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Page 2 of 28 Early Exploits: From Chicago to Marceline

The Disney House in Chicago

The Disney House in Chicago

If Walt's father was the source of his courage and self-confidence his mother, Flora (who has been dealt with somewhat more kindly by biographers and historians) was the source of his humor and love of fun and play. One day Walt brought home a store-bought practical joke called a "plate lifter." Simplicity itself, it allowed the joker to force a plate to jiggle up and down from across the table, by simply squeezing a little bulb, and forcing air into a mechanism placed under the plate. "Let's pull that on your father," suggested Flora, who proceeded to do so. That night, at dinner, Elias' soup bowl danced around on the table as though enchanted. "My mother was just killing herself laughing," said Walt. "She kept doing this and finally my dad said, "Flora, what is wrong with you? Flora, I've never seen you look so silly." So overwhelmed with mirth was Flora, that eventually she had to leave the room. "We had a wonderful mother," said Roy, "that could kid the life out of my Dad when he was peevish." 
Decades later, she was a terrific grandmother as well. "I remember her, as a kid, being fun to play with," recalled Roy's son, Roy E. Disney. "She had a way of getting back on your level. I remember rolling marbles back and forth in a hallway one time. She was enjoying it as much as I was." In 1988, Ruth wrote this description of her mother, that goes a long way in summing her up. "She was a great family manager and very capable in doing anything she undertook. My father liked to have her take care of all money matters except those requiring participation by both. She had a very even temperament, never displaying anger or lack of self-control, yet she held her own in any situation requiring it. "Before her marriage, she had taught school. Her father, Charles Call, who had been a school teacher, was a scholarly, kind and high-principled man. And her mother, Henrietta Gross, was described by our mother in this way: 'If I could be half as good as she was, I would be a very good woman.' "Mother did love to read. She did sewing of every description, making most of our clothes, men's shirts, quilts, was a great cook, a lover of babies, excellent with children. She was loved by everyone who knew her.". Flora with Walt and Ruth

Flora with Walt and Ruth
in a photo from around 1914

Roy Disney
A very proper looking
Roy, dated around 1913
A study in contrasts, no one ever doubted Flora and Elias' commitment to one another. In addition to raising five children together, they were often partners in business, with Flora helping Elias design plans for construction projects. Walt was their fourth child, born on December 5, 1901. He had three older brothers; Roy was 8; Raymond, 10; and Herbert, 12. Two years later, sister Ruth was born. Elias was working as a carpenter and builder in Chicago. But by the time Walt was four, Elias and Flora had become concerned that Chicago was no place to raise children. Then, as Bob Thomas tells the story in his biography of Walt, "two neighborhood boys were arrested for killing a policeman in a car barn robbery. One was sentenced to Joliet Prison for twenty years, the other to life imprisonment. "Flora, those two boys are no older than Herb and Ray!" Elias said to his wife. "We've got to get out of this cesspool of a city."
From the cesspool they moved to a tiny town called Marceline that was flowering in the middle of Missouri thanks to the proximity of the Santa Fe railroad. Elias bought a 45-acre farm there (thus making Walt a "farm" child as opposed to one of the "city" children who lived a few miles down the road.) The Disney's white frame house was set off by many shades of green. Leaf-heavy weeping willows, cedars and majestic silver maples populated the front yard. When the harsh Missouri winters melted in the face of a gentle spring sun, the fragrance of grape arbors, berries, peaches and plum trees and apple blossoms mingled in the air with the promise of fruit to come. In the fall, crispy red Wolf River apples weighed the tree branches down heavily with red apples the size of grapefruit. It was, in a word, paradise for Walt. He thirstily drank in life on the farm, his soul nourished in a way that was to provide him with warm feelings that he tried to communicate for the rest of his life. The idealized Main Street in Disneyland, the country life depicted in Old Yeller, even the fascination with animals that led to the True-Life Adventures, all had their origins on that farm in Marceline. Roy, Herbert and Ray Disney

Roy, Herbert and Ray Disney swimming in a small pond near their home in Marceline, sometime between 1906 and 1908

 
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