He was the oldest of eight children and, as such, was expected to take over the family business. He had other plans though and went off to the University of Michigan (to study chemistry) against his father's wishes - the first in his family to do so. He had to pay his own way through school by taking on odd jobs. I remember him telling me things like "I'd ask the lab instructors if I could stay and clean off the lab benches for a modest fee" "If there was a movie I wanted to see, I would usher the movie so I could get paid to watch it". For room and board, he helped to organize and legitimize the Co-op housing council . In fact, he is considered to be their first president (1939). In 1986 or so, they had a 50th year celebration and he was invited to be a guest speaker. He spoke of how they didn't bring the "bearded fellas" to a meeting the University President because he was worried the ICC might be thought of as a communist organization! Every month, despite his difficult situation, he would send a check home to Somerville to help the family out and was considered a hero by his siblings.
Of his younger years, he really didn't share much with me but one funny story was about how his mother used to tie him to a tree in the front yard while she was taking care of the younger kids so he could play outside but not wander off. One day, some older kids in the neighborhood took pity on him and untied him. Distressed, he ran back in to ask his mother to tie him back up!
An often repeated story was how, upon graduation, he and my grandmother got married in the Boston area and took a practical honeymoon by driving through Canada to get to Pittsburgh, PA where he had already landed his first job and picked out a tiny apartment with a Murphy bed that my grandmother complained about with great regularity throughout her life. Upon receiving his first paycheck, he remembers gratefully telling his employer that he really needed that check because he only had $5 to his name at that point in time. Soon my father was born and my grandmother would recall having to use a Q-tip to wipe the black residue from the dirty Pittsburg air out of little baby Allan's nose. They would move many times through the years (including stints in Needham and Marshfield), have two more children, and eventually five grandchildren, travel the world, retire and come to the end of their journey in Georgia. Frank Allan Rideout, Sr passed away in 1998.
To think that, after all my random travels, I wound up raising my own family just a few miles away from those three Boston locations where he spent so much of his life! The world is so big and yet so small at the same time...
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