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Chapter 8
Civilian Life
After being discharged I took a job at Adamson Machine Shop. I worked at general jobs. The best job I had was a 30’ planer. I ran it for about four years. They got pushy so I bid for a job on a 96" boring mill. I liked the job, but the guy on the first shift was an ass. He always tried to do more work than me and would run to the boss. His name was Bill Snyder. Well, we got a job that was so high we had to use an eight foot step ladder to reach the handle on the machine. One night I left a tool on the ladder. It was about six inches long by two inches. Snyder came in the next morning and said, "Monty Wilson and his step ladder." As he folded the ladder up the tool hit him on the head. He went in the office and told the boss that I had set a trap for him. I just laughed at them and said that it worked but the tool was not big enough.
The fellow on the 52" boring mill retired so I took his place. About that time, my brother Lee and brother Jim and I bought land in Suffield, Ohio. I drew up the plans and we built a nine-room brick house. We lived there for about four years. Then Lee got married. Jim and I lived there another three years and Jim got married. So Jim and his wife Ruth and I lived there until 1962.
Along about that time I got interested in square dancing. I met my future wife at a square dance. Her name was Emma Foy, and she was a widow. She had two lovely daughters, Wilma and Dotty, and a step-son, Nolan Foy. We danced together for six months and found that we were in love so we got married.
We lived with Jim and Ruth at Suffield but it never worked out. We never could get along with Ruth. So we bought a house in Mogadore, Ohio. Then we sold the Suffield place to Warren Wilson, my nephew. Lee, Jim and I each got a third of the sale price.
Well, Emma and I settled down to married life. We went to Niagara Falls on a belated honeymoon. Emma fell and hurt her knee cap. We went to see her mother in Belington, West Virginia.
We had a good life at Mogadore. We went dancing and had friends in after the dance for coffee and dessert. Everyone went wild over my wife’s pies. There were six couples of us and four of the couples are still together. They are the Jessmers, the Brickils, Merediths and us. We still get together and play cards.
We went to Florida to visit some friends. We went dancing with them and decided this was the life for us. Another couple and us rented a trailer in Venus, Florida. It was a dump. Emma saw an ad about a park in Brooksville, Florida, so we went there and bought a house. The park was Highpoint. We have lived there sixteen years in the winter and in Ohio in the summer. We were thinking of moving back to Ohio when the kids started coming to Florida. Nolan Foy, our stepson, bought a place just two doors up the street from us. Wilma and Darl rent a house across the street from Nolan, and Dottie, our other daughter, bought a house three blocks up the street. So I don’t think we will ever sell it. We will leave it to the kids.
Well, we have had some good times and a few bad times. If this story is ever finished, Wilma and Dottie will have to finish it for I am 78 and Emma is 80.
I have checked back. My Grandfather Wilson was in the Civil War. My brothers Merrill and Glenn were in World War I and there was four of us in World War II. My brother Merrill was in the Rainbow Division. Glenn was in the Quartermasters. My grandfather was in Company A of the 10th Regiment of the West Virginia Volunteers. We also had two nephews and a niece in World War II. We lost no one in three wars. We must have been good soldiers or else the Good Lord was taking care of us. In my case, I think it was the Good Lord.
All of this is true as I remember it. It came from my brain. I did not do any research. I did look up words in the dictionary. I swear to God that has seen me through that this is all true.
I do not know what would have happened to me if I had not met Emma.
– Monfrey H. Wilson
Stories 