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When Mary Noble married Felix Broyhill thirteen
years ago, she was twenty four and he was thirty. She had been working
with the Tubize Silk Company in Hopewell, Virginia and
"usually on the weekend when my pay day came", said Mary,
"I drew a good check and my father had died. My mother had five
small children to care for and I had to quit school in the year high and
go to work to help raise the small children. The high school was forty
five minutes walk from where we lived and I had hoped to finish, but
when daddy left us I saw I couldn't go on. I worked in the plant for
several years and Willie, when he was old enough, got a job, then Lily,
and when I got married mother had two children working.
Felix was a contractor and builder and was
making out apparently. Any way he was a nice man and I had known the
family a good while, as well as him. The week before we were married,
Felix had bought a brand new coupe and we had planned to go to the
Niagara Falls on our honeymoon. We were married at home on Monday and
drove away on our tour. We visited several place of interest on the way.
We carried rice which had been thrown at us all the way to the falls and
back.
We spent Sunday in the city of
New York and we had heard a lot of Dr. Roach Shaton at the Cavalry
Baptist Church. We wanted to visit it and that night we heard the Dr.
preach. We parked our car and had to walk four blocks, but it was worth
it. He had a wonderful church and the choir was beautiful, and such a
friendly atmosphere you'd never think it in so big a church and city the
size of New York, but I felt almost as if we been my home church only it
was more beautiful.
We left monday for the falls. They were
wonderful I'll never forget them and it seemed most of the people there
were like ourselves "honeymooners." We made a lot of pictures
and the Mist of the Way I thought was wonderful. We went across the
falls to say we'd been in Canada. We spent a day and night there and
started back to our new home. We had a wonderful time.
On the way home we came by the caverns in
Virginia, up in the Shenandoah Valley, and we went through them or some
of them. There are so many. And as were enjoying ourselves, we had
little thought of the letdown that awaited us on our return. Felix's
bookkeeper had made a great mistake in his accounts and instead of
having a big balance in the bank, was just about even, but then we would
have made it alright. He had built us a home and everything, but to make
bad matters worse, in just a few days a man who had been a big
contractor, and had been a strong competitor in the building business,
skipped town leaving a lot of bills for building materials and the
supply company got afraid of every contractor and brought a panic in the
building trade. Then the depression of twenty nine came and it
altogether broke us, but we still had our nice honeymoon to think about
and enjoy. Of course, if we had known how things were going to work out,
we could have saved that money, but then it all goes in a life time
anyway.
Felix couldn't get a job nowhere. The
depression in the building business had hit every contractor alike.
Felix put a mortgage on our home and kept going for a while but it was
too much of an upgrade business and finally he had to quit and in the
struggle we lost our home. We had one little boy then. The cute little
fellow; we called him Donald. We lived in the house with his [Felix's]
father and mother. That saved us house rent. And Felix bought home cows
and chickens and sold milk and eggs for several years. There was no work
to be get gotten. The silk company had closed, throwing hundreds out of
work and Felix didn't want to go on relief if he could help it, so we
pulled along very well. His mother died in nineteen and thirty and then
in thirty, his father. Felix was then selling Fuller brushes and we had
moved out to ourselves. We had another little boys, James.
Felix had wanted a girl and this father was in
tickled that we had a boy instead and he always petted and kept James
around when he was a boy as he hired and James was "crazy about his
grandfather who was up in his eighties.
Felix makes a good salesman and says he likes
to work for the Fuller Brush Company between jobs and I decided to take
up selling for the Avon Product Company. "We had moved to Bird
Street and were making it about as well as the average, said Mary, as
her white teeth showing through her smiling lips and her dark brown eyes
sparkling. (She is an average height, stout, weighing one hundred and
sixty pounds with short black hair, neatly dressed).
When our little girl came, we were
"tickled pink," as they say and Felix was wild with joy. We
called her Levine. She is short and fat, fair skin and blue eyes like
her daddy. She is two years old now, but there is where we had a bad
break. We wanted out little girl, but after had to go the hospital and
the doctor said we would better see Doctor Claikman and he said I'll
have to give you radium and that cost a lot and I had to take the radium
treatments one whole spring and summer. Felix was out of work most of
the time, but the doctors were all so nice and considerate and I got
better I wanted to do something to keep my mind off myself. I was so
nervous and I asked my doctor what he thought of my taking up maternal
nursing and he said it would be fine and would help me all he could. So
I have completed the course in nursing from the Chicago Nursing School
by mail. My average grade was ninety seven and friends giving me
something. I make a nice little bit of money all along and it helps out
in getting the children clothes and some things for them, beside I enjoy
my work. The children are all in school, except our little girl.
We have been living here in Highland Park for
the last three years. We don't like it here as well, but rent is not as
high. Our house is one of the old Dupont building owned by the Black
estate. It has five rooms, painted on the inside and has tar paper on
the outside. We were going to move to Arlington, Virginia. Felix has
work up there and he was getting good wages and I though if I were there
with him, I could keep boarders and help meet the expenses. Besides we
would all be together. Felix had wanted a house and it was just our
luck. He got a piece of steel in his eye and had to have an operation.
He was in the hospital two or three weeks, but after all that, he lost
his eye. I hated it so badly and he worried about it for a while, but he
finally became reconciled to his condition. Felix went back to work on
his old job, but his operation and hospital bill was so much we won't
get to move as soon as we had hoped, but as soon as we possibly can, I
want to move up there or else have Felix to come home to work. I get
awfully lonely with him one place and me and the children in another. I
asked Levine Xmas what she wanted Santa Clause to bring her and she
said, "I want old Santa to bring my daddy home," and I did
too. Life is too short to be separated so much from each other. |