1903-06-26: ​​~TOUR STOPS~---images---audio---transcript---notes---links---site navigation
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1903-06-26: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
Ashtabula O. June 26 ‘03

Dear Will:

It seems to me it is about time we heard from you.  If we don’t hear soon I shall begin to think that you are furnishing food for some cannibal.  I don’t know what sort of heathen you have met there.  I hope you will write a full and complete account of the place as I am very deficient in imagination.

I am having a fine time here in Ashtabula.  Lairds live right on the lake.  They have their own beach and a deep gully in the back yard.  I never heard so many birds.  Yesterday Sara’s brother Frank took us up the river and out on the lake in his launch.  I had no idea the harbor was such a big place.  There were a dozen big boats and scores of smaller ones and one ocean liner.  We went on one of the big coal boats and the mate took us all over it.  It was a new boat and it was in good conditions.  There is a beautiful passengers cabin - the spare room the mate called it - It made me wild to take a trip up the lakes.  I did not know the freight boats were fitted up so beautifully.  This boat carries 7,000 tons of coal.  We saw them loading it with the car dump.  They have a machine that lifts up the coal car full of coal, turns it over on its side, empties it into a long funnel and then sets it down on the track.  It unloads a coal car in three minutes.  They bring the boats down the lakes full of ore and unload them here and they carry coal back.  We saw them unloading ore from another boat.  They have machines called clam-shells for that.  There is a clam shell over each hatch and they swing the clam shells down in to the hatches and they open and scoop up the ore.  Then they shut up just like a clam shell and they swing out and open and drop the ore in piles.  The clam shells are new.  They are a great thing for the men used to have to shovel the ore and it was hard and unhealthy work.

The engineer in the boat showed us all the machinery.  They have an enormous engine and furnace.  They have electric lights all over the boat.  The boat was very interesting.  We all like the mate Mr. Allen.  He wiggles his eyebrows the way you do but he does not look at all like you.  I wish I could get a chance to go up the lakes on a freight boat.  Sara has gone and she says it is great fun.

Lairds have a ship yard.  They build tugs and launches.  They have just finished a government tug.  Frank took it up to Cleveland this week.  He went up as captain and Mr. McKinnon the state representative from this district went as engineer.  The government hired a non-union engineer - a scab - and as there has been a bit of trouble between the union men and the scabs they couldn’t find a captain or a fireman or anybody who would run the boat.  So Frank had to be captain and Mr. McKinnon was engineer and the scab engineer was fireman.  We wanted to go up in the boat with Frank but Mrs. Laird was afraid there would be trouble with the union men  and she would not let us go.  Everything went all right though.

I guess I got through all my exams - at least I haven’t received any notices to the contrary. I have just heard that I was elected Corresponding Secretary for Aelioian.  There are only two annual offices - Treasure and Cor. Secretary.  The rest are all monthly.  I have to make out the programs.  I also have another office for next year.  I am president of the library association at Talcott.  I have to subscribe for the magazines collect the tax and look after the reading room.

We are going to have a nice senior crowd next year at Talcott.  I think there will be about 15 senior girls there.  We can have some jolly times.

I have not heard from home since Commencement so I don’t know how it went off.

I guess I have written enough.  I think when I have written such a long letter I ought to get some kind of an answer some time.

Perhaps I had better tell you now about what I will need for next fall.  I ought to have some mun some time this summer, if you can spare it, for clothes - $25 or so.  If you havn’t it don’t bother about it for I can get along without it.  When I go back I will need $55 for tuition, lab fees, and books.  That is what I have to have.  If you can spare $20 or $25 more I will be very glad to apply it on my board for we are expected to pay in advance although we don’t have to.

How is living in the Philippines?  I hope it isn’t as dear as Washington.  I don’t want you to be as pinched as you have been.

I have been writing this because Sara is up in the cherry tree and I haven’t anything to do.  I wanted to go up but she wouldn’t let me because she did not want me to break my neck while I was here.

I hope you will write often and at length.

With Love,

Alma

P.S. I have just received a letter from Mama and she said Eva sang well at Commencement and got a lot of presents
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1903-06-26​: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
I am having a fine time here in Ashtabula.  Lairds live right on the lake.
Sara Grant Laird was an Oberlin classmate of Alma's, still a friend 20 years later.  She became an assistant professor of rhetoric at the University of Kansas.  She's in the Non-family Ohio folks page.

2.
I have just heard that I was elected Corresponding Secretary for Aelioian.
Aelioian: a Ladies LIterary Society at Oberlin.
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