At my rooming house in Macomb one summer Saturday, I was called downstairs to meet a Louis Switzer, who asked me to go to Tunnicliff’s Lake on a hayride with him as one of the Phi Sigma Upsilon fraternity. I had been washing my hair and was clothed in my old red kimono, but I accepted as it was one of the annual affairs of Normal school days.
He did not dance, but had named me as his lady for the Frat dancing party in the dining room of Macomb’s best hotel during the winter. He also chose a gentleman for my partner, whose name appeared on my invitation, while Mr. Switzer, remained in the background. I was quite thrilled as my partner and escort was none other than the football captain, Travis Bogue who later became a Phi Sigma Upsilon member.
Those two invitations and acceptances were the beginning of our romance, which has continued for 54 years since the Frat dance. He visited in my home but once, but we did have several tennis games and movie dates, before I left Macomb, for all time, I supposed. We wrote, sporadically, as I taught farther and farther west during his teaching and army experiences in the central states and Kentucky.
He appeared, by prearrangement, one evening at my rooming house in Rock Island, Ill., and again he caught me in a kimono, but I changed quickly while he talked to my two rooming companions, then we went for a walk to renew our friendship, which had ripened into love, though we hadn’t seen each other for 8 years.
That Christmas I visited my Uncle Giles, Aunt Cassie and their grown children in Avon and received his Frat pin, which I have to this day. It was a mark of engagement, although not considered binding. The next Christmas I received my diamond and prepared to become a farmer’s wife in ten weeks, March 4, 1921, when the house on his father’s farm would be vacated by the hired couple, which had been there for a year.
Louis and his double cousin Lisle Switzer, took a room in the Black Hawk hotel in Davenport, Ia., and we were married there. It was a nice, big, corner room on the mezzanine floor and the hotel help moved the bedroom furniture out and replaced it with appropriate living furniture.
Due to my parents living in Alberta, we decided to have the ceremony in the hotel, and not discommode the home of my uncle in Avon, although they wished the ceremony to be held there. While we were signing the register after becoming man and wife, a very loud hand-clapping came from the corner room on the same floor of the hotel, which was about 60 feet from ours.
Rev. Arthur Buckner of the Edwards Congregational Church of Davenport, who had read the ceremony, told us 100 B.P.O. Elks were having lunch there and were applauding because they had just received the news President Warren G. Harding of the U.S., had just been inaugurated at Washington, D.C. It wasn’t because of our nuptials, but the obliging minister volunteered to tell them a newly married couple was only at the opposite corner of the floor to which we declined with many, many thanks for his well wishes.
Our wedding luncheon awaited us in an alcove of the main dining room of the hotel, where we went to see a beautifully appointed table with yellow jonquils decorating it, my favorite spring flower. Mr. and Mrs. Switzer sat down with their attendants to their first of many married meals, Miss May Blackburn a teacher friend of mine and Louis’s cousin, Lisle, attended us beautifully there and to the train, which we took to Galesburg on our way to the Switzer farm, as I was to teach at the Pleasant Hill school to the end of the school year, starting the next Monday and were married Friday.
Louis had bought some furniture, but as it was not arranged properly, we spent that night with his sister, Stella Toland, Herb and six children, then set in the next morning to put our house in order. His crop year began in two weeks, so I ran home at noon 100 yards, to get as good a lunch as I could quickly, then went back to teach again until four o’clock, when the children went home and I plied broom and dustpan in doing my own janitor work.
I didn’t mind that as I was earning $250 for the two months, whereas I had earned $110 for a like time my first year of teaching and was only getting $180 for 2 months work in Rock Island. Louis usually came in from the field about 6 o’clock and was ready for supper a half hour later so I had 2 hours to make our home nice and get him a good supper.
It was beautiful living, my first on a farm. Small calves, pigs and chickens appeared, the cherry, pear, peach and apple trees blossomed and we could talk and laugh together until bedtime. That was about 9 o’clock as we both were working hard and needed our sleep but he began work again at 5 a.m., so the nights were not long. One day a letter came to our mailbox from the County Clerk of Scott County, Ia., where we had been married, to the effect that since the marriage license had not been returned to him, we were not legally married. We wrote Rev. Buckner immediately to rectify the mistake, which he did with apologies.
It has been a Switzer joke since then.