I was born the first time in East St. Louis Illinois, June 14th 1942. Of course you must know that that is "Flag Day". I thought they placed flags out for my birthday for a long time but found out that that was not the reason at all.
My mom and dad gave me a sister ( Lynette ) two years later so I could have someone to pick on, but we got along too well to do that.We grew up together very close and to everyone's surprise along came another sister ( Vanessa )when I was 11 years old.
As I look back life was really good. I had a lot of fun as a kid and enjoyed going the my grandparents to spend sometimes a week with them. I probably was a pain but they never let on that I was.
I loved to walk behind my grandfather as he plowed behind a horse and sometimes behind a mule. It amazed me the amount of dirt that my grandfather could collect in his shoes and still walk. We would take a break at the branch where my grandfather would have a jug of water laying in it to keep cool and he would light up his pipe and puff on it. I can still remember the circles of smoke rising above his head. Then he would be back at trying to plow up the ground to plant corn.
When I was with my grandmother, we would do all sorts of things. We would sometimes take long walks over the hills and pick huckleberries or muskiedines or we would collect seeds, rocks and all sorts of things. We even had a place we use to walk to where people dumped their trash and we just loved to look through that stuff. Saving jars for my grandmother to can her fruits and vegetables. Sometimes around July and August we would go down to the fields that my grandfather had planted and there would be watermelons growing among the field peas. They would plant them there mostly because I loved watermelons and they were just what I needed while on one of those adventures.
I saw a lot of different things as young boy staying with them. Everything from making lye soap to drying fruit in the sun. They didn't have the indoor bathrooms we have today and our bath was in a wash tub that had set out in the sun to warm the water. If you could have been there you could perhaps have caught me streaking across the backyard to the house.
I loved to hunt and fish and as a kid I learned early to handle a shotgun. I would hunt those hills and grandma would cook it for me unless I wanted to show mom and dad. I remember my grandma making my grandfather take me to duck hunt. He didn't want to go because he didn't like hunting and didn't even have a gun but grandma had a way of letting him know he was going to take me. He took me fishing a few time and he would just sit and watch me fish. Of course that pipe would be sending those circles of smoke up into the air. Sort of reminded me the the trains of those days. They finally had a pond dug and I think mostly for me, but they needed one anyway for the few head of cattle they had.
I could go on and on about those times but I stayed also at my other grandparents house sometimes too. It was great where I played under the big trees that was there and I even had an uncle that built a baby bed for my first daughter out of the black walnut tree that I use to play under.
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