Life’s Lessons

I was in church one day and our pastor was talking about trust. He referred to a child’s trust. Once in a while, as we go through life, a powerful lesson comes our way. Some call it a “Light Bulb” moment. The thing that we were supposed to have learned is to forgive and forget. I thought of my life and the things I have to forgive and forget.

Today I decided to write memories of events that have been with me throughout my life, some altering the way I deal with people and some with things. I will start with generalities about childhood, then on to my life.

A child trusts their parents completely. This trust is natural from the moment of birth. The mother suckles her young and holds them lovingly in her arms. When he or she cries mom is there, when the child tries to walk mom is there to kiss every bump, and when the child first walks it is a much-celebrated event for the parents, grandparents and friends. Trust is learned as well as natural.

From this place of complete trust in a child’s life the world is full of discoveries. The world seems to revolve around them. Life is good! Everything is funny and the child’s life is full of laughter. As the child continues to grow some things that go bump in the night are experienced. Bad things happen. As more and more of the unpleasant things happen to a child they become cautious and guarded. No longer is everything funny and filled with laughter. They learn that some things can be bad.

For me the sermon seemed to fit.

My Life.

I remember several events, or was told of these events by my mother. The first house where I lived was on North Main Street in Russell Kansas. When I was a toddler playing in the yard I became “hung” on the picket fence in the back yard, I was stuck with a picket under my chin. How this happened… nobody knows.

Another was when my brother, Bert, and I were going to Joyce Becker’s birthday party. Mom had us dressed in our “Sundays Best” clothes. She sent us off and did not hear from us for the longest time. Finally she got a call from the local railroad yard. They told her that two boys were running around the yard in their underwear. Joyce’s mom had called the party off because she was sick. Bert and Bob had gone to the rail yard, got into a wench truck, let the hook fall into a stack of lime bags and then had been playing in the lime when discovered by the railroad yard workers. What happened to their clothes… no one knows?

The next memory was of Bert and I attempting do hammer nails into the tires of Dad’s car. Daddy was home for lunch. When Mom pointed it out to Dad he said “They can’t drive a nail into a tire. Have you ever tried to do that?” When he set out for work he had two flat tires.

The last event was when Bert hit me on top of the head with a claw hammer. It seems that my cousin Danny and Bert were fighting over the hammer and Bert won the struggle. I was standing nearby and the hammer went up over his head and onto mine. Ouch! I think I remember the spankings.

Now I come to my own memories.

By 1945 our family had moved to a new home in the Theron addition on Oakdale Street in Russell. One of my first memories was when Uncle Hank came home from WWII. He was quite a guy because he had bought a brand new 1946 Plymouth convertible and he had a lot of money.

He was really good to Bert, Phyllis, Karen and me.

The next thing I remember was that Daddy got mad one evening at the supper table and slammed his fist down into a bowl of mashed potatoes. The potatoes went all over him, the table, the walls and the floor. It was funny to Bert and me. We were in trouble… again.

One evening when Mom and Dad were entertaining I came out of our bedroom, lifted the lid of the hamper and peed in it. I turned and went back to bed. I was sleep walking…

Then there was Phyllis’s doll. The doll had eyes that closed when you lay her down. Bert and I were very curious as to why the eyes closed. So we took the dolly down stairs and did surgery. The hair was hard to work around and we had to use one of Dad’s tools to open the head. But there we found the lead weights on the wires attached to the eyes. We put it back together to the best of our ability. It wasn’t good enough for Phyllis. She Cried… Mom’s solution… Bert and I worked for weeks to earn enough money to buy a new doll.

Another thing that was happening to me living on Oakdale, I started noticing girls. There were five girls my age living within three blocks of us. They were Melinda, Margaret, Charlotte, Jill and Virginia. My first experience of playing with a girl was with Jill.

There was a room or loft over her parent’s garage. We would go up there and play for hours. I fondly remember Jill. But they moved away from us and joined the Jehovah’s Whiteness church. That put them in another world from us.

I started kindergarten and all five girls were in my class. When I graduated high school all five girls were still in my class. Melinda, Margaret and Virginia were varsity Cheerleaders in our senior year. Yea, they were good looking…

Mom and Dad built a new house a few blocks down Oakdale on a cross street named Culp. We were only a few houses from Virginia’s house. Virginia’s parents were the owners of the Derry Queen Ice cream Parlor. It was just behind and across an alley from their house. That made it a local hangout for youngsters.

The Derry Queen was on US highway 40. And across the highway was an auto salvage named Solmer’s Auto Wrecking. Bert and I spent many an hour there finding parts and hubcaps for our cars. There was a dirt road running along the east side of the wrecking yard that lead to Grandpa and Grandma’s house. It was dirt for two blocks and passed through a creek. There was no bridge. So when it rained it was muddy and crossing the creek was a challenge. The road continued on for several blocks as a gravel road. Our grandparents lived on Third Street. So we only had to travel two blocks of dirt road and one block of gravel road to get to Third Street. Their house was up hill a half block west. At this time it too was a gravel road.

This was the environment where I grew to adolescence. My maternal grandparents were close-by, my paternal grandmother lived with us at times; Uncle Hank and Uncle Tommy were a big part of our lives and hometown was a huge part of our growing up.

Only a block behind, east of, our house was an open field or pasture where horses grazed. It was a big neighborhood-gathering place for youngsters. Bert and I were always building forts and other things there. Once we found a cable, looked like one from a drilling unit, discarded in the pasture. Bert and I got the bright idea of stringing it from a large tree down across a creek. You could take a hook or anchor, hook it over the cable and slide down and across the creek. Very daring!

Well, much to our chagrin, it was not fool proof. On one trip down Bert let go of the anchor and fell. The anchor rebounded up and came off of the cable. It then proceeded to drop onto Bert’s head. A scalp wound is very bloody!

Often coming to this pasture was Melinda and her older sister Rachael. They came to ride the horses bareback. There I got to know and like Melinda. I should have known her before; after all we shared the same kindergarten class. I went to the same church and sang in the same choir. I sang in the choir to be with her. I had bought a 1940 Mercury convertible. I was very proud of it. I drove her to and from choir practice and to church. From there things were a blur and she soon was dating my best friend, Jerry Galyardt, for the rest of our high school years.

Guys never get it. In the summer after our sophomore year I started dating Marj Eurich. She was in the eighth grade when we were sophomores. Marj and I were instantly very close. We went to the drive-in theater often. On the way to the drive-in we passed a scrap metal business named “Mountain Iron”. She used to joke with me, “Mountain Iron” / “Valley Tin”, pointing to her bra. That is when I learned that some bra’s had metal in them. By the end of the summer her parents were concerned that we were too hot of a thing, they went on a family vacation. I didn’t see her until the next school year. By then she was dating another of my very good friends, Gerald Reinhardt.

When reality set in I was devastated. I went from this close relationship where silence was a form of communication to “Its over”. I was having suicidal thoughts. I remember driving my car as fast as it would go with tears rolling down my cheeks. I vowed to never ever have that happen to me again.

Back at school things were different for me. I was focused on setting my direction for a career. I had entered into an agreement with my Mom’s boss, the Chief if Police, to work toward an appointment to the Naval Academe Annapolis. The district attorney was Bob Dole. He was going to do the work. I only had to write a letter explaining my background and scholastic performance. So from there on girls were only play things to me. I had many dates and a couple of relationships, but none serious to me. I probably passed over what could have been a rose while pursuing who knows what.

By graduation I learned that the appointment to Annapolis was not going to happen. My parents had divorced and chances for help going to school was out of the question. I had studied other alternatives. The Navy had a program named “Nuclear Power School” where you would get some college courses and certification to work in the nuclear power field. The only catch was a six year commitment. What else did I have to do? I signed up.