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Aurore (Rossignol) Collin |
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Children: Gloria
Karen
Pearl
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 Muriel was born in December of 1931.
She was sickly because mom’s milk was supposedly not good.
Mom would have to get water from the well and when she came in,
her clothes were frozen on her. Mom’s
mother died not long before Claude was born on September 21, 1935.
Mom’s brothers and sisters came to visit. It hurt her to see her family leave after they visited.
We were all very young we did not understand. I
started knitting and crocheting with mom.
In the summer, we picked strawberries and raspberries.
Priscilla had a gray lamb. I
was studying for my confirmation. Mom
was busy with all of that and sometimes she was crying a lot.
Dad was not home during the week.
He only was home on Sunday.
Muriel got better but then Janel was now sick.
He had fallen into the basement and he had to have surgery on his
head. We
all helped to pick fruit and vegetables.
We also did a lot of canning. I
don’t remember what games we played when we were young.
I
remember when how scared I was when saw a calf being born.
I did not understand what was happening.
We did not get much information about the “facts of life”
back then. I remember running into the house and being really scared.
Mom
always did a lot of knitting. She
even knitted our stockings. Uncle
Nelson came to visit. He
let us play with the little pigs. We
even washed them. In
the winter, we used to slide down the hill in a barrel that we used as a
sled. This was fun for us.
When I was about 15 years old, we moved to Connecticut.
I lied about my age and got a job in a factory.
We were 9 children and Mom and Dad in an apartment and we
didn’t have much room. I
think the apartment was on Smalley St. in New Britain.
After a while, Mom & Dad bought a house on the corner of
Market St. and Newington Ave. in New Britain.
It was bigger than the apartment we were living in and it had a
nice yard. We were living here when I met my husband, Gerard Collin. I
met Gerry at a dance that I had gone to with my sister Priscilla.
He asked me to go out the next week and I said OK.
I really didn’t want to go out with him.
He was a really nice guy and I liked him, but I was so shy that I
got ready to leave the house a 1/2 hour before he was supposed to pick
me up. I figured if I were
not there he would give up and not try to date me.
He must have known, because he arrived just as I was getting
ready to leave, so I had to go out with him.
This was in the fall of 1944.
We got married on June 25, 1945.
We
rented an apartment on Hartford Ave. in New Britain. This was during WWII and we had to use an icebox because you
could not buy a refrigerator. All
the steel was being used in the war.
Gloria
was born on July 23, 1946. Then
Karen came along on May 31, 1948. We
bought a 3 family house on Market St. in New Britain in 1952 and we had
Pearl on November 25, 1952. We lived on Market St. until May of 1966 when we bought this house on Cooke St. in Plainville and we have lived here ever since.
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