Breakfast and Love

This typical ad for the Bass Restaurant appeared in the Hobart Index-Commonwealth of October 21, 1937:


(Click on image to enlarge)

Fred's Bakery was operated by Fred Baumer. Apparently his rolls were so celebrated around town that H.C. and Martha Bass expected them to lure people into the Bass restaurant.

Among the Basses' customers in the mid-1930s was Herbert Ols — a resident of Hobart, a 1932 graduate of Hobart High, and now a working man, single, who lived with his parents on Linda Street. Every Saturday morning, he enjoyed breakfast at the Bass Restaurant.

His waitress was often Joyce Malone, who had been helping out at her mother and stepfather's restaurant since her graduation from high school.

Saturday after Saturday, the young people got to know each other, and to like each other … very much indeed.

♦    ♦    ♦
The wedding took place on October 20, 1937.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hammond Times, 25 Oct. 1937.

Hobart's Index-Commonwealth[1] specified that the newlyweds would be living in an apartment at 54 Main — evidently the house was broken up into separate units.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of Fred Ols.

I wondered at first why only Mrs. Henry Clinton Bass, and not Mr. and Mrs., was announcing the marriage. It's true that Joyce was not Mr. Bass's biological daughter, but a close and happy family might well have ignored that technicality. Then I learned that this was not a close and happy family. The Bass marriage was troubled. In fact, Joyce thought her stepfather treated her mother cruelly. For Joyce, the happiness of starting a new home with the man she loved was enhanced by the relief of getting away from a man she didn't even like.

This explains another thing that had puzzled me — the fact that while Joyce's mother is buried in Hobart, her stepfather is buried in downstate Illinois.

Martha and H.C. Bass eventually separated. They were recorded in the same household in the 1940 Census, but two years later, when H.C. filled out his draft card, the contact name he gave was not his wife but a relative back in Illinois[2]. And in the 1950 Census, H.C. was living alone in Illinois — calling himself widowed — while Martha and her son Carl Malone were in the crowded but (I hope) harmonious household of Herbert and Joyce Ols, who by then had two little sons, the younger of whom would grow up to share many interesting pictures and stories with Hobart history enthusiasts.

♦    ♦    ♦
This photo from the spring of 1938 shows Herbert and Joyce some six months into their marriage and looking very happy about it.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society and Fred Ols.


_______________
[1] "Herbert Ols and Joyce Malone Wed at Quiet Ceremony," Index-Commonwealth, 24 Oct. 1937.
[2] Fred Bass of Grayville, Illinois, whom I believe to be H.C.'s younger brother, James Fred Bass.