Does MPHS have photographs: No
Date of Interview: June 27, 1988
Interviewer: Helen Becker
Oral History Text:
HELEN BECKER: This is Helen Becker recording for the Mt. Prospect Historical Society on June 27, 1988. I would like to introduce at this time Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Hodges. Mrs. Hodges is related to some of the early, early settlers in Mt. Prospect, and I’d like to have her tell you –tell us –just who those ancient relatives are. Christine…
CHRISTINE MEYN HODGES: Well, my father was the late John Meyn, a blacksmith –the first blacksmith in the neighborhood. He was a blacksmith and a wagon maker. I remember Mt. Prospect as just a small, little, few streets, and there was probably a dozen children in all of the group. We enjoyed it very much.
BECKER: Where did you grow up?
CHRISTINE HODGES: We grew up –I was born and raised in this house that is still there on the highway.
BECKER: Northwest Highway?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Northwest Highway.
BECKER: Northwest Highway and what cross street?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Busse Avenue and the highway. It’s right at the point.
BECKER: Yes, where that triangle is there. That is where Bob Moore has his lawyers’ office right now, correct?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Right.
BECKER: That was the home and the blacksmith shop?
CHRISTINE HODGES: The blacksmith shop was at the point, and the home was next to it. We had a large house and a big orchard –every kind of fruit tree you want to mention — with a white picket fence around it. I remember that as a beautiful spot.
BECKER: The house is still there, though, you say.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes. The house is still there now.
BECKER: How many were in your family?
CHRISTINE HODGES: In all there were eight.
BECKER: What has happened to all of them?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Well, my oldest sister, she was married and moved to Chicago. The next in line in the family was my brother Herman F. Meyn. He lived in Mt. Prospect.
BECKER: What was he? What did he do?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Well, he was a blacksmith and wagon maker, too, but he was selling farm machinery, it seems like that, and later he was selling refrigerators and deep freezes and things like that with the other things. Then there was my sister Bertha, and she married Arthur Schellenburg from Arlington. He was the son of John Schellenburg, the mason contractor. Then there was Elsie, and she married Edwin Busse. He had a grocery store in town in later years.
BECKER: Oh, a connection with the Busse family.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes.
LAWRENCE HODGES: He was in the creamery at that time when they got married.
CHRISTINE HODGES: He was working at the creamery, the old creamery at the time…
LAWRENCE HODGES: His father always ran the creamery.
CHRISTINE HODGES: And then there was William, and he later started a grocery store. And there was John working for Busse Buick. He worked for Busse Buick. And then myself, and I was married to Lawrence here in 1925.
BECKER: Oh, then you brought him out here.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, from Elmhurst.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s where I lived. When we got married I ran a store in Barrington, and then they opened an A&P here when Busse built that building, and I came down here and worked in here for a little over a year, I guess.
BECKER: How did you meet Lawrence?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, I met him at Snell’s Corners, the dance place.
BECKER: Oh, a dance place.
CHRISTINE HODGES: I went in there with my two girlfriends, and I met him through my girlfriends.
BECKER: Oh, he must have been a good dancer.
LAWRENCE HODGES: She’s still alive.
CHRISTINE HODGES: I remember the town. It was very small then. The few children that were here, we were all friends. In the evening we would all get together out in that empty place –well, it was all empty. There were only two houses here.
BECKER: Two houses.
CHRISTINE HODGES: And we played games and things, you know.
BECKER: Two houses, you mean.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes.
BECKER: What two houses?
LAWRENCE HODGES: Schmaling’s.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Schmaling, and my dad’s house was the first one that ______.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And Luella lived upstairs of the tavern.
BECKER: At Main Street and Busse.
CHRISTINE HODGES: They didn’t have the tavern right off. They had a little building that is now the antique place. That’s where they had a building at that corner.
BECKER: Oh, where Wille Lumber is.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. Then later they built this tall building. They lived upstairs, and downstairs was Wille Tavern.
BECKER: Is that the present Wille Tavern?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Well, it’s a new building now.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s the son.
BECKER: The old tavern was not the present tavern.
CHRISTINE HODGES: No.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s still the owner. That’s the son, Adolph. Adolph started that. His father ran the tavern first, didn’t he?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, he was the first owner, William.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Then Adolph took over the tavern, and then when he built next to that building then his son helped him out in there. Adolph got to be, what, ninety-some years old, and he still goes every day. But he got killed, you know.
BECKER: Yes, I know he did. A couple of years ago, wasn’t it?
CHRISTINE HODGES: ________, I heard.
BECKER: Yes. He walked out in the street without looking, I guess. That was too bad.
CHRISTINE HODGES: But the Wille family lived on the second floor, and the tavern was downstairs. But there were only a few houses down Wille Street. The one at the corner up there at Central and Wille, there was a family living there by the name of Soenksen. And there were a lot of –well, they had about four children there, Erma, Freida, William, Alfred and …I’m trying to remember.
BECKER: I don’t remember the name Soenksen as one of the early families.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes, S-O-E-N-K-S-E-N. They lived there, and that grandfather used to be playing that accordion every night and on Sunday afternoon. Mt. Prospect was so quiet and so small that, we lived on the highway and we could hear the music allover town. For us kids that was great, you know. Oh, boy. We’d run over there and we’d enjoy listening to him. And they were a jolly family.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And where did the Holsteys come in? They lived next door.
CHRISTINE HODGES: The Holsteys, they moved in much later years, across the street on Wille.
BECKER: On Wille?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes.
BECKER: In one of those old houses along there on Wille.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Holsteys, Mecklenburg. There was Charlie Mecklenburg who built later.
BECKER: Henningsmeier is another name that I didn’t remember.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Henningsmeier is your grandparents.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, that’s just my grandparents –my mother’s family. Her parents had a farm on Elmhurst Road and, what’s that first street?
LAWRENCE HODGES: I can’t remember the name. It’s right after you get around the curve, the first street there.
BECKER: Council Trail or whatever that is?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, it’s that far down. The very first…
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s where the farm was.
CHRISTINE HODGES: The very first street there. They had a farm. When they passed on then that was called the Schaeffer farm.
BECKER: You mean where St. Raymond’s parking lot is now?
LAWRENCE HODGES: No,-that’s where St. Raymond’s stops.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Across the street.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That street at the south end of the parking lot.
BECKER: That’s Council Trail.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Council Trail, well, they had it at Council Trail and Elmhurst Road then, and they had their farm. And when the parents passed on, why then the Schaeffer family lived there, which is my aunt and uncle. Fred Schaeffer. They lived there quite a while, and then it all went into Mt. Prospect. Everything was changed. Everything was filled up to now.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And your grandparents had, what, ten daughters? Was it ten?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. I understand they had ten daughters.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And one son. Oh, no, that was the Schaeffers.
BECKER: I’ll bet he was spoiled.
CHRISTINE HODGES: So my aunt was there, and in the summertime when they’d have threshing, well, I was there every time. That was great fun. You’d hear this machine come through town on Elmhurst Road, and they blew their horn, you know. They blew their whistle, and you knew they were going over to the Schaeffer farm. Of course, all the kids were there, watching this thing, and it was great fun because they’d have a lot of food and the men would all come in to eat, you know, in between. They’d be there about two days. Oh, that was lots of fun.
BECKER: Now, when would that have been –about what year, do you think?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, that would have been probably in 1910.
LAWRENCE HODGES: You were only seven years old then.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, I was just this little kid. 1910 to 1911 or in there somewhere.
BECKER: Where did you go to school?
CHRISTINE HODGES: I went to public school on Main Street and Central until I was ten years old.
BECKER: Main and Central.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s that old building that the Episcopal church bought.
BECKER: Oh, the little white schoolhouse that they moved.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, they moved it over there, and now the library is at that corner, you know.
BECKER: But it was Central School for a long time.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. That’s where I went to school till I was ten, and then I went to St. Paul till I was thirteen, almost fourteen. Then they started a little thing, they wanted a high school in town. Well, this old building over there on Busse Avenue which was Bill Wille’s building where, like I said, they were selling feed and all this.
BECKER: Yes, where Wille Lumber and Fuel is.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, and they had a room there. Well, it was quite a big-sized building with a big room, and they tried to arrange for a high school. They didn’t send us to Arlington. They wanted their own high school, but it didn’t ork out. I remember being there, and they had one little old heater in that big room, and it was cold. So the teacher, Teacher Marsh was his name, he would say, “Well, you’d better just all gather around this here little potbellied stove,” they had, as they called it, “and I’ll read for you.” And he’d sit there and read and we didn’t learn very much that season there. So the following year ________.
BECKER: They just tried it for the one year, then.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. Then the children went to Arlington.
BECKER: I see. The high school was there, in Arlington.
CHRISTINE HODGES: That came later –I think it was about a year later.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And Des Plaines. John and Bill went to Des Plaines.
CHRISTINE HODGES: We were put into Arlington. Yes, if you wanted to finish –the schools weren’t graded. You’d studied all the subjects but you didn’t know what grade you were in, so my parents sent the boys to Des Plaines. They’d take the train and go to Maine High School, the main school there, to get their grading and know what grade were they in and what did they know. But I didn’t go. I don’t know why. They didn’t send me.
BECKER: Well, they didn’t used to send girls too much, I guess.
LAWRENCE HODGES: She had to learn to cook.
CHRISTINE HODGES: They figured a girl had better stay home and learn how to cook and bake, I guess.
BECKER: That’s right.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Well, anyhow, I didn’t get there. But I was more interested in getting going and getting a job. Years ago at fourteen or fifteen you were thinking of working.
BECKER: What kind of job did you go into?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Well, I went to Chicago.
BECKER: You did?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Sure.
BECKER: And you moved ________?
CHRISTINE HODGES: No, I took the train in. First of all, I went down there and there was a lady there that was taking girls and teaching them how to sew. So I went there and I stuck it out one season, and then I went down to the Loop and I got a job and I was working in Chicago.
BECKER: You were.
CHRISTINE HODGES: That’s were I worked. I’d take the train.
BECKER: As a seamstress?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, well, I worked for Stevens.
BECKER: Oh, you did.
CHRISTINE HODGES: And Hart, Schaffner & Marx –places like that had sewing. I had other opportunities, but I never was interested in changing. I stayed there until I married.
BECKER: Until you got married.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes.
BECKER: Well, then, I gather that you were the early postmaster.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Well, Alvin Beigel was the postmaster at the time, and then the Democrats took over in 1932. The firm I was connected with –I’d worked for the Universal Gypsum for seven years –moved to Buffalo, New York. They wanted me to go along, but I was so attached to this family by that time that I wouldn’t give up. So the postmastership opened up, and then there were the three committeemen from Palatine –George Tatsche and O. S. Johnson, who were the committeemen, endorsed me. Ted Moehling wanted the job, too, at that time, see, but I had the endorsement. And then I was appointed under Roosevelt. I was on a four-year appointment at first. For eight years I was under a four-year appointment, and then they put the postmasters under Civil Service and then they changed that over. Then in 1947 the Republicans took over again, or 1946, and by that time I knew –I used to be very active in politics, the Democratic party here and in Chicago, and I got to know the chief inspector in Washington, D.C., Connor. He used to be inspector for this territory. I wrote him a letter, and I said, “What do you think of the Civil Service?” He wrote back, and he said, “It might be all right, but all it takes is a vote of Congress can change it, and if the assistant’s job opens up, take it because you won’t lose any credits.” So I took over in 1947. I took over the assistant’s job.
BECKER: Where was the post office when you were postmaster?
LAWRENCE HODGES: On Main Street. It was a little store on Main Street.
CHRISTINE HODGES: And from there we moved to…
BECKER: Main Street and what?
LAWRENCE HODGES: Half a block north of Northwest Highway, in that Busse building.
BECKER: That’s right, on the east side of the street.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s right.
BECKER: And it was in the same building with…
LAWRENCE HODGES: Oh, there was a barber shop in there, and Otto Landeck’s private store. And there was a bakery in there.
BECKER: National Tea was in there.
CHRISTINE HODGES: And there was a five-and-dime.
LAWRENCE HODGES: The National Tea was in George’s building. That was built later.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes, National Tea. That’s right.
BECKER: But then I understand when you started as postmaster there was no home delivery.
LAWRENCE HODGES: No, and I even had to buy all of my equipment in the post office. And I got the Paddocks –they built the Arlington Heights Post Office, and the Paddocks, I knew Bob Paddock very well, the old father, and he had all that old post office equipment up in his attic in his printing place, so he moved all that stuff down here. Beigel wanted six hundred dollars for the equipment, and that was too much. I started in for two thousand dollars a year.
BECKER: Was he eligible to take all that stuff with him, Beigel?
LAWRENCE HODGES: He had to get rid of it. He sold it somewhere. I don’t remember at that time.
BECKER: He would sell it to you for six hundred.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Six hundred dollars, but that was a lot of money in those years.
BECKER: Was it his?
LAWRENCE HODGES: Because it was Bill Busse’s –no, it was Al Beigel’s.
BECKER: It was.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Busse was the postmaster, and then when they opened the bank he put Beigel in there as postmaster.
BECKER: Yes.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Al Beigel, see. Then I bought all that stuff from Paddock for a hundred dollars.
BECKER: A good deal.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And the firm I was with in Chicago was moving to Buffalo, New York, and I got the desk down there, a double desk and chairs and all that stuff, I got a lot of stuff I brought out from the firm I was with.
CHRISTINE HODGES: You had to buy the safe.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And a safe. I had to buy a safe. I bought a safe for ten dollars.
BECKER: Did you have to pay for all that? You did.
LAWRENCE HODGES: I had to pay for that, that’s right. So then when Bill Busse, later on in years, they signed a lease with them, then he bought the equipment from me.
BECKER: Well, tell me, you said you started home delivery.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Yes. At that time I started in there it was a third-class office, I think. It had to be second-class before any delivery service started. And the receipts were not high enough. We only had twelve hundred people, I think, at that time. So I got all the businessman and a lot of friends –I had made a lot of friends in town that worked in Chicago at different businesses –come out here and buy their stamps to bring the receipts up, see. And by the first of July the next year when they changed the ratings, we made the class where we could get delivery service.
BECKER: Then you got one mail carrier?
LAWRENCE HODGES: No, there were two –one on the east side and one on the north side.
BECKER: You said first, though, you had to number all the houses.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Yes. I had to number all of the houses in town. I took the plat and numbered all of the houses and drew a regular plat that I had to send in, you know. And then the carriers, they could walk around the street with just a handful of mail at that time, you know. Especially the afternoon delivery.
BECKER: Oh, that’s right. You had twice-a-day delivery then.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Yes. When I first went in there, stamps were one cent in town. You could mail a letter in town for one cent.
BECKER: In town.
LAWRENCE HODGES: It was two cents out of town.
BECKER: Two cents out of town.
LAWRENCE HODGES: That’s right. So we’ve still got some of those old stamps. She’s got a lot in a stamp collection.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes. I saved stamps –something special.
LAWRENCE HODGES: She worked in the post office for twenty-two years.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes, I was __________.
BECKER: You were, in town.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes.
LAWRENCE HODGES: She was just part-time in there, then the war came along and then she got in as a __________.
BECKER: Rosie the Riveter?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, I worked there twenty-two years.
BECKER: That was after you were married, then.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes.
BECKER: You helped him out.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes.
LAWRENCE HODGES: She had to work longer hours than I did — not longer, but I’d start earlier and then I’d go home and can. I used to can. We’d do a lot of canning –two hundred quarts a year we’d can. Peaches and tomatoes and all that stuff, and I’d go home and can that. She would work until six o’clock.
CHRISTINE HODGES: He’d go to work early, and then I’d come home at six o’clock. I had to get out the last mail, and then I could go home.
BECKER: I think you got the break. I’d rather be working than doing the canning, I think.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Right.
BECKER: So, how many children did you two have?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Three children.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Two boys and a girl.
BECKER: What has happened to them?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Well, they lived in town. Larry lived within three blocks of us, and Betty lived within two blocks.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Larry was in the garage business at that time.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, a builder. He would build garages. Then suddenly the one of them moved to Wisconsin, the other moved to Florida, and the other decided to try Pennsylvania for a while, and then he moved to Florida, and we were here alone. But we’re still here.
BECKER: That’s good. At least you’ve got places to go to now.
CHRISTINE HODGES: I feel like I belong here.
BECKER: You certainly do.
CHRISTINE HODGES: I feel at home here.
BECKER: Where are you living now?
CHRISTINE HODGES: On 209 Lewis, top floor.
LAWRENCE HODGES: 14 Elm Street.
CHRISTINE HODGES: We lived there first.
LAWRENCE HODGES: We lived upstairs of her father’s over here for a while, too, then we moved on the east side. We rented a place. Then I bought Barclough’s place at 14 Elm Street. It was a house, and I bought that for forty-two hundred dollars.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Can you believe it? A two-story house.
LAWRENCE HODGES: A two-story house.
BECKER: Frame.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Frame, yes. Of course, I did an awful lot of work. We scraped varnish off with razor blades.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. You know, the old style, well, the floors would be varnished and then there was carpeting in the middle, or a rug. Well, it wasn’t covered completely and we, oh, we worked.
LAWRENCE HODGES: A pipeless furnace.
CHRISTINE HODGES: We worked hard to get it into shape, but when we left there, which was nineteen years we lived there, it was beautiful. But he didn’t want a big, two-story house anymore. He wanted something lower.
BECKER: That’s right. When the kids move out, why, you have to make changes.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. So we moved into a range.
BECKER: A one-story ranch.
LAWRENCE HODGES: By that time I got enough out of it that I built a brand-new house for what I got for that house, without any mortgage. I didn’t want any mortgage.
CHRISTINE HODGES: No, you don’t want no more mortgage.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Because, believe it or not, in those years it was hard to get a mortgage, for even forty-two hundred.
BECKER: Really?
LAWRENCE HODGES: I had a lot that I traded in. But I was under a four-year appointment yet at that time, and then they changed it to Civil Service and then they put an FHA in, and then I got a loan from the bank.
BECKER: What years were you postmaster?
LAWRENCE HODGES: From 1933 to 1947 –no, in 1947 I changed over to the assistant’s job.
BECKER: Were you in the service at any time, military service?
LAWRENCE HODGES: No. I was over that age at that time. You didn’t have to go either at that time. I was offered a captaincy. They were asking to take postmasters into service at the time, but I wouldn’t leave my family.
BECKER: How big was your family in Elmhurst?
LAWRENCE HODGES: I had three brothers. Four boys.
CHRISTINE HODGES: You were the oldest.
LAWRENCE HODGES: I was the oldest, yes. I was twenty-nine years old when I went into the post office.
BECKER: Well, it worked out very well for you, then.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, we were very fortunate. Just great.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Well, I said I worked forty-four years without losing a day’s pay. It wasn’t always good pay.
BECKER: Well, that’s true. And now? Now you’ve retired, and how do you spend your time?
LAWRENCE HODGES: I don’t know where the time goes. Well, we head for Florida in the wintertime, and in the summertime I like to fish. We seem to keep quite active.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes, we do all our own. ..
BECKER: You said that you had real buddies that you went fishing with.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Oh, yes. I knew all the fishermen in town.
BECKER: Like who?
LAWRENCE HODGES: Les Best and Fred Meeske.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Eddie Haverkamp.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Eddie Haverkamp.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Art Miller.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Art Miller and Al Hockey.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Clarence Winkelman.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Clarence, I never got any –when I got sick then Clarence took my spot. There were always six buddies, and we’d go to Canada every year.
BECKER: Always go to the same place?
LAWRENCE HODGES: Yes, in the wilderness, really, way back. Fish, fish. I’d never had anything like that in my life.
BECKER: And what did you do when you retired? What do you do now?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, I work. I fill in at the post office hours, you know, in between subbing, and stay with the family, the children. I might be home.
LAWRENCE HODGES: But our family was very close-knit.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes. I had my family all living in town here. My sister –Edwin Busse’s wife, Elsie, is my sister. I have her, I have my brother and my sister-in-law. I have another sister up in Arlington. I will never get lonesome.
BECKER: That’s right. That’s wonderful.
CHRISTINE HODGES: all the friends that you know. When you live in town that long you know everybody.
BECKER: That’s true. You certainly must have known everybody.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, sure. We knew everybody. It sure changed.
LAWRENCE HODGES: You go to church today, there’s very few of them left that we know.
BECKER: That’s true.
CHRISTINE HODGES: A lot of new people.
BECKER: Well, we have to face that.
CHRISTINE HODGES: The funny part is, they meet me and they ask me, “Are you new here?” I say, “Oh, no, I’m not new.” I said, “You’re new.”
BECKER: Isn’t that something, yes.
LAWRENCE HODGES: So, we’ve had a blessed life. I can say that.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, we surely did.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And then we get down to Florida and we get all the kids and the children and the great-grandchildren. There are thirty-two of them, down there in Florida.
BECKER: Is that right! So you don’t have any time to sit around down there, either.
LAWRENCE HODGES: They keep us busy. Our daughter has a four-acre farm with a little four-room cottage on the back. It was kind of dilapidated, but I went in there and fixed it all up. Then last year they put in air conditioning, and therein a furnace, and it’s very nice.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, it’s a cute place.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Two horses, two cats, two dogs.
CHRISTINE HODGES: It’s not really a farm, it’s right off of …It’s not really a farm.
LAWRENCE HODGES: No, but I mean, four acres.
CHRISTINE HODGES: They’re taken into the village now. It’s building up all around. Big homes, you know.
BECKER: Where is this now?
LAWRENCE HODGES: Ormand Beach. It’s right near Daytona.
BECKER: And that’s where you go. Do you have a place down there? Is that where you stay down there?
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes. It’s right on her property. We had bought a home but we gave it up. We never moved down there. We thought we’d take it for later, but it was too much work. You’d go down there for the winter, and you’d be raking leaves all winter. Sure. Those leaves drop all winter long.
LAWRENCE HODGES: It was a big house –a four-bedroom house I’d bought down there.
BECKER: Oh, you don’t need that.
LAWRENCE HODGES: The house was eighty-five feet wide. It was a big ranch, all ceramic floors all the way through. I rented it out, and my daughter had to take care of it when we weren’t there, so…
BECKER: Now this is just about the right size for you.
LAWRENCE HODGES: Then my son, when he was in Pennsylvania and he wanted to go back to Florida. He wanted to live in Florida, so he took it over and bought it from me. He lived in there for two or four years, I guess, then he moved out and built himself another place.
BECKER: Well, this has been a most delightful conversation. We’ve just about come to the end of the tape here. I’m sorry I didn’t follow you around while you were making all these comments about all the pictures that we see here. So many of the people you recognize.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Oh, yes.
BECKER: That’s interesting.
CHRISTINE HODGES: Yes, lots and lots.
LAWRENCE HODGES: We were surprised the other night, we had our sixtieth anniversary three years ago, and we had a party down in Florida, too. We had one of these cameras where it picks up the sound, you know?
BECKER: Oh, yes. All the young people have them now.
LAWRENCE HODGES: And so, my daughter brought the tape along, and we showed it the other night. It was good. When I think back even three years, the way those little grandchildren grow. We’ve got ten great-grandchildren and nine grandchildren.
CHRISTINE HODGES: We invited friends that we made since we go down there all the time. We had a real nice.