Early Childhood A

The Blankenburg children (now grown) left a lot behind on the farm, including children's ski's, snowshoes, and when older, trunks in the barn, even a one-horse open sleigh up there in the barn. The main section of the barn was also built with hand-hewn beams, and in one area of the barn, with bad flooring, were scycles to harvest wheat in a bygone era prior to International Harvesters products. Up there in the loft also was an old Edison wax cylinder phonograph with a bunch of cylinders to play. We never ever did take the sleigh down and hitch it up to a horse and go. Eithe too much bother, or maybe it needed repair. But I once did get to ride in a neighbor's sleigh. One cold week-day morning, Mr. Natziski and his son Joe stopped out front of our house, and gave me a ride to school in their one-horse open sleigh.

In my pre-school years one of my favorite occupations was to feed sugar to the ants that lived between the flagstones of the front walk that connected our front porch with the road out front. I would spent hours just watching them work. My buddies. Then horror of horrors, my mother would come with a broom and sweep them away with all their sand, sugar and all! To my mind this was cruel and unusual punnishment, but heartless people that they were, they just laughed, saying, oh, they will build it all up again (the sand piled up by the ants around each ant hole).

Another fun thing was roosters. In those days my dad bought baby chicks unsorted by sex, so for a while they were 50 - 50. Then later he would leave a few, but sell most as "broilers". The remaining ones always tried to out-do each other in crowing. I joined in to "egg them on".