Chapter I

Terre Haute, Indiana

1923 to 1941

My parents, Daisy Ernestine Eslick Hood, and Orestes Hood, Sr. met while they were public school teachers in East St. Louis, Illinois, and after a brief stay in Gary, Indiana, where my father ws an electrician in the steel mills, they settled in the southwestern part of the state in Terre Haute, Indiana.  My father said that he wanted to live in a town where his children could go to college. I was the only member of the Hood family who went to under-graduate college in another town, namely Purdue University at West Lafayette, Indiana.  My father had been a student at Purdue in 1904, and my mother was a graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn.

There were eight children in our family namely, Ernest Alva, Ruth Louise, Orestes, Jr., Marshall Kelvin, Gladys Agusta, Dorthula, Daisy Estelle, and me, Nicholas Hood, II.

 My father was hired by the Excide Battery Company to be its representative in Terre Haute because of his knowledge of the electric storage battery.  His salary was $25.00 per week and commissions.

My dad later opened a radio sales store in downtown Terre Haute and he operated this business until the economic crash of 1929 which resulted in the loss of his business, and he almost lost his mind as a result of the "crash".  My father did not recover from this loss for about fifteen years.  The economic depression had a severe effect on our family, and it was necessary for  my mother to begin selling insurance in order to keep the family together economically.  My father repaired radios for the persons who had enough money to own one.  As a hobby, he constructed a crystal radio with several sets of head phones, and he would invite the neighbors to the family home to listen to radio broadcasts from radio station KDKA in Pennsylvania.

My older brother, Ernest, went to live with an aunt in Buffalo, New York, and he sent money back to the family.  The two other brothers had little jobs in Terre Haute, and they, too, helped out with the family finances.  My older sister, Ruth received an Elk's oratorical contest award  with which she paid her college tuition and that of her sister, Gladys.  All of the Hood children were able to obtain college degrees.