ONCE IN A LIFETIME

Well, let's go back to where my life began. It was Sunday, April 8, 1934, about five o'clock in the evening, when mother got her first labor pain. She had just finished up the evening chores with Dad and was starting for the house, the lantern showing her way as she came up the path.

The smell of the barn and hay was still fresh on her clothes. As she looked ahead, she saw the lamp in the house where their little girl was playing while she had helped milk cows.

The smoke from the chimney drifted across the almost full moon. She looked to the north of the house and saw the two spruce trees that Dad had planted when their two girls had been born. Adelaide in 1920 and Emma or Bernice as we called her by her middle name, in 1926. That's when the pain hit, and she stopped to rest. As she looked again at the two trees, she thought, "Willie, you are going to have to plant another tree this spring."

Willie was what she always called my dad. She made it to the house and Bernice came running to see her. In a moment, my dad came in too. Mother said, "Willie, it's time for the baby."

So my dad went out and hitched up the team. There were no cars or telephones. No one had a phone on our road. It must've taken quite a while for him to harness the two horses by only lantern light.

I can imagine that as my dad drove briskly along, he thought about this third child to be born, and how his life was changing so fast. He had the two girls already. Adelaide was away in Kennan going to high school, and the other one was Bernice.

My dad had been in World War One and wanted to forget about it. He said he wanted to have peace and quiet, so he came to this dead end road in northern Wisconsin, six miles northwest from Kennan, bringing along his wife and daughter Adelaide.

He hurried the horses to a faster pace so he could get back before Annie had this child.