Category: Early Life

Early memories often shape us in ways we don’t fully understand until much later.

These are the stories from my earliest years—moments of childhood, family, and the beginnings of a life that would unfold in ways I never could have imagined.

Tweety Bird

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My paternal great-grandmother raised parakeets.

Tweety Bird…Not the original, but they look alike.

Whenever we went to her house, I would stand beside the bird cage and watch them. They fascinated me. It was the only time I ever got to observe birds up close.

One day, Grandma ‘Rene — her name was Irene, but everyone in the family called her Grandma ‘Rene — asked Monty and me if we would like to take one home.

Of course we said yes! We were so excited.

Given Mom’s slight aversion to birds, she was less enthused, but she allowed it.

Grandma gave us a cage, and we took him home.

Monty and I named him Tweety Bird after the cartoon character.

Cleaning the cage fell to Mom. She was an excellent housekeeper, so she cleaned it often. When the weather was nice, she took the cage outside and cleaned it on the sidewalk.

The last time she cleaned it… was the last time she cleaned it.

She had set the cage down on the sidewalk and slid the removable bottom out so she could clean it properly.

Unfortunately, she forgot to slide it back in before she picked up the cage.

Before she could react, Tweety Bird saw his opportunity — and he was a caged bird no more.

Mom said he flew up into the tree by the back door, but there was no way she could catch him.

He soon flew away, never to be seen again.

I think she felt bad when she had to tell us what happened when we came home from school.

We knew it was an accident, and she really did feel bad — but we couldn’t resist teasing her that we thought she did it on purpose because we knew she wasn’t fond of birds.

The Turtle in the Truck

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My parents grew up during the Great Depression. Dad grew up on a farm where it was common to eat what you could raise or hunt.

Mom, having grown up in the same era, understood this in a way we might find a little more difficult today. I know Dad brought her rabbit, squirrel, and occasionally had her cook him a mess of frog legs.

One day, when Mom was running the Kewanee milk route alone, she got quite a surprise when one of Dad’s “acquisitions” crawled out from under the seat of the milk truck.

The acquisition?

A soft-shelled turtle—that Dad had intended to make into turtle soup.

Since I wasn’t there and only heard the story later, I can only imagine the look on my mother’s face.

If I’ve given you the impression that she didn’t like animals, that’s not strictly true. She did—but mostly puppies and kittens. She didn’t like unwelcome surprises, and this one definitely qualified.

I don’t know whether she was driving when it happened or if she had already stopped at the next farm.

I only know that she got out of the truck and refused to get back in until the turtle was gone.

The farmer at the stop had to remove it for her. Mom wasn’t about to touch that turtle, and she made it very clear she wasn’t getting back into the truck until it was gone.

The farmer ended up with the turtle.

Dad missed having turtle soup—

…and so did the turtle.

The Lawn Chair Incident

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In the summer and on Saturdays, my brother and I usually went with Mom when she ran the milk route for Dad.

It wasn’t unusual for them to stop for a little while to chat with the people they had become friends with, although they couldn’t stay long because the milk trucks in those days were not refrigerated.

One afternoon, Mom stopped to visit with a farmer and his wife. She went inside the house, but Monty and I stayed outdoors.

It was a beautiful day—warm, with blue skies and plenty of sunshine. We decided to sit in the folding lawn chairs under a shade tree.

I don’t remember what we were talking about, but Monty sat in his chair with his long legs touching the ground. My legs were much shorter, so I sat on the edge of the chair, swinging my feet.

That’s when disaster struck.

My position on the chair and the motion of swinging my feet caused it to fold up—catching my ring finger on my right hand between two pieces of metal. My weight pressed down hard on my smashed finger.

I started screaming at the top of my lungs.

Monty ran to get Mom, but he didn’t make it as far as the house before all three adults came tearing out and rushed to my side.

The farmer tried to unfold the chair, but he couldn’t. He grabbed some tools to take it apart, but he became frantic—probably because I was still screaming.

He partially took the chair apart… and partially ripped it apart.

I heard Mom say something about not ruining his chair, and he said he didn’t care. There were some curse words in there too, but I don’t remember what they were.

The only choice was to take me to the hospital.

Since Mom’s only transportation was the milk truck, the farmer bundled us into his car after his wife gave Mom a white cotton dish towel to wrap around my finger.

The only access to the highway to Hammond-Henry Hospital in Kewanee was a narrow gravel road with long, steep hills.

The farmer was in a hurry, so he drove as fast as he safely could.

I had stopped screaming once my finger was released from the chair, but now I was sobbing.

I sobbed all the way up the first hill…

…and laughed all the way down it.

The sudden drop always made me laugh.

As soon as we started up the next hill, I cried again—then laughed all the way down.

I think there were three hills in all, and it happened every time.

When we finally ran out of hills, I cried all the way to the hospital.

Fortunately, my finger wasn’t broken. The doctor bandaged it and sent me home.

After taking us back, Mom finished the milk route, although I don’t remember the rest of it.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that if I let my arm drop to my side, my finger started to throb—so I held it close to my chest for the rest of the afternoon.

When we got home, Mom made a sling for me out of a dish towel.

I was pretty proud of that sling.

To this day, that same finger is still slightly smaller than the ring finger on my left hand. It’s less noticeable now, and I doubt anyone else would see it…

…but I do.

Because I know what caused it.

No Brakes on Main Street

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Mom was running the Kewanee milk route for Dad one day, picking up milk in big heavy cans and hauling them to the Galva Creamery Company. Dad had a deal worked out with the farmers so they loaded the cans for her. When Dad ran the route, he usually helped them.

Monty and I were with her that day. We had been singing songs like we usually did. Our favorites were The Marine’s Hymn and The Caissons Go Rolling Along.

Suddenly, Mom stopped singing and told us to get down on the floor. She didn’t shout, but we could tell by the tone of her voice that she meant business. We didn’t question it—we got down immediately.

We asked her what was wrong.

“The engine died,” she said. “When the engine dies, the air brakes don’t work.”

I had been looking through the windshield just before she told us to get down. We were a little less than halfway down a hill.

The light at the bottom of the hill turned red.

That meant the cross traffic had the right of way.

I remember seeing the cars sitting there at the intersection.

I’m guessing the drivers saw the crazy people in the big runaway milk truck coming down the hill a little too fast and decided it might be best to stay right where they were.

Mom gripped the big steering wheel and kept the truck pointed straight down the hill.

The truck was heavy with a full load of milk cans. Once it started downhill, there was no way to stop it without brakes.

My stomach did that flip-flop thing it does when you go down a hill too fast. Usually it made me laugh.

This time it didn’t.

It all happened so fast. We made it through the stoplight without mishap. We were still rolling, but Mom finally got the engine started again and pulled off to the side of the highway.

We waited there for a few minutes. Then Mom pulled back into traffic and continued on to the creamery in Galva.

I was only six years old, but that is something I will never forget.

Doctors Make House Calls

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Or, at least they did in the 1950s.

I woke up one morning with a fever. Mom made me stay in bed and said I couldn’t go to school. She brought me some of my Little Golden Books and my favorite doll to entertain me. She called the doctor and made arrangements for him to make a house call later that afternoon.

I was fine with the books and my doll for a while, but I got bored. I had seen the books so many times. I don’t remember if I could read the words yet or just look at the pictures.

Before long, though, Mom brought me a new stack of books. Pearl Mohnen, the mother of the twin boys I played with across the street, had sent over some of theirs. I hadn’t seen them before, and I enjoyed them—but I noticed some had gum stuck to the covers. Boys! None of my books looked like that.

My bedroom was a stair-landing room. There was only enough space for my bed, with room to walk around it on one side. The other side was against the north outside wall. Around the staircase was a railing so no one could accidentally step off the ledge into the open stairway.

That afternoon, the doctor came. He stood on the right side of my bed, and Mom stood at the foot. He took his stethoscope out of his black doctor’s bag and placed it on my chest. I jumped—it was cold! I remember the quiet and the soft daylight in the room.

After talking with Mom, he pulled a pad of paper from his bag and wrote a prescription. Soon, he was gone again.

Mom knew she had to get to the drugstore before it closed, but we were home alone. It was cold and rainy outside, so she didn’t want to take me out—but there was no one to leave me with.

So she wrapped me in a blanket and sat me on a kitchen chair with my Little Golden Books and something with bright colored pieces—maybe her plastic clothespins, though after all these years I can’t quite be sure.

She told me she had to go get my medicine and that she would be right back. I knew where the drugstore was—it was only a couple of blocks away.

She told me not to get off the chair while she was gone.

I didn’t.

Mom knew she could trust me to do what she said—and I knew I could trust her when she said she would be right back. I wasn’t scared, but it did feel a little odd to be in the house alone.

She came right back, just as she said she would.

Autumn Leaves and Training Wheels

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Leaves crunched under my feet. The tall oak trees surrounding our school were alive with color as the blue sky and late afternoon sun filtered through them. The crisp autumn air held the faint scent of burning leaves somewhere in the neighborhood.

I was six years old, and the sheer beauty of the day felt like it was wrapped around me.

We had moved into town a few months earlier. Our house and the school were only a block apart, both along the highway that ran through town.

My friend, Susie, and I had agreed to meet back at school that day. She had received a new bike with training wheels for her birthday, and she told me she would teach me to ride it. But first, we had to go home and ask our mothers if it was okay.

Mom gave me permission, but reminded me to stop, look, and listen before crossing the street—and not to cross the highway under any circumstances.

Susie met me at the school a short time later, and that’s how I learned to ride a bike.

Susie rode it first, showing me what to do.

Soon it was my turn.

At first, I just sat on the bike. Then I slowly started pedaling. It wasn’t quite as easy as it had looked when Susie rode it. The handlebars wobbled, and I felt a flicker of frustration.

But once the wheels began to move and I found the rhythm of it, the wobble settled. By the time we reached the end of the block, I was more proud than frustrated.

Susie kept pace alongside me to the other end of the block. I turned the bike around, and she rode it back while I kept pace with her.

We continued in this way for a while, until the sun got lower in the sky and we knew it was time to go home.

By then, I was pretty sure I wanted a little bike with training wheels of my own.

I crossed the street toward home, the sound of leaves still crunching under my shoes, carrying the whole golden afternoon with me.

Nap Rugs and Sugar Plum Fairies

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Whenever I hear “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies,” I am six years old again, lying on a nap rug in my first grade classroom—warm and safe.

Kindergarten wasn’t required back then, so first grade was my first real taste of school—and I loved it.

After lunch, my teacher — Mrs. Quanstrom — told us to get out our nap rugs and lie down. She turned off the lights, but the room never got completely dark. The tall classroom windows still let in the afternoon light, filtered through the oak trees that lined that side of the school.

After turning off the lights, she put a record on the classroom player. I don’t remember all of the songs she played, but “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” was my favorite.

The room was very quiet except for the music. We could take a nap if we wanted to, but I was always too interested in listening.

The rug beneath me was soft. Mom knew why the teacher asked us to bring one, so she chose a rug she knew would be comfortable to lie on.

I don’t remember ever falling asleep. I was too busy listening—to the music, to the quiet, to the feeling of being exactly where I belonged.

I didn’t always keep my eyes closed, but I did most of the time. And when “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” played, I could see them in my imagination.

The fairies were small and light, and they danced and twirled in the air above me.

Even now, when I hear that music, I am six years old again, lying on that soft rug in a classroom washed in afternoon light.

I am still lying on that rug.

And I can still see the fairies.

No, I never did fall asleep during nap time.

I was already dreaming.

First Grade

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Around the time I first started school, I went shopping with Mom, Dad, and Monty for school supplies. I was so excited! I remembered the years when my brother went to school and I had to stay behind. Now I would never be left behind again.

When we got to the store, it was decided that Dad would help me pick out my supplies while Mom helped Monty. When everything had been chosen, Dad paid for the supplies. He was still carrying my tablet under his arm.

We left the store and had only gone a few feet when I heard him say, “Oh, no! I forgot to pay for the tablet.”

Without another word, he turned around and went back into the store — still clutching it to his chest — and apologized to the clerk for the mistake.

The only real experience I had with school before starting myself was the day I went with my brother — a memory I’ve written about before.

I can’t remember the exact first day of school. What I do remember is the school and the classroom itself.

The school was a tall, square building made of dark brick. It stood exactly one block from home. I couldn’t guess what school would be like, but I was anxious to find out.

I remember the inside of my classroom — from the wall of windows where the light filtered through the oak trees outside, to the crayon color chart on the wall with the names of each color printed in bold lettering. I remember my cubby, too. We each had one with our name printed on it to keep our nap rugs in.

We would move again before the end of the school year, but this is where I met Dick and Jane, Baby Sally and their pets, Spot and Puff. It is also where I learned that colors had names that I could write and someone else could read — and that classical music could make a child sit still and listen… and imagine.

Never Far From Home

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From the summer before I started school, until the spring of my third grade year, I attended five different schools.

One place we stayed a couple of years. Three others we stayed a very short time, hardly more than a few months. In the third grade alone, I attended four different schools. I never questioned why until much later in life, when it was too late to ask anyone.

We moved from the farm, near Viola, Illinois, to Galva, Illinois, 30 miles to the east. There I started school in 1958. 

By the spring of the next year, we moved back to the Viola area, near Aledo, Illinois. I finished first grade here, attended all of second grade, but before Christmas of the third grade, we moved again, this time 44 miles west to Burlington, Iowa. I was disappointed because I had a part in the upcoming Christmas play.

I remember we spent Christmas in Burlington, but we moved again shortly after, this time 72 miles northeast to Rock Island, Illinois.

We didn’t stay long in Rock Island, either, and by spring we moved again. Our move this time took us back to my mother‘s childhood home in the small village of Millersburg, Illinois, 7 miles northwest of Aledo. 

There I would live for more than 40 years.

If you wonder why I mention the distances between towns, it is to show that we were never far from Aledo, where I was born in Mercer County Hospital in 1952 — the same hospital where my own children would be born years later. We never strayed far from our roots or our families.

My parents are gone now, so I can’t ask them why we moved so often during those three years. With the moves came job changes for Dad.

Looking back, I understand more than I did then. Those were hard years in the Midwest. Jobs weren’t always steady, and people took work wherever they could find it.

But as a child, I didn’t see any of that.

Both Mom and Dad were very hard workers — and my dad always had a job. If one ended, another one soon followed. We never went without anything. If things were tough for them, they never let us feel it.

All I knew was that we kept moving…

and somehow, we were never very far from home.

Mom, Meet Butch!

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One afternoon when I was five, my mother put me down for an afternoon nap and decided to join me.

We were both sleeping soundly when we heard those words:

“Mom, meet Butch!”

We didn’t know anyone named Butch.

Mom opened her eyes.

She was face to face with an owl.

Butch the screech owl. And my brother was holding him.

Mom wasn’t amused.

It was well-known in our family that she didn’t like birds — at least not in her face. Or in her house. Or anywhere near her. Or near us kids.

She didn’t mind them from a distance, but she said they were dirty and carried mites. I wasn’t sure what mites were, but I got the idea they were some kind of crawly bug. Turns out I was right.

I don’t remember actually seeing the bird myself. I always took my glasses off when I was sleeping so I wouldn’t break them.

My brother wasn’t in the room much longer than it took to say those few words before Mom sent him scrambling back to the barn to put the owl back where he found it — cautioning him never to do that again.

Loudly.

Butch must have been a juvenile or Monty likely couldn’t have caught him. It never occurred to me to ask.

I do know Monty never brought a bird in the house again — or any other stray animal.

Sometimes I wonder if his ears were still ringing when he got back to the barn.