This is the first post of a long story that covers the four years I spent in high school. I have written out the basic story and will add to it as I think of new things, but this is fairly complete the way it is. Here is the first part:
It was the summer between my 8th and 9th grade in school (1956) that my mother married Floyd Elmer Kader. It took me at least five years before I could say I liked him. Maybe, I never did until he was dead, I don’t know. But the first few years were very rocky. I couldn’t understand why my mother needed someone else. This would be her third marriage and I thought she was making a big mistake. And to make it worse, he was moving us out to a farm near Belleview, Michigan. They decided not to sell the house on Kelley Street and ended up renting it out for the next several years. You’ll see how this was a good decision in the end. Everytime I go back to Michigan on a visit, I always go out and visit the farm area where I lived. The last time I did this (Barb and travelled out here a couple summers ago), the house I used to live in was gone. It looked like it burned down and there was a large trailer nearby that someone was living in. So, that part of my life is gone forever.
I don’t remember the actual marriage. I think they just went to a justice of the peace and it wasn’t any big deal. No church wedding or anything. They just came home one day and they were married. Floyd wanted us to move before fall school started so I could start at my new school in Belleview. You can imagine how I felt. Uprooted from the city where I was comfortable and taken to a foreign place where not only did I not know anyone, but now I was expected to pull my own weight as far as working on the farm was concerned.
Belleview High School was a typical farming community high school. I did OK there. I made two friends that I still think about every once in a while. Since I was pretty much what is today called a “nerd”, I attracted those types as friends. My best friend was a guy named Bob Harrison. He was a little over wieght (like me) and totaly clueless when it came to girls. I don’t think he dated in high school at all and I know he didn’t get married until he was in his late 20’s or 30’s. He lived with his Mom and Dad, of course. Later, his Dad died and I remember going over to his house and having just his Mom there. That was a weird feeling since I wasn’t used to loss and hadn’t experienced it much. Bob played the clarinet and loved Louie Armstrong. When I was at his house, we would play records and Bob would play along with the record. Later after he graduated from high school, he started hanging out with circus people. Whenever a circus would come to town, he would go down and talk to the band leader and ask if he could join the band for a couple numbers. They almost always let him. There was a place in Wisconsin where a circus would spend the winter (seems like a weird place – they should have been down south), but Bob would travel over there in the winter a couple times just to sit in with the band and practice with them. He never travelled with the circus that I know of, but he sure liked the music. A very strange guy, but he was my friend.
My second best friend was Dave Peters. He was another weird person. A born-again christian that carried a bible to school and tried to convert everyone he saw. He came from very strict parents who wouldn’t let him do anything. He couldn’t dance or listen to the radio or TV. I’m not sure why we were friends, but we were. He was always trying to convert me. It was the usual line about giving your life to Jesus. We don’t talk that way in our church, but it’s kind of the same principle. This was years before I knew anything about the LDS Chruch. We were in my bedroom at the farm and he wanted me to confess and turn my self over to Jesus. He’s been after me about this for months and I was tired of it, so I said OK. That’s all I said – just OK. He was so happy, he had got his first convert. He was the type of kid that would get picked on a lot in school, but nobody bothered me too much. I guess because I was pretty big. But as long as he hung out with me, no one bothered him either. When I get into the section about the Air Force, I’ll tell you a postscipt about Dave that happened while I was serving in Mississippi. We’ll do that later.
I spent two years at Belleview (9th and 10th grade – 1957 and 1958). Then I transferred to Pennfield-Dunlap in Battle Creek. We’ll get to that a little later.
Dad