Interviewee: Mildred Randa Klicka
Date of birth/age at interview: 1925/60
Interviewer: Rita Durrant
Interview date: June 10, 1985
Interview location: unknown
Interview length: 45 minutes
Time span discussed: 1930s to 1985
Summary: This is a report by a Solebury farm girl growing through the years. Millie tells about St Martin’s Church and the parish, school days through high school, daily work on the farm before school starting 4:00 a.m., and World War II. The work with cows and treating the milk so it did not go bad is good reporting for the uninformed! Tales of ice skating on the Canal, swimming in the river off Lambertville’s beach, and bowling and dances in Lambertville inform us of the social life available during and after the war.
Time markers:
00:40 – first memories at 4 years old of Aquetong Road; horse-and-buggy ride five miles to St. Martin’s
01:20 – father’s first car
03:00 – doctor and hospital
04:30 – parents moved to Solebury in 1918
05:20 – one-room schoolhouse and school days
07:00 – teachers: Mrs. Buckley and others
09:00 – one-room schoolhouse closed about 1938 and she then attended New Hope High School, graduated 1943
10:30 – dairy farming in the area
10:50 – work to be done before school from 4 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. for cows and milk preservation
13:30 – flies and food inspectors work
17:00 – comment on Quakers
21:30 – “If a boy I would have gone to college and been a teacher”
22:50 – war job: Office of Price Administration (OPA), difficult emotional work
29:00 – shopping in Doylestown, not New Hope; paper mill in New Hope major source of jobs
31:20 – ice skating on canal
32:00 – swimming in the Delaware River; bowling and dance nights
41:00 –dirt cellar of St. Martins dug out, improved in 1960s
43:00 – New Hope’s reputation far and wide a source of pride
