EARLY MEMORIES

The earliest memory I have we have dated slightly before I was two years old. At that time I remember my father putting me on the back of a horse in our backyard and marching me over to the porch and calling to mother to come out and see her big boy riding a horse. The reason I know it was before two is they got rid of the horses in our yard about the time I turned two.

Those early years were shortly after World War I, so that was still vivid in people’s memories.  We lived on 7^th east.  Across the street was a row of houses, but most of the block was still empty. This block was the next block south of Trolley Square.  We called it the “car barns”. Us boys used to play in the fields across the street and imagined they were trenches in the war.  We would shoot BB guns. It was fortunate that none of us had an eye put out.

Another early memory deals with our neighbor several houses up the street from us. He gave me a job of harnessing his horse to his vegetable wagon and working on it. The horse would pull us up to town to the farmer’s market where he would load his wagon with fresh fruits and vegetables.  On the way we would stop and water the horse at a watering trough which later became a little park and drinking fountain at about sixth south.  We would spend the day on a route selling fruits and vegetables at people’s homes.

Later, I had a job helping on a milk truck delivering milk to homes. This was very difficult for me during the winter because I couldn’t use gloves or the bottles would slip and my bare hands would get freezing holding the bottles of milk.  My pay for that work was 25 cents a day plus a quart of milk to drink for my lunch.

Another job at Christmas time was sponsored by some of my uncles who provided many Christmas trees for me to sell. At the end of the season our backyard still had stacks of trees that had not yet been sold. Many other childhood memories are involved during the three years we lived in Basel, Switzerland, but that should be the subject of some other blog.