World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, American; World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
My brothers and I slept in an upstairs bedroom with the window open a
couple of inches in the winter time. When we woke up in the morning
there would be snow in a pile on the floor under the window. We had
one floor register about four feet square in the living room and we
would sit around it for warmth. I remember the babies would sometimes
crawl on the register and wet their diapers. My mother would sprinkle
sugar down the flue to the hot furnace dome to get rid of the smell.
Above the register, on the wall, was a shelf which held my mother's
chime clock.
There was a small room upstairs where we had a library. My brothers
had about three hundred books there and there was an army cot there on
which I slept for several years. The library contained the Zane Grey
westerns. These were all lost later when my father moved out and
rented the house for several years during the war. All my possessions,
except for clothes, were lost at that time. After my father remarried,
he and my stepmother moved back into the house.
My brothers built a wooden platform in the backyard and we had a tent
on it for several summers. We would sleep out there when the house was
too hot in the summer time. There were three army cots in it. Dr.
Behan lived on Thad Chapin Street just around the corner. He had
several large farm horses which would get loose and come running down
the street in front of our house. If we were playing out in front and
heard the horses coming we would run for the front porch. Sometimes
the horses would run across the front yard and barely miss us. We were
so small that the horses seemed twenty feet tall. That is probably the
reason I never cared much for horses. During this time my father got
his first car, a second hand 1917 Ford. I can just remember that the
tail lights were small kerosene lamps that you fill up and light for
night driving. On one car that Clarence had, the windshield would tip
out from the bottom for ventilation and the windshield wipers were
worked by hand. I can remember pushing it back and forth while
Clarence drove.
In 1926 my grandfather, Peter Orson Benson, would come up to pitch
horseshoes with me. He lived with my uncle Jim across the street and
down the hill a little. I would see grandfather coming and would have
plenty of time to get ready for him because he was 96 years old and it
would take him about twenty minutes to walk up. He would toss the
horseshoes and I would bring them back to him. He was an active man
and had a good size garden until he was about 95 years old. I remember
that he had a long white beard that came down to his belt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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