun with factories, because of the cheap water power. Last night the falls were perfectly gorgeous, lit up by colored lights. After the supper we enjoyed the movie, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
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1973 NOTE
We spent the winter of 1926-27 at Clinton St., in Brooklyn. Bill, however, took several trips of investigation by train without me. But as soon as the weather became springlike, we hit the road again, as Bill wanted to inspect the Cyanamid Plant at Niagara Falls.
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