Jim's Brother Thirty-Five Short Stories About Growing Up In Rural Wisconsin

.. By Richard A. Dykstra

JIM'S BROTHER Thirty-Five Short Stories About Growing Up In Rural Wisconsin

By Richard A. Dykstra

James nnd Richard Dykstra on Christmas Day in 1951

Copyright © 1999 by Fi eldstone Press

Published by Fieldstone Press P.O. Box 198 Cedar Grove, WI 5301 3 e-mail: [email protected]

Printed by ep>-direct Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

Cover Photo: Rock Ridge Dairy Farm in 1964. [Photo courtesty Dykstra Engineering]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electrnnic or mechanical, without permission.

Special thanks to my wife and children for supporting this project from start to finish.

This book is for Stacy, Christopher, Sally, Erin, and Jordan, and is dedicated to the loving memory of Henry and Elsie Dykstra.

ACKN OWLEDGlVIENTS

Very Special thanks to my wife Linda for encouraging me to continue this project whenever 1 felt like quitting.

Special thanks to historian Jan Hildebrand for providing the foreword for this text.

Special thanks to Pat Premo for copy editing and proofreading several draft copies of this text.

The author also gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following individuals:

Ralph Dykstra, Sidney Dykstra, Margery TenDolle, and Laverne Joosse for providing background information about Mom and Dad's early years.

David Dykstra for verifying specific details discussed in this text and for providing additional input about Dykstra family gatherings, the early days of te levision, and All-Star Wrestling.

Erin Dykstra for inputting and formatting early draft copies of this text.

Jan Hildebrand, David Dykstra, Joan Dykstra, Pat Premo, June VerVelde, Mark Hesselink, Jan Hesselink, Harriet Debbink, and Diana Nett for reviewing early draft copies of the entire text and making suggestions regarding the text.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

No. STORY TITLE Foreword ...... 1J Introduction ...... 13 1. Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra ...... 16 2. Grandpa and Grandma .Janisse ...... 22 3. Morn and Dael ...... 30 4. The Dykstra Place ...... 44 5. Traditions ...... 46 6. klim rnorf ebarn sboof ...... 60 7. The Gift ...... 61 8. The Big Jump ...... 63 9. Moon Dog ...... 65 I 0. The Lumber Yard ...... 68 11. Baseball Was King ...... 70 12. Barnfloor Basketball ...... 74 13. James and the Giant Oil Drum ...... 76 14. Cy the Barber ...... 79 15. The Lady Sl11ck in the Mud ...... 82 16. The Toy Rifle ...... 8 4 17. There's No Dill In Di lemma ...... 87 18. After the Fall ...... 90 19. Cat Names ...... 93 20. Television ...... 95 21. Roger Kent at Ringside ...... 98 22. The Go-Cart ...... I 0 I 23. TWant To Be a Harn ...... I 04 24. The White Corvair ...... 108 25 . The Obsession ...... 11 1 26. No. 272 ...... 114 27. Help Wanted ...... 117 28. Jim's Brother ...... I 21 29. The Bad Poets Society ...... 122 30. When Farming Ruled ...... 124 31. The Favorite ...... 127 32. Fading Dreams of Liberty ...... 129 33. Morn's Meatloaf ...... 134 34. The Tribute ...... 136 35. Return of the Bad Poets Society ...... 138

FOREWORD By Jan Hildebrand

Each of us has a story to tell. Some keep a journal or diary while others write more formally, eventually publishing their memoirs in book form. Richard Dykstra has chosen to tell his story in a series of thirty-five vignettes. Richard, who was raised on a Sheboygan County dairy farm and attended a one­ room school, writes about his childhood and adult years with rueful humor and insightful honesty. Each vignette is short and to the point. From "klim morf ebam sboof' to "The Gift," each story brings a smile, provokes thought, or evokes memories of one's own childhood. There is certain to be at least one favorite for every reader. You'll get to know Jim's Brother in the pages of this book.

11 Richard, Li nda, and S1acy Dykstra in 1969.

12 INTRODUCTION

Religious converts often approach their newfound faith with greater fervor than lifelong believers. This same type of youth­ ful enthusiasm appears to be present in many other converts as well. For the first forty-five years of my life I cared very little about the past and its impact on the future. It is only recently that such things even mattered to me. Part of the reason for my recent change in attitude is the fact that both of my parents passed away within the past five years. While Dad recorded some childhood memories before his passing, Mom did not. l now wish that I knew far more about them. If anyone had told me twenty years ago, or even ten years ago, that the most-watched progratris on my television would be those relating to historical events, I would have thought the sug­ gestion somewhat amusing. But today I watch more of the History Channel and public television than anything else. Over the past five years, my newfound interest in history bas led me to sponsor the construction of a fully-furnished scale model of the one-room school I attended as a child, to serve as project coordinator, co-author, and co-editor of a 236-page text that documents the 150-year hi story of the Village of Cedar Grove, and to co-chair the committee that brought Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands to Cedar Grove to cele­ brate the village's strong Dutch heritage. 1 also recently became a member of the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, a marvelous resource for anyone interested in the history of east-central Wisconsin. Until now, I had not recorded any reflections of the past--

13 something I wish so desperately that my parents and grandpar­ ents would have done.

The Basics I was born in 1948 in rural Sheboygan County, Wisconsin and grew up on a 120-acre dairy farm with an older brother and younger sister. I received my elementary education at Liberty School, a small one-room school located one mile south of my parents' farm. J graduated from Cedar Grove High School in I 966. I moved away from the farm for the very first time in August of 1966 to attend college at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. While I endured city life for the next several years, I did not thrive on it. I longed for the day that I could once again return to the country. l graduated from college in 197 1 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in ElectTical Engineering Technology. At that time l received job offers from across the state and nation. With strong family ties and my love of country Iife, I chose to accept a job offer close to home. My wife and I established our household in Cedar Grove, just eight miles from the farm J grew up on. Major milestones along the road to adulthood include grad­ uating from elementary school in 1962, getting a ham radio license, a driver's license and a job in 1964, buying my first car in 1965, graduating from high school in 1966, getting married in 1968, and graduating from college in 1971. Over the past thirty years my wife and I have been blessed with one son and four daughters who have made us very proud. During that same thirty years I had a job, left that job, had another job, lost that job, and then started my own engineering business. The stories in this text deal both with the road to adulthood and with parent/child relationships after becoming an adult. Many of the recollections presented here are stories that my children begged me to tell them when they were little and begged me to stop telling as they grew older.

14 I Write Like I Read I attended a one-room elementary school during the 1950s, long before most present-day learning disabilities were given much credence. Jf such disabilities had been more thoroughly diagnosed at that time, 1 most certainly would have been labeled with one. The most likely candidate is Attention-Deficit Disorder. I did not read well as a child, I did not read well as a teen, and I do not read well as an adult. The problem was so severe that while at college, in pursuit of an engineering degree, I sought professional help. There, a test was devised to track the motion of my eyes while reading a text. The test revealed that rather than scanning lines from left to right and top to bottom, my eyes were roaming the pages at will. This was apparently an indication that while attempting to read l was distracted by other thoughts and previous readings. The test revealed that I was reading at approximately a fourth-grade level. I made it through college primarily by taking good notes and properly anticipating what would be covered on exams. This helped minimize the amount of reading required. Fortunately, the daydreaming and other distractions that make me a very poor reader actually conh·ibute to the creative processes required to make a good research engineer. Over the years I have become accustomed to writing io the manner I am most comfortable reading--brief and to the point. The stories in this text are presented in thjs manner. Hopefully, the life lessons discussed here will evoke memories and inspire readers to record reflections of the past for their children and grandchildren. Please read and enjoy. You will not be quizzed.

15 GRANDPA & GRANDMA DYKSTRA

Jan (John) Dykstra was born in the Village of Grijpskerk in the Province of Groningen, The Netherlands on February 11 , 1897. He was the second of six chil dren born to Cornelius (Case) and Grietje van der Woude Dykstra. Grandpa Dykstra immigrated to the United States with his parents and olde r sis­ ter Bertha in 1899. One brother and three more sisters were born in the Uni ted States. It appears that Grandpa Dykstra's family moved to Wood County in central Wisconsin for a brief time shortly after arriv­ ing in America. Church records indicate that the Dykstras joined the Vesper Christian Reformed Church in 1899, the same year the family immigrated to the United States. The Dykstras apparently moved on to Chicago very quickly, however, deem­ ing the living conditions in Wood County unacceptabl e for them at that time. In Chicago, Great-Grandpa Dykstra worked as a driver on a horse-drawn garbage wagon. It was a job with some real fringe benefits. He apparently worked on the wealthier side of town where the rich people's trash often became the new immigrants' treasures. The D ykstras returned to central Wisconsin in 19 11 , and this time they stayed. Anna Holstein was born July 30, 1899 in Chicago, Il linois. She was the f ifth of seven children born to Hendrick and Siementje Jopinga Holstein. Sadly, only four of the seven chi l­ d ren in Grandma's fam il y reached adulthood. Her parents immi ­ grated to the Un ited States in approximately 1893. The couple's two small children made the j ourney with them, and Great­ Grandma was pregnant with a third child at the time. The chi ld

16 Great-Grandma carried during their trip across the Atlantic died at birth. Shortly thereafter the two older children, weakened by the arduous journey from the Netherlands, contracted diphthe­ ria and died. While in Chicago, Grandma's father worked in a freight yard loading boxcars. The Dutch immigrants who arrived in America throughout the last half of the nineteenth century were well-known for both their strong work ethic and their honesty. This fact probably made finding a job much easier for Great­ Grandpa Holstein and other Dutch immigrants who arrived in America during the late 1800s. Grandma Dykstra's family, like Grandpa's, moved to Wood County in the early l 900s. Church records indicate that they were living in Wood County by 1906. The new immigrants were lured to central Wisconsin by sales agents who promised cheap land and plenty of it. Many of the Dutch who moved to Wood County in the early 1900s purchased property from the Benson and Anderton Land Company, which owned large tracts of land in central Wisconsi n at the time. The land company hired a Mr. Vander Meulen as a sales agent, and he advertised the property in several Dutch newspapers that were being published in Chicago and Iowa. The opportunity to purchase forty or more acres of land must have seemed like an offer too good to be true to Dutch immigrants who had come to this country from the overcrowd­ ed Netherlands. Their dreams were often dashed when they arrived in central Wisconsin. What the immigrants typically found when they arrived in Wood County was burned-off, stump-filled land, the remains of lumber camps that had recent­ ly been abandoned. For much of the area, the only roads were dirt logging trails filled with potholes. In many instances the immigrants who purchased land in Wood County bought the property without ever seeing it. This was apparently the case with Grandma Dykstra's parents. Upon arrival in central Wisconsin, Great-Grandma Holstein declared the house on their property unfit for human habitation and

17 would not move in. Suitable quarters were eventually provided, but based on Dad's and Grandma's recollections Great­ Grandma Holstein never did adjust to life in Wood County. Following their parallel journeys from the Netherlands to central Wisconsin via Chicago, the Dykstras and Holsteins became members of the same Wood County church, the Vesper Chri stian Reformed Church. It is there that John Dykstra and Anna Holstein probably met for the first time. Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra were married on May 24, 1918. Within a matter of months Grandpa was called to serve his adopted coun­ try at the close of World War I. He was inducted into the mili­ tary on September 4, 19 l 8. He returned home shortly after Christmas of the same year when he and most other draftees were discharged from the service at war's end. Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra had ten children, of which Dad was second-born. The children included Cornelius, Henry, Ralph, Sidney, GeralcL Robert, Wi ll ard, Sylvia, Margery, and John Jr. All but John Jr. were born at home with tJ1e hel p of a doctor and midwife. Great-Grandma Dykstra apparently served as midwife for the six oldest children before she passed away in 193 1. One of Great-Grandma's sisters and Sarah TerMaat, a very dear friend of the Dykstra family, served as midwives for births that occurred after Great-Grandma passed away. I don't know the reason, but pregnancies were apparently concealed as long as possible within many European-American communities throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Even family members remained clueless. Dad often recalled how the older children in his family would be called down for breakfast some morning only to find, to their surprise, that they had a new brother or sister. One possible explanation for the secrecy is the fact that pregnancies were considered very private experiences at the time. Another possible explanation is that with very poor prenatal care many pregnancies ended tragical­ ly with miscarriages or stillborn babies. Families perhaps did not want others to know when such instances occurred. Raising a large family during the depths of the depression

18 must have been a real challenge for Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra. Dad frequently spoke of how he and his brothers would go barefoot all summer and then get a pair of new or hand-me-down shoes for school in the autunrn. New shoes had to last the entire school year so they were purchased one or two sizes too big. Dad's shoes speech was usually reserved for times when my brother, sister, or I complained about how tough we had it. Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra were apparently rather stern disciplinarians and probably had their hands full when at one point they had seven boys under the age of twelve. Based on the childhood stories of Dad and his brothers, while they were pun­ ished for some of their mischievous deeds many more of their escapades went totally undetected. Grandpa and Grandma farmed in Wood County for over twenty years. They owned property for a time but lost it to cred­ itors in 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression. After that, they continued to farm but did so either by renting land or by working a farm on shares, which was a common practice dur­ ing the depression. In working a farm on shares the landlord provided the land, and sometimes even the cattle, while the tenant provided the labor. The crops or income derived from the farm operation were then divided between the tenant and landlord as agreed upon by the two parties. In most instances the landlord was either a bank or private mortgage holder who had foreclosed on the property forcing the previous occupants off the Land. During the Great Depression there were so many farms being fore­ closed on and so few people who could afford to buy the repos­ sessed farms that creditors chose to operate the farms on shares to at Least generate some income from the property. By the mid- I 930s Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra had become very good friends with Chris and Sarah TerMaat. The two couples were neighbors at the time and attended the same house of worship, the recently established Vesper Reformed Church. Sometime during the late 1930s the TerMaats left

19 The John and Anna Holstein Dykstra Family in 1942. Back Row: Robert, Sidney, Cornelius, Henry, Ralph, Gerald, Willard. Front Row: Sylvia, Anna (holding John Jr.). John, Margery. Wood County and moved to Sheboygan County in east-central Wisconsin. Within a very short time, Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra received a letter from the TerMaats informing them that a neighboring farm was available for operation on shares. They invited the Dykstras to move to Sheboygan County and the Dykstras accepted the invitation. Grandpa and Grandma Dykstra sold off a portion of their dairy herd before moving. They then milked the remaining cows one February evening, loaded the cattle and horses onto a semi , and made tbe five-hour trek to their new home, the "Hopeman Place" along the present County Highway CC just south of Risseeuw Road in Sheboygan County. All but oldest son Cornelius, who was twenty-one years old at the time, moved with the family. By the time the family did move, Dad was nearly twenty years old. While he moved here with hi s fam­ ily, he soon began working as a hired hand for othe r farmers in Sheboygan County's Holland Township. Grandpa and Grandma farmed the Hopeman Place on shares for several years and then moved to another farm near Waldo, also in Sheboygan County. ln 1947 they purchased a

20 farm near Hingham, just a few miles east of Waldo. Sadly, Grandpa Dykstra died of a stroke on September 24, 1947, just a few months before the family was to move onto their recent­ ly-purchased property. He was just fifty years old at the time, and this was his second stroke within a year. He had received little if any medical treatment for the hypertension he was afflicted with. Grandma and eight of her children did eventually move onto the Hingham property where several of the boys operated the farm for a time. Grandma never remarried. She continued to live on the farm for twenty years before moving to downtown Hingham in the late 1960s. For as long as she lived in the Hingham area, some or a ll of her children spent their Sunday afternoons with her. Grandma Dykstra entered a nursing home in l 988 and passed away in March of 1989, just four months before her ninetieth birthday.

2 1 GRANDPA & GRANDMA JANISSE

George Janisse was born September 20, 1867 in the fishi ng vi llage of Westkapelle on Walcheren Island in the Province of Zeeland, The Netherlands. He was the oldest of five children born to Corne lius and Pieternella Dirkse Janisse. In 1876 George Janisse, along with brothers Peter and Edward, and sis­ ter Nellie, immigrated to the United States with his parents. The Janisse family settled in Holland Township in Sheboygan County, Wi sconsin, presumably drawn there by fri ends or rela­ tives who had made the trek earlier. Grandpa's youngest sister, Adrianna (Jenny), was born in Wisconsin in 1879. Grandpa Janisse's parents began farming shortly after their arrival in Wisconsin. By 1888 they purchased a forty-acre farm about two miles west of Oostburg in Holland Township. While a fo rty-acre fa rm is very small by today's standards, it was a typical-size farm in the late 1800s, about all a family could han­ dle with the horse-drawn farm implements used at that lime. By the time Grandpa Janisse reached adulthood he was both help­ ing out on hi s parents' fa rm and working as a hired hand on neighboring fa rms. Very little is known abo ut Grandpa's education, but it must have been temporarily interrupted when he immigrated to the United States at the age of e ight. As an adult he could read both Dutch and English, with the Bible being his book of choice. Grandpa could also speak both Dutch and English, with Dutch reserved primarily for conversations that were not meant fo r younger ears. Al ice Dulmes was born January 29, 1896 on a fa rm just

22 one-half mile west of the Janisse farm in Holland Townsl1ip. She was the fourth of seven children born to John and Gert Pietenpol Dulmes. Her Grandpa Dulmes had immigrated to the Unjted States in 1854, makjng Grandma a second generation Dutch-American. Grandma Janisse was born totally deaf. Two of her sisters, Lena and Ruby, were hearing-impaired as well but it is uncer­ tain as to whether their deafness was congenital or was the result of complications during a childhood ill ness such as mumps, measles, rubella, or scarlet fever. r have been told by numerous acquaintances that the deaf children in Grandma's family had to work much harder than the others on their parents' farm, presumably as punishment for their impairment. Grandma and Lena communicated primarily by mouthing words clearly as they spoke and reading lips when they were spoken to. Ruby chose to communicate using sign language. When I was a child, Great-Aunt Ruby had Boston terriers as pets and the dogs were trained to respond to commands given in sign language. Lt was a pretty impressive show. Grandma Janisse received her primary education at a school for the deaf in Sheboygan, Wisconsin about twelve miles north­ east of her parents' farm. While this would be a short commute today, it was not in the early 1900s. At that time a trip of this nature required a significant amount of planning. While attend­ ing the school for the deaf in Sheboygan, Grandma boarded at the Home for the Friendless, a facility for orphans and other children with special needs. Weather permitting, she returned to the fa rm on weekends. Jan Hildebrand, a journalist and member of the Sheboygan County Hi storical Research Center, recently discussed Sheboygan's school for the deaf in Faded Genes, her weekly column in the Sunday edition of the Sheboygan Press. A portion of her December 27, 1998 Faded Genes column appears to explain why Grandma used lip reading rather than sign lan­ guage to communicate. In researching the school for the deaf, Mrs. Hildebrand unearthed an article from the October 27, 1894

23 Students at Sheboygan 's School for the Deaf in approximately 1904. Miss Rae Kribs is at the riglit with A I ice D11 Imes just behind her to the lcf"L edition of the Sheboygan Tim es. That article referred to how " ... pupi Is who cannot hear are taught to speak and i nterprct spo­ ken language by Miss Rae Kribs." Miss Kribs, who was the fi rst instructor at Sheboygan's school for the deaf, apparently preferred to teach students how to speak and interpret spoken language rather than to rely on sign language. Sheboygan's school for the deaf was apparently well respected, receiving a visit from at least one nationally-known fi gure. The school was visited by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell in March of l 896. Dr. Be ll observed the schoors teaching tech­ niques and visited briefly wi th the staff. At the time Grandma Janisse attended Sheboygan's school for the deaf, our society showed very little compassion toward the physically-challenged and needy. This fact mi ght account fo r the sadness in the eyes of the children on the accompanying photo. Over the past thirty years I have referred to Grandma as "totally deaf from birth." In reviewing Mrs. Hildebrand's recent newspaper article I was reminded that the hearing impaired were once referred to as "deaf and dumb." I remember Grandma Janisse being referred to as deaf and dumb when I was a child,

24 and l never did like it. While in this case the term "dumb" refers to not being able to speak, it still carries a very negative conno­ tation. Not only did Grandma have to board at the Home for the Friendless as a child, but the official name of the school she attended was the Day School for the Deaf and Dumb. When Grandma was born, twenty-eight-year-old George Janisse was working as a hired hand on her parents' farm. Based on the recollections of numerous friends and relatives, George Janisse made a bold declaration shortly after Grandma was born. I have been told by several different people that while Grandma was sti II in the cradle Grandpa Janisse declared that he would n1arry that girl some day. By the time Grandma reached adulthood Grandpa no longer worked as a hired hand on the Dulmes farm, but he did still work in the neighborhood and apparently never forgot the promise he made when Grandma was born. By this time Grandpa Janisse was working for his sister and brother-in-law, Jenny and Henry Hesselink. The Hesselink and Dulmes farms met along the winding Onion River, far from each farmstead's buildings. Grandma Janisse's parents apparently frowned on her

Barn raising project on the George and Alice Janisse farm during the micl-l 920's.

25 dating a man who was twenty-eight years her senior, so she and Grandpa often met secretly along the river where the two farms joined. Grandpa a11d Grandma Janisse were married on May 12, 1920 in Gibbsville, Wisconsin. At that time, Grandpa Janisse was fifty-two years old and Grandma was twenty-four. Despite the sig-nificant difference in their ages, they spent forty years together as a couple. l mmediately after their marriage, Grandpa and Grandma Janisse began operating a sixty-acre dairy farm on the west side of the present Ebbers Road, just south of Wynveen Road in Holland Township. Sometime during the 1920s their barn was destroyed by a severe windstorm. While a handwritten note on the back of a photograph states that the barn was destroyed by a tornado, this conjecture has not been substantiated. It may have just been the result of very strong winds. Shortly after their old barn was destroyed a new, much larg­ er barn was built on Grandpa and Grandma's property. The "barn raising" was an event that brought the entire neighbor­ hood together. Unfortunately, Grandpa and Grandma Janisse had to borrow money to have the new barn built. Within just a few years the stock market crashed, our nation's economy failed, and Grandpa and Grandma, like many others around them, lost their farm to creditors. They never owned property again. Instead Grandpa, Grandma, and Mom, who was an only child, lived in rental property and picked up work wherever possible to sustain themselves. George and A lice Janisse in 1942. 26 ln 1937, at the age of sixty-nine, Grandpa Janisse applied for U.S. citizenship to qualify for some of the public works proj­ ects and relief programs sponsored by the United States Government during the Great Depression. While in hi s seven­ ties Grandpa h·aveled throughout Sheboygan County digging ditches, building bri.dges, and working on other government­ sponsored projects to help support his family. After losing their farm, Grandpa and Grandma Janisse lived first on the "Wassink Place" along Dulmes Road in Holland Township and then on the "HaTkins Place" along County Highway GW before moving to the Village of Oostburg in 1957. By the time they moved to Oostburg Grandpa's working days were over, so Grandma picked up cleaning jobs to help put food on the table. One of my fondest memories of Grandpa Janisse is of him sitting in his favorite rocking chair smoking hi s corncob pipe. Irwin Arentsen, who attended the same one-room school as Mom, recently told me that he still remembers when students at their school had to make a silhouette of someone for an art proj­ ect. He vividly recalled the silhouette Mom created. It was a profile of Grandpa Janisse with his pipe. While I had always thought of both Grandpa and Grandma Janisse being very easygoing people, I have si nce learned oth­ erwise. While Grandma was quite low-key, approaching every new obstacle as one more challenge to overcome, Grandpa was apparently a bit more moody and pessimistic. Several years ago Dad recalled how Grandpa could go to his bedroom and stay there for days if he was upset about something. Though totally deaf from birth, it was Grandma Janisse who drove a car in their family. This makes some sense if you con­ sider the fact that Grandpa was over sixty years old before automobiles became commonplace in rural America. He prob­ ably figured that if he could get along without driving for his first sixty years on this earth, he could get along that way for a few more years. Grandpa Janisse passed away at his Oostburg home on

27 April 14, 1960. He had been blessed with ninety-two years on this earth and never spent a day of his life in the hospital. I was just e leven years old when Grandpa passed away but felt fortu­ nate that I got to know hjm at all, for he was over eighty years old when I was born. I never did get to know my Grandpa Dykstra, who passed away the year before I was born. While living, Grandpa Janisse served as Grandma's ears, Jetting her know when the tea kettle began to whistle, when the newspaper had been delivered, or when visitors arrived. When he passed away, a new means of catching Grandma's attention became necessary. For this task Grandma used short-haired, yippy little terriers whose sharp, shril l bark created vibrations that she could sense. Grandma Janisse owned th ree different dogs from the time Grand pa passed away until she went into a nursing home in the early 1980s. The dogs were all very unfriendly but served their purpose in an efficient manner. The last dog Grandma owned was named "Tippy," and from that point on our children referred to their great-grandmother as Grandma Tippy. I always hoped that people who heard us talk about Grandma Tippy didn't misinterpret the title. Grandma Janisse continued to live in her Oostburg flat after Grandpa passed away, working summers in a local canning fac­ tory and doing small cleaning jobs year-round. After Grandpa's passing, Grandma spent a lot of time with sisters Mary VanEss, Lena Morell, and Edna TeRonde who all lived in the Oostburg area. One of the hobbies the sisters participated in at that time was growing a unique variety of lily that required no earth or water to fl ourish. A person simply placed a bulb in an otherwise empty bowl and waited for the flower to grow. Grandma always referred to the plant as a Lily of India, though I do not know if that designation is totally accurate. The plants grew very ta ll , frequently as high as five feet or more. While these plants were very unique, they had one significant drawback. When they blossomed, they produced an odor so strong that the plants were temporarily banished to the basement.

28 Grandma and her sisters also spent a lot of time quilting and working on large jigsaw puzzles. At one point they completed a 4,000-piece puzzle, a feat that landed them squarely on the front page of our local weekly newspaper, The Villager. In 1971 , when the house Grandma Janisse lived in was being sold by her landlord, Mom and Dad purchased the home so that Grandma would not have to move. She continued to live in her Oostburg flat until 1981 when she entered a nursing home after breaking her hip. She lived comfortably at the nursing home for several years and passed away on January 31, 1984, just two days after her eighty-eighth birthday.

29 l\10M & DAD

Mom and Dad came from amazingly similar backgrounds. Both of their fathers were born in The Netherlands and immi­ grated to the United States as children. Both of their mothers were Dutch-Americans who were born in our nation's midwest during the late 1890s. Both Mom and Dad were born on Wisconsin farms in the sununer of 1921 . Both Mom's parents and Dad's parents lost their farms during the Great Depression. Both Mom and Dad attended one-room schools as children, and both grew up attending churches derived from the Dutch Reformed faith. While there were many similarities between Mom and Dad's backgrounds, there were also a few distinct differences. Dad was second-born i11 a fam ily of ten children while Mom was an only child. Dad was born in central Wi sconsi n and moved to Sheboygan County as a young adult while Mom lived her entire li fe within two miles of her birthplace. Dad stayed home to help on his parents' farm after completing the eighth grade while Mom went on to graduate from high school. Henry Dykstra was born June 26, 1921 on a farm in the Town of Hansen in Wood County, Wisconsi n. He was the sec­ ond oldest of ten children born to John and Anna Ho lstein Dykstra. Dad's older brother Cornelius had been named after his Grandpa Dykstra, and Dad was named after his Grandpa Holstein. While Dad went by the Ameri canized name of Henry or Hank throughout his entire life, his given name was actually Hendrik. As a child, Dad attended Vesper area schools in Wood

30 T he Dykstra Boys on their Wood County farm in 193 1. Sidney, Cornelius, Gerald, Henry (holding Robert), Ralph. County. He actually started school one year early, serving as a spokesman for his older brother Cornelius. Cornelius apparent­ ly wouldn't talk much, especially in school. Dad completed one semester of first grade before the teacher realized he wasn't supposed to be there. When the teacher discovered what was going on, Dad was promptly sent home and could not return until the start of the next school year. Dad frequently spoke about how he spent one-and-one-half years in first grade. He did complete his primary education at the proper time, graduat­ ing from elementary school in 1935. Like most rural boys in that era, Dad stayed home to help on the family farm after graduation from eighth grade. Wl1ile still a teenager he attended a six-week agricultural short course in Wisconsin Rapids in anticipation of operating his own dairy farm some day. When Dad attended school in Wisconsin Rapids, it was an old city with a relatively new name. The city was founded in the 1nid- I 800s and was known as Grand Rapids for many years. f n 1920 the city's name was changed to Wisconsin Rapids to avoid confusion between itself and the much larger and more familiar Grand Rapids, Michigan. Pri.or to its name change, many mailings intended for Grand Rapids,

3 1 Wisconsi n ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. By the time Dad was in his late teens he was both helping out on his parents' farm and working as a hired hand for other farmers. The work for other farmers was often seasonal, to ass ist with planting and harvesting crops. He would typically board at the homes of other fa rmers whi le working for them and then return to his parents' home when the seasonal work was completed. In February of I 941 Dad's parents and most of hi s siblings moved from Wood County to operate a farm on shares in south­ ern Sheboygan County. By that time Dad was nearly twenty years old. While he did move down to Sheboygan County when his parents did, he was pretty much on hi s own by then. He soon began working more as a hired hand for other area fa rmers rather than helping out on his parents' farm. He worked for the Con Hendrikse family first and then worked two years on the Pete Eerni sse farm along the present Ri sseeuw Road in Holland Township. While working as a hired hand on each of these

Elsie Janissc with her dad in 1927. 32 farms, room and board was a part of his total compensation. Marie Eernisse Neerhof, who was a teenager at the time Dad worked on her parents' farm, fondly recalls the time Dad spent with her family. During a recent conversation she noted the time Dad was told to repaint damaged surfaces on some farm machinery after harvesting had been completed. He appar­ ently had some paint left after all of the machinery had been touched up so he took it upon himself to paint a pair of Marie's barn shoes blue. Elsie Mae Janjsse was born July 19, 1921 on her parents' farm in Ho! land Township in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. She was the only child born to George and Alice Dulmes Janisse. J wish there was a more polite way to state what I am about to say, but l'm not sure there is. Based on the accounts of many people who knew Mom as a child she was, as they so bluntly put it, "spoiled rotten." Mom was the only child of a hearing-impaired mother and elderly father who both doted on her as a youngster. She apparently learned that she could get her way by pouting and became quite good at it. Mom received her elementary education at Greene School along County Highway A in southern Sheboygan County. She graduated from elementary school in 1935 and graduated from Oostburg High School in 1939. After graduation from high school Mom worked for several years at the Huth-James Shoe Company in Cedar Grove. Mom and Dad both attended Hingham Reformed Church in the early 1940s, and that is probably where they first met. At that time, the church was the p1imary social outlet for teens and young adults. The young couple dated for several years and were married on May 1, 1943. The wedding ceremony took place at the Hingham Reformed Church, with a dinner and reception following at the Hingham Hall. Their wedding occurred during the middle of World War II , so rationing affect­ ed the dinner served at the hall to some extent. As Dad recalled, the main course was worstebroodje, the Dutch term for pig-in­ the-blanket.

33 Henry and Elsie Dykstra's Wedding at Hingham Reformed Church in 1943. Lave rne \lanEss, Vernon Hesselink, Arline VanEss, Sidney Dykstra, Edna Dulm es, Ralph Dykstra, Elsie Janisse Dykstra, Henry Dykstra. When Mom and Dad married, Dad was still working as a farm hand for the Pete Eernisse family. Since the Eernisse fam­ ily did not have adequate space to provide room and board fo r a married couple, Mom and Dad rented an old two-story frame house on the southeast corner of the present County Highway GW and Ri sseeuw Road in Holland Township. The house was about one-half mile due west of the Eernisse farm. At that time, Dad purchased a secondhand bi cycle to take to work each day. Mom and Dad owned a car, but gasoline was rationed due to the United States' involvement in World War IL During the war years, most Americans used alternative means of transportation whenever possible. By the time Mom and Dad married, Mom had been work­ ing nearly fo ur years at the shoe factory in Cedar Grove. She apparently used money she had saved during that time to buy all new furniture for their home. Most of the furniture she pur­ chased at that time was used by Mom and Dad for the next fifty years. In the spring of 1944 Dad discontinued employment with the Ecrnisse family and went to work for the Ramaker Brothers

34 on a farm along County Highway GW. Ben, Bill, and Ellsworth (Kelly) Ramaker owned a significant amount of land along both sides of Highway GW in southern Sheboygan County. When Dad switched jobs, he and Mom moved into a house on the northwest corner of the present Dekker Road and Cotmty Highway GW. While the house they moved into was known as the "Scholten Place," it was owned by the Ramakers when Mom and Dad lived there. While living on the Scholten Place, Dad worked for wages for the first year and then operated the farm on shares with the Ramakers for two additional years. In operating the farm on shares, Dad became much more involved in making decisions regarding the day-to-day operation of the business. The two years Dael spent operating the farm on shares served as a tran­ sition period between working as a hired hand and having his own farm. As a full-time farm worker Dad was deferred from the draft during World War 11. At the time, feeding the troops was con­ sidered virtually as important as serving in the military. As Dad recalled, a lot of young men who were really not suited for farm life became farmers during the war. Most of those men quickly found other means of earning a living when the war was over. During World War II, German prisoners of war were used as an additional labor force on many Sheboygan County farms and at local canning factories. Dad often recalled how the prisoners of war were bused out to the Scholten Place to toil in the beet fields under his supervision. According to Dad, the prisoners of war made a very cooperative work crew. They apparently real­ ized that if they created problems here they might be sent to a camp with far more perilous conditions. Mom and Dad were good parents, and they worked very hard to provide for their family which consisted of my brother Jim, myself, and my sister Mary. Jim was born October 4, 1946, I was born June 12, 1948, and Mary was born June 27, 1952. lt appears that if it hadn't been for some difficult pregnancies there might have been at least one more child in the family.

35 While wading through boxes of receipts on the fam1 after Mom and Dad both passed away, my sister and I came across a series of invoices from St. Nicholas Hospital in Sheboygan. The invoices were from 1945. In asking several of Mom and Dad's relatives about the receipts, they informed us that Mom had several miscarriages between 1943 and 1945. ln one instance the pregnancy was far enough along that the fetus had recognizable features. In that instance the feh1s was placed in a wooden cigar box, which served as a makeshift coffin, and was laid to rest on the farm where Mom and Dad lived. Dad apparently performed the funeral service alone and never told Mom where the premature child was buried. 1 don't know if Mom chose not to be told where the baby was laid to rest or if Dad simply felt that she would be better off not knowing. In 1947 Mom and Dad purchased an eighty-acre dairy farm a long County Highway CC in southern Sheboygan County. Dad had purchased a team of horses and some milk cows from the Ramaker Brothers while working their farm on shares. He added to that herd when he and Mom moved onto their own farm. In the mid-l 950s Mom and Dad increased the size of their farm by purchasing an adjacent forty acres of land that became ava il able. Following that acquisition, the farm was known as Rock Ridge Dairy Farm. From the mid-1950s unti I the early 1960s Dad supplement­ ed hi s farm income by working as a mechanic at an International Harvester dealership in Waldo, about five miles north of the farm. He worked there full-time during the winter months and part-time throughout the rest of the year. T he employer a llowed Dad to take lime off as needed for planting and harvesting crops, as well as for any other farm-re lated busi­ ness. In December of I 962 Dad was offered a full-time job at a farm produce factory in Adell, about two miles west of the farm. He accepted the position and sold all but one of his milk cows at a hastily-arranged auction. One cow was kept on the

36 The Dykslnl Family in 1958. Henry, Elsie, Mary, Richard. James. [Photo Courtesy Bernice Dykstra] farm to provide fresh milk for our family each day. The sale of our dairy herd made me a very happy fourteen-year-old. It meant that we would no longer have to be the first ones to leave family gatherings on Sunday afternoons to get home for the evening milking. It also meant that we could go to school func­ tions, shopping, or visiting much earlier each evening because vve wouldn't have to wait until the milking and other chores were completed. Dad started his new job at the produce factory in January of 1963. His duties there were many and varied. He sorted eggs and carried out other appointed tasks in the factory during sev­ eral days of the week. On other days he drove a delivery truck that supplied fresh eggs to neighborhood stores and supermar­ kets throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Within a very short time, Dad realized that he would rather be farming full-time than working in a factory. After being his own boss for nearly twenty years he found taking orders from a factory owner somewhat less than desirable. By 1964 he began to once again purchase milk cows for the farm. At that time he expanded the capacity of the dairy operation from twenty-four to thirty-two cows. He also installed a bulk storage tank to 37 Rock Ridge Dairy r::mn in 1964.

repl ace milk cans and installed a barn cleaner to remove manure from the barn's gutters each day. After re-establishing and expanding the dairy operation, Dad never worked for an outside employer again. Dad always took great pride in the fact that he farmed suc­ cessfully for over fifty years. Many other farmers overextended themselves in the late I 970s and early 1980s when land and equipment prices were hi gh and loan interest rates were in the fitteen to twenty percent range. At that time, many farmers used overinflated land values as coll ateral for loans to purchase more property and equipment for their farms. When land and produce prices dropped during the 1980s, many of those farmers ended up going out of business while the Rock Ridge Dai ry Farm sur­ vived. One of the keys to Mom and Dad's success on the fa rm was the fact that they never purchased anything they didn't absolute­ ly need. If a task required larger machinery than Mom and Dad owned, they would hire another farmer to do the work rather than buy any additional equipment. This helped keep business overhead low and allowed Mom and Dad to weather some pret­ ty tough times. In 1997 Dad was still using the first tractor he

38 'J I ever bought, a Farmall Model H tractor that he purchased in the mid-1940s. While my brother, my sister, and I got along quite well as children, there were occasional spats of sufficient intensity to warrant punishment. In Mom and Dad's house, the punishment for any such offense was swift and just, at least in their eyes. They, like most other parents of their generation, believed in spanking because the Bible says that if you spare the rod you will spoil the child. The weapon of choice for such punishment was a half-yardstick that, while off-duty, rested on a molding over the bathroom door. The paddle had actually been a com­ plete yardstick at one time but was reduced in length one or more times over my brother's or my behind. While Mom and Dad typically each determined who was in for a spanking, it was Dad who carried out the punishment. If he was in the barn or out in the field when Mom determined that a spanking was in order, the punishment was amplified by a long, silent wait in anticipation of the event. When the proper time came, Dad would take his position in the old wooden rock­ ing chair next to the space heater in the kitchen and motion for the offending party to approach him. He would then place the offending party over his knee and commence paddling. I don't believe there was ever a set number of swats given, such as a one-size-fits-all policy, nor was there an established scale for the number of swats applied as a function of the infrac­ tion. The duration of the spanking probably depended more on what kind of mood Dad was in at the time. When he determined that justice had been served, he would lift the offending party up off his knee and the punislu11ent was complete. One thing I must say is that once Mom and Dad had punished any of us for n1is­ behaving, the incident was pretty well forgotten. They did not carry a grudge or continually remind us about what we had done. Jt may be my imagination, or it may be that my sister required far fewer spankings because she broke fewer rules, but it seems that Mom and Dad used this form of punishment far

39 less on her than they did on my brother and me. I hope this was because they saw less value and more harm in using this form of punishment as time passed. While I believed in spanking as a deterrent at one time, I no longer do. During her first twenty-six years of married life Mom stayed home to cook, clean, wash, mend, and iron to help sup­ port the farm operation. She was also primarily in charge of bookkeeping for the business. In the late 1960s, after l was mar­ ried, my brother was in the service, and my sister was away at coll ege, Mom went to work at Phi lli ps Sales, a local company that made Christmas centerpieces and various other decora­ tions. She started working there shortly after my brother left for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Dad once stated that Mom went to work primarily to keep herself occupied, so that she would have far less time to just sit around and worry about how Jim was doing in Vietnam. Both Mom and Dad were avid readers, well versed in a wide variety of subjects. Despite having only an e ighth-grade educa­ tion, Dad went on to serve in leadership roles both at hjs church and in our local school system. He served a total of twenty-four years on local school boards--nine years at a one-room school near the farm and fifteen years on the Cedar Grove-Belgium Board of Education. He served numerous terms as School Board President before retiring from public service in 1981. Mom and Dad were very busy people while farming. As a result, they came to very few events that I or my children par­ ticipated in over the years. The problem was compounded by three additional factors. First, Dad was a very impatient man who had a difficult time sitting through any sporting event or school function. He would rather be working on the farm where he fe lt far more comfortable. Second, Mom drove very little, so if Dad didn't escort her to events she usua lly didn't go. Thjrd, neither Mom nor Dad was terribly interested in sports, and it was sporting events that I and my children primarily participat­ ed in. While I thought I understood and accepted their absence from sporting events and other school activities over the years,

40 the fact that they seldom attended now saddens me somewhat. I don't think they rea li zed how much it would have meant to have them there. Mom passed away on September 12, 1993 of chroni.c liver disease. The condition had first been diagnosed in the mid­ I 970s. While no specifi c cause for her condition was ever determined, there are suspicions. Over the years Mom went to a lot of different doctors for a lot of different things. She usually didn't tell each doctor about other medications she was taking at the time. There is strong speculation that with all the medication she was on over the years, an adverse interaction between med­ ications could have caused liver damage. Shortly after Mom passed away, Dad found a note that she had scribbled sometime during her last days. The note outlined who she wanted to serve as pallbearers at her funeral, what song she wanted to be sung, who she wanted to sing it, and who she wanted as the accompani st. As it turned out, we had followed her wishes nearly to the letter without expressly knowing what those wishes were. Dad passed away on January I I, 1998 of complications fol­ lowing gall bl adder surgery. He was in part a victim of a med­ ical system that is controlled more by insurance companies and Medicare than by the needs of patients and their families. In order to save a few thousand dollars in hospital costs, Dad was sent home from the hospital far too soon following his initial surgery. Though he could not even write his name or read the time of day on a clock, he was deemed fit for discharge from the hospital based on cri teria established by Medicare. At the time, he was a confused seventy-six-year-old man with tubing protruding from hi s abdomen. The tubing and accompanying receptacle were used to drain and hold the excess bile still being produced by his system. While he was supposed to monitor and maintain the equipment he was sent home with, he wasn't able to do so properly. Ensuing complications, directly related to his early release, sent Dad back to the hospital in far more serious condition, a

41 condition from which he never fu lly recovered. Whi le Dad's ini­ tial release was meant to save a few thousand dol lars in hospi­ tal costs, ensuing complications ended up costing "the system" an addi tional two-hundred-thousa nd dollars. Dad paid an even higher price. On the day Dad passed away, my sister found a piece of paper on the table in his kitchen. Dad had written a verse from the Bible on the piece of paper. The scripture text was from the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 9, Verse 10: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might, for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave whi ther thou goest." That Bible verse pretty much sums up the way Dad lived. Anything he did was done with all of his rnight--and was usually done on his terms. The scripture text became the basis fo r the message at Dad's memori al service. Dad had been very seriously ill from September of 1997 unti I the time of his passing in January of 1998. During that time he lay unconscious in a hospital's intensive care unit fo r several weeks, undenvent months of extensive rehabili tation, and spent five weeks in a nursing home before returning to his farm shortly after Christmas. I have no doubt that Dad struggled so hard to survive while in the hospital and nursing home just so he could return to the fa rm , for however long that turned out to be. I am thankful that he got to spend the last two weeks of hi s li fe on the farm he loved so dearly. On Saturday, January I 0, 1998, the day before Dad passed away, someone found him lying unconscious in the parking lot of the restaurant be had driven to for breakfast. It was fifteen degrees below zero that day and Dad shouldn't have been out in such weather, but that's not the way he lived. Paramed ics were ca lled to the scene, but by the time they arrived Dad had rega ined consciousness. Rather than be transported to a hospi­ ta l, Dad signed a waiver, sent the paramedics on their way, and went into the restaurant for hi s breakfast. By the nex t morning he had passed away. In the early 1990s Dad documented much of his childhood

42 in a text entitled Ti-vo Longs and Ten Shurts. The title, which is intended to sound like a telephone number from an old crank­ style phone, actually refers to his parents and their ten children. Dad had several dozen copies of the manuscript spiral-bound for distribution to family, friends, and local libraries. I feel for­ tunate that Dad took the time to document a portion of his life and wish that Mom had done the same. Upon learning of Dad's passing, one longtime friend referred to him as a sage--a solemn, judicious man who both gained and imparted wisdom from life's experiences. 1 hope Mom and Dad know how much they were loved and how much they are missed. For several months after Dad passed away, if the telephone rang mid-morning I thought it might be him calling to see if I would meet him for lunch. We typically met for lunch three or four times each week after Mom passed away. The telephone often rang several times before I realized that it could not be him.

43 THE DYKSTRA PLACE

I don't know if it's a local custom, a Wisconsin custom, or a universally accepted practice, but for some reason the houses that people live in around here are defined by whoever lived there one or two generations earlier. I first observed this phe­ nomenon as a young child when I repeatedly heard my parents talking about Grandpa and Grandma Janisse living on the Harkins Place. They had moved there from the Wassink Place sometime during the 1940s. On rare occasions the description of a place refers to the present owners of the property. More frequently, however, it refers to the people who either lived there the longest or gained a measure of notoriety while residing there. I don't know who owned the Wassink Place but it was the Ramakers, not the Harkins, who owned the Harkins Place when my grandparents lived there. l recently came across a box of old photographs that had been handed down from my Grandpa and Grandma Janisse to my parents. While most of the photographs were studio por­ traits of Mom's ancestors, the box of photos included several pictures of the houses my grandparents lived in over the years. Those photographs confirmed the descriptions of their previous residences. One large photograph was clearly labeled "The Harkins Pl ace," while a second photo was labeled "The Wassink Place." When my parents married in l 943, they lived on the Scholten Place for a time before purchasing the farm they lived on for the next fifty years. The farm they purchased was known

44 alternately as the Burga! Place or Oonk Place by virtue of its previous two owners. I don't believe I ever heard the farm referred to as the Dykstra Place until my parents both passed away. Mom and Dad's farmhouse was recently purchased by Kevin and Jean Harmeling, a young couple who grew up in Hingham, just three miles north of the farm. For as long as the Harmelings reside there they are certain to be living on the Dykstra Place.

45 TRADITIONS

Most children grow up participating in a variety of both cul­ tural and family traditions. It is the family traditions that I wish to elaborate on since those are the customs that I recall most fondly.

Christmas The Christmas season was always the best time of the year around our farm. If things were going well on the farm through­ out the year, things were great during the Christmas season. If things were not going so well prior to Christmas, they at least improved somewhat during the season. My family, like most others arnund us, had a precise schedule of events associated with the Christmas season. While the order of events could occasionally be al tered somewhat, such deV-iations were frowned upon. Each yule season was initiated with our annual Christmas tree hunt. On a Saturday afternoon about two or three weeks before Christmas, my brother and J would get all bundled up, climb into Dad's old blue Chevy pickup truck, and ride out to "the swamp" with him. The swamp was a five-acre parcel of woodland surrounded by numerous other five-acre parcels of woodland about four miles southwest of Mom and Dad's farm. Mom and Dad received their five-acre parcel of woods thrnugh Mom's parents and grandparents. I'm not sure I fully understand the purpose of a single wood lot being divided up among so many different owners, but it apparently worked as follows. When Sheboygan COLmty was

46 in itially settled, most farmers cleared as much land as possible on their farmsteads in order to make a living. This left them lit­ tle if any timber to be used for either construction projects or for firewood. To get around this problem specific areas were left wooded, and a number of farmers purchased small parcels of the wood lot. The section of woods that Mom and Dad owned was prima­ rily covered with tamarack and cedar trees. In our family the cedars were used exclusively as Christmas trees while the tama­ rack trees were used to make lumber for corn cribs. Each year as we walked into the swamp Dad would repeat how to find our section of woods. We always looked for a nice Christmas tree in that section first, but I suspect that we occa­ sionally drifted onto another farmer's property before finding the perfect tree. In most instances, a large tree was chopped down by ax and was then trimmed back before leaving the woods. Only the very top was used as a Christmas tree. In actua li ty we had to find two perfect trees before leaving the swamp each year because we usually brought a second tree out of the woods for Grandpa and Grandma Janisse. It seemed only fa ir that we provide a tree for Grandpa and Grand­ ma, since the wood lot originally belonged to them. Upon arnvtng home with the trees, my brother and I would scur­ ry into the house and warm up with a cup of hot chocolate. Cedar Christmas tree at George and Alice Janisse's house in the mid- I950's . 47 Shortly after bringing the Christmas tree home, Dad would place it in a large round metal stand and bring the tree into the livi ng room for trimming. While we all participated in the trim­ ming of the tree, many older glass ornaments could only be placed on the tree by Mom or Dad. Those ornaments were usu­ a lly placed high on the tree where little fingers could not reach. The tree was also trimmed with delicate foi l tinsel each yea r. The tinsel was carefully removed from the tree at the close of the Christmas season so that it could be used again the fol­ lowing year. Damaged tinsel could only be discarded when it became too short to drape over the branches of a tree. Even then, the damaged tinsel could only be discarded with Mom or Dad's blessing. The weeks between tree trimming and Christmas Day were occupied with school and church activi ties, Mom's anm1al Chri stmas cookie and fud ge bake, and the production of approximately twenty-five pounds of party mix. Mom always erred on the side of caution, not wanting to run out of treats before the Christmas season ended. Shortly before Christmas, the students at Liberty School presented a special program fo r their parents. On the day of the program very few classes were held. As I recall, nearly the entire day was set aside for practicing the songs and skits that would be performed that ni ght. The program usually couldn't begin until 8:00 p.m. because most students lived on farms where the evening milking and other chores had to be complet­ ed before coming to school. On Christmas Eve my brother, sister, and I participated in the children's program at Hingham Reformed Church, which we attended at the time. At the close of the program each child was given a bag filled with treats as a reward for his or her per­ formance. The contents of each bag included an apple, an orange, a Hershey bar, and a box of Cracker Jack candy. By the time we arrived home from church, presents were under the tree. We typically opened our presents and then had a light lunch before going to bed for the night.

48 Two of the Christmas presents I received as a child actuaJly helped shape my career. In 1960 1 received a Gilbert Erector Set complete with a 120-volt electric motor. In 196 l I received a Heathldt Electronic Experimenter's Kit. Those two Christmas gifts steered me into my present profession as an electronics engineer. On the Sunday before Christmas we would go to Grandpa and Grandma Janisse's house where we would rush through din­ ner so that we could open our gifts. One year, when I was about twelve years old, Grandma bought a used typewriter from an area businessman and gave it to Mom for Christmas. Mom cried and cried when she opened the gift, knowing that Grandma had spent far more than she could afford. On Christmas morning we would attend a church service and then return home for about an hour before going over to Grandma Dykstra's house for dinner. Santa usually stopped in about mid-afternoon with gifts for each of Grandma's chi ldren and their spouses, as wel I as for each grandchild. The days and nights between Christmas and the new year were occupied with visits to and from friends and relatives. The purpose of those visits was to see each other's gifts and to help deplete each family's supply of Christmas treats. The Christmas season was capped off with a New Year's Eve party that was held either at our house or at my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Beverly's house. Of all the aunts and uncles who lived near us, Ralph and Beverly had children closest to my age. We never had any problem keeping ourselves occupied. One of the games we participated in as we got older was Scrabble. My cousin David and I were usually pitted against my brother Jim, who is two years older than me and four years older than David. Jim usually won at Scrabble, but not without con­ troversy. On more than one occasion David and I challenged a word Jim placed on the board and were delighted to find that the word was not in the dictionary used as a reference. ln many of those instances Jim boldly declared that the dictionary was wrong and Jobbied to keep the points awarded for the word. It

49 was obvious that Jim was destined fo r a career in politics. While we didn't always stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve, the party usually lasted well into the night. This allowed Dad very little sleep, since he had to be up by 4:30 lhe next morning to milk the cows.

Meals The Dutch-American families that lived in rural Sheboygan County when l was a child were famous for their meals. Anyone who stopped at our house at any time of the day or night was obligated to at the very least share a light lunch with us. When not in school, we participated in a six-meal day on our farm as follows:

7:00 a.m. Breakfast, served immediately after coming in from the morning milking. 9:30 a.m. Light lunch consisting of coffee or milk with cookies and graham crackers. Noon Dinner. 3:00 p.m. Light lunch of coffee or milk with cookies and graham crackers. 5:00 p.m. Supper, served immediately before going to the barn for the evening milking. 9:00 p.m. Light lunch of coffee or milk with cookies and soda crackers.

During the winter months, the noon meal was typically something li ke corned beef hash or spaghetti from a can. During harvesting seasons, Mom often prepared a large cooked meal both at noon and in the evening.

For as long as 1. can remember, the cookie of choice for any of our three scheduled lunches on the farm was the Oreo. Without specific rules, a box or bag of Oreos would probably have lasted Jess than a day. To prevent this from occurring, Mom and Dad instituted a two-cookie limit for any given lunch

50 break. The rule was amended on Sundays and holidays when we were each allowed one more Oreo per sitting. If Mom and Dad were in a particularly good mood during the week, they would invent a holiday such as "Sheboygan County Dutch-American Farm Children's Day" just so that we could each have one more cookie. The fact that we always had Oreo cookies available on the farm, coupled by the fact that anyone who visited the farm was forced to join us for at least one meal, made the farm a very popular place among my cousins. Many of them still recall how the farm was the first place they ever had an Oreo cookie. In most instances the fact that we had guests joining us for lunch was enough to consider the day a holiday, so we were each enti­ tled to one extra cookie per sitting. The definition of the various meals participated in by Dutch-American farm families is known to have created more than one embarrassing situation over the years. Most Dutch­ American families in our area had dinner at noon and supper in the evening. Unfortunately, that is not how people of other eth­ nic backgrounds defined the same two meals. During the 1950s, if someone invited a Dutch-American family to their house for dinner the family was likely to show up at noon rather than in the evening when they were expected. When I was a child, virtually every meal was eaten at the kitchen table where family members could interact. There is no doubt in my mind that this interaction served to keep families closer and more in touch with each other's feelings. In today's hectic world, it is a rarity to have the entire family sitting around the table for even one meal per day. While growing up on the farm our breakfast, dinner, and supper meals were opened and closed with a word of prayer. The closing prayer was not offered until after Dad read a pas­ sage of scripture from the Bible. The Bible Dad read from was tattered ru1d torn from years of use. I once wondered if God would be upset that we used a Bible in that condition. I quickly reassured myself that it was far better to have a tattered and torn

51 Bible than to have one that looked like new because it had never been opened. While virtually all of our meals took place with us sitting around the kitchen table, there was one notable exception. By the early 1960s, with the advent of TV trays and TV dinners, our New Year's Day di1mer was served in the livi11g room with the television set on. This is the one and only day of the year that we could either eat in the li ving room or have the television set on while we ate. As I recall, the first time we were allowed to eat dinner in the living room was on January 1, 1960. On that very notable day we ate dinner in the living room while watch­ ing the Rose Bowl parade. The Wisconsin Badgers were in the Rose Bowl that year and we didn't want to miss the University of Wi sconsin marching band or any reference to the Badger State while dining in another room. A Ithough it took several years for the Badgers to return to the Rose Bowl, a tradition had begun. From then on, each New Year's Day was celebrated by having TV dinners on TV trays in the I iving room. Throughout the remainder of each year we had to all cat together at the kitchen table and the television had to be turned off, even though it was in a totally different room. I think Mom and Dad felt that if the television set was on during our meals we would be more likely to daydream and wonder what we were missing.

Snow Days In our family the precise definition of a "snow day" was any winter day that school was cancelled because of inclement weather. Aside from providing us the opportunity to build a snowman or snow fort, snow days were filled with activities reserved for those few special winter days when we had no school. Son1e of the special activities we participated in on snow days included making homemade ice cream, making doughnuts in a deep fryer, working on large jigsaw puzzles, and setting up the card table to play solitaire or Monopoly. On rare occasions, perhaps once every two or three years, 52 Mom would empty every shelf in the pantry for cleaning on a snow day. While it was exciting to see some of the old kitchen gadgets and cookie cutters that only emerged from their assigned space every few years, the task of cleaning all those items was daunting and became tiresome very quickly. There is one snow day that I recall fondly, but with a degree of regret. It occurred in late March of 1961. On that particular day it began to snow heavily shortly after noon. It snowed so hard that many parents came to get their children from school before the scheduled dismissal time. David TerMaat was my one and only classmate at the one­ room school I attended as a child. On that blustery day in March of 1961 Dave's mom came to pick him up from school shortly before our scheduled dismissal time. When Dave's mom arrived at school, Dave asked me to ride along home with them and stay overnight at his house. Neither of my parents was at school when I was asked, so I decided for myself. Much to my delight, I decided that 1 should go along with Dave and his mom. This was a rather risky decision since we were seldom allowed to stay overnight at anyone's house. I went along home with the TerMaats and made another gigantic mistake after arriving there. I failed to telephone my parents and tell them where I was. While I am sure that my sis­ ter told my parents what I had done, they apparently would have rather heard it from me. Mom and Dad eventually telephoned the TerMaats to voice their displeasure with my move, but by the time they called the weather was so bad that they decided to let me stay. It snowed and drifted terribly throughout the evening hours. Dave and I, both certain that there would be no school the next day, stayed awake most of the ni ght. We intended to stay awake the entire night, which would have made us legends at our school, but we dozed off at about 5 :00 a.m. By 7:00 a.m. Dave's mom called us down for breakfast. We rushed through the meal and parked ourselves on the dining room floor just a few feet from a large console radio that stood

53 along the south wall. We sat there in anxious anticipation as one by one the school cancellations were announced. The list of cancellations was rather lengthy because there were so many one-room schools in the listening area. The entire list of canceUations was completed without a single mention of Liberty School. While we were somewhat concerned at that point, we didn't panic. It was entire ly possible that the announcer had inadvertently omitted Liberty School while reading the hundreds of school and business cancellations that had been called in. The cancellations were announced a second time, and once again there was no mention of Liberty School. By this time we were somewhat concerned. Then the telephone rang. Dave's mom ta lked briefly w ith someone before hanging up the phone and joini ng us in the dining room. She immediate ly informed us that Miss DeRuyter, \;vho was our teacher at the time, had cal led. Apparently Miss DeRuyter's father, who operated a dairy farm about two miles southeast of the TerMaat farm, took his tractor with scoop and opened up the road from their house to the road the TerMaats lived on. Miss DeRuyter informed Dave's mom that there would be school that day and that she would pick Dave and me up on her way to school. Mi ss DeRuyter kept her promise, unfortunately, and Dave and I spent the entire school day just trying to stay awake. What perhaps hurt the most was the fact that only two or three other students made it to school that day. All of the chi ldren from the north end of the school district, where my parents lived, stayed home the entire day. I was totally exhausted by the end of the school day, too tired to even think about how l would be disciplined when I arrived home from school. While I probably should have received some form of punishment for what I had clone, neither Mom nor Dad said a single word about it. They apparentl y felt that T had been punished enough by having to go to school while my brother and sister stayed home.

54 Birthdays Each of our birthdays was a special event while growing up on the farm. We received presents from our parents and sib- 1i ngs, and usually received a birthday card with one or two dol­ lars from each grandma. Grandpa and Grandma Janisse usually came over to the farm by mid-morning on my birthday. They frequently brought Irene Oonk, a very dear friend of the family, with them. Mom and Dad had purchased their farm from Ben and Irene Oonk in 1947, so Irene knew her way around the place pretty well. My birthday is June 12, a date that often coincided with the beginning of the strawberry season and the haying season. If the weather was nice Dad, my brother Jim, and I would go to work in the hay field while Mom, Grandma, Irene, and my sister Mary went out into the large strawberry patch on the south side of the house. If the strawberries were not quite ready for pick­ ing, the women would work in the vegetable garden. Grandpa Janisse was over eighty years old by the 1950s, but he still occa­ sionally helped in the garden. At noon we would all gather around the kitchen table for dinner. We frequently had johnnycake, a thin baked-cornmeal dish served from a shallow round pan. While this wasn't my favorite dish, it was alright and was a meal that our diimer guests thoroughly enjoyed. Following the meal we would rest briefly and then return to our appointed tasks. ln the evening, just before bedtime, we would each have one last piece of birth­ day cake as we discussed the events of the day.

The Journal ln 1962 Mom and Dad started recording the events of the day in a calendar book originally designed for businessmen and others to keep track of their appointments. While I had thought for many years that Morn was the keeper of the journal, I recently discovered that Dad did most of the writing. The infor­ mation recorded in the journal was typically mundane such as

55 whether or not it rained that day, wbat the high temperature was, or who stopped in to visit. For the most part the entries in the journal provided infor­ mation about the day-to-day happenings of our fam ily with. no menti on of world events. There appears to be j ust one exception to that ru le. The November 22, 1963 entry states that President Kennedy was assassinated that day. In 1982 Mom and Dad started giving our family a new cal­ endar book as a Christmas gift each year. For the past seventeen

JUl.Y AUCUST 12 3 4567 JULY 1 2 l • 0 f 10 11 12 ll I< s t> 1 a ' 10 n 15 16 17 18 1Q '2 0 21 12 13 1.f 1S 16 ,, 18 l2 2l 2~ " 26 21 21 AUGUST 19 lO :n 22 U 14 l:S 1P JO 31 26 21 u 29 30 :n

A page from Rock Ridge Dairy Farm's 1962 Daily Journal.

56 years. my wife Linda has faithfully continued the practice that Mom and Dad started so many years ago.

The Wiener Roast One Sunday in October, during the early 1960s, my parents invited Uncle Ralph and Aunt Beverly's family over for dinner. On that particular day the meal was somewhat less formal than usua l. We went up onto Gumdrop Hill, northwest of the farm buildings, and had our first annual wiener roast that day. Both my brother and aunt have early-October birthdays, and this apparently played a role in having the get-together. The menu for our first wiener roast was kept intentionally simple. The meal consisted of a hot dog on a bun with a side order of potato chips and soda pop to drink. The dessert of the day was the "smore," made with a Hershey candy bar, one or more roasted marshmallows, and graham crackers. Over the next several years the event's menu expanded to include beans, Jello salad, coffee, and a variety of homemade desserts. Oreo cookies, a staple on our farm, were also usually available. Following the meal, the children were excused from Gumdrop Hill to go and play as they wished. My brother Jim, cousin David, and I usually hiked back to the house as quickly as possible to watch a portion of the Packers game on television. We would then go outside onto the north lawn fo r a game of two-on-one touch football. Teams rotated as we played, with each person taking his turn on defense. David's younger sisters, Aim and Kathy, typically spent the afternoon with my sister Mary either playing outside with the dozens of cats we had around the farm or going inside to play Candy land, Monopoly. Life or some other board game on the kitchen table. All it took to keep David's younger brother Dale occupied was an overstuffed chair, plenty of light, and a foot­ high stack of comic books. The wiener roast became an annual event quickly and con­ tinued so for the next twenty years. As families expanded, three

57 generations of Dykstras became regul ar fixtures at the event. Mom and Dad discontinued hosting the wiener roast sometime during the mid-l 980s. By then Mom's health was failing and the size of the group was too large for Mom and Dad to handle. Several years ago Linda and I began hosting a wiener roast in our own back yard where our children, our grandchildren, and some of our neighbors seem to enjoy the event as much as l did while growing up on the farm.

Visiting There is a lost art in the hectic world we live in today. It is the lost art of visiting. Visiting is the device by which, in years gone by, stori es were passed down from generation to genera­ tion while sitting in someone's living room or around the kitchen table. While I never truly appreciated the fine art of vis­ iting as a child, I think it is somewhat sad that our society no longer has room for a tradition that played such an important role in the lives of our ancestors. When I was a child, my parents would frequently go over to another family's house for no other reason than to visit. As odd as the concept of going to someone's house just to talk and lis­ ten is, the practice of visiting during the 1950s included an even more bizarre feature. Jn most instances peopl e invited them­ selves into other families' homes. I remember Mom and Dad frequently telephoning friends, neighbors, relatives, or even casual acquaintances to either ask if we could stop in for a visit or to bluntly tell them that we would be stopping by. Those same people usually invited them­ selves back into our home at some future date. In reviewing some of Mom and Dad's daily journals, I am amazed to see how frequent such visits were. The visits were not only made on weekends but on many school nights as wel I. As a child, there were good places to visit and bad places to visit. The difference between the two was typically defined by whether or not the household we visited had children my age.

58 My parents visited with many aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles who not on ly had no children in the house but also had no toys fo r us to play with or comic books to read. A visit of this sort was alright in the summer when my brother and Tcou ld go outside to play baseba ll or footba ll , but a winter visit to such a place seemed to last fo rever.

59 klim morf ebam sboof

A pickup truck is a necessity on any farm. The first truck I clearly remember Dad owning was a blue, early 1950s Chevy pickup. Dad purchased the truck in the rnid- l 950s and kept it until sometime during the ea rly 1960s. The truck was a used vehicle when purchased and came bedecked with stickers and decals promoting Wisconsin's dairy industry. One particular item that caught my brother's and my atten­ tion at a very early age was a decal located in the lower passen­ ger-side corner of the truck's windshield. It was a decal that said "Eat more foods made from milk." As I recall , the first two words of the phrase were somewhat larger and occupied the top line of the decal. The lower line of the decal included j ust the words "foods made from milk." The decal was basically clear, with typewritten words being the only thing that stood out. The decal had been applied so that whoever walked past the truck would get the message. My brother and I spent a lot of time inside the cab of the old blue Chevy pickup since we frequently accompanied Dad when he used the truck for farm chores. From inside the cab the bottom line of the decal read ">llim moit sbsm aboot," which we pronounced "klim morf ebam sboof." It really meant nothjng, but was fun to say. It was so oft-repeated as a child that it has remained a permanent part of my vocabulary fo r over fo rty years.

60 THE GIFT

My parents both passed away recently, and after their pass­ ing I realized that 1 know far less than I should about them. I know that each of them was born in 1921 , that each attended a one-room elementary school, that Dad completed eighth grade and Mom graduated from high school, and that their parents lost their farms during the Great Depression. I also know that they were married in 1943, that they raised three children, and that they farmed successfully for over fifty years. But there are many more things I'd like to know about my parents, especially about each one's childhood. I'd like to know how close they were to their parents and grandparents, how they were shown affection, what responsibilities they had, and how they were disciplined. In knowing how they were raised, I might have a better under­ standing of how I was raised, as well. ln one of my favorite episodes of the Bob Newhart Show, Bob struggles valiantly to tel I his mother that he loves her. While he comes close on several occasions, he never quite makes it. That episode reminds me very much of the family I grew up in. I know that my parents loved me and I loved them, but we all had a difficult time expressing it. I actually never told my parents r loved them until I was over forty years old, when Mom and Dad each lay critically ill in the hospital. lt seems that those words should have been so easy to say, but they were not. r don't recall ever being hugged by my parents either, and I suspect that they were seldom hugged as children. If they had been, they would have known how good a hug feels to a child-­ a child of any age.

61 Several years ago our pastor presented a series of sennons on The G{/i--the g(fi. being the abili ty to properly express love and affection to one's fam ily. During that series of sermons he pointed out that if a person does not receive the g{(t as a child it is difficult to pass it on to one's children. This does not excuse a person fron1 passing the g{(t on--il just makes it more difficult to do so. I never received the g{fl as a chi Id and I seriously doubt that my parents received it before me. Each of them was born into a very stern, conservative Dutch Protestant family. Jn many such families you didn't need to be hugged, you didn't need to be told when you did something well, and you didn't need to be told that you were loved. You were just supposed to know. As hard as I try to express my feelings to my children, it is still very difficult for me. Fortunately my wife Linda feels far more at ease in doing so, seldom ending a telephone conversa­ tion without telling our children that she loves them. Hopefully, her example will allow our children to pass the g(ft on to their families as well.

62 THE BIG JUMP

A dairy farm is a wonderful place to grow up, but it can be a dangerous place to grow up as well. There is always the risk of being kicked by a stubborn cow, falling off a ladder while climbi ng up to the hay mow, or being injured while operating fa rm tractors and other such equjpment at a very early age. T here were enough clangers associated with the everyday oper­ ation of our farm that urn1ecessary ri sks were not to be tolerat­ ed. I found this out the hard way. In 1955 Dad rented hay land on a farm directly across the road from our house. One evening, after the cows had been milked and all of our other chores were completed, Dad took a tractor and wagon across the road to pick up a few hay bales that had been dropped directly onto the ground. This was often done at the end of a day if there were only a few bales left to be made after the last full load was completed. On that particular evening, my brother and l rode along on the wagon and helped pick up the hay as Dad maneuvered the tractor and wagon along each of the bales. We probably only had ten or fifteen bales to pick up before returning to the farm. After all the bales had been loaded onto the wagon, Dad drove the tractor and wagon back through the field and across the road onto our driveway. Just as we crossed the road and entered the drive my brother informed me that he would count to three and then we would both jump from the wagon. He didn't ask me if I wanted to do this--he just told me that we would. The logistics were such that he would jump off the wagon to the south and I would jump off to the north.

63 Jim counted to three and I, like a dutiful younger brother, jumped from the moving wagon. By the time Jim reached the count of three he had reconsidered the plan and stayed right where he was until the tractor and wagon stopped on the farm yard. He later claimed that if he had jumped from the moving wagon he would have jumped right into the north end of the house. When Dad turned around and saw what l had done he was none too pleased. I had jumped from a moving wagon at a point where l missed hitting the oldest, largest tree on the farm yard by a matter of inches. I wasn't hurt, but I could have been. While I had been talked into the misdeed by my brother, I knew very well that it didn't pay to use that as a defense. My parents' response to any such c laim was "If someone told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too?" I never really had a good answer to that question. As punishment for jumping from the moving wagon I was sent to bed immediate ly. It was only 7:00 p.m., about tlu-ee hours before my regular bedtime. That night is the only time I ever remember going to bed while it was still light out. To make matters worse, the episode happened on June I I, the night before my seventh birthday. Not only did I have to lie in bed try­ ing to get to sleep while it was still light out, but I had to li e there wondering if birthday presents would be withheld as addi­ tional punishment. After a long, sleepless night l crawled out of bed and shuf­ fled my way into the kitchen for breakfast. Neither Mom nor Dad said a single word about the night before and my birthday celebration went on as planned--prcsents and all.

64 MOON DOG

When I was a child, one of the highlights of each autumn was our school fair. The fair offered students an opportunity to display some of their works and included games, a food stand, and an auction as well. lt was at a school fair, when I was in first grade, that my parents outbid the competition for the puppy I grew up with. We brought the pup home from the fair that night and quickly constructed a makeshift pen out of straw bales on the east side of the barn. We named the puppy Theodore J. Dog, Teddy for short. Over the next several weeks we attended to Teddy's every need in his makeshift pen. We only took him outside for brief periods and kept a very close eye on him while he was outside to make sure tha.t he stayed around the farm buildings. One crisp autumn morning, just a couple of weeks after we brought Teddy home from the school fair, Dad came into the house with some saddening news. He couldn't find our puppy. Apparently Teddy escaped from his pen, made his way out of the barn, and wandered away from the buildings. We searched for Teddy on the barnfloor, in the garage, in the sheds, in the corn cribs, under the porch, and anywhere else we could think of, but we couldn't find him. We called the neighbors to see if any of them had spotted the pup that morning, but no one had. At that point we just hoped and prayed that Teddy would return on his own. As I recall, we left a light on in the barn for Teddy just in case he returned at night. Days went by, then weeks went by, with no sign of the stray pup. Just as we were about to give up hope, Teddy reappeared.

65 We never did figure out where he had gone, but it was apparent that wherever he was he had been we ll cared for. He returned to the farm well-groomed and well fed, probably looking better than when he left. One of my fondest recollections of Teddy is the time he fol­ lowed my brother and me to school. We knew he wasn't sup­ posed to follow us, but we did very little to dissuade him as he tagged alongside our bicycles. We thought it would be a fantas­ tic opportunity to show Teddy off to our friends. With his track record, we perhaps should have been more concerned that Teddy would still be around the school yard at the end of the day. Teddy never left the school yard that day. He stood vigil just outside the school door while we attended classes and then romped across the playground with us during recess. One of the games we played that day was 11ide-ancl-seek. I was at a distinct disadvantage, having every hiding place given away by the barking pup. l didn't even care though, l was just so proud to have Teddy at my side.

Teddy in a snowstor111 during th e late I 950's.

When [ was a child, 1 saw Teddy as a sleek, well-groomed American Kennel Club championship-quality dog. When I look

66 back at photographs of him 1 realize that he actually looked more like a wolf. Perhaps that has something to do with the nickname my dad's brother gave Teddy. Uncle Ralph tagged Teddy with the ni ckname Moon Dog, asserting that he looked up into the sky each night and bayed at the moon. I don't think there was a shred of truth to the story, but the nickname stuck and Teddy was affectionately called Moon Dog for the duration of his stay on the farm. Teddy spent twelve years as a member of our family--a pret­ ty long stay for a fa rm dog. He passed away in 1966, shortly after I left for college.

67 THE LUMBER YARD

When I was a child, there were very few places that I could go and be content to just si t and wait while my parents con­ ducted their business. Zuengler's Lumber Yard in Adell, Wisconsin was one such place. I have always I iked the smell of wood, so as a young boy it was a special treat' for me to tag along with Dad whenever he went to the lumber yard. At Zuenglers, the entire yard was fi lied with the sweet smells of sawdust and freshly sawn lumber. This was back in the days when carpenters worked with real wood rather than particle board, plastic, or aluminum. During the winter months there was an added bonus--scraps were used to fuel a woodburning stove in the office area. Anyone who has ever used a wood­ burning stove knows what a delightful aroma wood stoves pro­ duce. Visits to Zuengler's Lumber Yard helped propel me into my first business venture at approximately the age of ten. If we vis­ ited the lumber yard on just the ri ght day, and it wasn't the heat­ ing season, it was possible to return from the yard with a bushel basket fu ll of wood scraps. I used either those wood scraps or the ends of peach crates to make window holders for fu n and profit. Each window holder was a twelve-inch long stairstep­ shaped piece of half-inch-thick lumber. The product provided an adjustable means of holding the lower sash of a window open in an old farmhouse. I sold the window holders for ten cents each to many of my parents' friends and neighbors, as well as to our relatives. While I never became wealthy making window holders, the business

68 venture helped keep me occupied during summer months and provided a little spending money as well. Several years ago, my sister spotted some of my window holders at an auction in our old neighborhood. The window holders were lying in the bottom of a grape basket that had been purchased by an elderly woman. My sister approached the woman and learned that it was the grape basket she was inter­ ested in. The woman didn't even know what the window hold­ ers were. We purchased the two window holders from the eld­ erly woman for one dollar and they now grace my office at Dykstra Engineering, serving as a reminder of my first business venture some forty years ago.

Window holders made during the late I 950's.

69 BASEBALL WAS KlNG

During the 1950s, baseball truly was America's pastime. While baseball was televised nationally on the NBC Game of the Week each Saturday, most NFL football games were only tel­ evised locally and basketball was seldom televised at all. Closer to home, every kid on every farm in the area bad his own field of dreams. Our baseball field was located on the north lawn of the farm ya rd. The field was fl anked by a gravel driveway to the south and Mom's flower garden to the north. The very same area served as our football field in autumn. Our baseball field was rather long and narrow with a sli ght upward slope toward the outfield and a large tree right where third base should be. Home plate was less than ten feet from the road, so I built a backstop out of scrap lumber and chicken wire to prevent the ball from going onto the road if we played with­ out a catcher. Pri or to the arrival of little league baseball in our area in about 1960, the most serious baseball games took place on the school yard. Each one-room school typically had its own soft­ ball team. The teams would p lay each other both in the early autumn and in spring. At Liberty School, softball was the game of choice both before school started each day and during every recess. In order to have enough players for two teams both boys and girls par­ ticipated, and the participants ranged from six years old to four­ teen years old. At our school, the softball diamond was bisect­ ed by the school's gravel driveway. One could run on grass to first base, but then had to run across the driveway to get from

70 Rock Ridge Dairy Farm·s baseball field during the off-season.

fi rst to second or from second to third. While in elementary school I always thought it took a tremendous blast to clear our center-field fence, the four-foot­ high grid-w ire fence that separated the school yard from a neighboring farm. I was under the impression that our baseball field had approximately the same dimensions as a major league stadium. In looking back at our old school yard, I now realize that the center-field fence was probably less than one-hundred feet fro m home plate. Even as a child it should have been more obvious to me that the outfield fence was not as deep as I thought, since the fence was located just twenty feet behind sec­ ond base. Both before school started each day and at our noon recess, all twelve to fifteen children who attended Liberty School were available for softball games. During other recesses fa r fewer chi ldren were available since different-aged children had recess during different times of the day. Typically, only one or two grades were excused from school at a time during the morning and afternoon recesses. This is a situation that landed myself

71 and classmate David TerMaat in trouble while still in first grade. One beautiful autumn day in 1954, Dave and J went outside for our morning recess with just one other girl accompanying us. Dave and I wanted to play baseball against each other that day, and we wanted the girl to serve as full-time pitcher. The young girl had brought her lunch outside with her and was sitting on a swing having a snack at the time. She told us that she wouldn't play baseball until she finished her lunch. Apparently Dave and I were in a considerable hurry to initiate the game so we took her lunch, threw it over the fence, and said "Okay, you're finished with lunch. Let's play." That was a move that severely backfired. Not only did we not play baseball dur­ ing that recess, but we didn't play during the noon hour, during the aflernoon recess, or after school because we spent all those times sitting in school as punishment for what we had done. When I was a child, baseball was the favorite pastime at most family gatherings as well. Whether at Grandma Dykstra's house on a sunny Sunday afternoon or at our annual Holstein picnic in Waupun, baseball was played as quickly as possible after dinner was served. Unfortunately, one key participant con­ fused baseball with swimming and wouldn't play until one hour after he had finished di1mer. When not participating in larger, organized baseball games my brother and I would play catch or improvise our own "game of the week." While J was perhaps the better athlete as a child, my brother Jim was undoubtedly the more complete sports fan. He read the sports page of our newspaper religiously and knew the names of every player on every team. This was somewhat easier to do in the 1950s than today, since there were far fewer teams to keep track of and most players started and ended their careers with a single team. For our "game of the week" Jim would serve as the play-by­ play aimouncer as he threw a series of ground balls, li ne drives, and pop flies to me. He typica lly stood near the house while I stood about eighty feet to the west, just slightly in front of the

72 barn. While we called each improvised contest the "game of the week," we woul d often play two or more "games of the week" in a single clay. Each game was typically decided in the bottom half of the ninth inning when Jim would present me with the most challenging play of the game. In most instances he would send me deep into the outfield, up against the east wall of the barn, where I would have to leap to make a game-saving catch. I think Jim and I had as much fun with each improvised "game of the week" as we did wi th any of the organized baseball games we played in over the years. In closing, I feel obligated to make one brief statement about a softball game 1 participated in at Liberty School many 1 years ago. With reference to a friendly dispute that has been going on between Duane Wilterdink and myself for nearly forty years--! was safe at second.

73 BARNFLOOR BASKETBALL

While baseball was king during the 1950s, most farm kids had some provisions for playing basketball as wel I. If you were lucky you had an indoor court. usually a portion of a barn floor, to help hone your basketball skills. When I was a child, most Wisconsin farms inc luded a barn with a lower level for milking cows and an upper level, the barnfloor, for storing hay, straw, and oats. On our farm, the length of the basketball season was signif­ icantly affected by how good the crops were that year. An exceptionally good hay crop meant that the basketball court would be covered by hundreds of bales that didn't fit in the mow. This type of obstruction lasted until late fall or early win­ ter when the cows no longer grazed in pastures and were fed in the barn instead. My brother and I were responsible for throw­ ing hay down from the barnfloor to the lower level to feed the cows. We always made sure that basketball-court bales were the first to go. The geometry of a farm kid's basketball court depended on the overall layout of the barn floor. Our barn floor had a hay mow on the south end with a straw mow and granary on the north end. The center of the barn floor was basically open, but includ­ ed a straw pile in the northwest corner and a large feed bin just east of t:he straw pile. Had it not been for the feed bin, my broth­ er and I would have had one of the nicest courts around. With the feed bin, however, the basketball court included a severe dogleg-left that required clearing the bin to make a shot. On most bamfloor basketball courts, the home team had a

74 significant advantage. Only the kids who lived there knew the true height of the basket. Only the kids who lived there knew every unique angle on the court. Only the kids who lived there knew where every loose floorboard was and knew how to antic­ ipate every odd bounce that was certain to occur. While we were by no means poor, sports equipment was seen as a luxury by my parents. As a result, our basketball court was rather ill-equipped for the first several years of its exis­ tence. Initially, we didn't even have a backboard. Dad just attached a basketball hoop to one of the eight-inch-square beams that helped support the straw mow. Whe n Liberty School closed in 1961, my parents bought the school's backboard at an auction. The acquisition of a real backboard greatly improved our barnfloor basketball court and significantly enJ1anced its status among our peers. While growing up on the farm, the only basketballs we had were made of vinyl and were purchased at a local hardware store. The vinyl basketballs worked alright from late spring through early autumn, but presented a significant problem dur­ ing the portion of the year that basketball was 111 ost likely to played. Throughout the winter months, the length of time we could play basketball was entirely dependent on the outside temperature. When it was very cold out, the basketball would become too stiff to dribble in just a matter of minutes. A time­ out then had to be call ed so the ball could be brought back into the house and warmed up for another few minutes of play.

75 JAMES AND THE GlANT OIL DRUM

In the nostalgic 1983 movie A Christmas Stmy, the only thing young Ralphie Parker wanted for Christmas was a "Genuine Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-H undred-Shot Lightning-Loader Range-Model Air Rifle." That Christmas morning, after all the presents had been taken from under the tree, his dad spotted one last package behind the desk in the cor­ ner of the room. It was Ralphie's dream present. My brother Jim and I experienced a Christmas amazingly similar to that of young Ralphie Parker some twenty-five years before A Christmas Stmy was released. While we weren't near­ ly as precise as Ralphie in our description of the product we desired, Jim and I both wanted air rifles for Clu·istmas during the late 1950s. We dropped about as many hints as we could. Any additional requests might have meant that the air rifl es would be withheld simply because we begged too much. That Christmas as presents were taken one by one from under the tree, it began to look as if ourl wish would not come true. Then, after all the packages had been distributed from under the tree, Mom and Dad said that there might be one or two more presents for us. Mom and Dad went into their bed­ room and came back carrying two long, slender, perfectly­ wrapped packages. Our eyes lit up immediately, for we knew exactly what those presents were. Over the next several months Jim and I played with our new Daisy lever-action a ir rifles constantly, using them primm-ily fo r target practice and to help control the sparrow and pigeon pop­ ulations on the farm. The only thing that slowed us down was

76 the fact that we had to buy our own BBs. The farmhouse we lived in never had a furnace. The house was heated by two large oil-burning space heaters, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. The fuel oil used by the space heaters was stored in a large drum along the west side of the house just north of the kitchen window. One evening after Jim and I finished our chores, Jim took his BB gun up onto the barnfloor and decided to use the oi I drum along the house as a target. He repeatedly shot at the oi I drum some thirty yards away, enjoying the sounds of ping, ping, ping as the BBs rico­ cheted off the target. I didn't have my BB gun along, so I just sat there encouraging Jim to continue as I too reveled in the sound of the BBs hitting the drum.

fo'uc l-oil drum jus110 the len of 1hc kitchen wimlow on Rock Ridge Dairy Farm.

1 don't remember if Jim stopped his target practice because he ran out of BB s, because he wanted to ration the BBs he had until he could afford more, or because he simply tired of what

77 he was doing, but at some point he decided to quit and go into the house. At that point he and I traveled eastward down the barn grade, across the gravel yard, and up the west steps into the house. As we passed through the entrance and into the kitchen we got quite a surprise. There stood Mom very ca refully pick­ ing glass out of the kitchen sink. It seems that at least some of the ping, ping, ping sounds we had attributed to Jim's hitting the oil drum came from Ji m hitting the kitchen window just to the south. As punishment, Jim's BB gun was taken away for several weeks. At first I felt somewhat sorry for the encouragement r had offered Jim outside. I even felt a smidgeon of guilt. Then r remembered the time he convinced me to jump from a movi ng wagon just a few yea rs ea rlier. When that happened, I was the only one punished. Suddenly, I fe lt far less guilty.

78 CY THE BARBER

When I was a child, most of the boys that I knew had "zip" haircuts, which simply meant that a clippers was used to trim the hair fairly close to the scalp. Such haircuts, which were often performed at home, were pretty tough to do incorrectly. My brother and r, like most of the boys around us, had zip hair­ cuts until we reached the eighth grade. I'm not sure why, but my brother and I did not receive our haircuts at home. Instead, we went to the shop of local barber Cy Lafleur. At the ti me, Cy owned and operated a one-chair barber shop in Adell , Wisconsin about two miles west of the farm we grew up on. It was a ti me well before the establishment of large franchise shops and salons in our area, so each little vil­ lage had one or more barbers to tend to the needs of the com­ munity. As I recall , Cy worked in a factory during the day and oper­ ated his barber shop evenings and weekends. The shop was attached to his residence, but had its own entrance. Dad would typically drive my brother and me to the barber shop and then just sit on one of the two long wood benches in the shop while Jim and I received our haircuts. Since most people came to the barber shop without making an appointment, there was almost always someone there for Dad to talk to. This alone may have been a reason not to cut our hair at home. While Dad was a very impatient man in many respects, he loved to just sit and visit. In all the years we went to Cy's Barber Shop, I don't believe we ever made an appointment. We would typically just go there hoping that we could get in without an extended wait. If we

79 Cy's Barber Shop during the early 1960's. (Photo courlcsy El lie Laneur] would have to wait more than a few minutes, we would go across the street to Saeman-Schilling's General Store. There, Dad would do some relatively serious shopping while my broth­ er and I browsed through the comic books. Like most other barbers, Cy usually placed a board across the arms of his barber chair when giving haircuts to small chil­ dren. The young children would cl imb up onto the seat of the barber cha ir, turn around, and sit on the board provided. This allowed Cy to work from a far more comfortable position. I often felt somewhat embarrassed about having to sit on a makeshift booster seat to get a haircut. It was a day worth cele­ brating when I could sit directly in the barber chair. A trip to Cy's Barber Shop resulted in one of the most trau­ matic experiences of my early childhood. During one of my trips to the barber shop I climbed up onto the chair, tu rned around, and took my place exactly as I was supposed to. Unfortunately, as Cy proceeded with my haircut I became very agitated and restless, wiggling around far more than I was sup­ posed to. To make me sit still, Cy told me a story that absolute­ ly terrified me. In short, he told me that he had a pail of ears in the next room, and that the ears were from other young boys

80 who didn't sit still while he was cutting their hair. f'm not sure if I believed him or not, but I didn't want to take any chances so I sat perfectly stil I throughout the remainder of hi s work. One detail I vividly recall about Cy's Barber Shop is that he had a television set in the southeast corner of the shop and he was always watching Westerns. He probably could have given twice as many hai rcuts per day if he had not been so intently watching television while he snipped and trimmed. Our month­ ly trips to the barber shop actually gave my brother and me the opportunity to watch shows like Gunsmoke, Ha ve Gun Will Travel, and Maverick, which we were not allowed to watch at home. While I never really understood how a zip haircut could get too long in just three or four weeks, Mom had a precise set of standards to determine when a haircut was overdue. She was the one who generally told Dad when it was time for us to make a return trip to the barber shop. To Mom, even a fresh zip haircut was occasionally deemed inadequate. On more than one occa­ sion she threatened to send Jim and me back to the barber shop im mediately after arriving home from a trip to Cy. By the time J entered high school, flat-tops were in vogue. I don't reca ll if Cy didn't li ke cutting flat-tops, if he couldn't do it quite as well as other barbers in the area, or if he simply was approaching retirement at that time, but for some reason when I needed a flat-top I started going to another barber in the same vil.lage. And while going to a new barber was okay, it was never quite the same as when l frequented Cy's Barber Shop and Ear Emporium.

81 THE LADY STUCK IN THE M.UD

For the first eighty-seven years of its existence Liberty School had no running water and no indoor plumbing. During that time, students got their drinking water from a cheese facto­ ry across the road and used e ither of two outhouses that flanked the rear of the school building. By 1955 a furnace room and two indoor bathrooms had been added onto the rear of Liberty School. The building proj­ ect was initiated in an effort to keep the school open. At that time, the most backward one-room schools were the first to close. With a brand new furnace and indoor plumbing it was hoped that Liberty School would be spared. The new addition to our school included a room large enough for students to play indoors during inclement weather. A large refrigerator-freezer stood in the northeast corner of the room. The refrigerator allowed students to have fresh whole milk on a daily basis. The milk was delivered to Liberty School twice weekly by a small, family-owned dairy. The only outside entrance to Liberty School's rear addition was on the south side of the building. When the delivery person brought milk to our school, she backed her car along the south side of the old school building until she reached the entrance to the addition. She then carried several milk crates fro1n the trunk of her car into the addition, placed the milk in the refrigerator, and carried crates of empty bottles back to her car. All of this was typically done without disturbing classes that were being conducted in the adjacent room. East-central Wisconsin had a very wet spring in 196 1.

82 Several late-spring storms blanketed the countryside with wet, heavy snow. When the weather warmed, melting snow created standing water everywhere. One day that spring, the milk lady's car became mired in mud as she backed the vehicle along the old portion of our school. The milk lady completed her delivery and tried to leave, but her car wouldn't budge. At that point she came into our classroom and asked the teacher if some of the older boys in school could assist in free ing her car. Curt Hesselink, David TerMaat, and [ were excused from class and went outside to help the milk lady with her predica­ ment. We didn't help her out of her predicament; we helped her with her predicament. As we exited the school building we real­ ized that the longer the milk lady's car was stuck in the mud, the longer we could stay out of school. With that in mind we did everything possible to make sure the car stayed mired in the mud. Eventually, the milk lady thought of putting some boards under the rear tires of her car and freed the car by herself. Even then, she thought that we were helping by pushing the car at the appropriate time. The three of us managed to stay out of school fo r twenty or thirty minutes, and we felt very proud of our accomplishment. The milk lady went on her merry way and we figured that was the end of the story. Much to our surprise, she showed up at school the very next day, a day without a scheduled delivery. To our greater surpri se, she brought several ice cream treats for each of the nice boys who he lped free her car from the mud. We graciously accepted the gifts and kept perfectly sil ent about our actions. I'm sure we did this primarily to keep the milk lady from becoming disi llusioned, but it also helped preserve our sparkling image.

83 THE TOY RIFLE

For ten or fifteen years after the end of World War If, one of the favorite pastimes for young boys was to play soldier. At Liberty School this activity was typically reserved for times when there weren't enough kids to start up a softball game or when the basebaJl fie ld was too wet to play on. At one point during the late 1950s my friend Duane and I frequently played soldier during our morning and afternoon recesses. Duane was one grade behind me in school, but we shared the same recess each day. Younger students typically had their recess at a different time. Neither Duane nor I had very authentic representations of weaponry to use while playing soldier. Each of us used either a wooden or cardboard cutout of a rifle as we played. We were somewhat envious of anyone who had a more realistic repre­ sentation to use. At our school only one student had a genuine plastic reproduction of an army rifle, with sound effects and al I. That student was several years younger than Duane and me. Although his toy rifle was available during our recess, he had made it very clear that no one but he could use that wonderful toy. One Friday, during the spring of the year, the young student who owned the plastic rifl e was absent from school. It seemed a shame to have such a fine piece of equipment as his toy rifle go unused for an entire day, but throughout the morning hours the toy rifle stayed exactly where the young student had last placed it--on a shelf in the entrance to the school. By the time Duane and I took our afternoon recess the

84 temptation was too great to resist. While Duane went outside with his wooden rifle I reached up onto the shelf in the entrance and took down the absent student's toy. I had every intention of handling the toy rifle with the utmost care, but as I chased Duane across the school yard I slipped or tripped on something and tumbled to the ground. As I landed I heard a loud crack. I actually hoped that I had broken an arm or leg rather than dam­ age the toy rifle, but such was not the case. As I looked down I saw that the toy rifle had broken into two pieces. Fortunately, Duane hadn't seen what happened so I quickly picked myself up off the ground holding the two pieces of the toy rifle together. I tlipn made up an excuse for having to go back into school and continued to hold the rifle together until I got there. 1 went back into the school entrance and very care­ fully placed the damaged toy onto the same shelf it had origi­ nally occupied. I then went back outside and convinced Duane that we should play some other game for a while. At that point neither Duane nor anyone else realized what had happened, so there was a pretty good chance that [ had gotten away with it. Still, the thought that someone might figure out what I had done was sure to make for a long, anxious weekend. I stayed relative ly calm throughout the remainder of the school day, and by the time l arrived home from school I actu­ ally felt confident that my mischievous deed might go unde­ tected. That mood changed dramaticall y the next day. Dad was a member of the school board and shortly after our Saturday breakfast he was called to the telephone on school business. All I could think of was that someone discovered what I had done and wanted to show Dad in person. I tried very hard to determine the gist of Dad's telephone con­ versation, but it was difficult to discern based solely on his replies. When the telephone conversation ended he informed us quite matter-of-factly that something had happened at school and that he had to go check it out. Those words hit me like a rock. What could possibly have happened at school other than someone discovered the toy rifle and wanted to know how it had broken.

85 I don't know exactly how long Dad was at school that morn­ ing, but it seemed like fo rever. During that time I began antici­ pating every fom1 of punishment that I might be in for when he returned home. I was certain that I would be expelled from school fo rever and be punished at home as well. When Dad finally did return home he stated more precisely that "something happened at school last ni ght." The fact that he sa id somethi ng happened at night made me pause and think a little. I knew something had happened at school, but it didn't happen at night. Dad then went on to explai n that in the heavy fog that occurred the previous night someone drove off the end of the road and down the school driveway, stopping only when his car hi t the southeast corner of the school. Fortunately, the driver was not seriously injured. Dad further explained that there had been extensive damage to the school entrance but, he said, "the only thing damaged inside was a toy !:,1lm that fe ll off a shelf and broke when it hit the floor. " While I knew very well what had truly happened, I thought it would be totally inappropriate for me to muddle affairs with any contrary explanations at that time. Instead, I let the sc hool district replace the broken toy and waited an adequate length of time (u ntil [ was in college) before te lling anyone what had real­ ly happened. THERE'S NO DILL IN DILEMMA

Spelling was a very important part of our curriculum at Liberty School each year. We were given word lists to study each week, had regular spelling tests, and frequently held spelling bees in preparation for a county-wide competition that was held during the spring of each year. For spelling bees held early in the school year the teacher used two different word lists, one with difficult words for the older students and a separate list with somewhat easier words for younger students. When it came time to determine the stu­ dent that would represent Liberty School at the county compe­ tition, just one word list was used and only sixth-grade tlu·ough eighth-grade students participated in the bee. At Liberty School, this typically meant that five or six students vied for the honor of being the school's top speller. When I was in sixth grade l dropped out of our school spelling bee by misspelling the word government. While rat­ tling off letters a bit too hastily I forgot the "N" and spelled the word GOVERMENT. My hopes of a school championship were dashed and I watched the remainder of the spelling bee from the sidelines. When I was in seventh grade I won our school spel ling bee and advanced to the county competition. ln the time between the two events I studied word lists continuously, determined to rnake my parents and schoolmates proud. Mom, Dad, and my brother Jim all helped me study whenever possible. In 1961 , our county spelling bee was held at the Sheboygan County Teachers' College in Sheboygan Falls. That year,

87 approximately seventy of the area's top spellers fill ed the stage of the school auditorium. The spellers moved one by one up to the microphone as each was given a specific word to spell. As spellers dropped out of the competition, more and more open space became available on the once-crowded stage. When the word li sts that had been provided to participants were ex hausted, fourteen or fifteen spellers remained in the bee, and I was one of them. At that time, program organizers began using a new word li st, one that none of the participants had the opportunity to study. After swi tching to the new word list, spellers began to drop out of the competition much more quick­ ly. I finished tenth overall in our county spelling bee that year, dropping out of the competition on the word dilemma. It was a word r had never even heard of before, probably because I did very little reading as a child. I gave it my best shot but ended up spelling the word with two L's and one M instead of the other way around. While somewhat disappointed that I didn't win, I felt good about finishing in the top ten. As a reward for that feat, my parents let me pick out a brand new Louisville Slugger base­ ball bat, a memento that I have to this day. While I am a rather poor reader, I have found that overa ll l'm not a bad speller. This skill must be somewhat hereditary since two of my chi ldren represented the Cedar Grove-Belgiun1 Elementary School at our county competition some twenty-five to thirty years after my fifteen minutes of fame. At Liberty School and in the years since, f've learned a few tricks to help spell problem-words correctly. The most famous phrase to assist in spelling has to be "I before E except after C or when sounded like A as in neighbor and weigh." Exceptions to this rule include words such as foreign, forfeit, weird, either, neither, seize, lei sure, and height, but in general this catchy phrase can be a big help. Means of remembering the spellings of a few other problem words include:

88 I. There is a rat in separate. 2. Dessert (sweet treat at the end of a meal) bas two s's because you always want more. 3. Vern works in government. 4. The princiruil (head of a school) is your pal. 5. Let's go together to gfil her from school.

One additional spelling assist that l concocted after my per­ formance in the Sheboygan County Spelling Bee is "There's no dill in dilemma, but there is an m&m."

89 AFTER THE FALL

The last day of each school year was met with mixed emo­ tions by students at Liberty Schoo l. While many younger stu­ dents wished the school year could go on forever, older st udents looked forward to the summer break. During the 1950s most one­ room schools started after Labor Day and completed classes by the third week in May. This mea nt that nearly four months of sununer activities had to be scheduled and played out in one's mind during that last day of schoo l. The last day of school in May of 1961 had even greater sig­ nificance. Liberty School was closing after nearly a century of service to rural students in the Townships of Holland and Sherman in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. From that point on, rural students would be bused to larger districts such as Random Lake and Cedar Grove. Si11ce students would be going to two dif­ fe rent districts in autumn, th is was the last day the twelve stu­ dents at Liberty School wou ld study, work, and play together as a group. The last day of school also meant that students had to take proficiency tests to help gauge their overall performance and determine if they wou ld be promoted to the next grade level. There was a reward for completing the exams quickly. As soon as a student was finished with the exa m in any given subject, that student was excused from the school building and could play out­ side until the next exam was given. Boys and girls appa rently viewed the reward system in a significantly different light. The girls typically took their time with the exams, working as care­ fully as possible to assure optimum perfonnance. The boys raced

l)() through the exams in order to get a little extra free time outside. On the last day of school in L96 1, al l five of the sixth-grade through eighth-grade boys completed their proficiency tests in record time. This left nearly an hour of additional free time before the school day ended. While there were probably hundreds of constructive activities we could have participated in to fill that hour, we chose to spend it on the roof of the rear addition to the school. To get there we used one of the playground's seesaw boards, one that could be easily freed fi·om the pivot point at its base. The seesaw conveniently reached from the gro und to the roof of the addition. All we really did up there was sit and talk, but it seemed like a major accomplishment to reach such heights. While we anticipated that it would be quite some time before any girls completed their exams and came outside to play, there was always that chance, so one of the sixth-grade boys stayed down on the ground to serve as a lookout. If he saw anyone con1- ing outside to play, he was to quickly run to the rear of the school and let us know. After being perched on the school roof for just ten or fifteen minutes, we saw the lookout running frantically toward us. He told us that my sister had finished her exam and would soon be outside. The fact that it was my sister approaching probably didn't matter. Any girl who saw us up o n the roof was certain to tattle. To avoid getting caught on the school roof, we scrambled one by one onto the seesaw and shimmied down the board. When I reached the halfway mark, I lost my grip and fell to the ground. My left arm hurt badly after the fall, but I was relieved that my friends and I had all reached the ground before my sister could spot us. We quickly removed the seesaw from the roof and pre­ tended to be playing some other game. My arm hurt terribly throughout the remainder of the school day and into the evening. I didn't tell my parents how much pain I was in because I didn't know how to explain what had hap­ pened. That night I did my regular chores and fed the cows their hay. I had to feed the cows by grasping the top of the fork han-

9 1 die with my right hand and cradling the lower portion of the han­ dle in the crook of my left arm. There was no way l could actu­ ally grasp the fork handle with my left hand without writhing in pam. By the next morning the pain was too much to bear. Fortunately, by that time I had conceived a half-truth that would provide an adequate explanation for my injury without profess­ ing an outright lie. While at the breakfast table, J told my parents that J had fallen from the seesaw the day before. What I conve­ niently forgot to tell them was that the seesaw bridged a span from the ground to the school roof. Mom quickly telephoned Dr. Naylen's office in Adell to make an appointment for me. In less than an hour my left arm had been x-rayed and was found to contain a hairline fracture. Dr. Naylen wrapped the arm in a cast and placed it in a sling. We were out of the doctor's office and on our way back home in no tin1e. I had successfully avoided punishment for my mischievous behavior. That very same night, my brother and I were taken to Cy's Barber Shop in Adel l for our monthly haircuts. l received a hair­ cut fi rst and then sat on a bench with Dad while my brother's hair was being trinuned. I actually fe lt a degree of pride in my wound since everyone who entered the barber shop while we were there commented on it. The mood changed quick ly when one of the boys who par­ ticipated in the rooftop adventure entered the ba rber shop with his father. They immediately began talki ng about what had hap­ pened at school, sparing no detail. Within a matter of seconds Dad learned how I had actually gotten hurt. I didn't utter another word throughout the duration of our stay at the barber shop or all the way home. All I could do was imagine the tongue-lashing I was in for, but it never came. Neither Mom nor Dad said a word about the half-truth I had to ld or the manner in which I had been injured. Perhaps they knew that a long, silent, anxious wai t in anticipation of punishment was just as effective as any other pun­ ishment might be.

92 CAT NAMES

Every dairy farm can use one good cow clog and two or three good cats. The dog can assist in bringing a herd back from the pasture and can help usher cows into and out of the barn at appropriate times as well. A few good hunting cats can help control a farm's rodent population. Our farm had one not-so-good cow dog and way too many cats. There was a time when over thirty cats and kittens roamed the farm. While a few of them probably did some good in con­ trolling the rodent population, most of them looked at the farm as a resort community. They lounged in the sun all day and then returned to the barn at night. In the barn they were served a feast of bread, milk, and table scraps. With so many cats around, it was generally only farm favorites and a few other exceptional cats who received their own names. My brother and I took a considerably different approach than our sister in naming the cats on our farm. Mary, who is six years younger than Jim and four years younger than I, typically came up with names like Gray-and-Whitey, Orange­ and-Whitey, and Three-Color. Some of the cats and kittens that Jim and I named include Mewie, Feebly, Popeye, and Cracker Jack. Mewie was the runt of a litter born in late summer of 1961. The kitten was constantly mewing, but v11e never knew why. Jim and I used to play footba ll on the north lawn of our farm yard. Mewie always tried to follow us as we moved along the playing field. The kitten was very frail , though, and usually lagged far behfod. Typically, Mewie would reach one end of the football

93 field just as Jim and I were turning around to go the other way. Feebly was injured in a manner that occurred far too often on the fa rm; she was tread on by a cow while weaving her way through the barn. From that point on the cat's front legs pro­ pelled her through the barn while her back legs dragged help­ lessly along. Popeye had a unique look, but we were never sure if the kit­ ten was born that way or was inj ured by some other 1neans. Whatever the case, the kitten's left eye protruded nearly one­ half inch further out than its right eye. This led to the very appropriate name of Pop-eye. CrackerJack was the only cat I ever claimed sole ly for myself. T he cat had a significant amount of caramel shaded fur, very much the color of Cracker Jack candy. I believe I named the cat Cracker.lack primarily because of that, but he turned out to be a cracke1jack pet as well. One of my favori te memori es of CrackerJack is the way he would sit on top of our purple mar­ tin house taunting the birds and daring them to enter. While CrackcrJack apparently thought he was king of the world at that point, it was the martins who generally had the last laugh. If the martins ever caught CrackcrJack out in the open yard, tbey would swoop down on hi m over and over until he could scram­ ble to safety. Other popular cats and ki ttens that graced the farm yard in more recent years include Velvet, Window Kitty, Myrtl e, Ri cky and Lucy, Oscar and Mayer. Roxy and Boxy. Tony and Tiger, Inky, Dinky and Do, Spunky, Mischief, Bootsie, and the last lit­ ter of four to be born while Dad lived on the farm--George, George, George, and Martha.

94 TELEVISION

While experimental broadcasts had been performed as early as 1928, television did not become a 1 nc~jor force in our society until two decades later. By the late 1940s television sets were purchased by tavern keepers and sweet shop owners who recog­ nized the new medium as a way to altract customers into their establishments. By the early 1950s te levision had found its way into many American households. At that point, te levision actu­ ally served to increase socialization since people who didn't have a television set spent increasingly more time with fri ends or relatives who did. Mom and Dad purchased their first television set in the early 1950s. It was a black-and-white nineteen-inch Zenith con­ sole TV that Mom and Dad bought from Edna and Art TeRonde. The TeRondes, who were Mom's aunt and uncle, owned a com­ bination paint store and appliance shop in downtown Oostburg, just five miles east of our farm. Mom and Dad used that first console television set until 1968, when they purchased a Zenith twenty-three-inch color TV As I recall, the TeRondes brought Mom and Dad's first tel­ evision set out to the farm one spring or summer evening short­ ly after we finished supper. Great-Uncle Art installed the tele­ vision set and roof antenna while Dad finished his evening chores. The first show r remember watching on our brand new tel­ evision set was Name That Tune. As I recall, contestants on the show had to run across the stage and ring a bell before they could even try to name the tune that was being played.

95 Apparently early telev ision executives felt that in a medium that relied more on sight than sound, even quiz shows required some fo rm of physical activity to capture an audience's attention. Throughout the 1950s, shows like Name Th at Tune, Beat the Clock, and Truth or Consequences required some form of stunt or physical act ivity in add ition to knowing any given subj ect matter. Th e $64,000 Question and Ti11e11ty-011e used very visi­ ble isolation booths to heighten suspense, whi le Groucho Marx's You Bet Your life had a toy duck on a perch that dropped down whenever a contestant mentioned "the secret word ." Our household, like most others around us, had a censorshi p board that determined which television shows my siblings and I could watch. The censorship board consisted of Mom and Dad, and their say was final. Even though early television shows were far less expl ici t than the shows of today, Mom and Dad asserted that some productions were unfit for chi ldren of any age. In actuality, some of the shows we couldn't watch may not have been censored, but may simply have had the misfortune of being on at the sa me ti me as The Lawrence Welk Show, The Red Skelton Sho1·1~ Th e Gcm y Moore Sholl', or some other produc­ tion that was must-see TV for either Mom or Dad . With only one telev ision set in the house, if Mom or Dad wanted to watch a certai n show everyone else watched that same show. As I recall, we could not watch Gunsmoke or Maverick , but we could watch Wyatt Emp, The R(/leman, Zorro, Wild Bill Hickock. Bonanza, Dragnet, and Highway Patrol. My brother and I were not allowed to watch The Three Stooges Show because Mom and Dael thought we might imi tate them. We were, however, allowed to watch both box ing and wrestling, which probably provided us with more ammunition than the Three Stooges ever could have. Box ing was a key component of ea rly telev ision program­ ming, with one or more feature fi ghts telecast weekly from the early 1950s through the mid-I 960s. For anyone who watched the nationally-televised Fight ofth e Week on a regular basis, the March 24, 1962 bout between Em ile Griffith and Benny "K id"

96 Paret is certain to be both the most memorable and the most tragic. By the end of the fight, Kid Paret Jay badly beaten in the center of the ring. He was carried from the ring unconscious and passed away ten days later. This broadcast is believed to have marked the beginning of the end for nationally-televised boxing matches during the 1960s. Over the years, some seemingly insignificant episodes from some rather obscure television shows have made lasting impres­ sions on me. The best example of this phenomenon relates to an episode of the Ri!/T and Reddy show, a Saturday morning car­ toon show that I watched as a child. The Riif.f and Reddy show was a Hanna-Barbera production that aired Saturday mornings from the mid-I 950s through the mid-l 960s. As I recall, the show was on at 9:30 each Saturday morning in our time zone. I had to leave home for church catechism c lass by 9:45 each Saturday morning, so I rarely watched an entire episode of the show. The stars of the Ruff and Reddy show were a cat and dog duo that participated in a wide variety of adventures throughout the series' run . .I n one episode, Ruff and Reddy were launched from Ea rth in a rather crude spaceship and were eventually drawn into the previously unknown planet of Munimula (alu­ minum spelled backward). I recall very few details about Ruff and Reddy's space adventure in particular or about the series in general, but I have remembered the planet of Munimula for forty years.

97 ROGER KENT AT RINGSIDE

The wrestling that I watched on television as a child ranged from nationally-televised bouts broadcast during the mid- I 950s to All-Star Wrestling, a Minnesota-based, syndicated program that came on the scene sometime later. Both of these produc­ tions were campy, low-budget versions of today's glitzy wrestle­ fests. Each show was fa r less explicit than today's elaborate pro­ ductions but provided just as much drama and just as much entertainment. The nati onally-televised wrestling matches of the 1950s aired during prime-time and included wrestlers like Gorgeous George, Tony Rocca, and the Mighty Atlas. All-Star Wrestling, which J actually enjoyed more than the nationally-televised bouts, was the campier of the two productions. All-Star Wrestling was a broadcast enterprise of the Minnesota-based American Wrestling Association. The show initially inc luded local ta lent like Dick the Bruiser, The Crusher, and Verne Gagne who played a major role in the production of the show. As professional wrestling's popularity grew throughout the 1960s, the cast of characters on A II-Star Wrestling expanded as well. In many ways the show became a soap opera for men and boys, with story lines of h·eachcry and deceit that continued for months or years. Some of the wrestlers who joined the fold in later years included Wilbur Snyder, Nick Bockwinkel, Ray The Crippler Stevens, Bobby The Brain Heenan, Black Jack Lanza, Mad Dog Vachon, Baron von Rascl1ke, Haystack Calhoun, Bobo Brazil , Jerry Blackwell, Jumpin' Jim Brunzel!, and Verne Gagne's son, Greg. Many of these wrestlers moved from region

98 to region throughout the United States to provide viewers in each area of the nation with new faces and fresh young talent. Like most other wrestling associations throughout the nation, the membership of the American Wrestling Association included a group of lovable losers. Journeyman wrestlers like Sod Buster Kenny Jay, Scrap Iron Gardaski, Angel Rivera, and Rocky Guzman were defeated week after week by a host of wrestling's bad boys. On rare occasions, perhaps once or twice each year, one of these scrappy contenders would surprise the viewing audience with an amazing come-from-behind victory over a noteworthy opponent. Such victories were usually either the result of the OplJ.onent's extreme overconfidence or the result of the opponent's own moves backfiring. Victories of this sort were very memorable, primarily because they were so rare. Throughout the years, a variety of wrestlers used a vari ety of submission holds on All-Star Wrestling. Submission holds forced opponents to concede without ever reaching a three­ count on the mat. Some of the submission holds applied over the years included Verne Gagne's "sleeper,'' Baron von Raschke's "claw hold," Black Jack Lanza's "cobra clutch," Wilbur Snyder's "abdominal stretch," and the "figure-four leg lock," which was used by a variety of combatants. While many wrestlers used submission holds to end a match, others used a variety of finishing moves to drop their opponents to the mat for the three-count. Bobo Brazil used the "coconut head butt," which fe lled his opponents like a rock without affecting him. Four-hundred pound Haystack Calhoun, who wrestled in bib overalls, used "the big splash" which was nothing more than a belly flop onto his opponent. A variety of wrestlers used the "pile-driver," where an opponent was driven headfirst into the mat. As l recall, All-Star Wrestling aired late Saturday afternoons in our area when l first watched it. Because it was a syndicated show, both the time it was broadcast and the station that carried it changed frequently over the years. One of the most entertain­ ing segments on any given production of All-Star Wrestling was

99 the portion of the show where wrestlers were interviewed. Throughout the show's early years, Marty O'Neill handled most of the interviews and promoted most upcoming bouts. In promoting upcoming events Marty would stare straight into the camera, point at the camera with his crooked index finger, and say "Be there! You won't want to mi ss it." When Marty passed away, the next show to air ended in basic silence, except for the bell at ringside which was tolling in his honor. Jn one most memorable television interview The Crusher, who was the pride of Milwaukee, stated that he trained by "chasing girlies while carrying a keg of beer on each shoulder." My cousin David, who was perhaps a greater wrestling fan than I, recently recalled one other memorable interview with The Crusher. The interview, which took place shortly before a match with Mad Dog Vachon, ended with The Crusher singi ng his throaty version of "How Much is That Doggy in the Window." On All-Star Wrestling, combatants dueled as Roger Kent provided a play-by-play description of action "inside the squared circle." He would introduce each bout with "This is Roger Kent at Ringside" and then proceed ·with a barrage of descriptive phrases as the match progressed. Some of the most memorable rhetoric included phraseology such as "He was kicked into the middle of next week," or "He's on rubber-leg street," or "He doesn't know if he's afoot or horseback." Whenever a wrestler applied the pile-driver as a finishing move, whether it was applied to a hero or vi ll ain, Roger Kent would proclaim "It ought to be banned, and is in some states." In speaking of The Crusher, Roger Kent once said "He's a legend in his own time and someone else's." ln my book, Roger Kent fits that same descriplion. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but they just don't make shows like ALI-Star Wrestling anymore.

100 THE GO-CART

l have always liked machines and the tools used to repair them. Some very early photographs bear witness to this fact. One photograph taken when I was just three years old shows me holding onto Grandpa Janisse with one hand and holding onto a pliers with the other. A second photograph shows me lying under my tricycle pretending to repair it in the same manner I saw Dad repair bis car and truck. As I matured, I continued to tinker with tricycles, bicycles, and any form of engine-powered equipment. Mom and Dad never had a problem finding someone to mow the lawn. They had an old engine-powered reel-type lawn mower that [ loved to use. Every time I mowed the lawn I would dream of the day that I could use the mower's engine to power my own go-cart. While still in elementary school I assisted neighbors Curt and Lee Hesselink in repairing an old Maytag washi ng-machine engine that had been stored in our garage for many years. We eventually did get the engine to run, but it never worked well enough to pO\·ver anything. Throughout my elementary school years I built a variety of four-wheel coasters for use on the farm. By the time I graduat­ ed from elementary school I was too old for coasters and too young to drive a car, so I bridged the gap with a series of engine-powered go-carts that I built with Dad's help. As I recall, my first engine-powered cart was a wood-frame model that had previously been used as a coaster. That first go-cart included a very crude steering system and coaster wagon wheels. My many years of lawn mowing finally paid dividends when Mom

IOI and Dad let me use the engine from their old lawn mower to power my first go-cart. Within a very short time I began designi ng a new, more state-of-the-art go-cart. The new cart included a tubular metal frame, a two-cycle engine with centrifugal clutch, a sophisticat­ ed steering mechanism, and inflatable rear tires. The frame used for 111 y new go-cart was based on a frame design I had seen in a recently-published edition of Popular Mechanics. The materi­ al used fo r the new go-cart frame was obtained by dismantling an old hayloader that Dad had abandoned along Gumdrop Hill on the farm. The hayloader was no longer needed when Dad started baling hay rather than hauling and storing loose hay for feedi ng the cows. Ea rly one summer I spent several days disassembling the hayloader, cutting pipe from the loader into sections, and select­ ing the best sections of pi pe for my go-cart frame. Dael and I then brought the pipe and a detai led set of drawings to Jasper and John Ramaker's Blacksmith Shop in Hingham fo r assembly. When Dad and I returned to the blacksmith shop to pick up the assembled frame, we received a quick lesson in economics. Even though I had prov ided all of the material for the go­ cart frame, even though most of the materia l was a lready cut to length , even though I had provided a detailed set of drawings for the frame, and even though the average laborer earned just one dollar per hour at the time, the bi ll for my go-cart fra me was so high that we couldn't afford to take the frame home with us. The invoice included numerous hours of engineering and draft­ ing time that neither Dad nor I felt were necessary. The total bill for the completed go-cart frame was around sixty dollars--about ten times greater than had been anticipated. While I probably would have found a way to pay the bill j ust to get my new go-cart frame, that's not what happened. Dad was so angry that he told the Ramaker Brothers to keep the frame and probably even told them where to store it. I was very dis­ appointed, but I understood Dad's position. If we agreed to pay this bill , there was no telling what the next bi ll for the repair of

102 some farm machinery might be. While the best part of the hayloader now belonged to the Ramaker Brothers in Hingham, I did eventually find enough pipe for a second go-cart frame. When I had enough pipe for a second frame I made a new set of drawings and Dad brought the pipe and drawings to Bert Miske in Adell. This time the frame cost just three dollars to complete and I was on my way to a new set of wheels.

Homebuilt go-cart in the summer of 1963.

Completing the go-cart took the better part of one summer. Like many other projects l participated in over the years, build­ ing the go-cart turned out to be more fun than using it. I kept the cart until l reached the magic age of sixteen and qualified for a driver's license. At that time I sold the go-cart to a neigh­ bor and started concentrating on cars. When the Ramaker Brothers retired from business in the early 1980s, I went to their auction to see if my first go-cart frame was still there. I rather hoped the frame was there so that J could get a true indication of its value. Unfortunately I didn't see the frame at the auction that day. J don't know if the Ramaker Brothers eventually found a willing buyer for the frame or if they simply cut it apart and used the pipe for other projects. A part of me still wonders what happened to that over­ priced engineering marvel of the early 1960s.

103 I WANT TO .BE A HA IVI

The one-room school I attended for the first seven years of my elementary education closed in 1961. As a result, I had to attend eighth grade in Cedar Grove, a village about eight miles southeast of the farm I grew up on. The thought of having forty classmates instead of one was somewhat daunting, but I did eventua Uy adj ust. In attending a much larger school during the last year of my elementary education, I met a lot of students with a wide range of interests. One of those students was Dwight Jagga rd, son of the minister at First Presbyterian Church in Cedar Grove. By the time I met Dwight he either was, or was soon to be, a licensed amateur radio operator. It was a hobby that very quickly cap­ tured my imagi nation. 1 received a Heathkit Electronic Experimenter's Kit as a Chri stmas gift in 1961, and soon began building the simple transmitters and receivers descr.ibed in the kit's instruction man­ ual. Within a very short time I set up a radio station in the upstairs bedroom that I shared with my brother. I served as the station's disc jockey playing records, providing sports and farm news updates, and occasionally interviewing either my brother or a friend or relative who happened to be visiting the far m. The simple transmitters built with my experimenter's kit were very much li ke today's M1: Microphone. My broadcasts could be heard on any AM rad io in our house or barn, as well as on the radios of neighbors who lived within a one-half mil e radius of our fa rm. My cousiJ1 David recently recalled the time he and his dad listened to one of my broadcasts on their car

104 radio as they drove home from our farm one evening. I quit broadcasting about one minute after they left the farm, thinking that they would no longer be able to hear me. I was later told that they were one mile north of the farm when I stopped broad­ casting, and that l was still coming in loud and clear at the time. That was by far the greatest distance my station's signal ever reached. I was never able to dupl icate the feat and often wonder how much longer David and his dad could have heard me if l had continued broadcasting that night. By the end of my sophomore year in high school I had qual­ ified for my Novice Class amateur radio license. That first license was attained by taking a Morse code proficiency test in combination with a brief written examination, with both por­ tions of the test admini stered by a li censed amateur radio oper­ ator. A fellow named Evan Smith, who lived just four miles southeast of our farm, helped me prepare for my Novice Class license exam and administered the test when he felt l was ready. While preparing for the Novice Class license l frequently visit­ ed Evan Smith's house and watched in amazement as he com­ municated with ham radio operators from across the United States. While a Novice Class license was nice, its term was limited and the radio bands that could be worked as a novice were lim­ ited as well. The next step up was a General Class license, which provided additional opportunities but required a higher level of both Morse code proficiency and technical background. I started studying for a Gene ral Class license almost immedi­ ately after completing my Novice license exam and achieved that next level by the time I fini shed my junior year in high school. I eventually went on to obtain an Advanced Class ama­ teur radio license, which provided even greater opportunity to communicate with other ham radio operators from around the world. The examinations for both the General Class and Advanced Class licenses had to be taken in Milwaukee. Having a ham radio license was nice, but the license did very little good without some equipment to get on the air. I

105 Richard Dykstra al his ham radio station in 1964. didn't have much money to invest in my new hobby when I started, so I initially purchased a very-used receiver and built a low-power transmitter using parts I obtained fro m Evan Smith. l used the home-built transmitter and very-used receiver throughout the time l had my Novice Class license. By the time I received my General Class license, I had a job and a litt le more money to invest in my hobby. At that time I purchased a better transmitter a nd receiver from Allied Electronics in Milwaukee. The combination of the higher class license and better equipment served to significantly increase 1 my range. Within a year I had conversed with ham radio opera­ tors in all but six states. Many ham radio operators that l con­ versed with sent QSL cards as confirmation of communication, and I sent my QSL cards to them. At the time I participated in the amateur radio hobby "QSL" was the international radio sig­ nal for "I acknowledge receipt." Over the years my interests have changed considerably. Even though I still have an amateur radio li cense and still have an adequate transmitter and receiver, I seldom scan the bands in search of fellow hams. It was fun while it lasted but as of now my own family, my O'vv n business, and a wide range of new

106 interests have made ham radio a lot less exciting for me. Whi le I no longer actively participate as a ham rad io opera­ tor, many of the QSL cards I received as confirmation of com­ munication sti II proudly adorn the walls of my office.

107 THE WHITE CORVAIR

By the autumn of 1964 I had a driver's license, a weekend job, and a very busy social li fe--the three ingredients required to convince my parents that I needed my own car. While Mom and Dad owned two cars at the time, there were four drivers in our family. The scheduling problems created by thi s fact even­ tually helped S\vay the vote in my favor. While Mom and Dad agreed to let me buy my own ca r by early spring of my junior year in high school, it took several more months to find the perfect car. Then in May of I 965 Dad found a 1960 Corvair two-door coupe at an auto dealership in Sheboygan. Dad asked the dealership to hold the car until I could see it--just to make sure that I would like it. From the moment I first saw the shiny white Corvair l knew my auto hunt was over. The ca r had a sleek, low, sporty look that was certain to enhance my status among my peers. After a min­ imal amount of bargaining, the ca r was mine. The events of the day were so significant that my new car was mentioned in Mom and Dad's daily journal along with a description of the day's weather, the high temperature for the day, and a bri ef discussion regarding who we went to visit that night. For those of you who may be interested, \Ve brought the car home from the dealership on Friday May 21, 1965. Jt was very wa rm that day, with a high temperature of 80° Fahrenhei t. We went to Oostburg that night and stopped in at Grandma Jani ssc's house to visit. My shiny white Corvair had a price tag of seven-hundred dollars. While seven-hundred doll ars may not sound like much for a fi ve-year-old car, one must remember that J was only earn-

108 The white Corvair in 1968. ing ninety cents per hour at the time. As I recall, Mom and Dad helped pay for auto insurance and provided some fuel for the car in exchange for my continued assistance on the fiu-m. Although I worked full-time at a local cheese factory during the summer and worked weekends at the same place throughout the school year, I still helped out on the fa rm whenever possible. While there may have been a few nicer cars in the student parking lot at Cedar Grove High School during the 1965-66 school year, there weren't many. By the time the school year started I had equipped the car with dual glass-pack mufflers for improved sound, had thrown some dice over the rear-view mir­ ror for improved looks, and had installed a new radio and better speakers for improved groovin' to the music. The car that I purchased represented the first model year for the Corvair. As a result, the car had a few unique problems that I hope General Motors evenhtally resolved. First, the car had an air-cooled engine that used an around-the-comer fan belt to provide the cooling air. The fan belt would frequently leave the engine's ninety-degree pulley system. Whenever this occurred, the engine overheated, an indicator on the car's dashboard illu­ minated, and I had to stop the car to replace the fan belt.

109 The second major problem associated with my Corvair related to the debilitating effects of carburetor icing. The engine's carburetor would ice up quickly if the weather was damp and the air temperature was around thirty-two degrees Fahrenhei t. If l ever drove in such weather conditions, T knew that the car was certain to stall after about twenty n1inutes of driving. Jn this case I would have to turn the car off, let engine­ heat melt the ice that had built up on the carburetor, and then restart the car to continue on my way. My Corvair had one other unique featu re as wel l--a gaso­ line-fired heater. Gasoline from the car's fuel tank was vapor­ ized and burned to provide heat for the interior of the car. This feature did not present a problem when it worked properly. In fact, the heater warmed up the car much quicker than the heater of any other car built at the time. A problem did arise, however, whenever the heater failed since very few service stations knew how to fix it. As J recall, one of the few service stations that could repair the heater properly was Carl & Jim's Service in Gibbsville. r drove my white Corvair fo r six yea rs before parting with it in 1971. I think my wife Linda misses the car far more than I do. That was the ca r I owned when we first started dating, and she has attached a significant sentimental value to it. She might fee l somewhat different if she had been the one who had to replace the fan belt each time it flew off, or if she had become stall ed in rush-hour traffic over and over because of carburetor 1cmg. We occasionally talk about buying an older car for senti­ ment's sake. Linda thinks that if we do buy an older ca r it should be a white Corvair. I would much prefer one of the other cars I have driven over the years such as a 1957 Chevy, a 1966 GTO, a 1979 Cutlass Supreme, or a 1990 Lum ina Z34. Each of these cars has a much higher fondness-factor with me because each required far less maintenance.

110 THE OBSESSION

I was born the middle child in a family of overachievers. My older brother moved to Washington D.C. in 197 1 after gradua­ tion from college and a tour of duty in Viet11am. In Washington, he served as press secl·etary and chief of staff for two different United States Congressmen, served as a staff director for the United States Senate, and was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense by President George Bush. My younger sister has worked as an author and editor for Western Publishing, as a program director for the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth, and most recently as a free-lance a uthor and editor in the Milwaukee and Madison areas. Both my brother and sister are avid readers, and both of them took elementary school and hi gh school more seriously than I did. Jim was valedictorian of the Cedar Grove High School Class of 1964. Mary was valedictorian of the Class of 1969, graduating in just three years. I an1 not an avid reader but l did, like my brother and sister, achieve a measure of fame in high school. r was voted class clown for the Cedar Grove High School Class of 1966. I don't know if it has something to do with being the middle child or not, but all throughout elementary school and high school ] was more interested in getting good laughs than getting good grades. I still remember providing witty, though totally incorrect, answers to questions on high school exams when r actually knew tbe right answers. This lack of seriousness was probably either my way of avoiding direct competition with my brother or was the middle child in me looking for some much-

111 needed attention. My parents apparently recognized and accepted the fact that I would not meet the academic standard set by my older broth­ er in e lementary school and hi gh school. As l recall , they put very little pressure on me to match his achi evements. J recently mentioned this concept to my brother and he had a somewhat different explanation. He suggested that whenever Mom and Dad did talk to me about improving my performance in school, I simply ignored them. I never really did enjoy elementary school or high school, but something changed when I entered college. When 1 started college at the M ilwaukee School of Engineering in the autumn of 1966, I actually started to e njoy learning. A great deal of this change in attitude can be attributed to the fact that I began tak­ ing more courses that r was truly interested in. 1t also probably helped that far fewer of my courses relied on reading to com­ plete classroom assignments. During my f irst year of college my grades improved dra­ matically as compared to high school. As my grades improved, r took more pride in my work and began to take the concept of education more seriously. The level of seriousness increased with each ensuing school year, probably enhanced by the fact that I was solely responsible for fi nancing my college education and the fact that by the time l graduated from coll ege I was mar­ ried with one child and a second child on the way. By the end of my sophomore year in college I had the high­ est grade point average in my class. From that point on r was determined to graduate as class va ledictorian and make my par­ ents proud. Although they never even hinted that I had disap­ pointed them with my performance in high school, I began to feel that I had. My quest for academic excellence soon became an obsession. With hard work and good class notes 1 managed to graduate as valedictorian of the Milwaukee School of Engi neering Class of 197 1. This was a feat that not even my brother had accom­ plished. I felt that I had redeemed myself for my lackluster per-

11 2 forrnances in elementary school and high school. While I felt a sense of pride in my accomplishment, that early success became somewhat of a burden over the years. From that point on I have been struggling with a degree of com­ petitiveness and level of anxiety that take the fun out of many otherwise enjoyable activities. It was a lot more fun being class clown.

11 3 No. 272

Jn August of 1969 Richard Nixon was our president, the United States was basking in the glory of its first successful trip to the moon, and the war in Southeast Asia was approaching its zenith. At that very same time, my older brother Jim was on his way to Vietnam for a one-year tour of duty, while l prepared to start my junior year of coll ege at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. l am not sure why, but even with my brother going to fight for our country in Vietnam I felt very little emotion about the war or its consequences. My feelings \.Vere probably influenced both by the way I was raised and by the college I chose to attend during the 1960s. First, I grew up in rural Wisconsin where, for the most part, children were taught to trust both their political and military leaders. Thousands of young men from our area had served their country during World War I, World War II, and the Korean Conflict. Most people in the community simply felt that it was the next generation's turn to defend America's free­ dom. Second, f attended college at an engineering school where protests of any kind were basically unheard of. While violent anti-war protests and demonstrations were occurring on college campuses across the nation, students at the Milwaukee School of Engineering were going about the business of getting their col lege degrees. When I entered college, young men of draft age were given student deferments. This at least assured young men that they could complete their undergraduate studies before being draft­ ed. While many students hoped that the war in Vietnam would

114 end while they were sti ll in college, that did not occur for the young men around my age. My brother graduated from coll ege in May of 1968, was drafted in October of 1968, and left for a tour of duty in Vi etnam by August of 1969. In December of 1969 a lottery was held to determine the order in which young men of draft age wou ld be selected for military service. Each date of the year was matched by random drawing with a num ber from one through 366. The dates of the year represented the birthdays of draft-age men. The numbers from one through 366 represented the order in whi ch the young men would be drafted, with number one being first in line. This is one of the few instances where being number one was not a good thing. Each college student would continue to be deferred until he either completed his undergraduate studies or left school for some other reason. At that time, the student would enter the draft pool using the lottery number assigned him. l don't recall being terribly concerned about the events of the day when the draft lottery was held, but I certainly should have been. Even though I was marri ed and had a young chi ld, if I had received a low lottery number r most certainly would have been drafted sometime within the next two years. Fortunately, I did not receive a low lottery number. The match for my June 12 birthday was number 272. While I heard the number just once, I have remembered it for nearly thirty years. Lottery nurnber 272 al I but assured me that I would not be drafted. A college classmate of mine was not so fortunate, winding up with the dreaded number one. Shortly after receiving my lottery number I learned that only young men with lottery numbers of approximately one tlu·ough 140 were li kely to be drafted in 1970. Since that num­ ber could increase in subsequent years if the war continued to escalate, I was advised to go to the draft board and withdraw my student deferment immediately. In doing so I became eligible for the draft in 1970 rather than becoming eligible only after I graduated from college. As it turned out, predictions about the maximum lottery number that wou ld be reached in 1970 were

11 5 fairly accurate and I never did receive an induction notice. 1 am still somewhat baffled by how little attention I paid to the war in Vietnam whi le it was going on around me. While I was once oblivious to the war and its consequences, the sight of parents and other loved ones paying tribute to their fallen heroes now affects me deeply.

11 6 HELP WANTED

I graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in May of 197 1. Just two weeks later I started working as an engi­ neer in Kohler Company's Small-Engine Division. lt seemed like the perfect job for me. While my academic background was primarily in electronics, l had always enjoyed worki ng with small engines. As a youngster I was always tinkering with lawn mower and garden tractor engines, and at tbe age of fourteen I built my own go-cart. Within a couple of years the initial excitement of the job wore off and J had a difficult time making myself go to work each day. There are several reasons why I began struggling at work. The first reason actually had nothing to do with my job function, but simply with the location of my office. l worked in Kohler Company's Engine Development Lab, which was locat­ ed in the basement of the Engine Plant. Each morning I woul d walk down a ramp, through a long, damp corridor, and across the entire length of the engine lab to get to my office. There were no windows in my office. In fact, there were no windows in the entire lab. It was li ke going to work in a cave each day--a very noisy cave. I had to walk about one-hundred yards to see what it looked like outdoors. After growing up on a 120-acre dairy farm, working in the engine lab's cave-like atmosphere was somewhat difficult. The second reason I began struggling with my work related more to job function. While at Kohler Company, I worked nine years in a supervisory capacity and two years as a project engi­ neer. Neither position a ll owed creativity or the ability to work

117 as a hands-on engineer. In my supervisory capacity I processed lab technician time cards, ordered parts, scheduled engine tests, and maintained electronic equipment. None of these job fu nc­ tions lent itself to creativity. While my work as a project engi­ neer was somewhat more satisfying, the tasks required in that position still related more to planning and scheduling than to creating and designing. My relationship with Kohler Company became somewhat strained in the late 1970s when a competitor offered me a job in their brand new research and development facility doing the kind of work I had always dreamed of. At that time, Kohler Company would not grant a wa iver to a recently-signed employee agreement that prevented me, or anyone else, from going to work for a competitor within one year of leaving Kohl er Company. Knowing that Kohler Company would not sign a wa iver, the competitor assured me in writing that they would hold the ir position for me for up to one year. With this assurance, I left Kohler Company and tried to keep busy until I could begin working for the competitor. I couldn't keep myself busy enough, though, and within six months of leavi ng Kohler Company I began getting anxious and depressed having no meaningful job to go to each day. At that time, in an attempt to prevent signifi­ can t emotional problems, I returned to Koh ler Company. While I thought that returning to work might lif\t my spirits, it did not. I returned to the same work I had previously found unfulfilling. Over the next several years I began missing a lot of work and was probably less than a model employee when I was there. During that time I received no pay raises and no promotions. l started a part-time venture doing technical writing in the hopes that I could one clay make a Ji ving doing that, but the business never developed to that point. In June of 1982 Kohler Company made the decision that I could not bring myself to make--they discontinued my empl oy­ ment. What they actually did was fire me, but I have always had a difficult time expressing it in those terms. Although I shou ld

11 8 have been upset and concerned about how I would provide for my family, I was not. The only emotion I felt was relief. Within a year of leaving Kohler Company I started my own engineering business. In order to survive that first year my wife Linda and I refinanced our house, and Linda worked nights at a local canning factory. At the end of our first full year in busi­ ness our income tax return showed a net taxable income ofjust ninety dollars. Fortunately things improved over the next sever­ al years. When my employment was discontinued at Kohler Company I had the difficult task of explaining the situation to Mom. She never accepted change well, and a change of this nature would be especially difficult to take. In discussing the situation with her l tried very hard to avoid saying that I had been fi red. Instead l used terminology such as "Kohler Company let me go," or "My position was eliminated from the corporate chart." For several years after I left Kohler Company, Mom contin­ ued to ask me if I thought I would ever work there again. She truly hoped that I would so that things could be the way they used to be. I didn't have the heart to tel I her that l didn't want things to be the way they used to be. I think that one of Mom's concerns was that l would be unable to support my family with my own business. I'm sure she felt that there was more security in working for someone else, and she tried in a none-too-subtle manner to get me to do so. The floor and chest-type freezer in the entrance to Mom and Dad's farmhouse were always covered with newspapers to help keep the floor and freezer clean. In the past, the section of newspaper that Mom and Dad used for this purpose could have been anything from the front page to the sports section of their small local daily, the Sheboygan Press. A strange thing happened when I lost my job at Kohler Company. At that time, the fl oor and freezer in the entrance to Mom and Dad's farmhouse began to be covered with the employment sections of both the Sheboygan Press and the

11 9 much larger lvfilwaukee Journal. For the next several years, available engineering jobs stared me in the face each time I passed through the door. T his continued for over hvo years until Linda and I built an office onto our home. At that time, Mom probably realized that we were in business for keeps. An acquaintance once told me that the nice thing about hav­ ing your own business is that you can work any seventy-five hours of the week that you want to. While this may be a bit of an exaggeration, it is certainly true that one must devote a sig­ nificant amount of time to a business in order fo r it to succeed. Although I have worked many twelve-hour to sixteen-hour days since starting my own business, I have also had the opportunity to attend many school activities and other midweek functions that I could not have attended if I worked for someone e lse. While Mom and Dad still farmed, the flexibility of my schedule also allowed me to assist them as needed. They appreciated the help, and some of my best engineering designs originated dur­ ing the daydreaming I did while driving a tractor out in the field.

120 JIM'S BROTHER

For the first fifteen years of my adult life I was known to many people in my community simply as "Jim's Brother." By the time I graduated from college my brother had established a name for himself by working as a reporter for a local daily newspaper, serving a tour of duty in Vietnam, and moving on to serve as press secretary for a very popular United States Congressman in Washington D.C. Whenever anyone tried to explain who I was, they would simply say "You know, he's Jim's brother." Over the years, as my wife Linda and l became more involved in community projects, as our children participated in a wide variety of school activities, as we established our own engineering business, and as our business began to sponsor local sports teams, we began to create our own identities. As a result I am now referred to as J irn's brother far less frequently than at any time in the past. One of the most fulfilling days of my life occurred recently when my brother was visiting the area. As he was being introduced to someone by a mutual acquaintance he was introduced simply as "Rich's Brother." As our children have become established in their own right over the past several years, Linda and I have learned to accept a new form of identificati on. We now joyfully accept the fact that in many instances we are simply referred to as "Stacy's parents, C.J.'s parents, Sally's parents, Erin's parents, or Jordan's par­ ents."

12 1 THE BAD POETS SOCIETY

While I consider myself a decent writer and an above-aver­ age speller, there is one literary concept that I never really have grasped. It is the concept o f poetry, for which my lack of inter­ est and ability go back many, many years. My mom saved everything she possibly could over the years. Shortly before she passed away she turned over boxes and boxes of workbooks, homework assignments, art projects, and assorted other mate1ials that she had saved from my seven years of study at Liberty School. Among the hundreds of documents that she had saved was a copy of the last school newspaper ever published at Liberty School. The newspaper, which had been mim eographed at the time of its publication in September of 1960, was tattered, torn, and severely faded, but the paper's handwritten contents were still legible. One section of the September 1960 Uber~v Press included poems that were written by sixth-grade through eighth-grade students at the school. As I discovered in readi ng the published works, my poem included severa l inverted phrases that were apparently used to place rhyming words at the ends of two suc­ cessive lines. It also included a rather abrupt ending. The poem, which is entitled My Pigeons, goes something li ke this:

122 My pigeons I do feed, When it is food they need.

They never do have rest, It's either eggs or babies in their nest.

They bring me loads of joy, Like when a baby gets a new toy.

When them I have to band, They're warm and fluffy in my hand.

And now I must quit, For l have to go and pigeon sit.

123 WHEN FARMING RULED

During the 1950s, Wisconsin's rural landscape was dotted with over one-hundred-thousand small, picturesque farms. In many areas of the state one cou Id drive no more than one-quar­ ter mile before seeing another functioning dairy farm. During the mid- I 950s there were sixteen dairy farms operating along a four-mile stretch of County Highway CC in southern Sheboygan County. The farm I grew up on was one of them. Today there are just two dairy farms operating along that same four-mile stretch of road. In the mid-I 950s a typical Sheboygan County dairy farm included eighty acres of land and a he rd of twenty-five to thir­ ty milk cows. There were some larger farms and some smaller ones, but an eighty-acre fa rm was typical. Such farms were usu­ a lly operated by a single family who took on no more land or cattle than they could comfortably tend to by themselves. T he larger, more-efficient machinery used by today's typical farmer makes it possible to cultivate significantly more land than fo rty years ago and to tend a much larger herd of cattle. As many older Wisconsin farmers retired from the business over the past thirty years, the land they once tilled was acquired by much larger operations that represent the farming of today. While the land was typically sold or rented for continued farm­ ing, the houses and barns on the old farmsteads were often sold separately. ln many instances the old farmhouses and adjacent buildings were purchased by individuals who wanted to live in the country but work in the city. The sight of today's rural landscape is somewhat saddening.

124 While most farmhouses continue lo be properly maintained, many barns and other fa rm buildings are becoming severely worn and weather-beaten. Whenever I see old buildings in that condition I try to imagine what the fa rmstead looked li ke in its prime, when the barn and farm yard were bustling with activi­ ty. Sadly, the old barn on Mom and Dad's fa rm came crashing down in a windstorm in November of 1998, just ten months after Dad passed away. Its demise was somewhat predictable since Dad spent very little time or money on its upkeep over the past thirty years. By the mid- l 960s it was obvious that neither my brother nor I would take over the farm as an adult. l think Dad knew by then that he would be the last to use the barn in a dairy operation. Farmi ng is, and always has been, an honorable profession that requi res a lot more inte ll igence, business sense, and savvy than most early-generation farmers were given credit for. Typical farm operations are at the mercy of the weather, the overall economy, people's dietary habits, and government price controls to name just a few. Dad was always very proud of the fact that he fanned successfully for over fi fty years, and I feel fortunate to have grown up on a Wisconsin farm. It was obvious at an early age that neither my brother nor I was being groomed to take over Mom and Dad's farm when they retired. While my brother and I grew up on a dairy farm, we were not all.owed to join a 4-H club, we rarely mil ked a cow, never plowed a fu rrow, never seeded a field, and never c ultivat­ ed a crop in the twenty years we each spent on the farm. While we did occasionally help clean the gutters in the barn, even that was reserved for times when Dad was either not feeling well or was too busy to do it himself. What we were a llowed to do was to get the cows from the pasture, get them into and out of the barn at the appropriate times, feed and bed the cattle and young stock, carry full pails of milk from the barn to the milk house, and clean all of the equipment after the milking had been completed each morning

125 and evening. Out in the field we could disk and crush plowed land, rake hay into windrows for baling, drive the tractor with a baler, bring full loads of hay back to the barn, and transfer the hay fro m the wagons into the mow. I don't know if Dad intentionally shielded us from the innermost worki ngs of the farm so that we woul d be forced to pursue other professions, if he didn't have the patience to teach us some of the tasks that requ ired more precision, or if he sim­ ply didn't think we could do some jobs properly. I suspect it v,1as a little of each but wish that at some point I would have asked him why we were shielded from so many farm tasks. Whatever the case, with my limited training I would have had a difficult time becoming a successful farmer even if I had wanted to.

126 THE FAVORITE

While growing up on the farm it was a rare treat to go out to a restaurant for a meal. Mom usually prepared ttu·ee big meals each day, with several additional lunc hes in between. By the time my brother, my sister, and 1 moved away from the farm in the late 1960s, things had changed somewhat. By then Mom and Dad would occasionally go to a restaurant for dinner or supper. By the time Dad sold his milk cows in the late l 980s Mom's health was failing, so she did a lo t less cooking. As a result, she and Dad went out for most of their noon and evening meals. I had my own business by then, so my wife Linda and I often j oined them for di1rner. One day in the sunm1er of 1990 1 met Mom and Dad for dinner at Edie's Restaurant, a converted drive-in on the south­ east edge of the village we live in. Shortly after we arrived at the restaurant Edie's husband Ivan came over to our table and greet­ ed us with: "Well , J see the Dykstras aTe here with their favorite son." I immediately thought to myself "Wow! What a perfect lead-in; what a perfect chance for Mom and Dad to brag me up a little." Here was a golden opportunity for Mom and Dad to tell Ivan and Edie how proud they were of me. What fo llowed was considerably di fferent from the scenario I envisioned. No soon­ er had Ivan finished his greeting when Dad replied "I don't know, Ivan; Mom would walk on her knees to Washington to see Jim." "Mom would walk on her knees lo Washington?" It was the

127 first time I had ever heard that expression used, as Dad described the lengths Mom would go to for an opportunity to see my older brother Jim in Wash ington D.C. Immediately following Dad's reply Mom came back with "And Dad would do anything fo r Mary." She was referring to my younger sister Mary \.vho lived in Shorewood, about forty miles south of the farm we grew up on. Here I was si tting squarely between Mom and Dad whi le they argued about who their favo rite was, and I wasn't even in the running.

128 FADING DREAMS OF LIBERTY

Most people associate one-room schools with horse-and­ buggy days, but there were still over one thousand such schools operating in Wisconsin when the United States sent its first astronaut into space in1 1961. I attended Liberty School, a small one-room school in southern Sheboygan County, for seven years prior to its closing. By 1963 Liberty School and most others like it had closed. The schools fe ll prey to the bigger-is-better philosophy that dominated the era's education and poli tics. The existence of rural schools had been threatened long before the schools were finally forced to close. Educational and political leaders had for many years termed one-room schools inefficient and backward. In 1947 the Wisconsin Legislature passed a law that required each county to reorganize its school districts. The objective was to eliminate rural schools by consolidating them with larger municipal districts. lmplementation of the County School Plans became some­ what difficult. With rural schools and municipalities guarding their separate interests, many proposed changes were stalled by petitions, public hearings, and court battles. In 1959, realizing that county reorganization and voluntary consolidation were moving slowly, the Wisconsin State Legislature passed an addi­ tional law to speed the process up. The new legislation required that by July of 1962 every public school in the state had to be part of a high school district. As a result of that legislation near­ ly a ll of the state's one-room schools closed, the small districts were attached to larger municipal districts, and most rural stu-

129 dents were bused to municipa l schools. I attended Liberty School fo r seven years prior to its c los­ ing, and I am thankful for that. I frequently think back to the years I spent at Liberty School and fo ndly recall the time spent there:

... l remember the great disappointment I felt in second grade when I learned that my teacher was getting married. She wasn't going to wait for me .

... I remember softball games where boys and girls played together, not because of equal rights but just so there would be enough players for two teams .

.. . 1 remember singing "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog" at a school fair when I was in third grade. I used a guitar that was bigger than me .

... I remember staying after school for a crime I didn't commit. But I also remember getting away with many other pranks, and once I was rewarded for a good deed that I didn't actually do. My conscience sti 11 bothers me .

.. . l remember using the bathroom at home each winter morn­ ing, j ust before school, to reduce the chance of bavi ng to use the school's outhouse .

.. . I remember going to a friend's house after school one day in the midst of a terrible snowstorm. We stayed awake until 5:00 the next morning, certain that there would be no school that day. Unfortunately we were wrong, and the school day seemed to last forever .

.. . I remember Dave TerMaat and myself, the only two students in our grade, kidding about our class rank after Liberty School closed. I told everyone that I was va ledictorian and Dave was at

130 the bottom of the class. He told everyone that he was salutato­ rian and that I was second from the bottom. Neither of us lied .

... And l remember going to a picnic at Liberty School in June of 196 l, a picnic that marked the closing of Liberty School after ninety-three years of service to the community. For me, the excitement of the day overshadowed that moment's true signif­ icance--the era of the small country school was drawing to a close.

Gr.ides one through eight al Liberty School in the aulumn of 1960. Back Row: Curt I lcssc link. David ·icrMaat, Duanc Wilterdink. Richard Dykslrn. Susa n Strnhl. Miss Jc<1n DeRuyter (teacher). Middle Row: Lee Hesselink, Tyrone Arneson. Ed ith Scholten, Dennis Kaiser. Da nny Kaiser. Front Row: Pamela Strahl, Mary Dykstra, Darvin Kaiser, James Strnh l, Mark I lessdink.

Aft er Liberty School closed, I began to appreciate the edu­ cation I received there and I started hoping, or dreaming, that some rich benefa ctor or historical society would restore the school to its original condition. Unfortunately that never hap­ pened, so Liberty School aged, not too gracefully, with the pas­ sage of time and as the school became more tattered with each passing year so did a wealth of childhood memories. By the mid- I 990s it was apparent that Liberty School would

131 never be restored, so I began thinking of other ways to preserve the history of the school. At that time [enlisted the assistance of Mark Hesselink, a talented craftsman who had also attended Liberty School, to construct a ful ly-furnished scale model of the school building. In 1994 Mark and l spent one day walking through the old school building. At that time, we recorded building and school­ yard dimensions, made extensive notes regarding construction details, and took photographs of the building's interi or and exte­ rior. Over the next several months, Mark made a detailed set of drawings complete enough for someone to replicate the build­ ing at some future date. One set of drawings was donated to the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center so that the infor­ mation would be available for generations to come. By 1995 Mat'k began working on a six-foot-long scale model of Liberty School. He provided the basic construction skills while my wife and I, and our daughter Erin, assisted with painting, staining, and furnishing the building. The scale model was completed by September of 1995 and is now on display at

Scale model of Liberty School. the Cedar Grove Public Library. The model includes individual lap-siding boards and over 2.000 handmade. indi vi dually­ attached cedar shingles. The scale model's roof can be removed

132 to reveal a fully-furnished interior. The effects of economic inflation became obvious as the scale model of Liberty School was being built. The original school building cost approximately two-hundred dollars to con­ struct in 1868. The scale model of Liberty School cost nearly three thousand dollars to complete in 1995. In 1996 my sister and 1 organized the first Liberty School reunion to be held since the school closed some thirty-five years earlier. Over eighty fo rmer students ranging from forty­ two to eighty-five years old joined over a dozen former teach­ ers for a dinner and program at DeZwaan Restaurant in Cedar Grove. Not a single person there regretted attending a one-room school as a child. In fact, most of the people who attended the reunion feel as I do, that we were fortunate to attend a school where classmates became more than friends--they became a part of each other's extended family.

133 MOM'S MEATLOAF

Mom was a good cook. In fact, if you asked anyone who ever ate a meal at her house they would probably tell you that she was a great cook. And she took the job seriously. 1f anyone turned down a second helping wh ile at her table, it was taken as a personal insult. Mom always offered guests second or third helpings by saying "Do you want ir1 ore, or don't you like it?" The fact that you might explode if you ate another bite never entered the picture . You either ate more or you didn't like what she had served. Part of the secret to being a good cook is having good recipes. Mom had lots of good recipes, many of them handed down from generation to generation with refinements made along the way. She was always very protective of those fa mily recipes, especially if they included refinements or improve­ ments made by her. It has been suggested that if she provided a recipe to a friend, the rec ipe she provided mi ght just have a few lines altered. In so doing, fami ly and frie nds would still have to sit at her table to partake of the real thing. In 1985, my sister and I helped coordinate and publish the Dykstra Fami~v Cookbook to commemorate our Grandma Dykstra's 86th bi rthday. Grandma's ten children and their fami ­ {jes were asked to provide recipes for the publication. The intent was to publish family favorites that had been perfocted over the years. At that time, I pleaded with Mom to include the rec ipes for some of my favorites--chicken rice soup, hot-milk cake with caramel frosting, and her special brand of meatloaf. But rather than letting the world in on her secrets, Mom submitted recipes

134 for other dishes that she seldom, if ever, made. One of my favorite meals while growing up on the farm was meatloaf and baked potatoes. This meal was only prepared t\vo or three times each year, but it was worth the wa it. After I mar­ ried, it was still a treat to be invited back to the farm for my favorite meal. For many years my wife Linda tried to make the same meal for me as a special treat, but it was never quite the same. l had thought, mistakenly, that if Mom provided us with her meatloaf recipe, the meal that Linda prepared might be just as good. After a fair amount of begging Mom relented, and I eagerly awaited the first meal using the recipe she gave us. Much to my dismay, the meatloaf prepared by my wife still didn't taste as good. I complained so much about it that after several years of trying to duplicate Mom's meatloaf, Linda sim­ ply quit preparing it all together. Shortly after Mom passed away, Dad invited our family over for Sunday diru1er. As a part of the main course he prepared meatloaf, and it tasted exactly the same as when Mom used to make it. I was surprised that Dad, who had done very little cooking whi le Mom was alive, could make the meatloaf taste so good when my own wife couldn't. With continued discussion we learned why. Whil e I had specifically asked for Mom's meat­ loaf recipe, that isn't the recipe she gave us. I suspected Mom of dealing in bogus recipes for many years, but it came as quite a shock to learn that she handed one down to her own son. Linda was a bit more cynical, suggesting that it may have been done solely to reinforce the notion that Mom was the better cook.

135 THE TRIBUTE

Mom was born in July of 192 1 to parents of very modest means. Her father was a Dutch immigrant who had worked pri­ marily as a farmhand si nce arrivi ng in America. Her mother was a second generation Dutch-American who was born totally deaf. There was a significant age difference between Mom's parents--her father was twenty-eight years older than her moth­ er. Mom grew up in rural Sheboygan County. Wisconsin where she attended a one-room elementary school and a small-town high school. By the time she reached her teens, her parents had lost their farm as a result of the Great Depression. Her parents never owned real estate again. Instead, they lived in rental prop­ erty picking up work wherever possible to sustain themselves. Mom married in 1943, raised a family, and then went to work outside the home after my brother, sister, and l had moved off the farm. Many people who knew Mom felt that she was controll ing, both in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. This could be the result of being an only child with an elderly father and hear­ ing-impaired mother who both doted on her as a youngster. Mom had many good qualities as we ll, but those who saw her as controlling seldom looked any further. Mom died in 1993 of chronic liver disease, a disease that greatly dimini shed the quali ty of her last five years on this earth. Despite the pain and weakness caused by her ill ness, she never complained and never gave up. While on her deathbed, she still talked about what she would wear to her oldest grand­ daughter's wedding the next year.

136 It was at Mom's funeral that the impact she had on people became most evident. There were flowers everywhere, and the church was filled with family, friends, and casual acquaintanc­ es who came to pay their last respects. Shortly before the funer­ a l service began, an elderly gentleman approached me and explained why he was there. He had known my mother as a chi ld some sixty years earlier when the two lived in the same rural neighborhood. He had long since moved to a nearby city, though, and hadn't seen Mom fo r many, many years. The gentleman went on to explain that as a chil d he was a Roman Catholic living in a very consen1ative Dutch Protestant community. He said that many children either could not or would not be his friend because of the difference in religions. "But," he explained with a smil e, "your mother was always kind to me. And when I read that she passed away, I wanted to be here and pay my last respects." I never felt more proud than the day the elderly gentleman related that story to me. Here is a tribute that came sixty years after the deed. A person does not have to be a famous artist, musician, or schol ar to have a lasting impact on people. A sim­ ple act of kindness can make a lasting impression just as well.

137 RETURN OF THE BAD POETS SOCIETY

l can think of no more fi tting way to end this text tha n with a poem. Thi s is a poem that illustrates how much my writing skills have improved since my fi rst poetic verse was published in September of 1960 [Reference Story No. 29]. My new, improved verse goes something like this:

These stories I did write To bring the past to light.

I trust the tales herein have shown That you should go and write your own.

I hope you liked these stories we ll , For loads of joy they were to tell.

And once again, I now must quit. My wife wants me to work a bit.

138