Ruth & John Help Ken & Family Move to Florida - 1971

The picture shows Lynn, Kate and Cindy Pellettiere at Kate's 2nd birthday in April, 1972.  They're in the balloon-clad dining room of the Palatine house with beach pails and shovels on the table in front of them, favors for the kids about to come to the party. The painting is one of Dan's.

Ruth's diary talks about how she and John stayed at Ken's home for a few weeks.  They helped show the house, clean the house, make meals, take care of the boys, do laundry etc. while the Des Plaines house was on the market.  Ken's family would move to one in Clearwater FL that summer, joining Ruth and John as well as Ruth's mother and brother in Largo FL.

June 1, 1971 - 42nd Anniversary!
"I made 2 phone calls to pick up furniture & clothing, etc. before Diane phoned for help.  Out I went to Palatine to stay with ailing Cindy and the baby so she could go register  L & C for summer school.  She or they returned about 11:10 and I had to hurry right back here for boys' lunch, then took them to school and went to beauty shop (Tiffany's - Joann) where had hair done.  

Back here to put roast in oven, clean up lunch dishes  & make a few more beds before Philip got here to go to the store with me.  Roger went right to a birthday party from school.

Anniversary card in the mail from D & D.  She & girls phoned & sang over wire the 'Birthday' song - and substituting Anniversary.  Had good meal for 5 of us at 6:10 - only I and boys didn't like the taste of the sweet potatoes."

The "summer school" was an arts/crafts class at the Palatine Park District facility over on the east side of town.  It was one or two hours each time, met twice a week and ran several weeks.  Lynn & Cindy seemed
enjoy it.  Ken's first wife is mentioned periodically in Ruth's diary.  She must have been living separately, perhaps in a hospital.   Neither the diary quote nor the picture are in Pieces of a Life.  The 5 people who ate Ruth's dinner would have been all Kelloggs - Ruth, John, Ken (39), Philip (10) and Roger (7).

John's Exciting Encounter with the Police, Guns Drawn!

This is not from a diary, but sketches an incident that turned up among the papers left by my parents, Ruth and John Kellogg.  It's in John's handwriting, hastily written on the "scrap paper" with an ad for his bandage business on the other side.  I know he wrote it at 6:15 AM, but don't know the day or the year.  My guess is in the late 1950s or 1960s. The neighbor he mentions is not familiar to me, so I was not living at home at that point.

"I went to the garage and found door jammed.  Would not open.  I raised it a foot & crawled under & was looking at it when 2 men with guns rushed up & said to come out.  They said they had said they were police officers, but if so I did not hear them.

Citro girl & boyfriend were held up as they came home about 4 AM from a dance.  The Citro garage door makes noise so the girl, not yet asleep, heard door being opened.  Citro put on garage light & burglar rushed away.  Police said they saw me crawl under the door & figured I was the burglar.  

Good thing I got a good heart!  

Never had anything like this before."

I've never heard this story before, nor did I know the Citro family, who must have lived nearby, either on Linden or Euclid in Oak Park.  Both streets shared our alley.  Evidentally the attempted burglary was after the boyfriend dropped off the Citro girl at her house.  John usually left for work by 5 AM, so the fact that he wrote this note at 6:15 is telling.  He was upset enough to get off schedule - and doubtless was interviewed by the police as well, though his driver's license would have quickly proven who he was.  I wonder if the burglar first tried the Kellogg door, accidentally jamming it.

So far I haven't found out anything else, but perhaps a newspaper or The Oak Leaves might have covered the story.  This is not part of Pieces of a Life.

Ruth Meredith at Austin High, Chicago in 1925

I love my mother's graduation picture, taken in the Spring of 1926.  Ruth Viola Meredith's marcelled dark blonde hair was very stylish.  Too bad the photo isn't in color.  Her "cat's eyes", as she called them, were greenish hazel.  My guess is that the blouse was either dark green or navy blue with a red bow.  Ruth was very aware of fashion and made most of her clothes.

Tuesday, Jan. 13, 1925 - "Today we had dandy exercises in Gym.  In Typing I have started on the first exercise in the 13th lesson, which isn't so bad, because Wanda is only on the 11th exercise.  I hope she gets through though.

Mr. Nichols showed us a Wild Western of the life on a ranch in the History class today.  Of course, it was a moving picture, supposed to fit in with the lesson, but it didn't this time."

Wednesday, Jan. 14, 1925 - "Nothing special occurred today, sorry to say.  Oh, but when I think of the many, many things that have to be done, both in and out of school hours, I just have to gasp.  The end of the term is only a few weeks away.  I didn't get any farther in Typing today.  In Industrial History class we were shown a moving picture concerning Westward movement in the early days."

Friday, Jan. 23, 1925 - "Today was better than yesterday although I had to go through three finals.  They were Shorthand, English and Industrial History."

Ruth mentions Wanda Thiele, her best friend, on Jan. 13.  She and Wanda both had to work hard to get through high school.  In Ruth's case, I suspect that being a preemie in 1906 was involved.  She was placed in a coal oven with the door ajar as an incubator for a week or more.  Her mother, Lottie Weekes Meredith, probably got that idea from a midwife or another mother.  Lottie was 19. Her mother, Viola Hawley Weekes, had died when she was 9.  Lottie left school in 7th or 8th grade to keep house for her father and little Lewis.  Ruth's father graduated from high school through Western Electric where he worked for many years.

Moving pictures were new when Ruth was in high school.  "Talkies" were about to come out.  She loved going to the moving picture theatres of the 1920s.

Ruth was disappointed with some of her grades, but happy to get an E in Gym, an 88 and an E minus on two English tests.  Mr. Nichols gave her S on a map and E on another History test.  Those were all better than her grades in Shorthand and European History on the preceding Monday.  The diary entries are not in Pieces of a Life, but the graduation picture is.  Sadly, few pictures of Ruth as a teen and around 20 have survived.