Memoirs of Lloyd Moss: 1929
For furnishings we had a bed, a bureau, a Morris chair, a small gas stove beside a tiny sink, a table the size used by drug store soda fountains and two chairs. I soon manufactured more furniture by nailing orange crates together, and when they were covered with white oilcloth and draped across the front with blue and white checked gingham they looked pretty good to us. We shared the bathroom with the owner and her husband. We didn't need much furniture since we had carried in our total possessions in two suitcases. But it was our home and we couldn't have been happier in a villa on the Riviera. We made a game of budgeting everything and got along fine although our allotments seem impossible today. One example will serve to illustrate how we made do. For food for seven days for the two of us we had one five dollar bill. However you must consider that in 1929 we could usually find a market that was selling Nucoa brand margerine at three pounds for 25c. One week we had 10c left over so we bought a goldfish bowl at Woolworth's. The next week we bought a fish for five cents to put in it, our first pet. Hamburger was two pounds for 25c and pink salmon, the tall cans, were 16c each.
There was no lack of entertainment because Philadelphia has many parks and fantastic museums and art galleries. So we enjoyed life to the fullest for the rest of the summer and part of the fall. Then the Trenton was ordered to Hampton Roads, Virginia for battle practice. This was a real blow to us but we soon solved it by Florence's packing our things back in their suitcases and riding train and boat down to Norfolk. In the meantime I had gone to the Navy Y.M.C.A. and gotten the address of a family named Warren who rented a room and furnished meals to couples like us. Mrs. Warren was a real southern cook of the first order. She piled that wonderful food on the table like every meal was a banquet. Usually three kinds of meat, hot biscuits, several vegetables and choice of desert. She was a real genius because if you looked out into the kitchen while we were eating there wasn't a dirty pan or spoon anywhere. She had been cook for a work crew sometime in her life and had learned to clean up everything as she went along.
We were accepted as part of the family and taken on weekend drives around the Virginia countryside. We thought we had just about the best of everything, and I got liberty off the ship quite often and Florence was looked after as part of the Warren family when I was away. In mid-December the Trenton went back to Philadelphia. Our former landlady's two apartments were both occupied so I found another place on the next block on Spruce Street and Florence came back to move in. That situation wasn't satisfactory because it was only a bedroom with kitchen privileges and our mealtimes conflicted with the family's, so after one week we found an apartment on Sansom Street which was somewhat better. At least we had our own kitchen and privacy, and after stuffing newspapers in all the cracks around the windows it was fairly warm. But it wasn't like the little place on Irving Street.
Our first Christmas together was somewhat of a disappointment because I was obligated to stay on duty on the ship so that another electrician with children could go home. Knowing that it was helping a family be together over Christmas made it bearable for us. We planned to make up for it on New Years Eve by joining the revelry downtown and going to the roof garden restaurant on top of one of Philadelphia's larger hotels. The famous old play "The Drunkard" was being performed there and it was being given a lot pf publicity. However, when we went downtown it was so quiet everywhere that it was easy to see why New York comedians always got such a belly-laugh from their audiences whenever they mentioned the wild nightlife of Philadelphia. There was no cover charge there even on New Year's Eve and of course no liquor because prohibition was still very much in force, in legitimate places anyway. We enjoyed the evening as no one pressured us to buy any more food and soft drink than we wanted to. The show was much less exciting and daring than we had been led to believe by the lurid ads.