My mother’s family was a little different. All I know is that she came from a fairly well-to-do family in New York. They bought a farm in Waterbury Center.

My grandmother hated farming—didn’t eat didn’t eat meat, didn’t want to see chickens die. So whatever chances she had of marriage there she didn’t accept. She married a man named Eastman, from Fairlee, Vermont, who built the Eastman Block down here on the corner, he and his brother. He built a great big house up on the corner up here and then died.

My grandmother had two small children, my aunt and my mother, age 3 and 1, I think. And probably had some funds. They sold the big house on the corner. And there was a barn next door, and they made the barn into a house.

My grandmother remarried a printer. In those days printers were common. And he became a banker, Tom Cave. He later became state treasurer. He was born in England. I don’t know anything more about him than that, other than I used to go fishing with him when I was a kid. And I regret not pursuing the many questions that come to mind years later (laugh), you know.

My grandmother and my mother lived close together upon a hill. And people that lived up on the hill generally might be middle-class or in some cases upper middle-class professionals.

My mother played the piano—could play anything by ear. All she had to do was hear it, and she could play it. And she was very good. My sister could almost do the same thing, but she also was trained musically and went to Oberlin for a couple of years and still plays the piano in nursing homes at age 85. So she seems to have hung onto it.

And In those days, when people didn’t have anything to do, my mother would play the piano and people would gather around the piano and sing. I’m talking about just the family, sometimes. Occasionally one or two others. And occasionally people would come to the house, and that same thing would be done. My mother also accompanied vocalists who were singing in the city, not necessarily famous. But she performed in that way as an accompanist, and my sister in later years also became a very proficient accompanist.

My mother was more liberal than my father. I think in the Methodist church at the time, there was a bishop of some sort. They called him the “Red Bishop.” He was hardly very red, but that was what they called him. And to some of the conservative Methodists, he was too far to the left in the political arena and followed what I think they called the “Social Doctrine,” or something like that. I’m not a church expert.

In those days, the homeless were called “hobos”, and they came to your door. And sometimes they would sharpen your knives, and we would feed them. We always fed them and sometimes paid them something for whatever they did. And both my father and mother concurred that that’s what you’re supposed to do.

My mother would not buck my father on political issues. But she was on the left as far as social issues.