The Stranger Comes To Live With Us!

Our cook stove, which also was used to heat our small home, had a brick chimney with an opening under it that was about 5 feet from the floor. This area is where we would store the firewood. A chore shared by my sister and I, was to fill this with firewood every day. A strange man had just come to live with us (my father home from the army) and my first memory of him was a disagreement over whether I should help my sister bring in wood or not. I understand that it appeared I was not doing my ‘share’ of the chore, and this stranger told me to get busy and help her. My response, I am told (as I do not remember the words – but definitely remember the result) was ‘you do not tell me what to do MAN”. The next scene is vivid in my memory – of this ‘MAN’ chasing me across the back yard… a barbed wire fence ran across the back and I remember scrambling under the bottom wire of the fence - getting up running – thinking .. hah ‘that MAN will never catch me’. To this day I can still see, as I looked back the MAN at a full run, vaulting over the fence. Once caught it was ‘explained to me’ (in a way father’s of that era would) that he was indeed my FATHER, and that for the rest of my childhood, HE could and would tell me what to do.

MY DAD