Next - 1931

Hi all.  I'm just letting you know that we're going to begin tomorrow, January 1st, with the first entry from Mom's new diary, 1931. She did't seem to have kept a diary in 1930 or at least if she did I don't have it. Her entries are very short, just two or three sentences. But I also have my Dad's letters home to his parents. So between the two writings I think you'll get a pretty good picture of college life at Oregon during that period. And, this is the year that they meet so you'll read about that as well. Hope you enjoy the reading.

December 11, 1930

December 11, 1930

Dear Folks,

Here it is the eleventh and your letter is still here, but I just had to tell you the news.

June Bryant sent Bill and I a package, and we just opened it. Boy it’s a big box of cookies and just about the best I ever tasted too. Pretty nice.

I received the result of an accounting examination we had last week. The test was sprung on us without any chance for preparation at all, and it took a whole hour to complete. Well I made forty-four points out of a possible fifty, and that was the highest grade in the class. Maybe you don’t think I feel good.

December 10, 1930

December 10, 1930

Dear Mother,

Thank you so much for your encouraging letters; they did me a lot of good. I have a bit of good news to tell you and Dad here: about a week before Thanksgiving we had an examination in Social Science over our whole term’s work. We just got the results today and little sonny here pulled down a two. There were only four in the class who received as high a mark as that, and out of a class of one hundred three that is very good. I was so darned elated that I couldn’t do anything in Military all the next hour. No foolin (sic), I have been going around here with a wild look in my eyes and a song on my teeth all day.

After supper this evening, I went over to the Gamma Phi house and sat on the davenport with Helen Burns for half the evening. I may come home on the train with her Thursday afternoon at four-twenty. My gym exam comes off five o-clock Monday evening; so I will be able to get home Thursday instead of Friday. Boy I will be plenty glad to get home.

I made sixty cents taking tickets at a basketball game the other evening and eighty cents at a concert las night; so the University now owes me a dollar and forty cents if I add correctly. I still have a dollar and a half left from Grandpa’s five dollars and with twenty dollars and fifty five cents in the bank, I am sitting pretty.

Not much more to say except that Thursday evening I would like to go to a Hi-Y meeting if you won’t think me too neglectful in rushing off.

Love, George

December 5, 1930

December 5, 1930

Dear Folks,

I think I had better write to you now, because the next two weeks will be very busy. This grind of studying is terribly monotonous.

As to finances. It will take quite a lot of money to be initiated, and without my mail job it will no doubt be very hard. Now here is my plan, but I don’t know whether or not you two will agree to it. The University makes a practice of lending money to the students in need. If I borrowed this money, I could no doubt pay it back next year; because I will get a job this summer some place. Please think it over, and we can talk more about the proposition when I get home.

When I send my washing home, you might as well keep all of it but the handkerchiefs there, because I will need some at home.

These darn exams are sure beginning to worry me a lot; everybody says they are terribly hard. I have two weak subjects that must come up if I expect to be initiated this term. Next term I am certainly going to carry more house; so I will be sure and make lots of points. I hope I don’t worry too much, but things are certainly tough. Sometimes I almost feel as though I would like to give up the sponge and come home, but that isn’t a good sign of character is it?

Maybe I am just discouraged, but it will probably soon pass.

Love, George

Jane’s Notes: Throughout these letters there is much discussion about finances. I think it must have been hard to go to college during the depression.

Memories of Ann Elizabeth Powell Hibbard - Episode 11

We needed a chauffeur because of course we only had one car. He had to take us where we needed to go when my father was at work altho’ he drove my father too. For a while Sleepy’s husband was our chauffeur but he proved unreliable so my father had to discharge him. Before we had a car and a chauffeur we traveled about by horse drawn cart. There were three classes of them, the caratella, the carametta and the calaea. The caratella you hailed on the street whether it was occupied or not and were dropped off near your destination. This was an open cart that the driver filled with as many people as he could crowd in and that the poor little pony could pull. It was used by the poorer people.

Then the Carretla was also pulled by a pony, but it only carried one fare of one or two people and just went to your destination. You also hailed the Carametta from the street like a taxi. It was enclosed around the sides and back and had an oil cloth curtain to go across the front in case of rain. the Calaesa was a much larger two wheel cart also enclosed and pulled by a horse. When you were going to a party you called the livery stable and ordered it to arrive at a certain time and the driver wore a uniform! Then there was the ultimate, a Victoria!, a four wheeled carriage with room for four with the driver on a box in front. It could be covered or have the top down. This could be ordered from the livery stable but the wealthier families had their own!

Well I have strayed a long way from my mother’s life as a bride in Manila in 1908.  My mother and father were married on Dec. 7, 1907. Before my father left Manila for his visit home he had lived in a boarding house for bachelors so I am sure many of my mother’s first friends in Manila were men friends of my father’s. In fact some of them even boarded with them when I was a little girl. Their first home was a cottage in the suburbs, a place called Santa Mesa. There’s a picture of it in my baby book. One of their friends was a photographer. That’s why there are so many baby pictures of me because that was before every family had a snap shot camera.

January 4, 1994

I discovered this in Ann’s desk a day or two ago. My eyesight has become too poor to peruse it completely, but I assume it is Ann’s effort to flesh out what her father was unable to complete. I assume her father’a account is with the family historical papers in the teakwood chest and I will place this tablet in that chest. In August Ann will have been deceased three years.

George L Hibbard, husband of Ann Elizabeth Powell Hibbard.

I have lots of letters that my Dad, George L. Hibbard, wrote to his parents from Eugene. My grandmother never threw anything away. Since the next installment of Mom's diary begins in 1931, I thought I'd publish these few letters that I have from 1930. These would have been from Dad's freshman year in college. He makes no mention of Mom so I don't think they had met yet, although they were in school together.

December 2, 1930

Dear Folks,

I certainly had a pleasant trip with the “Dean”. He is easy to talk to, and that is the kind of person I like.

Thank you so much for the pajamas and scarf. The scarf should have waited until Christmas though, and you should have bought something for yourself mother.

Jimmy Bravis thinks we are out of luck for a mail job this year, because his father tried to get Jim a job. He had an application in as early as I did too. Mr. Bravis has a lot of influence; so I don’t know what to think.

I went to the dispensary this afternoon to see about my wart. Doctor Phy cut the top off and then burned it with an electric needle; the sparks from the needle burned clear down in and wasn’t the most pleasant sensation imaginable. I have to go back in  about a week for another treatment.

I helped Bill get out the house bills today and mine is only thirty-nine fifty; so I should be able to save some money this week or rather month. If my mail job doesn’t come through, I am going to come down here for a couple of days during the holidays and help Jean and Bill close the books for the term. I may be able to work into this job yet by my junior year.

The slippers I left at home are in sad need, but I can manage until they get here.

I am fine; so you two be that way too. Mrs. Grady asked me to invite you over to their home anytime to play cards or something.

George