Dottie's life adventure begins before Dottie is even born. Based on the actual life of my mother, her adoption and eventual return to visit her real family during the 1920's and 30's, it is a fictional story that includes information, places and some speculation as to what happened at the time of her birth and why her lifes adventure began so young.
1918 was not a time when a young girl had a child without being married, and when this situation happened in Dottie's grandmother's household, it brought about events that would shape Dottie's life forever. Touching the lives of many people along the way, Dottie would be sent halfway across the country as an Orphan Train Child from New York City to the farmlands of Iowa.
Follow along on this twisting train ride as Dottie travels and grows into the young women who completes a circle that answers many of the questions her adoption left with her.
R. MICHAEL BUCK:
Remembering the story my mother wove about her adoption in Iowa, and her early life adventure as a Train Child, often the idea of writing a book crossed my mind. As a teacher in Romulus, New York, she spent 40 years educating young students and effecting changes in their lives. When she passed a few years ago, I made the decision that someday I would try to tell her story.
Born in 1949 in rural Upstate New York, Waterloo, Seneca Falls, and Geneva are towns I grew up hanging around, and parking around. I spent my school years in the Waterloo Central School District, and my free time interacting with the many Buck family members, the Zukowski brothers and the Utzman boys living close enough to walk to. But that could easily be a book itself!
Following graduation from High School, I attended Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa as an undergraduate student in Music Education. When I graduated in 1971, I became a music teacher in Romulus, New York. Finlayson, Minnesota and South Beloit, Illinois, were next on my resume finally settling around Rockford, Illinois where I reside today. 35 years later, I am an elementary school principal, having received a Masters Degree from Northern Illinois University in 1993. Employed and stable, I decided to spend my evenings writing the story I promised myself I would write a couple years ago.
This is the first publication in a series in which I will try to tell the story of growing up during a time in history when such rapid changes have occurred. I hope you enjoy getting to know Dottie and through her story, gain a better perspective on lifes challenges.
Home?
As the glowing sun shown over the tall bright green trees to their left, Dottie could see the shape of a freshly painted red barn coming up around the curve in front of them. Her excitement grew as the sun seemed to reflect from the long red painted wood plank boards covering the walls, while the thin line of the white trim was so typical of the barns she had been raised with in rural Iowa. It brought a familiar comfort to the surreal moment. The white washed farm house and the lush rough mowed green yard also reminded her of home as they slowly drifted into view farther around the long curve.
Gliding slowly up the dirt road so they could take in everything, Dottie tried to imagine that very little had changed since she was last here, but suddenly her senses were startled to alert. As they came around the last corner of the barn and her eyes could see the full view of the farm house area, she was jolted out of her safe daydreaming thoughts.
There in the yard was an old woman hanging damp freshly washed clothing on the long taut cord of a clothesline.
The woman was dressed in a printed loose fitting wash dress, like most every woman when they were busy around the house. She would reach down and pick each piece of clothing from the large wicker basket that sat at her feet judging the size of the clothing and the space she had to fill. She would shake each of them once or twice and attach them to the line with the clothes pins she pulled out of the brightly colored cloth basket she had hanging on the line near her.
Dorothy’s thoughts were blended with the reality of how the sun made the clothes look so bright and clean with her thoughts of who this woman could be. With bright white hair pulled back in a bun, and looking the right age, Dorothy knew that this must be her Grandmother. This women, she had learned, had made a decision so long ago that would change little Dorothy’s whole life, a decision that would actually sculpt that life into what it is and would be. As she stared, she thought that her grandmother’s day had started as early for her as Dorothy and her Aunt’s had. Making the trip out to this farm had not been part of the original plan when they were leaving Iowa.
When Aunt Mabel had made the offer to bring her on one of these annual shopping trips to New York, the plan had been to just gather information about her real family. Dottie had gone to her mother before they had left Iowa and asked if it would be alright.