I mentioned in the last post Martin and Laura. They were Floyd and Mom’s only children. Martin was born first apparently while we were still living in Battle Creek. Laura was born a couple years later. They were and have always been very close as brother and sister. I was never too close to them, but we are on good terms. I wish I had more contact with them. Floyd always wanted someone to follow in his footsteps. He knew it would never be me and so he turned to Martin. Unfortunately, he died before that really happened, so Martin never became a farmer either. I remember when Laura was born how mad Floyd was that it was a girl. A girl can’t help him on the farm. He wanted only boys. It was sad, but this was the 50’s and that’s the way they felt about things. As you know Martin now lives in Maine with his wife Sue and Laura still lives in Battle Creek. She married once, but I don’t think she ever married the guy she lives with now. Maybe we’ll talk more about that when we get to that point in the history.
Floyd pretty much made me do everything that he did except on a smaller scale. He was big guy, 6′ 5” at least and he weighted like 350 pounds. A really hugh man that you just didn’t mess with. I asked my Mom one time how she could possibly stay with this brut, and she told me he was the gentlest man she had every known and he made her very happy. At the time, that didn’t make me feel too much better, but as I look back on it, I’m very grateful for Floyd. I’m grateful for the love he showed my mother and for the way he raised me, even though I didn’t like it at the time.
Not sure if you’re all aware of it, but I am sealed to Floyd and my mother in the temple, so that makes him more my dad than my real dad. So, like it or not, he is part of our family. And I think that is a good thing. He was basically a good man. He only hurt me once and he definitely had reason. If I had been him, I’d have beat me every day just for principle since I was such a snot to him. I can remember it like it was yesterday, we were standing out on the lawn and he had given me a job to do. (weed the garden, I think). I told him I didn’t want to do it. He said essentially, he didn’t care what I wanted, that was what he wanted me to do. So I got really mad and said something about how fat he was. (”I don’t take orders from a fatso.”) (He really wasn’t – he was just very big). Anyway, it was an insult and I could tell I had hurt him. Before I knew what happened, he reached out and slapped me hard on the cheek. Down I went to the ground. I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to do. He just frowned at me, said something about getting to work and walked away. I hurried to do the weeding that he had asked me to do. That is the only time in the four years I lived on the farm that he struck me and I really felt like I deserved it.
I always say that I came to the farm a selfish self-absorbed spoiled city kid who thought the world revolved around him. I came away, four years later, a young man who had grown up and now respected work and was able to do work and respected other people and was able to get on with my life in a meaningful way. I knew I didn’t want to stay on the farm after I graduated, but I have much to thank Floyd for. I’m very grateful he came into my life.
In the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year (1958), I couldn’t stand the thought of another summer bailing hay and working 14 hours a day in the sun. I talked my Dad into letting me come live with him in Battle Creek. I also had to talk my mother into letting me go. (Maybe I should have been a saleman). At any rate, I joyfully moved out of the farm and into Battle Creek to live with my Dad, his wife Dorothy and his daughter Linda. Linda was several years younger then me, but we got along pretty well. The person I didn’t get along with was Dorothy. She hated me almost as much as I hated Floyd. (Step-parents just don’t always work out very well.) I managed to stay the summer and since I was in the Pennfield School district, I applied there for 11th grade. I had actually started class in the fall when it became apparent that I couldn’t stay at Dad’s any longer. I talked to my Mom about it and we decided to move me back to the farm. As it turned out, our property was on the border of the Pennfield school district and if I walked about 1/2 mile down this road, I could catch a bus into Pennfield from the farm. Now, I don’t remember if I told Pennfield I had moved or if they believed I still lived in their district. At any rate, they let me stay at Pennfield and for my final two years of high school, I rode an hour each way on a bus to go to Pennfield.
That was a good experience. The only two teachers I remember from high school, were both in Pennfield. I only remember one of the names and that is Mr Oakes. He was my math teacher. I can still picture him in my mind. He started a math club and I was the president. When I trace back my love of mathematics, it all goes back to Mr Oakes. Teachers can have tremendous effects on kids lives. The other teacher, whose name I can’t remember, I’ll have to find my year book, was my senior English teacher. As most of you know, I was the valdictorian of my class. That was in large part due to the grades I got at Belleview which was a far easier school than Pennfield. I often wonder if I had spent four years at Pennfield, if the end result would have been the same. I hope so, but who knows. As valdictorian, I had to write a speech for graduation. So, I sat down and wrote my best work about ending one era of our lives and starting a new one. All that crap. I showed it to my English teacher who was my advisor on the speech and she said, in effect, it was biggest pile of crap she had ever seen. She said, “We can do much better than that” and proceeded to re-write my graduation speech. If I can find a copy of it, I’ll include it on this blog. But the Vietnam war was just starting and she had a lot to say about that. It was pretty strong and I remember there was a long silence after I finished speaking before everyone started clapping. I think I shocked them a little. This was 1960 and kids didn’t talk like I did in the speech. Of course, it wasn’t me talking, it was the teacher.
Floyd died on Sept 20, 1962 while I was in the Air Force about 2 years after my leaving home. He was out in the back yard at the grandma’s house working on a tractor, when he suddenly just fell over. He was in a coma for three days and then died, never waking up. They said it was a blood vessel in his brain that burst and killed him. Probably a result of his size and blood pressure. He had just turned 46. My mother, Martin and Laura couldn’t stay on the farm after Floyd died, so they moved back to Kelley Street. I was in the Air Force at the time and decided that this was a good excuse to get out early. I applied for a early discharge on the grounds that I needed to go home and take care of my mother (called a hardship discharge) and they granted it. In Jan 1965, I returned to Kelley Street for the first time in about 10 years.
Dad