HELEN HAD DOUBLE PNEUMONIA AND WAS TAKEN TO McKEESPORT HOSPITAL. HER DOCTOR WAS DR. LAPSLEY. THE SURGEON THERE OPENED HER BACK AND HER LUNGS WERE DRAINED. I REMEMBER MY MOTHER GETTING OFF THE STREET CAR AND THE OLD CONDUCTOR HELPING HER CROSS THE STREET. THE SERBIAN PRIEST, REV. SHUNDICH WAS CALLED FOR THE LAST RITES AND HE PLACED TWO QUARTERS UNDER HER PILLOW AS A LITTLE GIFT. WHEN HELEN AWAKENED SHE REMEMBERED THE MONEY. REV. SHUNDICH CAME TO SACRAMENTO AND BURIED AT THE LITTLE SERBIAN CHURCH CEMETARY AT ANGEL CAMP.

DOROTHY CAME HOME FROM A SHOPPING TRIP, AND BROUGHT FOR HELEN A BLUE PAJAMA SUIT FOR PLAYING. IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I HAD EVER SEEN ANY KIND OF PANTS SUIT FOR GIRLS. EVEN AS HELEN WAS ILL AND RECUPERATING FROM PNEUMONIA MY MOTHER HAD A HEN SITTING ON EGGS IN THE WARM UPSTAIRS BATHROOM. SHE ALWAYS HAD A FEW CHICKENS FOR EGGS.

ONCE WHEN I MAY HAVE BEEN 6 I WENT TO THE LITTLE WOODS BACK OF DAUGHERTYS WHERE I FOUND A NEST OF EGGS THAT ONE OF ELI’S CHICKENS WAS BROODING FOR HERSELF. I LIFTED MY DRESS AND AS IN A BASKET, I BROUGHT THOSE EGGS HOME AND PUT THEM IN THE ICE BOX. I WONDER NOW IF A SNAKE MAY HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME TAKE THOSE EGGS.

IN GYM CLASSES THE GIRLS WORE MIDDY-BLOUSES AND BLACK BLOOMERS. PICTURE THAT. BUT BY THE TIME DOROTHY AND I TOOK GYM CLASS WE HAD GREEN OR BLUE GYM SUITS. MOM HAD TO BUY A FEW TOWELS SO WE COULD HAVE TOWELS FOR CLASS.

With the $3000 I Made During the War, We Buy our First House

After the war was over, Westinghouse laid me off immediately. V-E day was in June; V-J day was in August. I was laid off in May of 1946. They said I would be taking a job away from a fellow. But no man could have lived on the $120.00 a month I was getting.

I think I was being subsidized by the government. When the war was over they just didn’t want to subsidize the girls anymore.

It would have been nice to have the extra money. We were living with my mother and father at the time. Then, Jack Fallon pulled some strings for us and we got into housing In turtle creek. And that housing project is still there.

Joe took out an allotment for me, and I got $50.00 a month. He also took one out for his mother. That was lovely; she finally got something!

When Joe got home from overseas, I had $3,000 saved. It was enough to put a down payment on a house. One time Joe and I were on for a ride and I had Martha on my lap. I said: “showed there’s a house with a for sale sign on it.”

We looked at the house, and went down and signed papers on that house. I had the money for the down payment and I could have spent it. Joe had the money to buy a house!

We moved in in March of 1950; it was the year Emmy was born. The house costs $10,000.00, and I think we put down $2,000.00. When we sold the house, we made about $2,000.00 which gave us the money to move to California.


“I Couldn’t Get California Out of My System”

At that time, your mother and dad (Poppy and Joe) we’re going to have Tina. They wanted Baba, who was at the house when the phone rang.

I said: “aunt Helen is going to have her new baby and she wants you to come and be with the kids until she gets out of the hospital.”

She said: “oh, Zoe, you go and I’ll stay here with your kids.”

Dear Baba! She took care of my kids, Dorothy’s kids, Brownies kids, and Mel’s kids. When Mel died I never forgave aunt Pat.

Pat said: “I had a wonderful father – in – law.” She just slid past my mother. That hurt me Baba was the one who was good to her.

Tina was born in January; at that time Joanie was thirteen months old.

I had never been to California! I was tide to the kitchen for all those years. Joe worked on second shift, and I was a mother and father to those kids.

I thought: “well I have to go. Hell is going to need help with these new kids.”

So I came. And you know, I couldn’t get California out of my system. I remember standing in a rain shower in January or February and I remember thinking to myself: “the air feels so wonderful!”

I never got over that. I told everyone about my wonderful trip. Joe was getting ready for work and the came up the stairs and said: “when are we going?”

I must’ve been nagging, and I must have nagged for two years because it wasn’t until David was born that we finally moved to California.

But Joe was the first one who said: “we’re on our way to California!”

I wasn’t talking about coming to California; I was just saying how nice it was.

That day, I started to pack!

We came in August of that year; I wanted the kids to get registered for school.

It was good for Joe to come. I know Joe would have never lived to be 78 in the Pennsylvania climate. No Thompson man had ever lived to be 70. Bills health was never super, and I had Dede whose lungs were very thin. She suffered from a staph of infection the way Chris did.

I had bought the Barron’s guide to junior colleges and I started to study it. Joe wasn’t thinking about college for any of the kids, but my Joey was already being interviewed for the football team at Dartmouth.

I said: “Joe will get a scholarship but my girls have good minds too, Joe.”

I was way ahead of my time. My neighbors were thinking about anything like I was thinking and I had all these little kids hanging on me!

I had wanted to go to school so bad. I knew that education was the whole key.

This house, (18841 Arata), was not the first house we looked at. So we went to Fireside Realty on highway nine, and they found this house. No one had ever lived here before.

There had been a house on this property before. The Morris’s lived in it, but one day the kids were making popcorn and burned down the house. When they built this house they put in a redwood ceiling while the other homes just had fiber board. Joe before all the siding off the house and put insulation in the walls, replaced the siding, and then painted it.

I wanted to get out of this house for years; Joe and I did go and look at other properties. When Joe had his heart attack, I was scared. I was scared to make a move. I couldn’t put that pressure on him. I decided to look everywhere we would have access to Kaiser Hospitals because we’re a tied into them, and I still feel tied into them. We looked at property in Elk Grove, American canyon.

One morning about fifteen years ago I said: “Joe, we could pay this house off.”

I’m always glad we did that. When Joe died he felt good about owning his own house. But he always loved everything up to me. Maybe I blundered; I would still like to have gone out of this house.

Just said it himself: “we should’ve had a nicer house for kids.”

We were quality people and Joe knew that I knew how to take care of the house.

Sometimes I don’t feel sorry for young people who can’t own a house because I see that they can’t respect anything.

You know, I was a child of the depression. I can remember standing on the back of my dad’s old Model A Ford. All the parts at the Westinghouse plant were out in the rain, rusting. Dad talked about how no one could find work.

I said: “dad, where did all the money go?”

We Nearly Lose Diane


When Diane got sick with staff pneumonia, the doctor said to me: “you know, she’s a very sick baby.”

He was telling me that she was dying. Her one long was completely collapsed. The other lung had a tiny space; just enough to keep her alive.

In the hospital there was a new machine there designed to cool the oxygen, and the nurse didn’t know how to connect it!

Just said: “let me do that; how show you how to connect it.”

He connected that machine.

I was sitting there holding Diane’s hand under the plastic; I held it all afternoon. Just held it.

She didn’t die when they thought she was going to die; one of the doctors even said: “I wouldn’t give you 50¢ for her life.”

That was a defining moment.

I always used to play with the kids I’d say: “get out the toys and let’s play.”

But after that moment I kind of got lost.

The doctor told me that he wanted to see Diane every other day, either at the hospital, or at his office.

Martha was holding a baby, Joe’s it work, and jellies at home with the kids. That’s how we did it. It was a big job for Martha; the baby could have died in her arms.

All of a sudden the baby went into pneumonia again; she couldn’t hold down her medicine. I’d put the medicine into her mouth and she would vomit it out and get it all over her clothes. And it rained every day that June; I couldn’t get any clothes dry.

But finally she was cured, and the pathologist wanted to talk with me. He asked: “what kind of baby is she?”

I thought he was asking if her brain had been damaged.

I said: “she seems pretty happy, doctor. She responds to me.”

Diane was born in May, but she didn’t get better until August of that year.

So I asked the doctor: “what should I do?”

He said: “what every year doing, keep doing it. You’re keeping her alive.”

Diane like to eat, even as a newborn. She couldn’t keep the medicine down, but she could keep cereal down; and I was breast feeding her.

I would send to the butcher (at that time you could get meat delivered), and I would say: “send me around stake, and leave the bone in.”

I took the marrow out and mixed it with her cereal. I never read that anywhere; I just thought: “this kid wants to eat.”

Diane was born in 1958.

Talk about defining moments, I was never the same after I took care of that baby. It was really hard on me. She was my sixth child and from may through August of that year it was life and death. It was hard

The other defining moment was when Joe had the heart attack and I knew I had to pay attention to him.

“If Our Kids Could See Us, They Would Think We are Crazy!”


Sometimes Joe and I would sit in this kitchen and laugh our heads off. We would say: “if our kids could see us they would think we’re crazy.” Joe always had a late breakfast; he didn’t like to get up in the morning.

But after he retired I just let him sleep in.


The morning he got very ill, I was sitting here with Helen having coffee while Joe was still in bed. All of a sudden I heard something that didn’t sound right in my house. I went into the bedroom and just said: “call 911.”

I told Helen that I was going to call 911, and asked her to wait out front to meet the Medics.

Your mother and I handled that emergency that morning. Did you know that?

Life is so complex that you can’t know everything.