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 3rd 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 6th 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
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