Victory Heights, RD#2Franklin, Venango County, PA

My great aunt Gene was my maternal grandmother's sister.  She was the oldest of seven children born to Glenn Pressey Clinger and Elmina Marsh Clinger.  The family lived in the Erie, Pennsylvania area.  Aunt Gene wrote a series of 'chapters' about life and family growing up in the 1920's and 30's organized by the addresses where they lived.  For posterity, I am providing them here.  They are edited for flow and clarity.  I have also added current day images from Google maps, real estate pages and newspapers for further information.  

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The home is described as being about one mile down from the United Brethren Church and there is a photograph of the house.  The house pictured above, 5542 US 322,  fits the description and matches the photograph.  Further, the United Brethren Church still exists today and the history from their website reads:  

Sometime between 1932 and 1934 the late Herbert Dunham intended to purchase an old Methodist Church building that was no longer being used as a church.  Mr. Dunham wanted to convert it into a home in the up and coming community.  When Mr. Dunham was inspecting the deed for the property, he found that it had its intended use specified . . . a place of worship.  If the building was not to be used for a place of worship, then the property was to revert back to the original owners of the property.  Not long after acquiring the property, Mr. Dunham contacted the Reverend Arthur Baker and they began the footwork to have this facility again be used as a place of worship within the community.

     In 1936, Mr. Dunham presented the congregation with the deed for the church building and it was decided to join with the Sandusky Conference of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and it became VICTORY HEIGHTS CHURCH OF THE UNITED BRETHREN IN CHRIST.  Mr. Dunham was one of the faithful officers of the church for many, many years.  Other officers were: Mr. & Mrs. Millard Vandermark, Mr. & Mrs. Edward Vandermark Sr., Mrs. Georgia Cauvel, Mrs. Johnnie Hughes, and Mrs. Maud Walters.  The Reverend Ralph Fraker was the District Superintendent.The first pastor of Victory Heights Church was the Reverend Clair Day.

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Why we moved from 1622 West Second Street I'll never know, probably because dad didn't pay the rent.  Anyway we moved to Victory and a new house.  Victory is a place on top of the hill out of Franklin, PA on Route 322.  As  I recall there were about six houses there.  It was out of Oil City school district but I gave an Oil City addresses, but I think my aunt (I was in the same room as her son Bill) reported that I was in ineligible to go so I had to go to Cranberry.  I never took Sophomore English as I went into Junior English at Cranberry and stayed there as I cold do the work.  

When we moved to Victory, we didn't have any gas nor did my dad have money for a deposit so we had an oil stove my mother cooked on, a coal stove in the dining room and we all sat down to our evening meal in a bedroom downstairs.  You can see that this was conducive to a 15 year old.  I remember mother having us children make a garden across the road.  There was corn, tomatoes, onions and swiss chard.  The corn and tomatoes were particularly good.  I can't  remember what kind of car we had but dad did take Carolyn, Ted and Cork with him to see about a job in Pittsburgh or so he said.  Carolyn or dad told how Ted was amazed over the Pittsburg skyscrapers and kept looking at them like a hick from the sticks.  He was about 10 years old and kept saying how tall the skyscrapers were.  

I remember my dad had a pilonidal cyst and he was in bed because of it.  I had basketball practice and had no way home from Salina to Victory.  It was dark but I decided to walk home.  It must have been three miles.  I went a mile down 322 when I saw a car turn around and come after me.  I scrambled up a small embankment to a house and knocked on the door but no one came.  The car had passed and didn't see me so I started home.  Someone took my home at about 8pm.  I never did that again and my dad was better the next day.  

Not having gas meant my mother had to head water for baths for the 7 of us plus mother and dad.  I used to take a cold shower twice a week so I never had to use the wash tub.  i only worried about myself in those days.  I remember one time a man came to the door while mother was taking a bath.  What an embarrassment for her.  

We must have moved by the spring for my 9th grade class had a picnic at our house.  I must have finished 9th grade at South Side.  The teacher, Miss While and the class walked into the woods to the lookout over the Allegheny River.  

I remember my father taking some old clothes, filing them with paper and making an effigy of himself and hanging it in the garage so we would think he was hanging from the rafters.  Where it was hanging I have no idea.  Carolyn cut it down.  That was the beginning of a problem that plagued him, I think, for the rest of his life.  There was on time in the Victory house he slammed mother up against the red hot chimney and burnt her face.  Imagine what little kids thought seeing that.  I was old enough to know what was going on but the little kids didn't understand it.  My mother was an abused woman and like so many women, wouldn't or couldn't leave him or the problem.  After all where could she go with 7 children.  As I look back they were very trying times. A man without a job during the depression of 1936.  At the time we thought we were the only ones that had problems.  At least we didn't starve to death.  These are the only incidents that I can remember at Victory.  

I turned on the radio the morning in January when Franklin Roosevelt was scorn in for another term as a president.  Damn him.  I have been a Republican since we lived at 2943 Cochran Street for the Democrats were always "the people party" and the Republicans were always a rich mans party.  There are other, and probably better, reasons but I will not go into them.

I also became aware that I had a domineering side to me, the German in me was trying to show itself.  Anyway I was learning that I was a person with feelings, etc. but I hated the place.  Had it not been for basketball at Cranberry, I would have been more and more intolerant of my father's actions.      

There was a United Brethren church about a mile up and we managed to get there on Sunday mornings and Wednesday night prayer meeting.  Remember that both mother and dad were socializers.  They wanted to be part of the happening in the area.  There was a play or something at church on a Sunday evening and Carolyn and I were to sing a song.  I was to sing melody and Carolyn, who could sing like a bird, was to harmonize with me.  The ended up singing the melody as I could not sing at all.  Carolyn, Ted, Doug and Richard all had musical talent while Cork, Robert and myself never showed any signs although we did have other talents.  The kids got their musical ability from mother's die.  My mother sand in the Church choir as did my uncle Graham.  My aunt Ethel and uncle Arthur played the piano.  Bill Schaffer played the violin at school while my uncle Seldon was church soloist at the United Christian Science Church in Indianapolis.  

This was a real nice house only, remember, there wasn't any gas.  The living room had a fireplace with bookshelves on each side, a dining room, kitchen and bedroom.  To the right of the front' door was a room for music then back of it was the bathroom and a bedroom.  Upstairs were to two bedrooms.  Carolyn and I have the one to the front of the house and boys that the back one.  We used the one down stairs for an eating room.  Again we had to move, no job, no money.