Memories
By Wesley Bueker
I was born on August 19, 1926 in early afternoon. My dad always said my coming interrupted the oats harvest. My mother and dad lived on a farm in Kochville Township, Saginaw County, in Michigan. We lived with my Grandmother and Grandfather, Emma and William Bueker.
The house was a big, two-story house built with brick veneer. It was heated with a big round furnace in the basement. Wood and coal but mostly wood was the fuel. The heat came up through a register between the dining room and living room. The upper rooms were warmed by the little heat that slipped up the stairway.
My recollection of my first awareness of me as a person is when I was about three years of age. Mother and Dad, each with a folded newspaper, would sit facing one another in the living room. I, naked as I was the moment I was born, would run between them. They would swat at me with their folded newspapers. Most of the time they would deliberately miss. However, Dad now and then would sting me a good one.
Let me tell you about wintertime. I slept in the south upstairs bedroom. It was the favorite room in the house. When the wind blew and snow was falling, snow would sift in and pile up on the sill. On cold mornings, and when wasn’t winter cold, I would run as fast as I could down to the kitchen to dress by the kitchen range.
Grandma, that’s what she will be called from now on, Grandma; Grandpa will be grandpa. Grandma would fix breakfast. Bacon, eggs and potatoes and toasted homemade bread. She used a deep frying pan, at least 4 inches deep. The bacon came from pigs raised and butchered on the farm. (Later I’ll have to tell you about butchering time) Grandma would fry the bacon. With the lard left in the pan she would deep-fry the eggs. I think she removed some of the grease before she fried the potatoes. She used butter on the toast, genuine, rich butter, often churned from our own diary cow’s milk. Living was good! (It’s no wonder my cholesterol was 328 before the doctor put me on Lipitor.)
Electricity hadn’t arrived yet at our house. We used kerosene lamps and lanterns. We had an Aladdin lamp that gave forth a brilliant light. It had a mantle in it. In the evening the family would sit around a library table in the center of the living room and read.
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