From the miscellaneous drawer - Memories

People often say they remember where they were when they heard some dramatic event had occurred. Not true for me in regard to the JFK shooting in Texas. I might have been traveling and away from news sources.
There is only one event I can pinpoint in time and my memory. What’s especially odd about the memory is how vivid it remains and my age at the time. It was Sunday, December 7, 1941. I was six.
My family had gone by car to nearby Homewood, Illinois to the Auditorium there for Evelyn Klein’s Student Piano Recital.
Miss Klein was a German Jewish refugee and she came every week on the Illinois Central railroad to give piano lessons to we three children. My sister, age 11, had taken to the lessons far better than my brother or me.
The large auditorium was filled with parents and relatives. Washington Auditorium in Ely is quite similar in its interior.
The program had begun with the audience settling down to listen. The rustling of getting comfortable in the seats diminished into a respectful quiet. But six year olds aren’t known for their quiet and are easily tuned in onto the new restlessness and movement occurring on the far side of the room, near the multiple entry doors at the rear of the room. There the agitation became more and more evident as men, especially, jumped up from their seats, exclaiming and talking more and more loudly.
My dad responded to the growing excitement as well and soon the hundreds present began to leave the building and hurriedly headed for cars, for home, and the radio news of the Day of Infamy - the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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P.S. To my list of people over-65 and still working can be added: Patty Zupancich in the meat market at Zup’s and Kathleen Rice at Merhar’s Ace Hardware.
Give me a call if you know some other working oldsters. Most of them will agree that the pay checks are helpful and the interaction with people is stimulating.
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In the Ely Echo newspaper of November 2, 1977, forty years ago, the headlines were:
• Candidates for Ely City Council are: Dick Anderson, Helen Bachar, Gerald Bibeau, Carl Blair and Bob Columbo;
• New Ely power sub station may become a reality.