With not much going on right now I will start an autobiogrophy
THE WAY I REMEMBER IT
I
am starting this September 25, 2023.
Have thought of doing it for better than 25 years and time to get at
it. I have been reading or listening to
a lot of books this summer – around 35 books so far. Many of these are biographical or autobiagraphial which makes me think I should do it.
The
last one I am working on I have about 450 pages read out
of 875 of a large hard-bound book about the life and times of a newspaper editor
in northeast Nebraska, who started his hometown newspaper in Bloomfield,
Nebraska at the time the town was just laid out in 1890. The author, a distant relative of the editor,
recounts some personal memories as well as citing page after page from the
newspaper. This has proven to be a very
interesting history of the area. This is
in my “bathroom book” and is only read for short times.
I am about through with one on Kindle (my “bedtime
book”) about a man from northwest Arkansas who was 88 years old when he wrote a
book on his life for his kids in 2019.
He worked in a shoe store after graduating from High School, then
avoided being drafted into the Army (during the Korean War) by signing up for
the Navy. He later worked in and, along
with his wife, bought a printing plant.
Became a Lay Speaker for a church near Springfield, MO for some 26
years; owned and bred hunting dogs. Just
found out, in looking up the history of the book, that the e-edition I am
reading was published by his children after he passed away.
Anyway,
reading these and many other biographies makes me think that I should get mine
down on paper.
I
was born at a very young age. As I was
told, this was in the farmhouse some 2 miles south of Callaway, NE on a farm
Dad was renting in June of 1943. This,
of course, would be during World War II. I was the third boy in the family with my
oldest brother Roger born in March of 1937 and older brother Donald born in May
of 1939. My mom told me, in the 1980’s,
that she had a miscarriage in the middle of the 4 years between Don &
myself. My younger brother, Darrell, was
born in December of 1945 and our only sister, Louise, was born in January of
1950.
I do not remember anything about that house, except the day in March of 1947 when we moved the ranch/farm some 7 miles southwest of Callaway (and about 5 miles northwest of Oconto). I recall being told to get a cardboard box and go around and gather up socks. Also, there were a lot of people helping with the move and some of the neighbors brought their female dog and I was alarmed that our male Collie dog named "Woofy" was trying to “jump over” the other dog and I was trying to get them apart. Some of the men laughed at me. There was one neighbor with a red 6-wheel farm truck with cattle racks folded up and a lot of stuff piled in it. Mom had a foot-or-so square, tall yellow cabinet and it was laying on top of the other stuff. I got to ride in the cab of the truck, though cannot recall anything about the driver.
The place we were moving to was on the edge of a good-sized ranch. I know there were no buildings at the corner of the property closest to the highway. It was a mile or so west of Highway 40 that angled south-east to north-west and was covered by river gravel. That is made up of rounded yellow/tan colored rocks (and is not anything like the limestone rock roads we have here in southwest Iowa where we have lived for the last 53 years. The buildings from the ranch (some 5 or 6 miles) were to be moved to this site. Dad had gone down several days before the move and had bought a wooden chicken house (something the size of today’s common portable storage sheds) and set it up the hill a way. This ground was at the base of a hill that sloped to the south above where the house and barn were to be. I believe a mover had picked up the barn from the ranch and moved it to its current site first. Then, they moved the house – which was about 24’ x 28’ with three bedrooms, kitchen and living room. The day they moved the house, it got dark before they had it set quite where they wanted it and decided to wait until morning. It rained during the night, and they were unable to move it; so, they unloaded it where it sat. That was the reason our house was only about 100 feet east of the barn. The barnyard smells from the hogs and cattle were always there. Dad said if it was somebody else’s livestock causing the smell it stunk; but if it was your own livestock it smelled like money. Hopefully, making money, but sometimes like money lost.
We
had an “outhouse” up the hill a bit south of the house for many years. Digging a new hole and moving it several
times. Going uphill when needing it was
not always the most pleasant thing; it was finally moved across the driveway to
the northeast of the house on level ground years later. An indoor bathroom was installed in the house
in May of 1961, a month before I graduated from high school.
A well was dug and we got water in the house, to a sink in the kitchen, fairly soon. A basement was dug out from under the house, using a “slip” that scraped up dirt and then was pulled out the entryway by rope to a horse and dumped outside. There was a shoulder left about four feet deep in from the foundation of the house so it wouldn’t cave away. Cement was poured for the floor, but I’m not sure if it was done right away. Cement was plastered on the walls and the shelf left by that 4’ shoulder and it was relatively closed in. Many years later, a forced air furnace was put down there as well as a freezer. Potatoes, watermelon, and other garden stuff were stored on the floor in the northeast corner of that basement.
I will probably take many months to expand on this story.
Hang in there, Lynn
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