New York Years "Lebanon Springs"

We only lived in the Hatch's old house for a few weeks. From there, we moved across Lebanon Springs to a big old hotel (which was being rented out until the building sold). We unpacked all our belongings in a 2-bedroom apartment on the second floor.

We enrolled in the local schools. We bought a washing machine and dryer. (wondrous "toys" for us!)We went to an auction and bought a 3/4 size spool bed for me.

Since we had been out of the country, my brothers and I hadn't been exposed to many germs. So, we caught everything. While we were in that house, we got the chicken pox AND the mumps. (Later that fall, we also got whooping cough.)

There was Chinese restaurant down the street that we visited a few times. They had a little girl who was very pretty and made friends with us. (A few years later, we found that she died...so sad.)


The landlord (a new vocabulary word for me, as an 8 yr. old) lived next door. His cat climbed a tree and on to our second floor windowsill during a rainstorm. We let it in. I missed my pets in the Bahamas and fell in love with it. He was completely black with a few white hairs on his chest and huge paws, with extra toes. The landlord said we could keep him, and I named him Spooky.

While we lived in that building, we visited a church and was invited to their house for dinner afterward. They had no children and I was bored. The wife gave me an Amish book, the first time I had ever heard of them. She also gave me some big wooden needles and yarn, and taught me the first steps in knitting. I remember sitting on a bench swing on the hotel's porch practicing my knitting.

(CORRECTION: My mother said that the woman who lived in the apt. below us taught me to knit. It wasn't til years later that we visited the people who gave me the Amish book and wooden knitting needles. I thought I was confusing the two memories and asked her yesterday...smile!)


We expected to live there for a long time, but the building sold in only two weeks. So much happened in that house that it's hard for me to believe it was only two weeks.