Interview of Ethel Rost

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Description

Ethel Rost talks about living in Geneseo with her husband and her children to SUNY Geneseo’s organization “Heard @ Geneseo.” She shares how she and her husband met and what brought both of them to Geneseo. The oral interview was taken and transcribed by Anna DiRienzo and Alyssa Cavallari, and it was later revised by Megan Wong and Jordan Keane.

Creator

Cavallari, Alyssa; DiRienzo, Anna

Date

2011-11-18

Contributor

Rost, Ethel; Wong, Megan; Keane, Jordan

Format

doc, 31 KB

Type

Interview

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ETHEL: I was born in 1917, so that makes me—well I’m going to be 94. I never did have a real good memory. I always used to tell people that they’ll never know when I have Alzheimer’s disease. ALYSSA: That’s smart. You’re just planning ahead. ETHEL: Well, yeah. But anyway, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve enjoyed life. I was born at a good time. There was. I’ve gone through several wars as you well know and um, also breadlines, we had all that and seemed to come out of it very well. My family was middle class, we were not poor, we were not wealthy, and worked for everything we got. My dad was a very ambitious man. I have two brothers. I’ve got to count them all. I have twin sisters and two others. [. . .] ALYSSA: How long were you a beautician? ETHEL: Oh golly, I’ve forgotten when I graduated from high school. I think I had the beauty shop probably four years before we got married and we got married in ’41. I had the shop in my home for about four years and in the meantime, my husband had gotten a job. He went to Buffalo State and he was an industrial arts teacher and mechanical drawing so he had a job here in Geneseo. So that was in ’40. I think I’ve got those years right. Today it seems like they’re so busy, most of them that they just don’t have time for the kids. ALYSSA: Did he teach at the college? ETHEL: The high school. ANNA: Where did you meet your husband? ETHEL: Would you believe we started first grade together and went all through school together? ALYSSA: Oh my gosh!! That’s so precious. ETHEL: I’ve got some pictures of him in the clothes that kids wore, for his First Communion I have pictures of him. He wore a white suit. It was almost like a sailor suit with the wide collar in the back, ya know. I don’t know if they have them now. It went up and then it was boxed around the back. You know, a rectangle around the back. He had white socks on and black shoes. And hair, longer hair. Completely different than the kids are today. He was a neighbor, as I said. We didn’t pay attention to each other at all. We weren’t the least bit interested until we got in our senior year and we couldn’t afford to do anything about it because he had to have his education. He went to Buffalo State then and that’s where he got his degrees and I told you that he worked his way up here to being principal and so on. He started as shop teacher at this high school in mechanical and pretty soon he became vice principal, principal and then supervising principal when he died. ALYSSA: How did he get a job in Geneseo? ETHEL: I had gone to beauty school and socially I had a friend who had a beauty shop so when I was home in Williamsville I had a beauty shop in my home but when we came here, this friend of mine had a beauty shop up on Main St. right next to the parish center, you know where the Catholic church is in that house right beyond there? She had a beauty shop so it was a small town and a small business so I worked with her for a number of years and it worked out very well. ALYSSA: Do you remember what you used to wear when you were younger? I know you were just talking about your husband’s little sailor suit. Do you remember any of the outfits you used to wear? ETHEL: Yeah, I will, if you’re interested, look up some pictures. I can’t do it today. You wouldn’t know the hairstyles that they had then. My hair was almost black when I was a kid and I guess it really, really was black. I never quite thought it was but my dad did and he always, always called me “Blackie”. I can remember, I had bangs across here-right above the eyebrows and then came down straight and straight across the back. It was like a boy, they called them boy cuts. That was the style at the time. I didn’t mind it at all, I thought it was pretty cute. Anyway, so I worked for her for, I don’t know how many years, whenever she needed help. It was nice because we were having children at that time. My husband, he would get home from work and he would take care of the kids while I, although by that time, they were in school so I could work during the day too. It was a good life. ANNA: How many kids did you have? ETHEL: Three girls. Linda was the one you met, she’s the oldest. Then I’ve got another one, Debbie O’Mara. Do you know anybody in town by that name? That’s an old family. And she lives on the Long Point Road. You know how to get to Long Point? ANNA: To Conesus Lake? Yup ETHEL: Yeah. Going down the hill, the Long Point Rd. hill, you go straight, takes you right to the park and they’re that last house on that hill as you go down. It’s set way, way back. It’s hard to see because they have a field of weeds in front of i,t but when you drive, it’s a long drive way, but when you get back they have it mowed and so on. But they have their privacy with their field of weeds in the front of it. They’ve got a really cute house. It’s an interesting house. I remember the first time I saw it before they moved into it somebody else had built it and it was in the process of being built and they parted companies, and it never got finished. Deb and Tim bought it. It has a bough. It looks like the bough of a ship at the front. It’s very interesting to look at but inside is just darling. But I thought, “Oh my gosh! Who would want to live in that house?” Before I knew she was interested in it. But it was the cutest house. Like I said, the people were in the process of building it when they broke up so the main parts of the house were done but the trim around the doorways and windows and baseboards, things like that had to be done. They bought it as is and completed it themselves. It really is cute. ALYSSA: It sounds like it. So they fixed it up nicely? ETHEL: Yeah they like old things and they’ve got a house full. His mother and father were antique hunters and they’ve got it fixed up real cute. And of course he’s a collector too. Just like them. The garage is full of antique things that are meaningful to him, to someone else they probably aren’t, but they are to him. ANNA: Have you always lived in this house in Geneseo? ETHEL: No, when we first moved here, we lived right down on Second Street. Do you know where the Stucco house is down there? It’s right below here if you go to South Street and go down Second. It’s what? The second house from South Street. ALYSSA: Did you live in the apartment when you had Linda? ETHEL: No, we didn’t. After we moved out of that apartment, why did we move? We were probably there for two years. Then we lived in a house up on Oak St. It was a house to ourselves. The first one was an upstairs apartment. So we moved to the house up on Oak St. and we lived there I think two years and then Linda was born in this house. It was about five years before we moved into this house. It was in bad shape. It needed to have a lot of work done on it and as you come in the front door there, it’s a large living room.