Dad

Yes, this is my Dad in high school - 1932. It would have been the year before the barn fire that I wrote about last time. He was about 16 years old, even though he looks 12. And no, he wasn't related to Harry Potter, even though he looks like his father. He was MY father. IS my father. My father, who led a very interesting life through some very difficult times in history.

Dad was a child of the depression, born to farmer parents with nine children and not a lot of money. That world they lived in seems so long ago and far away, but Dad has lived through it all.

In this picture, Dad is standing next to his brother Carl's car - a 1926 Model T Roadster. That car was instrumental to Dad's chances to better himself in life. Uncle Carl had not had that car long when he was killed in a car accident (different car.) Carl was 23 and had moved to Janesville to do construction work. He was riding with a friend when his friend lost control and the car hit a tree. Uncle Carl was killed instantly.

Grandpa went down to Janesville to get Uncle Carl's things, including the car. From that car came Dad's lifeline. Out of the nine children in the family, only two were able to go to high school and finish. There was no bus service of course, and town was too far to walk. If you had no transportation, you had no chance to go to high school. So Dad drove Uncle Carl's car to high school every day, taking Aunt Hertha and two neighbors along. It wasn't easy... the union guys stopped them every day to make sure Dad wasn't hauling any milk or dairy products into town to sell them for Grandpa. But Dad was determined to get through high school and go on to college. He and Aunt Hertha both succeeded at that, and both attended UW-Stevens Point. Dad graduated with a math degree and began his search for a teaching job.

Sadly, the determination didn't lead to a teaching job - much as Dad tried. Even though he was one of the top students in his class, teaching jobs were hard to come by. So he moved to Chicago, where Aunt Hertha was already living with her husband Bill. Dad took a job delivering booze for a liquor store and cleaning the adjacent bar after closing time. Not exactly the perfect job for a college graduate, but it was some income.

Dad's drives to high school and daily confrontations with the union guys were good preparation for his time in Chicago. Every night the police would stop at the bar when he was cleaning, thinking he was breaking in. Every day he faced the ongoing gang war in the streets - not gangs like we have today, but gangs like Al Capone's. It was a pretty miserable existence.

The last straw for Dad was when he found himself ducking into a doorway to get out of the line of gunfire from a gang fight. He decided it was time to move back to Edgar and go into farming with his brother Fred. They took over Grandpa's farm, married sisters, and even lived in the same house through the first 4 kids (all Mom & Dad's.) Then Uncle Fred's health got bad, so he and Aunt Marie moved to South Dakota and Dad took on the farm alone.

Somehow Dad's experiences all led him to where he was supposed to be. It may not have been the life he envisioned when he was that 16 year old young man in the photo, but I, for one, am grateful he landed where he did.