Marti Steussy
My mother, Howard's sister Miriam, asked me to post that her most vivid memory concerns a visit by our family to Howard's at Highlands in North Carolina--I think it would have been in the 1970s. On a hike to a waterfall, Mom climbed a fairly steep slope--that part went fine--and then froze in terror halfway down again, partly at the steepness of the slope and partly at the auto traffic along the road at the foot of the slope. She said her whole life passed in front of her eyes and she wondered who would care for her children when she died. She will be forever grateful to her brother for climbing back up to her and patiently talking her down, one step at a time-- "I think you could put your foot on this rock"; "I think you could hang onto this root here."
She did make it down fine--but it is a vivid memory!
Other stories: the parsonage that the family lived in before the death of the senior Howard Pospesel had a large oak tree in the yard that harbored bats, which would sometimes crawl into the house. Young Howard would bravely put a colander over his head to ward off attack and then venture forth to chase the bats out of the house.
I'm not sure if it was at that house or the next one, but he was asked to take an empty cardboard box to the basement. Having pushed it from the top of the steps and watched it slide smoothly down, he decided that it would be fun to sled down in the box himself, so he dragged it back up and climbed in. Unfortunately, with the extra weight, it tumbled rather than slid--Mom reports that he did not need to be taken to the hospital, but it was not a pleasant experience!
And I remember myself that in Grandma Pospesel's subsequent residence on W. 2nd Street in Dayton, there was a dime on the bedroom floor which Uncle Howard had glued to the floorboards for the fun of watching people try to pick it up. (So far as I know, it was still there when the house was sold, and may be there to this day...)
