Teddy Joins the Family and Yeager Rd – Memoir Continued

Shortly after that incedent in Beaver Park, certainly within the year, we moved again, to a finished, or partially finished, basement on Yeager Rd., also in Lorain or its outskirts, on the southwest side of the town. It was rather countrified with a long curving gravel driveway. We lived there while the owner built his house over us. Our family continued to grow with the addition in 1951 of baby Teddy (no Jr as he was given a different middle name than Dad’s).

I don’t know how or exactly when, but Dad picked up a newer car toward the end of our time on Yeager Rd., a Dodge 2-door Coupe. The color was a light, celery green. He was working as a bricklayer at the time.

Buttons was his name, a white mixed breed puppy with black and brown spots. Gery (Guy) and I played with him constantly until the day he ran into the road, and we watched him get hit by a car. We buried him in the yard under a tree. Dad got a Boxer puppy next to replace Buttons. Her name was Circe (after the Greek goddess), but she suffered the same fate as Buttons. Our next dog was Puddles, a longer haired multicolored Border Colie mix, what Dad called “a Heinz 57,” who lived with us for several years.

When our landlord completed his house over us, we moved again. There are a few other memories from the basement, which I’ll recount in another section of this record. I think that was the longest time we had lived anywhere up to that point. I was going on six by then, with another major trauma just around the corner, school. Was definitely not ready for, nor expecting that one! What a dirty trick to play on an innocent, free spirited little boy!

To be Continued

–LE