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Jeanne Hufnagel Sees the Elephant
By Hank Hufnagel in the Clarion News
Jeanne Hufnagel was my mother, and after a life that spanned 89 mostly joyous years,
she passed away last December. (Obit)
I am still getting used to the idea and am looking forward to the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend when family and friends are invited to attend a memorial gathering to celebrate her life. It will be good to talk with the many people who knew and valued her, to tell the stories we all know of her interesting life and to relive in memory days spent in Clarion long, long ago.
My parents married during the big war and lived in Buffalo NY, where Dad helped design fighter planes for Curtis-Wright. I was born up there in Buffalo in 1945, but remember nothing of that time. My earliest memories are of the small, small house Dad built with his own hands in 1946, just after the war was won. It was located on Wood Street across from Becht Hall. There is just a parking lot there now, but our little house still survives as a rental unit, having been moved to the backyard of what is now Laurel Legal Services in the 60s when the College went through its big expansion.
Did I say our little house was small? It was really, really small… a tiny bedroom, a diminutive living room and a very petite kitchen… more of a cottage than a house, but Mom loved it and set about making it into a home. The place was pleasantly situated on top of a high bank, the back of the lot overlooking the LEF&C Railroad Station, where the Carrier Administration Building stands today. Across the street in front was the college and a number of private residences, now long gone but back then filled with friendly people who were quick to welcome us to the neighborhood.
This was Clarion in the 1940s. There was no mall, no Walmart, and no Aldi. On Thursdays in the summer, businesses closed at noon so the men could go play golf. Stores also closed Saturdays at noon and remained so until Monday morning rolled around. J. C. Penney's, with its fancy pneumatic tubes for making payments, was on Main Street where the Dancer's Studio is located today. Across from them was Wein's and down the street was Crooks Clothing which had both been in business for decades even way back then. Where Goodwill is now was then the A&P, by far the largest grocery in town. There were others though… Rankins, McNutts, Reinsels, Garbarinos, Hermans and a half dozen more. The L&R or Ditz's or Weavers were where you went for hardware, tools, paint, wallpaper, curtains and anything else you might need to beautify your home.
The way that Mom got to these places was to bundle us kids up, snuggle us down into a big old baby carriage, then push off for her destination. The family grew and grew, and by the end of our days at the little house, the baby carriage was straining under the load of three growing children. Mom used to chuckle about the time she stopped to talk with another woman, who after examining us, said, "The children are lovely, but you will soon have to get overload springs for your carriage."
The pace of life was much slower back then. There was no TV and no computers… just the radio and two movie theaters for entertainment, unless you manufactured your own fun, which everyone did. However, every once in a while, something different and exciting always seemed to happen… the spice of life…
One spring night, the first warm night of the season, the first night spent with the windows wide open, Mom woke to a strange noise. All it did was wake her, and she could not identify what it was, and so she lay there listening to the distant spring peepers and wondering if it would come again. And then, there it was. It was the sound of a large cat, like a lion or a tiger. Was she dreaming? She strained her ears, and in a few moments she heard it a third time.
Nudging my father, she said, "I hear lions or tigers."
He groggily came awake and was doubtful. "It's just cats fighting."
"I know how house cats sound. This is something else."
"There are wildcats in the woods, maybe that's all…" at which point he was interrupted by a loud trumpeting out in the night. His mouth dropped open.
"That sounds like an elephant to me!" Mom exclaimed with a smile.
"Me, too. Let's go have a look."
And so the two of them pulled on robes and stepped out into the yard, the sky just beginning to lighten with the coming of a new day. And now they could hear much more. Lions and tigers and bears. Elephants and monkeys. Moving toward the back of the lot, they looked down at the railroad station and all became clear. A gaudily decorated circus train had pulled in during the night and was now waking up as the business of setting up the tents and feeding the wildlife got under way.
And my parents smiled with delight. They were young and in love. They had the makings of the family they both dreamed of, and they were living in their marvelously new home. And now… icing on the cake… the circus had come to town!
Old News of Clarion County