July 10, 2020

We had very little money. My mother taught in country schools until she finally earned a BS degree after attending summer school, while I was growing up. She got permission from the County Superintendent to teach my brothers and me at one of those schools. I learned a lot sitting in a one room school way out in the country. My fourth and fifth grade experience was in a corner of Allamakee County called Sand Cove.

My father was a commercial fisherman, working long hours on the back waters of the Mississippi River. My brothers, John and Jim, and I spent our summers in an old shanty on a plot of land that our dad won in a card game. He called it Mini Park, and it lay on the banks of the Minnesota Slough. It is on that little piece of land where I hold my most treasured memories. No water, no electricity, accessible only by boat. We roamed the river bottoms, climbed trees and swung from vines that hung from towering cottonwood trees. Our mom read: “The Bobbsie Twins, “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,” “Tarzan,” and the “Little House” books, by kerosene light. We buried ourselves in an old feather-tic mattress under layers of patchwork quilts when thunder boomed and lightning lit up the night sky.

We felt safe and were loved. We were scolded when we used bad words and misbehaved. Our mother taught us about God and Jesus Christ. Our dad taught us how not to swear. Although Daddy smoked Camel cigarettes and enjoyed alcohol, he taught us never to do either. We never did. We had little, but we loved life, and loved each other. I am so thankful for the privilege I was blessed with to grow up when and where I did. We didn’t realize that there were rich people who lived in big houses in big cities. I was a young white kid from New Albin, IA. My friends and I felt that we were living the best life. A privileged life.