Life in a new town

 
 1942  The decision was made for a move to San Jose; the first house we moved into was a grand old victorian on North 5th Street.  Things had rapidly changed, but everyone settled into their grooves and found war-time life was still interesting.  
 

We had a lot of fun in this big old house and wished that we could have bought it for the asking price of $2,500. There were a lot of rooms and we liked the neighborhood Kelly family grocery store.  All the Kelly family called mother "Cookie". 

This was another house where the hoboes still found my mother for a meal handout---by marking our house with chalk. "Lady, your house is marked." We looked and never could see the chalk marks.  

There seemed to be a lot of service men brought home for a meal by any of the members of the family.  We all enjoyed the ping pong games in the little aerie room on the second floor.  I'll never forget the way we got the large wooden ping-pong table up into that second story room.  The stairway was narrow and winding so we hitched a long rope to the interior of the room and hauled the table up the outside of the house.

There were dances at the ballroom behind the De Anza Hotel that we all went to, a combination of  high school kids and servicemen.  In spite of the rationing we always ate very well.

For fun we would go to Santa Cruz on the Peerless bus but hated the odor of deisel fumes.  Naine and I would sit on beach and she would tan beautifully while I would burn.

Once my mother, Naine and I went to the show at the Fox theater in San Jose and up into the balcony to sit. Naine had gone on ahead of us and all of a sudden Mom and I lost our balance and fell head over heels down the stairs....... fortunately neither of us was hurt. We giggled and giggled but it could have been disastrous.