Unjustly accused

My younger brother Dale was born when I was two and a half years old. I cannot remember his being born. We were the seventh and eighth of what eventually were nine children.

As we both got a little older and Dale became big enough to be a play­mate, especially in those early years before either of us started school, we would spend hours and hours play­ing in the yard near our farmhouse. Because we lived on a farm, relatively isolated from other kids our ages, our neigh­bor­hood was our family, and our fun was home­made, fashioned out of whatever might be at hand. Our family was poor, and we had a few simple toys, undoubtedly a number of them hand-me-downs, nothing at all elaborate or fancy or expensive such as children might enjoy in more prosperous times.

On summer evenings I remem­ber play­ing games with our older brothers, games such as hide-and-go-seek, Annie-Annie-over, or cow­boys and Indians. Or in the winter there were snowball fights and fox-and-geese.

Sometimes Dale and I would climb up into the apple tree and pretend we could see the end of the world. Or we would go exploring among the weeds and cattails and other growth along the drain ditch bottom across the road from our house.

Just north of our house was an old abandoned silage pit that made a fun place to play with our little toy trucks and cars. Dale and I would build our roads and towns right on the edge and down the side of the pit.

We had a family dog named Red, who was fun to play with. He loved to chase after balls or sticks and bring them back to you to throw again. We could always tell when it was about to rain because Red would eat grass before an approaching storm. By the time we moved to Idaho in 1959, when I was nine years old, Red must have been getting pretty old in dog years. On one of our many trips to our new house, he jumped out of the back of the pick­up, and we never saw him again.

Once Dale and I were playing with some spears we had fashioned out of some tall, dried stalks of some kind. Dale threw one through the window in the back door and smashed the glass in the storm door. That meant big trouble for the one who had done it. Dale tore off to some hiding place, while I stood innocently around, my spear in hand, to get caught at the scene of the crime.

Ray, my next older brother, was four years older than me. He had witnessed the accident, he said, but claimed that he'd seen me throw the spear. Despite my earnest pleadings to the contrary, I was found guilty and got a good lick­ing from Mom.