Between Chicago and LaPorte.

Our cousin Robert Bernth shares: "Joseph Petelle owned a grocery store in Chicago and grandchildren Charlotte and Welser Weaver would visit their grandparents and recall playing in the yard outside of the store. Charlotte recalls that grandma Lulu would do the baking for the store and provide freshly baked cookies for the grandchildren as a treat. Charlotte recalls a large imported cuckoo clock would hang in the store and was the subject of great interest on the part of the patrons. She also recalls men coming into the store and wiling away the hours by sitting on pickle barrels and playing cards, waiting for the clock to cuckoo..."

About 1926 they moved to LaPorte, Indiana to be near their daughter Mabel. Their home at 328 Pine Lake Avenue was close to the lake. Grandson Ed Petelle remembers that they maintained a "'neat little vegetable garden' where they picked fresh carrots, tomatoes and other vegetables for dinner." The garden would prove to be a boon for the family, as the country fell into the Great Depression in October 1929.

Information gleaned from the 1930 census reveals Joseph's occupation as a painter at a metal door factory. They rented the home for $30.00 a month. Joseph was 62, and Lulu was 60. A lodger, Bertha Armestedt, age 18, was living with them, as was Joseph Thoma, age 15. Joseph (the grandson's) name is given as "Petelle" not Thoma, in most records, including this one. He attended LaPorte High School.

Their daughter, Mabel Weaver lived at 323 Pine Lake Avenue with her husband and two children, Charlotte, 14 and Welser, 12. The elder Welser maintained a worm farm that proved fascinating to his nephew Ed Petelle who recalled: "… he had a worm farm in his back yard and sold worms to local fishermen. He had an iron rod attached to the electric current by the barn. When [Welzer] stuck the rod into the wet ground the worms came wriggling out by the dozens. Wonderful experience for a city kid!" Of his Aunt Mabel, he recalls she made the best butterscotch pie he ever had with a topping of meringue piled several inches high.

Lula's mother passed in March 1930 and was buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. Lula died a few years later, at the age of 64 on October 5, 1934 at Grant Hospital in Chicago. She was buried in Montrose Cemetery. Joseph built a bench from tree limbs to sit at her gravesite.

His health failed and he lost some toes on his right foot to diabetes. He moved in with the Weavers but died suddenly on July 9, 1940 when he was visiting daughter Stella's home on Irving Park Boulevard in Chicago. Joseph was buried in a Catholic service from St. Paschel Church and was laid to rest alongside Lula after the site was blessed by the priest.