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 Learning to read. Learning to read for an 8- or 9-year-old is easier than one might think. By the time a child is that age he has heard just about every word in the average person's vocabulary spoken countless times. The key is to recognize strings of letter combinations and to pronounce them. This is where phonics comes in. My father and I would sit at the kitchen table and I would start to spell out the word by speaking the first couple of letters. At that point he would guess the word and tell me how to pronounce it. He taught me certain combinations of letters usually had a certain sound connected to it. Th and Ph being the easiest but there are many others. Once we went through Dick and Jane we started the serious work. We had a weekly newspaper that was printed in Westfield. He had me read the news articles on the front page out loud. It was torture at first but after a couple of months it got easier. It's amazing how few words are actually used in a news article and once you learn them the rest becomes a lot easier. This actually served 2 purposes. It taught me how to read and I became my father's eyes. I became quite adept at painting a picture with words in my father's mind's eye. More on this later. Phonics is a wonderful tool. I learned how certain combinations of letters USUALLY sound. Unfortunately English is just full of silent letters and letters that can sound different in different contexts. That all came much later. For now we were only interested in the basics. Along with learning how to read Dad taught me enunciation was the key to verbal communication. How you enunciate a string of words can have a huge impact on their meaning. In my youth I was pretty good at reading aloud and speaking with the proper enunciation. That skill has now, for the most part, left me. I can barely complete a sentence without forgetting what I am going to say or stumbling over a word. In any event we made good progress all that first winter on the farm and by spring I could read well enough to understand and communicate a written newspaper article to my dad. In between reading and math lessons my mother worked with me on printing. Once you learn the alphabet printing is easy as the letters look the same printed by hand or printed in a book. Cursive was different. I struggled mightily with that and never developed an attractive cursive style of writing. My mother was of that generation that was taught cursive and her handwriting was beautiful. She had a cursive writing style that would have looked right at home on the Declaration of Independence. In any event I soldiered on all that first winter on the farm and by spring I could print legibly, write cursive that looked like a chicken walked across the page but was legible to me and I could read at a decent level. I mastered basic math by this time and when I say bacic math I mean very basic. I never became good at math and later failed algebra twice in high school. I could add a column of number up and do basic multiplication tables but fractions were still very difficult for me. Always were for that matter although later on I could do them. During that first winter Dad started getting a monthly newsletter in the mail from the veterans administration. It had more world news that the local newspaper and I would also read that aloud to my dad. Most of the stuff in that newsletter he had to explain to me as I had no concept of global politics or US politics for that matter. Global Geopolitics was not very high on the list of things I wanted to learn at that age but learn I did. So much for my learning to read write and do arithmetic. I never got completely caught up with other kids my age but that first winter got me to the point I could at least be functional in school with my classmates. 

 Page 17

Reading. One of the most important things a human being can learn. If you can read all things are possible. Everything ever made came with an instruction sheet or in some cases an instruction book. Most everything that has moving parts comes with an exploded diagram an the part numbers for each part. I managed to get through 3 years of George B. McClellan elementary school without learning how to read. How this is possible is a 75 year old mystery to me. In any event my father took on the job of teaching me. A few words about my father. He is the classic case of someone who has all the bad breaks and very few good ones. He married my mother in 1934 at the height of the Great Depression. Nine months later my brother was born. In those days there was massive unemployment so families tended to group together. My father and mother lived with my grandmother and his sister aunt Helen and her husband Matt. That had to have been hard. Everyone picked up part time jobs and chipped in to keep things going. My mother did cleaning for a wealthy Jewish family while Pa was a truck driver that picked up runs on an as need basis. all part time no full time work. My brother was a Preemy. I forget the ounces but the story as it was told to me was that he would fit in the palm of Ma's hand. They had no money so they had to go to the County Hospital which took care of the indigents and welfare cases. The nurses and doctors at the hospital told my parents there was nothing they could do for such a premature baby and to take him home and let him die. My grandmother who I always accused of being some kind of witch doctor said she knew a midwife that could possibly help. The midwife came to the flat and told my mother to pump some of her breast milk. She pulled out an eyedropper thing and filled it with the breast milk, opened Stew's mouth and put a couple of drops in. She worked out a schedule where someone would give Da Bro a couple of drops of milk every so often. Darned if he didn't survive and grew up to be 6'3" tall. From 1934 to 1939 when I was born my family was on a combination of welfare and part time work. By the time I came along in 1939 the military/industrial complex was coming alive and preparations were being made to go to war. After 1939 my father worked a fair amount of full time work until he was drafted in 1944. The war was mostly over by then and a couple of months after Pa got drafted they stopped taking 30 plus year old's with kids. He was one of the last one of the 30 year old's with family that got drafted. From 1944 to 1948 it was back to a combination of welfare and part time factory work for my mother. It was during this time I developed my respect for the Salvation Army. My tonsils were taken out and my first dental work was paid for by the Salvation Army. For decades I kept my Salvation Army ID card in my wallet for decades until it literally wore out. I never failed to donate to them twice a year after I became and adult and I still do. In any event Pa was in the army in 1944 and 1945 and then spent 1946 and part of 1947 at the Blinded Veterans rehab center in Massachusetts. Ma went over there to be with him so during this period I became acquainted with the Salvation Army. My grandmother and my Aunt Helen took me there for my various problems. The Doctors wouldn't sew up my artery and they wouldn't do anything to save my brother but the Salvation Army was there for my sinus infections and ear aches, my tonsils and my first dental work. The next page I publish will get back to reading.  

Page 16

We now pick up on my crash course in remedial education. But, first I would like to take a few moments to talk about my teachers. Mrs. Hillmer was a very wise country elementary school teacher. Instead of putting me back a year or two she recommended a crash course in playing catch up. Fortunately my parents were willing to go along and volunteered to help. My mother volunteered to work with me on math and my father volunteered to work with me on reading. Fortunately for me I had two excellent teachers. I'll take a few moments here to describe my parents. My mother was a real Amazon. She was about 5'10" and built like a Green Bay linebacker. Her biceps were bigger than mine even after I was full grown. She had an 8th grade education but she was fabulous in basic arithmetic. In the years to come she did the books for a fully operational dairy farm. Much more on this later. During the 20's she was a real flapper. For years I had an old B&W photo of her in her 20's style flapper mini skirt complete with the head band. I was told she was a whiz at doing the Charleston and playing women's basketball. Somewhere along the line she learned how to play the guitar and the banjo. Like many people she developed selective memory. To her dying day she swore she never smoked or drank but what she didn't know was I had a photo of her at a Chicago park picnic sitting on a keg of beer with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. She was also about 9 months pregnant with me. In later years I have memories of her driving the John Deere tractor pulling a baler with the hay wagon following behind. She would drive the tractor following the windrows and I would stack the bales as they came out of the baler. We had 16 milk cows by then and she would weigh the milk from each cow at each milking and write it all down. From that she would calculate how much ground feed to give each one. The production records also decided which ones needed to be kept and which ones needed to be culled and sent off to the meat packers. She kept track of when they came in heat and called the artificial insemination guy when they needed to be bred. There is a lot of record keeping running a herd of dairy cows. My mother was an original German Hausfrau. I forget the exact sequence but it went like this. Monday was wash day, Tuesday was ironing day, Wednesday was cleaning day and so on and so forth. One of my chores was to use furniture polish on the wood parts of the parlor furniture. This came later after we bought the big farm with the big farm house. While I was in the 4th grade we lived in the little house on the little farm. That first winter we bought a Guernsey milk cow and calf from a neighboring farmer. We drank the milk and separated the cream from the milk to make butter. It was my job to turn the crank on the butter maker till it turned into butter. My mouth still waters at the thought of fresh home made bread right out of the oven slathered with home made butter. Being poor wasn't all bad. Ma was a fabulous cook. She also had a very simple way of thinking about portion control. On Sunday she would say to me " Billie" go kill some chickens. I would ask her how many and she would look at me like I was retarded and say "There are 4 of us'. "Kill 4 chickens". All pies were cut in 4ths. All cakes were cut in 4ths. Bread was baked 4 loaves at a time. Being poor wasn't all bad. In any event she started working with me on my math deficiencies.  I had a mattering of 2+2 eqals 4 but division and multiplication were pretty much a mystery. However we waded right in and by the end of 4th grade I could pass a very basic math test. In later years I could never comprehend algebra and failed at it twice in high school but I learned enough basic math to get by.  

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Random thoughts 

 I have referred to More on George B. McClellan Elementary School. We now arrive at the more. I started Sheldon Elementary on a Monday enrolled in the fourth grade. The teacher was a woman named Mrs. Hillmer. I can’t recall her first name. Thursday she tells me she wants to drive me home after school to talk to my parents. WOW! Does that ever sound ominous. In any event after school we got in her car and she drove me home. We all sat down around the kitchen table and she proceeds to tell my parents that she thinks I have a vision problem. The back wall behind her desk was a huge blackboard and she noticed I couldn’t see what was on the blackboard. Investigating farther she concluded I couldn’t read at all. Not only that she concluded I couldn’t do basic math. She suggested I be taken to town to see Doc Frederick and have my eyes tested. Beyond that she was at a loss as to what to do next as it wouldn’t do any good to set me back a year as I still couldn’t read or write. The next day we went to call on Doc Frederick. Doc Frederick was the last of what they call GP’s or General Practitioners. He specialized in nothing but treated everything including doing eye exams. Doc put the thing in front of my face and we started the process. Is this better or is this better and so on. I’m sure you all know the drill. After he was finished he informed my parents that I had acute Myopia, which is near sighted, so bad that I was borderline legally blind. The glasses were ordered and we were told they would take about a week. Mrs Hillmer gave Ma some flash cards with the alphabet on them and some basic Dick and Jane books to find out what I actually knew. I pretty much knew the alphabet but couldn’t read the Dick and Jane books. My math was very basic as I could do 2 and 2 makes 4 but couldn’t do division or fractions. Now we get to the mystery that I have pondered for the better part of 75 years. Was the Chicago school system so bad that they could turn out a third grader that was blind and couldn’t read or write or do math? Did I even attend school at all? I have vivid memories of Kindergarten but no memories of my class room teachers or grades 1 through 3. As far as school is concerned all I can remember are the snow ball fights and the janitor supposedly dispensing paddling punishment. The little girl with the black hair and pig tails would certainly have come after Kindergarten. The only things I remember from Kindergarten was rolling out the little rolled up mats at nap time, playing musical chairs and brick shaped wooden building blocks. If I were to guess I would say the problem was my last name started with L which means I would have been seated near the back of the room. In those days seating was done alphabetically which means A’s sat up front and Z’s in the back. Being basically blind and sitting in the back I wouldn’t have been able to see much. I have no recollection of report cards or test taking or any interaction with teachers. There is a 3 year blank in my memory bank concerning school. I probably didn’t play hooky for 3 years because in those day they had Truant Officers whose job it was to track down kids not attending school. Logic says I attended school and managed to be passed on from grade to grade without learning anything. Later on I managed the same feat with High School. In any event I was where I was and Mrs. Hillmer and my parents decided on a crash course of teaching both at home and at the school. The only memory I have of grade school in Chicago was the teachers used to walk up and down the aisles carrying a pointer and occasionally whacking someone on the knuckles for something or other. It never happened to me but I saw it happen quite a few times. The mystery of test taking and report cards never did get solved. The next Random Thoughts I will cover my crash course in learning. 

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Random Thoughts
Ok, back at the ranch. Things are falling into place. Ma can drive now. We have food in the house and a new refrigerator and gas range have been delivered and hooked up. We got a Frigidaire refrigerator and a Monarch gas range. A pair of propane tanks were set up in back of the house and the lines ran through the wall to the back of the stove. REA ( Rural Electrification Association ) turned the power on so we now have electricity and gas. Life is good. Ma drove me down to the elementary school to enroll me in the fourth grade. They weren’t big on records in rural America back in 1948 so I didn’t see any papers of any kind produced. Ma told the teacher I had passed grades 1 through 3 in Chicago so they enrolled me in the 4th grade. When Ma told the teacher where we lived all we got was a confused look. The teacher had no idea where that was. Ma told her it was the old Hans Hanson place and that cleared up everything. She knew right where that was. We found out later that the old Hans Hanson place was where we lived. RR2 Westfield, Wisconsin didn’t mean anything to anybody but the minute you said the old Hans Hanson place everyone knew right where that was. Had we lived there for a full generation I suppose it might have turned into the old Lillie place. In any event the teacher said she would get hold of one of the school board members and check to see how far it was to our house. Wisconsin had a rule or law or regulation back then that any student that lived 2.0 miles or farther from the school had to be transported. The next day the board member clocked it door to door with his car and came up with 1.9 miles. The teacher did the same with her car and also came up with 1.9 miles. They apologized profusely but said nothing could be done. It wasn’t 2.0 miles or more. Such is the story of my life. Back at the ranch Ma was driving me crazy. In the morning the temps were in the 60’s so she wouldn’t let me go outside to play without a jacket on. I promptly took it off as soon as I got outside and hung it on something. Every time I headed for the door I got a list of all the places I shouldn’t go. I shouldn’t go down by the pig shed because there were probably big rats there. I shouldn’t go down by the chicken coop because snakes like chicken eggs and I would get bit by a snake if I went there. I shouldn’t go down by the creek because I might fall in the water and drown. The list went on and on and on. I was told not to go into the surrounding woods because I might get lost and no one would ever find me. I roamed all over a 40 square block of Chicago for years while Ma was working in the defense plant and Pa was in the Army but now all of a sudden she was in full mommycopter mode. On top of that I now had to walk 1.9 miles and back to school every day. That turned out to be not as bad as I at first thought. The road to the school passed over one stream and bordered one lake. I found all kinds of diversions along the road. Sheldon Elementary School was probably one of the last one room schoolhouses in Wisconsin. It set on a sizable plot of ground at the intersection of two rural roads. The road I traveled was all gravel while the other road was black top. The school was one large room appoximately 50 x 50 feet. One corner was dominated by a gigantic wood stove. The teachers desk was in the front of the room placed in the center. Behind her chair a rope hung down to ring the school bell which was mounted in cupola on the roof. She rang the bell to start school and at the end of recess. The room had eight rows of desks which were for grades 1 through 8. Each desk had an inkwell and ink pens and pencils were used for writing. It was the job of the boys to keep the inkwells full. One wall was covered with bookshleves and had a decent selection of books. Back then they had a thing called a bookmobile which came around once a week. The students could check out books and return them to the bookmobile when they were done. Every monday morning we lined up and the teacher gave us what we called a Goiter pill. It was actually an iodine pill which was supposed to prevent Goiters. I guess Goiters were common in the old days. Next to the school was good sized building where the firewood was stored for the winter. The local farmers filled it every fall and it usually lasted all winter. It was the job of the boys to keep the wood box next to the wood stove filled all winter. In front of the wood shed was a concrete pad with a hand pump on it. It was the job of the boys to keep the stoneware water fountain full. The water fountain consisted of a huge stoneware container with a stoneware lid and a faucet on the bottom. It would keep the ice cold well water cold all day. Out back there were two outhouses. One for the boys and one for the girls. On the back wall of the schoolroom there were two discs hanging on strings. One for the boys and one for the girls. One side of the disc said in and one side said out. When you had to go you raised your hand and the teacher would nod okay. You went to the back of the room and turned your disc over to read out and then ventured out to the outhouse. When you were done you came back in and turned the disc over and went back to your seat. This was my new home for the next 4 years.     

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Random Thoughts

October 9.1948. That is the day we moved from 1948 Chicago to 1890 central Wisconsin. After the family members that moved us left with their cars and two wheel trailers we settled in for the night. All we had to eat were some sandwiches wrapped in cellophane and water drawn from the well. The next morning was when things started getting interesting. The 1947 Hudson was parked by the gas barrel but Ma couldn’t drive and Pa was blind. Pa told Ma to get behind the wheel and he would teach her how to drive by noon. The farm had a driveway off the main driveway that was about 1/8 of a mile long. All morning they went up and down the driveway with Ma following instructions and Pa telling her what to do. By noon ma could start the car and shift through all three gears. This is when I realized Pa was a great teacher. Maybe being blind helped but Pa could paint a picture in your mind with words better than anyone I ever knew. Many times in the years that followed Pa taught me things that a kid on the farm should know. More on that later. And that was with only a 4th grade education. They made arrangements to have a refrigerator and gas stove to be delivered and bought some groceries to tide us over. For me the day was spent exploring the immediate property and out buildings. There was a barn with spaces for cattle below and a hayloft above. In addition there was a sizable granary with farm equipment storage below that. It held a Farmall F-12 tractor and various small implements. There was also a pig shed on the end of the granary and a small stone chicken coop building below the barn. There was also a tool shed full of all the tools a small farm would need. Thinking back on it this was all very unusual. Typically when a farm was sold there was an auction and all the farm equipment and cattle were sold off. In this case it was like the owners just packed up and left. Everything one would want or need to operate a 77 acre farm was there left in place. The property and it’s contents were very interesting. The farm was first settled by a guy named Hans Hanson. Running through the property was fairly good size trout stream. Hans got permission from the state and built a dam and spillway across the stream. He built a wooden building that contained a grist mill above the spillway with a water wheel to provide power. By opening gates he could allow water through the spillway to turn the water wheel which had a shaft running up into the grist mill. This had a series of gears and pulleys with drive belts to run the grain grinders. Apparently he ground grain for decades with that mill. He owned the property right up until the start of WWII when he died. During the decades he owned the property he added all the stuff 1890 farmers added to their farms. He had a small vinyard of grape vines which bore wonderful grapes. He had a series of blackberry bushes along the grist mill and the other end of the property had another smaller stream that run through it. On this one be built a series of small dams so he could flood the marshes where he grew and harvested cranberries. The farm was bought by a guy from Chicago at the beginning of the war so he could get a farm draft deferment so he wouldn’t have to go in the army. He dabbled around all during the war just enough so he could keep his deferment and then when the war was over he left and went back to Chicago. In the process of living there a big rain came up and the trout stream level went way up. Instead of opening the spillway gates to let the water through he left them closed and the dam washed out. When we moved there the 6 acre lake was gone and the dam was laying down flat. The water wheel still worked but without the water from the pond you couldn’t get enough usable power to be useful. The thought has crossed my mind countless times if I still had that property and had kept it up it would be worth a fortune. Sigh! Woulda Coulda Shoulda. In any event Ma made it back from town that afternoon with enough provisions to last us till they delivered the fridge and the gas stove. We never called it Westfield. It was always town. We went to town we came back from town but never Westfield. In any event the following days were every bit as interesting.

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Random Thoughts
As previously mentioned 1948 was a year of big changes. Ma is no longer working and Pa is home from the Veterans Rehab Hospital. That means Ma has more time to worry about where I am and what I am doing. After so many years of freedom I find it very annoying to have full time parents hanging around. There is a feeling of big changes in the air. The new cars are starting to roll of the assembly lines and the neighborhood is full of shiny new cars. The baby boom is off to a roaring start. Women can be seen everywhere pushing baby buggies. The flood of weddings after the GI’s came home is paying off. My uncle Sonny bought a console TV. I remember the first time I saw it in operation. Wow! What a revelation. Everyone wore suits and ties and lived in big houses with beautiful furniture. Watching TV for the first time is when I started realizing I was poor. Uncle Sonny paid $850 for a B&W TV in 1948. That would be just about $10,000 in today’s money. Pa bought a used 1947 Hudson late that summer. I can still see it parked across the street. At the time I knew Pa was blind and Ma couldn’t drive so it never occurred to me to wonder what they were going to do with the car. All that summer there was a feeling of something going on but I didn’t have a clue as to what it was. I found out in October of 1948. One day a swarm of relatives with cars and 2 wheel trailers showed up. What little furniture and possessions we had were packed up and the caravan set out. I had no idea where we were going or why. All I was told is we were moving to the country. The country was a 77 acre farm in central Wisconsin about 10 miles outside of Westfield Wisconsin. It’s only a little over 3 ½ hours from Chicago to Westfield so the caravan  people unloaded everything and headed back to Chicago late that afternoon. I remember vividly my first evening on the farm. I asked where the bathroom was and I was directed to a little wooden shed out in the back yard. The farm we moved to was much closer to 1890 than it was to 1948. It had a 3 hole outhouse, water came from a hand pump outside and was brought into the house in a bucket. The kitchen had a gigantic cast iron combination stove with an oven and a reservoir to put water in. If you wanted hot water you had to build a fire and use a teakettle or dip out some warm water from the reservoir. My bed was set up in an unfinished attic upstairs. The house had a tin roof and I could see the metal between the boards as there was no insulation or sheet rock on the ceiling. Later on I found out it was wonderful when it rained. To this day I would love to go to sleep under a tin roof during a rain. I turned 9 that October and being a city boy I had no idea what living in the wilderness was like so I am sure my imagination fired up. I remember that very first night when it got dark. We had no electric so ma fired up a kerosene lamp. I told pa I had to go to the bathroom to pee so he told me to go outside and go around the corner of the house and pee on the ground. As I went out the front door there was a gentle breeze blowing.. About 50 feet straight out there was a gasoline barrel on a wooden stand. Behind the stand was a bush. My mind went into overdrive and I was sure that bush moving in the dark was a bear. I turned around and ran back in the house terrified. Ma got a flashlight out and she showed me it was just a bush moving in the breeze. Living miles back in the woods in an 1890 farmhouse was a whole new experience. There was a window with a screen in it upstairs and deep in the woods all manner of strange sounds wafted in. I heard my first Whippoorwill that night. I still love the sound of a whippoorwill at night. I asked Pa about it the next day and he told me that was how the male and female whippoorwills found each other. First one would call then the other would answer. He told me to listen carefully and I could hear then getting closer and closer together until they went silent when they found each other. I have no idea if that is true but it sounds great and sure enough I could detect them getting closer and closer together until they went silent. Not all the time but quite often. Sometime just one would call out all evening with no reply. I always found that sad. So much for day one of my new life. The coming days and weeks were full of activity.