I went to school from June 1968 until Aug 1971 when I graduated. So, it was a little over three years. I took classes year round, summer included, except for the summer of 1969 when we decided to take a break. I (and probably Karen, too) was a little homesick. I hadn’t been home to Michigan for a couple years and I was kind of burned out from the studying. So, I called IBM and asked them if they had any summer temp jobs in the Battle Creek area that they could plug me into. This was a great program that the company had. They would hire you to fill in for people who were going on vacation during the summer and at the same time, the student could earn much better money that he could by working at the school or at a fast food restruant.
I was told that they had a job with the Kalamazoo Branch Office which was only about 15 miles from Battle Creek. It seemed perfect, so we shut up the Provo house and moved to Kalamazoo for three months. We rented a little upstairs apartment and set up house keeping. We just had the one baby then, so it wasn’t too crowded. My Dad eventually moved from Battle Creek to Kalamazoo, but I don’t think he had moved yet at this point. So, we drove over to Battle Creek to see him and to see my mother and we drove to Quincy, Michigan where Karen’s parents lived and saw them. We had been gone quite a while and since we were suddenly so close, they expected us to visit every weekend. It got old in a hurry.
I went to work at IBM and did what I knew how to do which was fix key punch machines. Karen stayed in the apartment and took care of Matthew. One incident that I remember (and, Karen correct me if I have this wrong) was the window of our living room opened onto the roof of the porch for the first floor of the building. You could go out the window and stand on the roof and get some air. It was summer and hot and that was a common occurance. I only have fuzzy memories of this, but I think Matthew got out that window one day when we weren’t looking and fell off the roof onto the ground below. I don’t know what kind of ground he landed on, but I don’t think he broke anything and didn’t seem to have any permanent scars from the fall, but it scared us pretty bad.
In the fall, we were really ready to go back to Provo and start school again. We decided that we would never live near family again and we never did.
Dad
Oh my goodness!!! I didn’t know Matt fell off the roof of your home. That is nuts! I can imagine how scary that was. Poor Matt!!
