The Early Years

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I was born on August 19, 1934, in an old farmhouse built by my grandfather in the 1800s on Wheeler Road near the small town of Maple City, Michigan.

What I want to do here is give my life story in case my children, grandchildren, and anyone else wishes to know some of my experiences in life.

This will not always be in chronological order as I plan to put things down as I think of them rather than creating a long, drawn-out, boring story. 

This is not just my story, as I think it is more important to also include other people who have been players in parts of my life.

I wish to recognize my mother and father for enduring the enormously hard task of devoting themselves to raising six children while living in poverty.

In 1940, my dad was working for a local resort we called Dunn's Farm. It was on Glen Lake, which was about 3 miles from our farm.

He was paid $12.00 a week for six full days, plus milking the cows on Sunday.

I was born on the old farm that was started by my grandfather, William Sweet.

I believe he might have gotten the land for free, as the government wanted to get the land settled.

I can picture my grandfather starting to clear the land with a team of horses and a cross-cut saw. How he got someone to work the other end of the two-man saw, I do not know. I assume my grandfather lived with another settler until he built the buildings. I imagine he sold logs to get money for buildings and other expenses. He most likely had logs from the farm sawed into lumber for the buildings.

I was born in 1934 after my dad had taken over the farm due to my grandfather's illness. There was no road past the farm, just two tracks made mostly by wagon wheels in the beginning and later by automobiles. There was no electricity or indoor plumbing except for a hand pump connected to a cistern that collects rainwater for washing clothes. There was a small basement that had the remains of a furnace that had long since become unusable. In its place was a potbelly stove in the room above the basement. There was also a kitchen stove in another room for cooking meals and heating water for washing clothes and bathing. Lighting consisted of kerosene lamps and a lantern for use in the barn at night.

There was very little heat in the second-floor bedrooms on cold winter nights.

Very little time was wasted getting into bed at night or getting dressed in the morning.

We were about to lose the farm due to unpaid taxes, which my father was unable to pay.

When I was born, there was no road past the farm, just a pair of ruts in the sand, initially caused by wagon wheels and later by autos as they began to become available.

The road wound around trees that had not been cut by the farmers in the area.

Now comes one of those things we call synchronicity.

When I was about five years old, the county decided to build a new road that would run past the farm.

Fortunately, the county was looking for gravel to use to build the road, and they found a gravel pit on the farm, high up on the hill in the woods.

The gravel was sold to the county, and the farm was saved. And what a joy it was for us kids.

We each picked a truck driver and rode all day long as they hauled the gravel and spread it on the road. The drivers had us kids entertain them by singing songs that we knew. I remember singing:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

You make me happy when the skies are gray

You'll never know, dear, how much I love you

Please don't take my sunshine away

You can find this beautiful song on YouTube

My mother once told me that the worst thing she washed were snotty handkerchiefs.

Once wet, the snot turned into an icky slime that was difficult to get rid of.

Bear in mind that washing was done with a washtub and washboard.

Water was heated on a wood-fired kitchen stove, and a bar of soap was rubbed on the clothes as needed.

Her knuckles would sometimes bleed due to scraping them on the washboard.

At the time, there were five children.

After washing in one tub and rinsing in another, they had to be wrung out and hung out to dry on a clothesline outdoors.

This presented a problem in the winter as the clothes would sometimes freeze and not dry until the temperature warmed up.

Imagine today if everyone were required to go back to this kind of washing.

It must have been around 1938 that my dad bought a washing machine.

I suspect he bought it through the Spiegel catalog, as we did with almost everything we had.

I don't believe they charged any interest back then, and as long as you paid a little each month, you could go on for a long time before you caught up.

Since we did not have electricity, it was powered by a gas engine. Because of the gas fumes, it had to be run on the back porch.

Water had to be heated on the kitchen stove and carried to the washer.

I believe it also had a ringer, so my mother did not have to ring the clothes by hand.

Ironing was done with some heavy metal irons that were heated on the kitchen stove.

At least two irons were necessary, so a second iron was hot when the first one cooled down.

Rainwater from a cistern in the ground was used for washing and bathing.

I went to kindergarten two years in a row, so I jokingly tell people that I flunked.

The real story is that in my first year, I was only four years old, so it didn't count, even though I was issued a report card showing that I had passed.

My mother wanted some relief, so she sent me to school with my 10-year-old sister.

My brother Stan had just been born, and so it was rather stressful trying to keep track of an overactive 4-year-old while tending to a baby along with all the many other things that a farm woman had to do.