Wordless Wednesday - March of Dimes Ad 1951

Morse Chain, The Echo,  Nov-Dec 1951

A few weeks ago I posted a story about the quarantine of Ithaca, New York due to the 1916 infantile poliomyelitis epidemic. The disease became prevalent again in the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading to the inoculation of the Salk vaccine to millions of children. The March of Dimes campaign was very successful. 

1486 Taughannock Boulevard, Ithaca, New York - In her own words

"I always loved that house. I never dreamed that I would ever live there."
~ Carol Louise Agard Nunn ~

I thought it would be fun to post my mother's memories of moving into our home. She shares her dreams, captures a time of simple living and the issue of establishing credit.            

"I have no recollection of moving day from the Jacksonville Road house to Taughannock Boulevard. The furniture we had was minimal, but it must have been adequate, because we had all the basic things.  In fact the first purchase we made when we got married was a small refrigerator. That was the only thing we purchased. Everything else came out of somebody’s attic. I remember we paid six dollars a month to pay off this refrigerator, which ran for many, many years.

            Before Eddie and I were married, we had friends, Chuck and Jeanne Lueder, and they purchased the Taughannock Boulevard house. We went to visit them at that house, and I always loved that house. I never dreamed that I would ever live there. I just liked it very much. And, was astounded when I was finally living there.

            You came in the front door and the stairs went up. It had a large enough hall so you didn’t feel cramped. It went right straight back to what we made into the kitchen. The left hand side was a living room. I don’t know what was special about it; it just suited me. There wasn’t anything really that I disliked about the house. It just seemed like it took forever to do anything we wanted to get done, but that was just financial.

            I always wanted a swimming pool there. It would have been very impractical and it never came about. We just did little things. I was pretty happy with it just the way it was.  Eddie and his father did make a whole new kitchen, which was a large room and they worked weekends. Eddie worked all week at the Morse Chain Company. On Friday night he would go to 89 Lumber on Route 89 and purchase enough material to get he and his father through the weekend. One weekend he stopped to get supplies and for one reason or another he did not have enough money to pay cash for it. They wouldn’t give it to him, because we had “no credit.” Of course we had a mortgage that we were paying on. That made him livid. He was so honest, and we always paid bills on time. So on Monday morning he went to the bank and got credit started.

            I can remember the finish they put on the kitchen cabinet doors showed the gold from the grain of the wood. I thought that was so pretty.

            Later on when we were working at the Inn - we worked many hours over there - we had wanted to carpet the kitchen, and we went down and looked at carpeting, which were these little squares that you put down. A couple of weeks later, Eddie arranged for the carpet to be put in during a day – I spent most every day at Taughannock Farms - when he knew I wasn’t going to be home. I always went home at 4:30 in the afternoon and changed my clothes to go back for the night clientele. When I walked in, here is this kitchen all carpeted.  It was like, “Oh my gosh! How did he do this?”  The carpet was a dark green with flakes in it so it didn’t show the dirt.  Unfortunately, it was about the time we were getting ready to spend more time in Florida, so I never did really spend an awful lot of time on that carpeting."

Thanks, Mom, for sharing these great memories.   

Talented Tuesday - Morse Chain Purchasing Department, 1950

From Left: Steve Morris, R.W. Appleton (Director), Ed Nunn

This 1950 August-September issue of Echo, a publication of the Morse Chain Company, a Borg-Warner Industry, features an article on Ithaca’s Purchasing Department. The headline reads, “Ithaca’s Purchasing Department Keeps a Weather Eye on the Markets of the World.”  The article further states: “In the course of a year, the Purchasing Department of the Morse Ithaca plant buys enough steel to reach five times around the Equator!”

My father, Ed Nunn's job was to be constantly alert to the quality and value in the materials he purchased for the company – don’t we wish there was more of that type of vigilance today. 

Sports Center Saturday - Morse Chain 1952 Golf Team

I was sorting through files this morning and came upon three issues of the Morse Chain Echo. The reason these three were kept is because each featured a photo of my father, Edward Nunn. Previously, I had found his photo in the issue, but never took the time to really look through the rest of the magazine, until this morning.

I will continue to share photos of the people and events in these three issues. The photos of the department Christmas parties are wonderful, and each photo is labeled.  The issues I have are Aug-Sept 1950, Nov-Dec 1951, and May-June 1952.

Below is a page from the May-June 1952 issue and features the Morse Chain Twilight Golf team.