MARTIN:

Percy, tell us what you remember best when you were a boy.

PERCY:

I remember the winters. The winters have changed.

MARTIN:

How have they been changed?

GERDA:

I think they're getting colder.

PERCY:

There used to be more snow. Do you know that?

HERSHEL:

I agree. There used to be more snow. It must have been colder then.

GERDA:

I think it's colder now.

HERSHEL:

I've lived my whole life here. It used to be colder.

MARTIN:

What do you remember best, Alice?

ALICE:

My grandmother. She was a mother to me. Do you understand?

MARTIN:

Not exactly. What do you mean?

ALICE:

She lived with us. My mother was sick. My grandmother took care of us.

HERSHEL:

I remember people used to be sick a lot.

MARTIN:

Did you always have doctors in the town?

GERDA:

There were two doctors when I came here.

PERCY:

We always had a doctor or two.

HERSHEL:

We didn't have a doctor during the war.

PERCY:

Which war?

HERSHEL:

World War Two. Dr. Lane went to the army.

MARTIN:

Did that make life difficult?

ALICE:

A little. People couldn't drive to another town easily.

MARTIN:

Percy, where did you go to school?

PERCY:

I went to school on my farm.

MARTIN:

Did you study at home?

PERCY:

No, it was a one-room school with one teacher. It was on the corner of our farm.

HERSHEL:

Most of the schools were one room.

ALICE:

I went to school here in town.

MARTIN:

Did your husbands and wives come from the town? What about you Alice?

ALICE:

Mr. Leedy, my husband, was a pharmacist. He came here to open a drug store after he finished college.

MARTIN:

Gerda, what about your husband?

GERDA:

He lived here. He lived on a big farm. We came from Germany. My father worked for my husband's father. It was very difficult.

MARTIN:

Why was it difficult?

GERDA:

Because of the war. People here didn't like us. But my husband's family was very good to us. He wasn't my husband then of course. I was just a girl.

MARTIN:

And you loved him.

GERDA:

Oh yes, from the beginning.

HERSHEL:

My wife was a neighbor. She lived on the farm next to ours. We went to school together too.

MARTIN:

Percy, where did your wife come from?

PERCY:

I didn't have one.

ALICE:

Why not?

PERCY:

I didn't want one.

MARTIN:

What work did you do?

PERCY:

I made violins. Later I owned the violin factory. My father was a violin maker too.

HERSHEL:

I didn't know you made violins.

GERDA:

Do you play the violin?

PERCY:

No, but I loved to hear them.

MARTIN:

Thank you for talking to me today. I enjoyed it.