My Army Reserve Days (M-7)

September 15

After college graduation I continued helping mom develop the family business (DaLe Monogramming & Signs). The Viet Nam war had started and I decided that I would join the army reserves instead of waiting to be drafted.

My choice was a pretty good one and I attended reserve meeting once a month in an available reserve unit in Cherokee, Iowa about an hours’ drive from my home in Sac City. There was a unit in Sac City but they were at maximum strength.

I returned from my training after 4 ½ months. I was trained as a personnel administrative specialist. In just a few months I was given the job as company clerk for the Cherokee unit. That was a very good job, as I discovered later. I was aware of everything that went on in the unit.

This memory happened while I was company clerk and I remember it well. It has to do with my meeting and getting acquainted with a friend that I would know and love for the rest of my life. He is the one that inspired me to write this memory.

I recall the company commander and the company’s first sergeant were discussing what they were going to do with a man that was supposed to be transferring from a Sioux Falls, South Dakota to our unit. He had not reported for a couple of months so they were considering asking that he be activated into the regular army.

The very next monthly meeting he showed up. He explained that he and his family had moved to Spencer, Iowa, (my home town I had spent my first 13 years) and had spent some time getting settled. His name was Jim and we began getting acquainted right away. I was dating my first wife, Sharon, at the time.

Our reserve unit was an artillery unit and we received orders that we would be going to Camp Rippley, Minnesota for our two week reserve training shortly after he started attending our meetings.

I am a bit foggy as to how we ended up being together in a jeep in the convoy as we travelled from Cherokee to Camp Rippley but nevertheless He drove the jeep as he had an authorized army jeep driver’s licence and I was his backup driver and rode in the jeep with him.

The trip was long and it rained like cats and dogs at one point in our trip. The jeep had a vacuum activated windshield wiper (just one) but for some reason wasn’t working very well. It had a back-up system and, I was it. I had to manually operate the windshield wiper from a lever on the top part of the inside windshield. It was a part of the trip we discussed many times during our lives.

While at camp we lived in tent type shelters and it was pretty uncomfortable. The weekend between the two week training we had off and could do whatever we wanted to do. My birthday fell on the Sunday of that weekend.

Jim said that he was going to call his wife and have her come pick us up and take us back to Minneapolis for the weekend. His wife arrived and we road with her back to their parent’s homes in Minneapolis.

That ended up being one of my best birthdays ever. Saturday we went “bar hopping” down Hennipin in Minneapolis an saw some things ....well I won’t go into detail but it was very interesting to say the least

On Sunday after we had recovered from the night on the town Jim’s mother fixed a wonderful beef roast dinner with all the trimmings. It was fantastic, and I still remember it very well.

We returned to Camp Rippley for the second week of our training. That is one memory I recall and I will continue with others in up coming Blogs.

Memory M-6 My Cousin Diane

September 10, 2010

Well, I had a lot of fun this morning talking to friends and relatives on the G-Mail phone. I was encouraged to keepem’ coming. I visited with my cousin, Diane, from Sioux City, Iowa and found out some new things to add and revise in my memories.

We talked about when we were growing up and had questions about our grandpa Ben. We were told that he had to move to town from the family farm. We were also told that he worked as a painter after moving to town and purchasing an apartment house on West 3^rd street in Spencer.

                                             

Above is a photograph of Grandpa Ben. He spent a lot of time in the tavern not to far from their apartment house and Diane and I have had suspicions that he may have had a drinking problem. That was totally opposite from Grandma Ben’s feelings toward stuff like that. In fact she was an active member of the WTCU (Women’s Temperance Group)

Diane was one of 5 children that were siblings from Dad’s brother Russell. Russell and his family lived on and farmed the family farm that Grandpa and Grandma Ben had moved from.

I, of course, lived in town and went to the East grade school. Interestingly she rode the bus and they were bussed to the East grade school also. They would have me ride home with them on Fridays sometimes and I really liked that. I got to go to the farm!

Diane is 2 years younger than me and her sister, Sharon is 2 years older than me. Diane and I were closest and we were always doing stuff that sometimes got us into trouble like the time we gathered eggs from the chicken house and decided it would be fun to throw them at a bunch of pigs. We real got talked to about that, can’t remember if we got spankings or not.

Here is a picture of the family farm in the background. The house is in the upper right and you can see the barn, the cattle pen and the horse water tank in the back left portion of the picture. The people starting in the upper left is Diane, uncle Russell in front of her, then Sharon laying next to her brother Bob. Art Wolstencroft is on the right and my dad behind him.

The farm was an 80 acre farm and I remember that Diane and I would walk to the pasture to get the dairy cows for milking in late afternoon. It was a long walk, but I had fun because I didn’t have to do it every day like they had to.

Another thing we talked about was the small grocery store that Art and Blanch Wolstencroft operated on 6^th Avenue West.

                                                                

My mother worked for them during the time my dad was gone in the Navy. Art and Blanch had no children but were both very active in Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls. They had Bulldogs also. I remember Pudge , the mother and Shorty one of her pups. Somewhere along the line, Art and Blanched moved to Minnesota and bought a fishing resort close to Walker, Minnesota. They were there for a few years and my Grandma and Grandpa Rich would go there to go fishing, One time Grandpa let mom and Dad take his 1937 Chrysler Airflow car and with me we went to Art and Blanch’s resort and went fishing,

Well that’s it for this time I will remember more later!......Dave

Windows Live Writer

September 9, 2010

I have just discovered Windows Live Writer, a program that allows me to type my Blog in a special writing area of Windows Live. I am going to attempt to put a picture in the Blog.

This is a photograph of a small restaurant in Springfield,MA where my brother took me when I was out visiting him a few years back. They have the absolute best hamburgers I have ever tasted. Below is a picture of the grill where they fix the burgers as people wait 4 deep to purchase them.

And below is a picture of one of the White Hut burgers with the grilled onions and trimmings.

My mouth still waters when I think of how great these White Hut Hamburgers were. I also had French fries and a soda with my two burgers.

It appears that this Windows Live Writer makes writing the Blogs easier. Plus the inserting of photographs is much easier too.

This was my memory from when I went out to Massachusetts in 2005.

Blogs can be Therapeutic

September 4, 2010

It is my humble opinion that my working on a Blog is a means of therapeutic treatment for me. For one thing, I had to look up the word "therapeutic" and find out how it was spelled before I could even type it in here!

When I was 6 years old, I was in the first grade in Reynolds grade school (or the East School as it was also known) in Spencer,Iowa. I lived on Grade avenue in a fire station and walked 9 blocks to school each day. If I had lived on the other side of Grand avenue (the West side) I could have gone to Lincoln school, only 5 blocks away. Be that as it may, I liked Reynolds school because it was close to my grandmother's house and in bad weather I walked to her house for lunch instead of the 9 blocks home to the fire station for lunch.

Back to my story..... Back in the 40's beginning reading was taught in 1st grade. I had a lot of difficulty with reading and it wasn't until the last few days of school I discovered why. They gave us a sight test at the end of the year and when I got home after the sight test that afternoon I told my mother....Mom, "they covered up my good eye!"

It was discovered that I only had 19% vision in my right eye and as a result was not able to see very well. In later years it was also learned that I was dyslectic that didn't help in my ability to read. Plus my school was experimenting with "sight reading" instead of phonics which made it even worse. I remember I had to go to a medical doctor to get fitted with corrective lenses and even with the glasses I was still not seeing 20/20.

Fortunately back then they hadn't started labeling kids as learning disabled and I was never put in a special class. I ended up having to learn my own way. My own way was by memorizing things. I learned by rote learning. That is also why I was always a very poor speller.

I now tell people with a smile that I didn't know I was dumb so I made it through grade school. and graduated from college using my own learning technique. I read very little, just memorized my lessons.

I did very poorly with multiple choice tests because I normal could not read the questions fast enough and ended up not finishing the test of guessing at the answers. True/False I figured I had a 50-50 chance. Essay type tests I shined on...I was able to put the answers in my own words. I also did well in oral tests.

I ended up graduating with a BA in Business Management and Graphic Arts (double major). Then in later years was granted an Honorary Doctorate degree fro the University of South Dakota for my work in showing how I was able to use my Art training in Business with a family business that my mother and I founded in the early 60's. I ask no payment for these lectures and was awarded the honorary PhD because of that gift I had made.

So you might begin to understand why I consider these Blogs as Therapy for me now as I am getting older. Besides it gives me something to do.

Well bye for now...see you next time! .... Dr Dave

Laughing Your Way Through

September 2, 2010

Last night we (Evelyn and I) went to our weekly Life Group meeting and really enjoys the humor that was present in the video from Mark Gungor called "Laughing Your Way Through". It is a series dealing with Man and Woman and their differences in how they function.

It is basically a seminar on Marriage but is very applicable to couples and single people who are dating. There are several clips from his series on U Tube and if you want a good laugh at a very serious subject I would recommend that you go to this link and see some of these clips: http://www.laughyourway.com If you want to check it out, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxckAMaTDc It is one clip on Men's brains and Women's brains.

It is very humorous and so true it makes you laugh at yourself.