As I begin this post, I want to preface it by saying that last Saturday I attended a Family Discovery Day hosted by our church. It was a full day of learning how to better search out our family histories. One of the "classes" I attended was "Everyone has a Story." While it was primarily about interviewing "elderly" family members to preserve their memories and histories, it really hit home to me that when she created this blog and accompanying book of questions for me, my daughter Brooks was really "interviewing" me in a way that she knew would be rather fun for me and that would also preserve my information. So, now that I've gone through the topics that most interested me, I'm going back to the beginning of her questions and just going to start answering them...
So. My family. A rather typical family of the 50s & 60s, I'd say. Dad went to work as a General Contractor every day. I know he still helped out sometimes on his family's farm in Oswego, IL. I only know that because I remember going with my mom to take him lunch during planting or harvesting times and I remember crying for the sheep that I saw him shearing in the barn. I was definitely a "Daddy's girl" and looked forward to sitting on his lap watching TV with him on the evenings he was at home. Bonanza on Sunday nights and Ben Casey on Monday nights were the best! Not that I particularly liked the shows or understood what they were about, but I sure liked having those special times with my dad.
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With my dad in his rocking chair.
Picture taken with our new Polaroid
Instant Camera!!! |
My mom was a real mom. Not much of a homemaker from the cooking/cleaning aspect but a mom who taught me love, manners, respect, and how to laugh. I've always thought of her as a women's libber before her time. She had a plaque in her kitchen that said "My home is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy." And it was.She taught me how to do the dishes, dust and vacuum. She let me turn the handle on the meat grinder to turn Sunday's leftover roast beef into homemade hash. She let me put the chocolate chip cookie dough on the cookie sheets after she sliced them from the Pillsbury wrapper and she let me lick the beaters after she mixed a cake from the Betty Crocker cake mix.She was the PTA president, room mother, cub scout den mother, school volunteer and member of a bowling league. (That's where she was on Monday nights when my dad and I watched Ben Casey!) She'd help in the barn at milking time when my brothers were gone and she'd drive the tractor while my dad stood on the wagon to grab the bales of hay. She never quite got the hang of the clutch and nearly threw Dad off the wagon on multiple occasions! She had a temper and would become even angrier as my brothers taunted her by running in circles around the dining room table as she chased them with the belt. (I never remember her actually hitting them with it, but watching the chase was enough to put me in tears.) She loved sports, particularly baseball and it seemed like we LIVED at the baseball park in the summers as Al played pony league and Bill major league.She loved to participate in a family game of ball in the yard on the farm, but I fear I was a great disappointment with ZERO athletic talent or coordination.
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Mom in a dreaded dress with
"Miem" at Grandma Zielke's house
(Pants were much more the norm
for my mom!!!) |
Bill was 10-years-old when I was born. He was my protector and did the big brother things like reading to me and remembering to win stuffed animals for me at the fair. His friends were pretty attentive to me and I remember that I always planned on marrying his friend Roy Parker when I grew up. Bill played the trumpet in band and orchestra; was a boy scout and played football and baseball. I still remember sitting on the couch in the living room and looking at his senior picture a few weeks after we had taken him to Iowa to start his freshman year of college. Suddenly, I burst into tears, not even really understanding why. All I knew was that I wanted my big brother to be at home.
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| Boy Scout, Billy |
Al, who was seven when I was born, was the fun brother. He played more games with me; made up most of them and NEVER showed me any mercy to let me win. (At least that's how it seemed...) I remember having VERY RED hands after playing a hand slap game where I'd have to put my hands, palms down, on top of his hands, palms up, and try to pull them away before he could flip his hands over to slap mine. Remember, I said I wasn't very coordinated; my reflexes weren't that great either apparently. Al played the trombone in band and orchestra, was a boy scout and played baseball and basketball.
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Al's senior picutre
1965 |
There were always pets. When I was born, we had a Boston Terrier (exactly one year and two days older than me) named Boots. When we moved to the farm in Wisconsin we had dogs: Boots, a collie named Copper, a black lab named Buck (cuz Bill bought him for $1), an abandoned black lab named Lady, Little Buck and Pickles. (Little Buck was the son of Buck and Lady; Pickles was the daughter of Lady and the neighborhood Beagle...) There were also about 10 cats (Slippers, Snoop, DC, Goldie, etc.), 2 ponies: Sandy was mine; Sputnick was Al's with a few special cows and pigs...When we sold the farm and moved back to Aurora, there was another Boston Terrier rescued from an animal shelter: Samson, who had digestive "issues" (...man, Samson could clear a room!) and later, Tinkerbelle, my beagle mix, a birthday present from Bill's family after Samson had to be put down after swallowing one of my beading needles.
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| Dad with me and Boots |
People today refer to the "perfect" Leave it to Beaver-type family and say it's unrealistic, but I think I come from one of those families. Far from perfect, with it's share of worries, heartache, laughter and love, but if you tune in and watch any of those old shows, you'll come to realize that those families weren't perfect either. Every episode would have a challenge or situation to overcome. Ward and June didn't always see eye-to-eye. Wally and Beaver were NOT perfect kids and they had some friends who were NOT good influences (i.e. Eddie Haskell), but in each episode, you would see the family work together to RESOLVE the problem, to learn and to grow. What made that family perfect was their desire to work together and to know their binding link was the love they shared. Yeah, I was pretty blessed to have the family I had and pray that my children can look back and feel that I tried my best to create that kind of family for them as well.
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