Page 189 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 177

Jack: What?

Mary Pearl: Blow. B-l-o-w. On Leffler and Virginia. It’s still
there, a great big beautiful building. They still have school there.
I went through 8th grade there and then after I graduated I went
to St. Mary and Joseph’s Academy and took up bookkeeping and
short hand.

Jack: St. Mary and Joseph’s was a high school?

Mary Pearl: Yes. I went there two terms, and then I went to
work at the Simmons hardware company as a stenographer and
then at Butler Brothers. And my Dad made me quit. He said my
mother needed me at home. He said, “It’s too bad if a dad and four
brothers couldn’t keep a mother and a sister.” I wanted to work,
because I had lots of fun.

Jack: How did you meet Francis Devine?
Mary Pearl: Being with his sister. She was a friend. I didn’t
know she had any brothers. Two weren’t married and one was. We
went as far as being engaged until I met Daddy and I broke it up.
Francis Devine’s mother and dad came down at Christmas and
wanted me to reconsider and go with him, and I said, “No.” They
said, “You don’t know if this other guy loves you or not.” I said,
“No, I don’t; but I know I love him. So that’s it.”

Jack: What was your house like at the turn of the century?
Did you live in the same house all the time when you were a little
girl in St. Louis?

Mary Pearl: No, my mother and dad rented for a good while
in that one house on Minnesota Avenue for fourteen years, and
Daddy [Bart] and I moved to the house [in Hamburg] that Daddy
[Bart] bought—in fact, it was his mother’s house that we bought.
[Grandma Day also owned the house next door where she lived.]