One of the worst things we did as children we did with Judy's friend Karen Dybdal. Karen had neighbours who were not overly friendly, an old lady and a man called Smithy. Karen didn't like them because they had put grease on the trunk of the tree which was between the two yards so that Karen couldn't climb it. I expect the old people resented the noise we made when we played in the yard. I expect they weren't so much unfriendly as preferring quiet and to be left alone.

Anyway, we wrote some anonymous unkind notes, calling them names - then pushed them through the letter box. Once we rang the doorbell and ran away.

When I was eight, I had to have glasses too, and to start with, I was quite pleased about this. Judy had had glasses for some time and could see much better as a result. I hadn't realise that my eyes were bad until we'd been at a basketball game with Dad, and he asked me to look at the scoreboard and say what the score was. I couldn't see the numbers. So I was taken to the eye doctor at the clinic and he confirmed that I needed glasses. They were too big for me and kept slipping off my nose. I didn't like them, and thought I looked better without them so I took them off whenever I could. But soon my eyes got worse and I couldn't see without them, so I had to wear them all the time after that.

When we were about 7 and 8, Kathleen moved out to the West Coast with her friend Margaret Dyer. They started out in California, but ended up settling in Portland, Oregon where they both had grandmothers. Letters from Kathleen were a real treat, so when I was rummaging in Mother's drawer for a handkerchief once and found a letter from Kathleen that Mom had not told us she had received. I was very curious and read it.

In it, Kathleen said that she was having a baby. This confused me no end, because I had no idea that she was married. Needless to say, I thought that you couldn't have one without the other. So I had to admit reading the letter to Mom, because I needed to know what it was all about. Mom told us that Kathleen had got married to Neal the previous summer, and that she had called home and told Mom about it after it had happened. Mom was so upset because they had not been married in the Catholic Church, that she had not only kept it a secret, she had also refused to write to Kathleen, although she did encourage Judy and me to write to her.

When Kathleen and Neal had been married for a year, they had a son, Mark. And when he was baptised, Kathy and Neal had their marriage blessed too, and then it was all right with Mother again. When Mark was nearly a year old, Kathleen and he flew back to Bismarck for a month.

They had to stay that long because they only had money for a one-way flight, and had to wait for Neal to send money from his next pay check for them to get back.

Mark learned to walk when he was our house, and celebrated his first birthday with us. Kathleen made a cake with butter icing very thick and rich on top. We asked Oscar Omett, Dad's friend from the hospital to come over and take coloured pictures for the occasion. They were the first coloured pictures we had ever seen. Mark had on red overalls and a white T-shirt; Judy and I had green sweaters with a rich brown cordoroy skirt for her and a gold one for me.

One Saturday, Kathy and Mom went shopping leaving Judy and me in charge of Mark. We had him on our bed for some reason and he fell on his head on the floor and cried. We didn't tell anyone about it, for fear that we would get in trouble.

Another time, Kathy was downstairs washing diapers, and Mark pulled Mom's electric clock from its place on the dresser into his baby bed. I rushed downstairs to tell Kathy but she shouted at me for not taking it away from him, before telling her about it. I didn't seem to be able to do anything right.

We enjoyed the visit, but things were a lot more peaceful after Kathy and Mark went back home.

Because we never seemed to have enough money to make ends meet, Mom decided that she needed to work too. She applied for a job at St. Mary's School which we were attending, and started by teaching sixth grade. We helped a lot more with housework, but she still did the cooking and much of the housework and got very tired with having a full-time job. She was very conscientious and a good teacher, and spent hours in lesson plans and correcting assignments. The children liked having her for a teacher.

Other one of my friends was called Bonnie Simon. She had me around to her house to sleep over once or twice. Once when I was staying with her, we decided that we knew how babies were made. Since children were denied coffee and parents were allowed it, it obviously had something to do with coffee. And we knew that seeds were involved. So we decided the man put a watermelon-type seed in his wife's coffee. We are so proud of having figured it out all by ourselves. I related this story to Lois and Sharon, our friends from down the road, but they laughed and said that I was all wrong. They then provided very graphic details relating to what they had seen their brother-in-law and sister do when they were down in the basement, but of course I didn't believe the things they said.

I remember when Dad was repairing the radio he must done something wrong, he said "Oh damn". We were so shocked. To us, who'd been told never to say bad words, this was about the worst thing he could've said. But funnily enough, I didn't ever hear him say it again.

I remember one time when I was particularly angry with Judy, I said "God damn you." She started crying, and then I did too. I'm sure she thought that I was well on my way to Hell for saying that.

Our school's new principle was called Father Al Simon. He was young man with lots of ideas. Television had come to Bismarck and he thought he'd like to teach religion on TV. We didn't have a set then as we couldn't afford it, but we'd seen it at our friends' houses and were very envious.

Father Simon picked some children from our class, including me, and asked us to be the group he would teach on TV. About ten children trooped with him to the local television station. We were seated on chairs in a semi circle, and he had a chair in the middle. He talked about some aspect of religion, and then ask us questions. I remember that the question he asked me was, "What do all the Stations of the Cross have in common?"

"They all have to have a wooden cross by them," I replied correctly. That was the right answer, but somehow I think we had practiced in advance, so we knew all the right answers before we went on air. But as we didn't have aT V, I never saw how we did.  I think we just did the one program, so presumably Father's experiment was not all that successful.

We did eventually get a TV set - a big console in blonde wood which we thought was so wonderful. I remember coming home from school and turning on to watch a soap opera called The Valiant Lady before Mom came from school as I was sure she wouldn't allow me to watch it. Our piano practice suffered as a result.