Starting to write this at the age of 46 I would think that it will be somewhat difficult to remember things from so long ago. I can remember things according to the different homes we had so that is how I'll try to piece things together.

I moved in as a new baby but I do remember some of the things that happened at the second Water Drive home. It was about a half mile from State Highway 64 and it was a gravel road.

At this home I remember we spent a lot of time hanging a string down the laundry chute. It went from the top floor of the house all the way down to the basement. There was a little door in the wall on each level for throwing laundry in. The fisherman was the person at the top level and the ones at the lower levels would tie (hopefully) an interesting item to the line.

I remember watching my dad shaving off a very hairy beard. I don't know why he had grown it.

The farming chores must have been pretty hard in those days but I don't remember much about chores at this home. I guess I was too little to have chores in the barn. I remember a small horse that was in the pasture and that Bruce fell off and hurt his leg pretty bad. I think he broke it. I might have that mixed up with the time he fell from the hay mow down to the thrash floor.

Then there were the two cedar trees in the front of the house. I always thought they made the place look like a millionaire's home.

Maybe he did it more than once but I remember one time that Dad hooked up the stone boat to the tractor and we all loaded up on it when he pulled us down the road to Apple Ave in the winter time. He would look back at us and smile. We all liked it so much.

There was an Amish family that lived across the road. There last name of coarse is Miller. One time they had a party out in the middle of the field. They were yelling and drinking around a fire.

I can't ever forget the time when there was a bad accident over on Highway 64. There is a long ninety degree curve on Highway 64 and someone had lost control and went of the curve. Bruce, Dean and Lorin went down there to check out the scene after it was all over and I tagged along with them.

As we scoped it out, we could see that the car was airborne as it flew from the embankment of the highway, broke off the tree tops and then fell to the ground. As we searched around a bit we found pools of blood. Then we started to find coins here and there. It wasn't very often that we would even see money, so we picked it up. Some of the money was in the pools of blood. I don't remember that the blood bothered me much but the others were older and it probably did have some kind of effect on them. I heard about how one of the men who lived had crawled to Grandpa Emmerich's house that was about a quarter mile from the curve.

I must have been bored or just curious because I went back down there by myself. I searched around for more money and checked out the blood again. I thought about how the man had crawled down the ditch to Grandpa's house. I slowly made my way down to Grandpa's on my own. I hid in the ditch when cars went by. When I got there I found that no one was home. I will never forget the smell of that house. When we visited we never went upstairs so while I was there that's where I went. I found a room were there was lots of things in storage. I came across a violin and tried to play it. It was a terrible sound so I didn't play it for long. I don't remember what I was doing when Grandpa and Grandma came home but I was there. Everyone made a really big deal of me going there on my own. I remember them talking about how I "ran away from home".

This is where I lived when I went to kindergarten. It was a one room, brick building in the town of Holway. On the first day of school, a girl named J. A. cried and cried when her mom dropped her off.

Then there was a toy barn that was big enough for us to reach in and put the animals and other things where we wanted them. A boy named L. W. squeezed through the small doorway of the little barn and was stuck in there for a long time. He was one of the twins that were in my class. I don't remember the teacher's name or most of the kids names from there but those twins sure stuck out like a sore thumb. It seemed like they always found trouble.

When I started grade school I went to a school in the country side called Holway School. There was first through sixth grade there. It's hard to think of anything that happened then but I do remember that I got an A in every class. Then it came to second grade and I had very good grades then too.

One time when I was on the school bus, a girl named E. H. Sat in the next seat behind me. I had a sheet of paper rolled up and was using it like a telescope to look around. When I turned around and looked through the scope at E., she pushed it right into my eye. That hurt so bad I couldn't stand it. It was the same time we were doing a lot of testing at school and I couldn't concentrate at all because of the pain in my eye. I told the teacher about it but she didn't seem to care. I think she thought I was just trying to get out of the testing. When I went outside for recess the cold winter air helped the pain go away quite a bit so I played just like the rest them. After seeing that the teacher was sure I was just trying to fool her. But as soon as I got back to the warm air and the testing, my eye hurt like mad again. To this day, if the light is just right, I can see a little jagged arch in my eye.

There was a big ole merry-go-round on the school playground that most of us kids loved to hang out on. It had a big frame on the top and chains hung down all the way around that the benches were hanging from. We often did a thing we called "swinging out". We would hang onto one of the chains and the rest of the kids would get the merry-go-round going as fast as they could. We had to hang on really good because the spinning would cause you to fly almost straight out as you spun around and around. It was a feeling that you could only get when you would "swing out".

One time when I was "swinging out", the school bell rang and everyone went running in. There I was, "swinging out" like crazy and there was only one way to get off when others weren't around to stop it. I let go! I don't know how far I flew but I landed on my back and my head hit on a stony spot on the ground. I went running back into the school and I could feel the hot blood running down my back. The wound wasn't really that big but since it was a head wound it bled a lot. The teacher cleaned me up and Mom came to bring me home and clean me up. Like the scar in my eye, to this day I can feel a distinct bump on the back of my head.

There was another time when I was in a situation during recess and the bell rang. As far as I remember, I was alone and I was by the driveway of the school. I was crawling around like some kind of animal and came across the end of the culvert under the driveway. I crawled into it and when I got in there a ways the bell rang! I could hear all the other kids getting quieter as they went inside. I panicked and decided to turn around inside the culvert to get out. When I bent my body to turn around I found myself stuck in there. I was so scared I thought for sure, this was it. Good thing I was skinny as a rail. With a lot of effort I got turned around and went back to the classroom without ever telling anyone about my life passing before my eyes. I don't have any physical scares from that one but I was pretty scuffed up when it happened.

When I was growing up my favorite animals were the cats. I would spend hours just taking care and playing with them. When I found a favorite kitten I would do anything to stay with him.

One time I hid one in my pocket and took him to school with me. I did get him all the way to school without anyone knowing but it didn't take long and I was showing it off to classmates. Someone told the teacher and she called home for Mom or Dad to come get the kitten. It was Dad that had to come get the kitty so I guess he was done with milking by that time.

The last home that we all lived in together and the one we lived in the longest was the Emmerich homestead right up on Highway 64. It was quite a big deal to live on a paved road.

I remember crawling around on that bright red carpet in the living room and how much bigger this new place was. The laundry chute was no where near as good for fishing because it only went from the bathroom to the basement.

This farm, with all it's out buildings and big house made me think we must be really rich now. This was also a very big turning point in my life. I was 7 or 8 years old then and had farm chores of my own. I learned to drive the tractor and spent hours raking hay and maybe a couple more chores. I'm sure as a kid that it seemed to take longer than it really did because it sure got boring driving a tractor around and around the field until it was all raked.

Something that I remember well about this time was that when it came time to go back to school I found that they wanted to take 2 or 3 kids from Holway School and transfer them to Brookside school. I think it was because I was one who was closer to Brookside than Holway. I was chosen along with the M twins. Their names were T. And T. M. And these boys knew how to make trouble like you wouldn't believe.

When we got to our new school it was very noticeable that we where the outcasts and the new kids from Holway. Brookside was bigger and the kids from there made fun of Holway School. But the twins didn't take teasing very good at all and stood up for themselves quite well. I found myself in the middle of this and started to side with my old school mates. It didn't take long before we found the bad guys from Brookside. One was named R. H. And he knew how to be class clown better than anyone. I was too afraid to get in as much trouble as some of these guys but I was starting to spend too much time with them.

When I started in Brookside I was in third grade and the teacher's name was Mrs. F. She had a paddle hanging on the wall that she didn't hesitate to threaten us with if we were bad. She told us that she had E. H. (my bus driver) make it for her and how he made it a little better by drilling holes in it to prevent a layer of air from slowing down her strikes. I soon found out that she was not kidding at all because when R. H. disrupted her class she took him down to the floor with her knee in his back began to beat him on the butt over and over till he cried from the pain. You would think that this would be enough to detour any kid from ever doing anything wrong with that paddle hanging on the wall.

Knowing what I know now, no one could ever force someone else to change for the better by physically beating them. Sadly to say, R. H. was beat with that paddle many times again. There were a couple of other boys who were beat a few times. I even seen her use that paddle on a girl one time. When I think about it now, I can't believe she got away with such a thing. It probably was because it was the early 1960s. When she beat someone she made sure she did it right in front of everyone as an example for us all. You could see the fright in everyone's eyes as we had to watch. Some of the girls even cried.

There did come a time when I did something wrong (I don't remember what) and it was right after recess. I seen that she was coming toward me with that paddle in her hand. She had that look that she had when she would do the beating on the others. I always wondered why R. H. didn't just run like the wind because that mean lady would never be able to catch him. Well, when she came to me, I didn't hesitate to run faster than I ever did before. I'll never forget the look on her face as she tried to convince me that I should just lay down and take my beating. I was so scared that I stayed out there on the playground for the rest of the day. From then on I watched her like a hawk and she could see that if she tried that paddle on me I would be gone in the blink of the eye. She NEVER got to beat me with that paddle!

Academically I was failing everything. I was way too busy learning how to be bad. By the end of that school year Mrs. F. told me that she was going to give me two weeks as a fourth grader next year to prove that I could stay there. But I was so far behind and uncaring about school work that after two weeks of being a fourth grader, I was back in Mrs. F.'s third grade class watching her beat on R. H. again with that paddle.

After two years of being a third grader at Brookside School I found that I was back at Holway School. It wasn't so bad to change to a different school this time because I was getting away from the thought of being beat with a paddle.

When we moved to the farm on highway 64 there were two cats that lived there before we did. They were both black and white. A male named Buffy and a female named Fluffy. It didn't take long and Buffy was hardly ever around but Fluffy was always hanging out in the haymow. She lived there for years but she had a close call when she was out mouse hunting in the hay field and Dad came along with a sickle-bar mower on the old ford tractor. She must have tried to jump out of the way a split second too late because one of her back legs was sheared off all but by the skin and a few tendons. She adapted really good to living with only one back leg but that dead foot hung from one leg for the rest of her life.

One time as I was filling the straw cart, Fluffy came to me and was meowing like crazy. Then she started to walk away, come back and meow and walk away again. It was just like on the Lassie TV show when Lassie would want Timmy to follow her. No! I wasn't dreaming! She led me up to the top of the chopped straw stacked up in the straw mow. She had a lot of litters of kittens up there and now she just had a new litter. The best I could ever figure out for this was that she just wanted to show me her new babies. It was one of the neatest things I ever seen. I stayed there for a little while and then went back to bedding the cows. It was just a minute and Fluffy was right back by me meowing like crazy and trying to get me to go back up there. She had to wait for me to finish my chores this time but then I spent a lot of time up there playing with those kittens just like I always did when I knew where some kittens were hidden. The problem was that nobody else seen this happen. I didn't talk about it much. I guess I didn't think anybody would believe that Fluffy did exactly what Lassie did.

I always wanted a tabby cat, like Bruce had, to call my own. Every year there would be one that I picked out and I would name her Rootbeer every time. I got the name from the color of her feet because they were a golden brown color. It always ended up that Rootbeer died for some reason. It was so sad every time. I thought I'd never do it again but after a while I would see a new kitten that looked just like the last one and name it Rootbeer again. I don't know how many Rootbeers there were but at some point I never did it again.

There was a strange thing that Lorin taught me to do with the cats. He called it "check their meow" He would slowly squeeze the front foot of the cats until they would let out a "MEOW" I guess he had to check it in case they got in trouble so he knew they could call for help! I must have liked it because I remember checking a lot of MEOWs too. We also got a big kick out of how every cat had it's own sounding meow.

Another thing he did was grab their "part". A cat's "part" is the front of the chest. This didn't make them meow but for some reason it was really funny.

Working on the farm made me strong and the great food that mom served made me very healthy. I remember I would run a lot and learned how to breath to be able to run longer. I was even leaping over machinery that was parked on the lawn. It came to a time when I found I was faster than anyone I knew. In Gym class I was always first around the field.

Running reminds me of the many recesses that Mr. K. (the principle at Holway) would come out and play football with the class. It was so good to have a teacher that would come out and do that. Sometimes he would even postpone class so we could finish a game. The problem I had with Mr. K. was that he knew me from an academic and social point of view so he would never pick me as the captain of the team. He would always pick D. H. or G. O. You would think that I made a good receiver because of my speed but the ball was very rarely passed to me. The few times they did pass the ball to me, I would miss or drop it. I think I was just nervous.

I was the fastest runner and there were a couple of people that would always try to beat me around the field. It was D. S. that was always right there making sure I stayed in tune to be the fastest. I could hear his foot steps coming up behind and I learned how to "kick in my jets" and it seemed like a magical power would push me on to my goal on being first every time. I also found that if I controlled my breathing by taking long slow breaths in through my nose and out my mouth it would be like fueling my body to run faster.

One time when D. S. didn't come to school I was taking it a little easier running around the field. One by one, I passed everyone until it came time to pass D. H. He was a very strong guy who also lived on a dairy farm. I pushed myself up beside him and kind of stayed with him for a moment. Then I started showing off by taking strides as long as I could. Pushing off as hard as I could with each step. As we ran side by side he swung at me, striking me square in the chest. With the wind knocked out of me I came to a complete halt and was last for the first time ever.

I thought for sure that Mr. V. must have seen what happened but I never heard anything about it. Maybe he did say something to D. H. before I got there but I think he also seen that I instigated the whole thing.

This was also the time that I had my first girlfriend. Her name was B. G. I remember how we would walk around the school together during recess. We would also go and sit under the big tree over by the merry-go-round. I think it was about fifth grade that she didn't want to be my girlfriend anymore.

There was another girl named L. H. who really had a crush on me. I liked her but the problem was that her brother was D. H. and he didn't seem to ever like me. I was his age, but I failed third grade so now I was in his little sister's grade. Maybe it was the fact that he was the one who smacked me in the chest knocking me out of the foot race.

Back on the farm there was always plenty of work mixed just right with play. Bruce and Dean had a way with keeping things interesting. They developed a lingo that only our family and a few selected others could understand. For instance, When they would see each other they would do this loud Indian like chant that went something like, "CHEEGALEECOOCHOO". I think it started when they would swing from the rope in the hay mow.

There was another hilarious display when they would make a short line of themselves, shoulders shrugging with a slow awkward gate, the second in line hanging from the first guys shoulders, and they would be making a sound something like, "THTHTHTHTH TOHN THTHTTHTH TOHN.

There were times when they got all eight of us kids plus one or two of the Meyer boys all in the line doing this strange thing that we all got the biggest laugh ever from. Where in the world they came up with some of this stuff I will never know.

Sometimes, while we were baling hay, Bruce would walk beside the pick-up on the baler and stomp the mice that ran from under the wind-row. He put them on the load of hay and would give them to the queen of all cats when we got back to the barn with the hay. His cat's name was Tiger. Of coarse Bruce called her "Bee Wee". Don't waist time trying to figure out why he called her that because, as I said earlier, there was a lingo that few knew how to understand. She was a tabby and was grey with black stripes.

One thing that I could never forget were the "Saturday evening motorcade races." A motorcade is a bicycle. We had a U-shaped driveway and the connection was across the front lawn completing the circle track.

The trail across the front lawn was worn in very well indeed. I'm sure if there even was a winner of the races it was in order of age. Winning the race didn't matter because after milking on Saturday night we would all load up in the station wagon and go to "Tasty Treat" for ice cream.

One time when we were on our way to "Tasty Treat" we seen something coming towards the car. It was dark so all I could see were sparks and something flapping. We just about hit head on but Dad swerved and avoided the crash. When it went by we could see that it was a horse. The sparks were from the shoes of the horse on the blacktop. The flapping was the harness that was broken from what it was pulling.

Dad said there must have been an accident with that horse. A mile or two up the road we found that there was a person laying in the middle of the road and there was a car with the spokes from the buggy sticking in the grill. There was horse poop everywhere. Dad went out there and found that the man on the road was dead.

A few minutes later another man was walking back toward where it happened. Turned out he was thrown a long way and ended up on the side of the road. He was alive and walking but his head was laying off to one side. Turned out he had a broken neck. To this day every time I drive past that place on highway 64, I think of what I saw there.

On the brighter side, going to "Tasty Treat", I remember calling it "Tasty Freeze" too, was quite an ordeal. Stuffing 8 kids and 2 adults in an old station wagon had a lot of things involved in it. Loading up the car probably made it squat pretty good. Three of us sat in the back seat and the rest had to climb way back in the cargo area of the ole wagon. There was a bench seat that flipped down. Sometimes one of us would either squeeze in the back seat or the space that was left on the floor way in the back. Something tells me that Patty got to ride in the front between Mom and Dad.

When we got there we all stayed in the car and the waitress would come to Mom's window and get the giant order of ice cream cones. For the most part, all of the rhetoric and teasing stopped as we munched down the yummy cones.

I'm not sure but I think it was bowling night that Bruce and Dean were in charge of watching the rest of us. On bowling night for Mom and Dad was the same night "Hawaii 5 0" was on TV. When the theme song came on Bruce would start to pound on the arm of his chair to the beat of the drum. Then we all joined in and by the time the song was over all you could hear was everybody pounding like a bunch of crazy people. As soon as the song was done Bruce would make us all be quiet because he wanted to hear the show. We all watched it because the "big boys" did.

There were many long hot summer days and since our barn was partially underground we would hang out there because it was cooler. There were dividers between the stalls that helped keep the cows in place. On the long summer days the cows were all outside and the dividers between the stalls made a perfect shape of a horse.

We would use a burlap gunny sack to wrap around the lower part for sitting on and we would use the strings from the bags to tie on the back to make a tail. If I remember right, when Deb would come out to ride, she would go all out and use the sack strings to make a perfect mane on her horse. I thought it was a little too much. We used bailer twine to tie around the front for the reins. Another bailer twine was tied over the top and hung down on each side for the stirups. Sometimes our horses would stay saddled up when the cows came in for milking so we could us them again the next day.

Up in the haymow was a pretty good place to pass lots of time. There was always the rope for swinging almost all the way across the mow. Most of the time there would be a litter of kittens liveing somewhere up there.

Sometimes we would find frogs while we bailed hay and we would stomp on them so we could nail them up on the walls in the haymow. So after a while there were skelitons hanging up on the walls.

I know I help build some of the most elabrate underground tunnels that you would have to crawl through to get to the secrete hayfort. If you were unfamiliar with the tunnels you might end up in a dark place falling in a hidden drop off.

Then there where the few years that we made all chopped hay instead of bailing. I remember us talking about how all we would do is drive tractor and blow it into the mow for chopped hay. Easy for summer time but in the winter scooting all that chopped hay was a lot more work. If we bailled all the hay it was a lot of work in the summer heat loading wagons out in the fields and then stacking all the hay right tight to the roof boards of the mow.

The best part about makeing chopped hay was that we could make slides that would be almost from the roof to the floor. Thats probably about a thirty foot drop and would be very itchy from the chaff that would end up in my clothes.

In the early seventies we had a new silo put up so we didn't need to do as much bailing. Trucks came in and dropped off all the staves, roof sections and other parts for the silo. What I remeber most about this is that it was when I seen my first rachet wrench. When they hung up the metal rings that went around the silo they had to tighten them in hundreds of places so the ratcheting sound was often. I walked around for a while trying to figure out what that strange clicking sound was. When I found out what it was I watched them for a long time. I'm sure the ratchet and socket thing was around before then but I don't remember it untill then.

Milking the cows was done with bucket milkers. Dad told us about how he had to dump the milk into the old time milk cans and try to keep it cold in the summer and keep it from freezing in the winter. I'm sure there was a lot more to it than that but I wasn't around then.

In the days that I did know about Dad dumped the milk into a pail and Bruce and Dean had to carry every bit of the milk up the walk, up the hill to the milk house and lift it up into a strainer on top of the bulk tank. So if you think about the fact that the barn was about fourty feet long and then uphill in the end it was quite a job. They called it "Nourishment".

I don't know how it came about but at one point Dad brought home a great big stainless steal bucket with a lid. Sometimes more than one cows milk would fit in the big bucket so Bruce and Dean didn't need to carry as many times but they were heavier!

At one point we got a "step saver". It has a resivoir on wheels that we took right down by the cows and a long hose took the milk all the way up to the bulk tank. I'm sure Bruce and Dean were glad but it also meant that none of the rest of us will have to carry over 1500 lbs of milk to the tank every day like they did.

There was always a radio playing in the barn so anytime you were in there you could hear it. We heard the high school football games dureing the evening milking and one time we heard Dean's name come over the radio. He signaled for a "fair catch" after a punt. The oposing team had hit him so he drew a 15 yard penalty. Dad said something about it that I don't remember but I do remember that he was smileing when he heard Dean's name.

Beside playing football Dean was in the band. He played the trumpet and at one point the Medford band played at a Packer game. When he got home he was showing one of his dirty white band gloves to everybody and telling us the story about it. He said he slaped Dave Hampton on the ass as he went by and he was never going to wash the glove. I always wondered if he saved that glove.

Speaking of Dean and his trumpet reminds me of something that was one of the neatest things. For almost one whole summer, right around the time the sun was going down he would go outside and play Taps. It sounded so good out there in the wide open farm feilds. I think there was a time when L.H., a neighbor lady, called and told him he forgot to go outside and play Taps. Then he went out and played it for her.