Page 184 - Always Virginia

172 Virginia Day Fritscher

“Well, he and his mother are coming up tonight.” And when they
came up, well, I must have fell for him right away and he for I,
because I broke my engagement to Francis as soon as I went back
home. Six months after, we were married. We only went together
six months.

Jack: Didn’t Grandpa go out west for awhile?

Mary Pearl: Yes, between the time we met, and before we got
married, to Portland, Oregon. He had a brother, Tom, worked out
there. Tom came home with Dad and visited their mother [Mary
Lynch Day] for about four or five months and then Tom went back
and that’s where he died—and got married out there too. [Bart
Day had 4 brothers: Tom, Joe, John, and Jim. He had one sister,
Margaret who was known as “Aunt Mag.”]
Jack: In your wedding story, my Mom always told me that
in Hamburg when you saw the man walking across the field, you
liked everything about him, but that he had red hair.

Mary Pearl: I never cared for red hair. When Daddy went out
to Oregon he had red hair, and when he came back his hair had
turned black. And then we got married.

Virginia: Tell Jack about how Francis Devine threatened to
kill you on your wedding day.

Mary Pearl: Yes, Francis always said that because I broke the
engagement that he’d kill me on my wedding day. I said, “You
won’t know when it is.” We were getting married in secret. [So
they could not announce the banns of their marriage.] But Francis
found out, and there he was out in front of the church, but I wasn’t
a bit afraid. He didn’t come near me, nor I didn’t him. And I never
once saw him....well, once, after that, I was going to the bakery for
my mother, and I was on one side of the street and he was on the
other. I didn’t notice who it was walking toward me—’course more