Otis Elevator and Sandy Pond

Clayton worked for Otis Elevator from the late 1940's until his retirement.  We only had one car, so Daisy would drive him to work in the morning and pick him up at 4:30PM if she needed the car that day.  For some reason I don't remember going with her to drive him to work.  Maybe someone else gave him a ride?  In any event, I do remember riding with Mom to pick him up.  Leo & Alice Bezewski were friends of Mom & Dad, and Leo worked at Otis too.  Most of the time Alice and their 2 sons Lee & Bobby would be in the parking lot waiting for Leo while Mom & I waited for Dad.   I would play with the 2 boys and their beagle while we waited, playing tightrope walker by balancing on the railroad tracks that went through the parking lot.  They also had a daughter Gail who was older than the boys.  I guess she was old enough to leave home, because she was never with them waiting in the parking lot.

We did a lot of things with the Bezewskis, including a vacation to Sandy Pond in update New York every August.  We stayed in cabins that had no heat or hot water, but were close to the pond and the Wigwam Hotel for nighttime entertainment.  Dad & Mom loved to fish.  They would go out at dawn and again before dusk, fishing for pike and bass.  Today's photos are of a day's catch.

Mom would clean the fish, wrap them in newspaper and bring them to the hotel freezer.  At the end of each vacation we'd collect the frozen fish and put them in a cooler for the 8 hour drive home.  They always made it fine and we had fish dinners for months.
I learned to bait a hook and fish too.  If I didn't go out on the boat with them, I fished off the dock for sunnies and perch.  Whatever I caught, I had to clean, so I learned to do that too.  I don't know if I would remember how anymore, since it's been a over 40 years since I had to clean a fish.

Lyndhurst

I can't tell you much more about the first 20 years Mom & Dad were married.  Maybe my brothers and sister will chime in and give me some stories about living in Pennsylvania and Newark.  I am the youngest child, by 10 years.  A few years before I was born, Clay & Daisy bought a house in Lyndhurst.  It was an old house and from what I heard, it didn't even have a real bathroom.  The toilet was installed in the basement.  The house was built as a 2 family home, with a 1 bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor.  Clay basically rebuilt the inside of the house, with his sons help.  The first floor became a kitchen, living room, bathroom and pantry.  The 2nd floor became 3 bedrooms and a small half bath off the master bedroom.  There was no hall, so when you walked upstairs you walked directly into one bedroom, with the other 2 rooms having doors off of it.  When I was very small I shared the back bedroom with my sister and the boys had the center room.  Before long, the boys got a bedroom set up in the basement, which Clay finished, and I got moved to the center bedroom.  By the time I was 9 my sister got married and I got her room, but by that time the boys were also gone and their bedroom became my playroom.   Daisy always wanted a dining room, so in 1964 they had another room added in the back of the house, off the kitchen.  It made room for wonderful family dinners on holidays when my older siblings and their families, as well as 2 of my aunts, came for dinner.  The photos below are from the first Thanksgiving dinner in the new dining room.

Clay and Daisy: The Early Years

Clay & Daisy married during the years of the Great Depression, so they did not have an easy start.  In the beginning Clay worked for the Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA), building roads. (See photo.)  Later he got a job as a short order cook in Rye, NY and in White Lake, NY.  Daisy's first job was as a maid for a family in NY, but that only lasted a day.  When she arrived, she was given an attic room which made her feel very claustrophobic.  She couldn't stand this so she left the next day and hitched a ride back home.  Her second job was as a cook for a Jewish family in NY. This lasted a little longer, but I'm not sure how long.

Clay & Daisy both turned out to be good cooks, unafraid to experiment with different cusine's.  Clay's background was German and English, Daisy's background was Russian. The jobs as cooks added to their repertoire, as did later living in Italian neighborhoods.

During the 1940's Clay's older half-brother Enos got a job in New Jersey working for Otis Elevator.  He brought word of this good job to his relatives in Pennsylvania and Clayton went to work there as well.  Several other relatives also went to work for Otis, including Daisy's cousin's Myron & John Orinick, and Daisy's sister  Margie's husband Frank Benonus.   Once settled in the new job, they found an apartment on Cutler Street in Newark and Daisy and their 3 children joined Clay in New Jersey.

I believe they lived in Pennsylvania with Clay's father when their oldest 2 sons were born, but moved to New Jersey before their 3rd child arrived.  Their 3rd child and 1st daughter was also born in Pennsylvania though, because Daisy returned there to give birth.

If I've got any of this wrong, I hope someone will correct me.

Courtship and Marriage of Clayton & Daisy

According to the story Daisy told me, this is how she and Clayton met:
Nick Rollason, Clyde Rollason and Clayton Paynter were driving in Nick's car and they picked up Mary, Julia, and Daisy Orinick as they were walking home from a dance. Clayton sat with Mary that time. At a later time, Clyde had a date with Margie and Clayton was with him. He saw Daisy through the window when they picked up Margie and asked if Daisy could go out with him.  I don't know what year that was, but they eloped  to Luster, Sullivan County, New York on September 10, 1936.  Mary used to tease Daisy that Daisy stole her boyfriend.

They didn't tell anyone that they got married for several months.  Daisy went home and acted like nothing had happened until her brother Bill found the marriage license in her purse. There was some difficulty at that and Clay's friend Clyde Rollason told Clay about it, saying he had better get Daisy away from the farm.  That's when Clay brought her home to his father's house in Waymart.

The photo on the right was taken sometime in the 1940s.

Dad, My Inspiration

I know I said I would probably update once a week, but I have lots of memories I want to get out, so maybe I can do one a day over the weekends.  Monday through Thursday my time is taken up by my full-time job, but on Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays I should be able to carve out time to write.

Today I'll tell you my earliest memories of my Dad, Clay. He was a kind, gentle, hard-working man.  During the day, he worked at Otis Elevator as a mechanic on the machines that made the elevators.  On weekends he did all the maintenance on our house and worked on cars for other people in our garage.  The thing that amazes me today is that he always let me, a girl, help him as best I could.  I remember being in the garage with him doing little things like holding the flashlight or getting tools for him from the time I was very small.  If I asked questions about what he was doing, he always tried to answer in language I would understand.  No matter what he was doing, he always had time for me.

When the work was done, he liked to sit on the front porch of our house and watch the world go by.  I liked to sit with him sometimes and ask him questions about our family.  He is the one who inspired my love of genealogy research, with the stories he told me about the people in his life who I never met. I will add some of those stories in future posts.

Please take a minute a leave a comment or email me, telling me what you remember about Clay.

Mom Rocked Me to Sleep

For my first post, I will tell you about my earliest memory of my mother, Daisy.   When I was very small, I remember being curled up on her lap in the kitchen as she sang lullabies to me, to get me to take an afternoon nap.  I'm told I was a difficult child, wanting to be held all the time and crying when she would put me down.  This was probably the only way she would get a break.

I remember one day in particular when I fell asleep in her arms like this and woke up later on the couch in the living room, hearing a strange voice in the kitchen.  The Sunday School teacher from the Presbyterian church that my brothers, sister and I attended had come to visit my Mom.  It seemed very strange to me at the time to see this teacher in our kitchen.

I have been racking my brain trying to remember the name of the church, to no avail.  It was on Stuyvesant Avenue in Lyndhurst, but my web searches have not turned up any churches where I remember this one to be.  Can anyone help me here?

I'm sure my brothers and sister can add similar memories.

The photo above is of my Mom holding a baby, who I believe is my oldest brother, Ron.