My grandmother was the only one of her brothers and sisters to go on to high school. There wasn’t money for books so she had to borrow books from the school, but she made it through and graduated. Grandma went on to become a Kindergarten teacher (at the time it only required a High School degree). To be a teacher at the time you could not be married. Grandma had to keep her wedding quiet when she married my grandfather (They went over and got married in IN) so that she could keep working until the end of the school year.
Grandma once said that when she told great-grandma they were getting married, all she said was “You’re old enough”… She was only married to my Grandfather McArdle for a few years. He drowned at Ellsworth Park when my mother was just a few years old. She remarried a few years later to my Grandfather Wakeland. Grandpa Wakeland saw her at a bar where she worked and told my Uncle Ervin that he was going to marry her. Her response was “Like H*** You will” She made Grandpa Wakeland prove that he wasn’t as wild as my grandfather McArdle before she would marry him.
She and my Grandfather McArdle lived in a shack by a coal miner my grandfather McArdle worked in. My mother when she was born slept in the bottom drawer of the dresser…..
