Christmas, the Snow Family, Moving Away

Dorotha wrote to my mother:

I remember one Christmas your grandmother and mother went into Detroit on the interurban to buy dolls for the Sunday School Children in their class. Every Christmas the Christ Episcopal Church had a huge tree and this particular year they trimmed the tree with these dolls. Can't you picture it with foot-long dressed dolls all over the tree? Ivadel and I received one I know. Marie was a Presbyterian.

[When we visited your grandmother] she made us Washington Pie, a sheet cake spread with red raspberry jam and topped with thick whipped cream. Whew! Although I generally avoided Dr. Snow's office because it smelled so strongly of medicine [Dr. Snow died in 1892; his office in his house wasn't much changed].

Gertrude [the Snow's daughter], Arline and I would run upstairs to the "Green Room" to play paper dolls. She had such lovely ones I remember and we played in an alcove in this room that had Nile green wallpaper -- a beautiful room.

[Much later] I remember your father [Ed Moore] stopping by now and then in their open touring Edison car and picking me up to take a ride to Inkster and back. Those were the days.

Marie wrote:

There were wooden sidewalks with ditches on one side past our house and of course no street lights. Sometimes on dark nights in the rain some of the Ovens family or others living on farms just out of town would stop and borrow a lantern to help see their way home. We were all good neighbors and friends. In fact I knew almost every one in the town until the war. [World War I]

When we moved east after I had been married for some years and had a daughter in college, she said, "Now Mother -- just because you don't know people, don't go around talking to strangers." I have found that there are friendly people everywhere and although many things have changed, life goes on and the world is quite wonderful.