PART 2: We’re sharing some memories of Bradford from Dr. Frederick Young. Here’s part 2.

“I had a cousin in Colorado who played the accordion and I wanted to learn to play. Sam Dietch who had a music store in Bradford taught me to play and by the time I was in 5th or 6th grade I took piano lessons from William Davis at the Episcopal Church with the goal of becoming an organist.”

He wanted to become an archeologist, too, to specialize in Chinese and Egyptian artifacts.

“Even though my father’s family spoke Cantonese, learned when they and their relatives had a trading business in China, they discouraged me from archeology saying how long it takes to get the necessary doctor’s degree.

“When my father’s relatives gathered on holidays it only took a few drinks to have them talk about their Chinese days and the Chinese servants they brought to Toronto. When eating at Mandarin restaurants my dad would write out our order and that brought out the owner who gave us silver decorated chop sticks,” Dr. Young remembered. “In those days there were few Occidentals who could write Chinese.

As a child I learned a small amount of the language comprising mostly of cursing and insults that many years later surprised my Chinese graduate students at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. I wish a foreign language had been taught in elementary school.”

His father had a photography business, and it was usually slow after Christmas.

“He made appointments to take pictures of famous people who were vacationing in Florida and California like Greta Garbo and Humphrey Bogart.”

With so many wealthy families in Bradford, teachers weren’t bothered by a month-long vacation early in the year — about one-third of the students would be out on vacation.

“I think children learned much more traveling than they did in school.”

More to come.