Word: pa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MARY T. FARLEY Cresson, Pa...
...They Got Married. Pa was a rebel, who had marched with Coxey's Army, and boomed about the docks, harvest fields and foundries of the U.S., indulging his love of fisticuffs and agitating for the union shop. Ma, who had worked as a nursemaid for a rich Cleveland family (and named four of her children after theirs before Pa caught on), yearned for respectability. Ma always said she had married Pa against her better judgment: "That man . . . wouldn't take no for an answer." Pa's story was a little different. "I was keeping company with your...
...during their married lives Ma & Pa engaged in daily verbal sparring-usually before breakfast. But they faced the world stoutly and together-a world which consisted for years of drafty old houses (once the family lived in a tent) and endless peregrinations in search of work (Ma always bought just one railroad ticket, sent her big brood scurrying off through the train to hide in the lavatories...
Test of Success. As the boys grew, they were sent to work after school as a matter of course, and Ma herself often helped piece out the family finances. Once she bought a whole carload of apples and made $100 profit selling, them to the neighbors. "Your Ma," muttered Pa almost fearfully, "is acting like a crazy woman." Pa, a man of set ideas and enormous faith in his own mind, sometimes thought his children were going off their trolleys, too. But in the end, even Pa had to admit that the Loves-not, of course, excluding himself-had done...
...title comes from a remark of Ma's, the happy day she watched her eldest graduate from high school. Later, on their 50th wedding anniversary, Pa went back to the idea in a little family speech, and added a thought of his own. "I always did the best for my kids," he said. "I put them all through high school and"-he cried triumphantly-"not one of them have ever been arrested...