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Contents

Photographs

Reminiscences

Paper Trail (1930 census, much to add)

Letters: see All Letters page for many letters to him or mentioning him 

Click on image to enlarge. Once enlarged, to zoom, move cursor to right of image, back onto image, and click again.

from his baby book	first page of list of gifts from his baby book	2nd page of list of gifts
parents' page	grandparents from his baby book	Baby's first outing
	The picture that made the paper
Waiting for his chauffeur	Probably in the yard of his Sims Grandparents	Four years old
last of the baby fat?
Digging that crazy tie	High school grad photo. Note the Tilden Tech pin.	the "psycho eyes" portrait
this looks like what happens when your friends take you out drinking	what someone put in his yearbook	July 1949, after spending the night sleeping in the 1926 Model T after running out of gas on a Wisconsin back road
	Column about him by his uncle Leslie Sims	Five Star Junior Program, Les Hardison for Pres
labeled photo of Alpha Sigma Chi black and white ball

Notes on his baby book gift list: his mother grew up in Friendship TN. Sisters Fern & Kathryn Thompson (born c.1908 & c.1906) are in the 1920 Friendship census, as is Nina Parks, wife of Irs D. Park (mail carrier) and Alva Alford (though there is no Mrs. yet). Alva is the son of Jennie Alford, a widow living with her brother, John Carman. Think W.S. Sims may be Lyda's paternal uncle William Sims, but not sure.

Reminiscences

(Much to add)

Notes on a 1998 conversation with LC Hardison about the Great Depression:

        Of the Great Depression, he remembered the split pea soup. People on relief and working for the WPA (like his father) received bags of dried peas as pay. He hated it; it had sand in it. He wouldn't eat anything to do with split peas until well into the 1940s because he got so sick of them during the Depression.

        He recalled they had "script money"--government printed pseudo-dollars with grids on the back. Each time a merchant accepted a script dollar, he put a stamp on the back worth a penny. In theory, but the time the script dollar had changed hands a hundred times it had built up a hundred stamps, and had come to be actually worth a dollar. The trouble was that most merchants refused to accept script dollars. The only ones who would, as he recalled, were those who otherwise wouldn't have had any business at all. For example, there was a toy store he recalled walking a long way to visit because his mother had heard they accepted script money.

        He didn't recall getting any toys a that store, but did recall having roller skates, and marbles. Marbles were kid commerce in the Depression, bartered, bet, even sometimes bought. Everybody had marbles. How he came to have roller skates, however, he couldn't recall. Roller skates cost a dollar, and a dollar was a day's wages.

        Hotels gave out "Due Bills" during the Depression, which were good for a free stay in the hotel or free tickets to the Century of Progress World's Fair (1933). But, he said, the street car to the World's Fair cost seven cents, and they didn't have seven cents to spare.

Paper Trail:

1930 census census, Chicago, District 1330, Powell Avenue (renting for $25/month)

William Hardison, age 34, married at 32, investigator--insurance

wife Lida S, age 29, married at 27

son Lesley C, age 1