(1953 – 1957)

Our usual vacation when we were children was to visit Jamestown relatives, (100 miles east) stopping on the way at Crystal Springs to use the toilets and have a cool drink from the spring. We mainly visited with our mother's half­ sister Leona and her family. She had four children and the older two boys were about our ages, so that was great fun. And we would also visit with Leona's mother who we called Ma although her real name was Martha. Nobody liked Martha, as she had treated her step-children with disdain when she had married their dad, soon after their beloved mother had died.

Dad had cousins in Pettibone and Tappen (50 miles east) who we would visit on their farms. And Mom had three brothers on farms, and one who worked at a grain elevator, all near Jamestown and we would go to see all of them occasionally.

But the big excitement came when Judy and I were allowed to go to Uncle Cornel and Aunt Maybelle's farm and stay there on our own for a week. We had such a good time - fishing and driving the tractor down to collect the mail and helping Maybelle bake. After the week was up, we were taken out to eat at a restaurant before Cornel took us to the train. I remember telling him that he had left some of his money behind, which showed how used to eating out I was. I had never heard of tips before. And then he put us on the train and he asked the conductor to look after us and make sure we got off at Bismarck, where our parents were to meet us.

But we were tired and fell asleep, and when we woke up it was to see
MANDAN outlined in rocks on the hillside. We knew we had bypassed Bismarck, but didn't know what to do about it. My first thought is that we had gone the wrong way around the world, and were coming into Bismarck from the other direction. (I was only young remember.) Our conductor said he hadn't wanted to wake us ­but when we got into Mandan he had to take us to the bus station and pay our fares back to Bismarck. In the meantime our parents were frantic - having met the train and us not on it. They called Cornel but he assured them we were on the train. So eventually they found out that we were coming on the bus, and met that. Mom was running down the street with her apron on ­obviously very worried and now very relieved.

We were allowed a second week at Cornel's farm the next year. We drove there with Aunt Mary and her two sons and Aunt Rose. The others stayed a night or two, and in the middle of the first night, Maybelle's nephew and his Philippine wife arrived, and Maybelle took Jim and John, Mary's boys, and put them to sleep on a couch and put her nephew and his wife in the bed they had been in.

In the morning Mary went in to wake her boys, not realising the switch that had happened in the night, and she screamed when she found the others in her sons' bed.

Another nephew of Maybelle's called Jackie who had red hair and freckles and was full of mischief stayed there that week too. He got us into all sorts of trouble. I remember how we had got grain and dust in our jean cuffs, and when we realised it, rather than going outside to empty them out, we did what Jackie recommended and emptied them into the floor air vent in the upstairs floor. Then of course all the dirt filtered downstairs onto Mabelle's clean house, and she was very annoyed.

Also that week, Cornel let us shoot his gun at targets in the garden I was very scared and didn't want to do it, but Judy and Jackie did.

And we went fishing and caughts loads of sunfish, and I wanted to impress the boys so I helped gut them Uncle Cornel thought it was vey inappropriate for a girl to do this. I didn't want to do it either, but wanted to show I wasn't a sissy.

Then about 1955 we drove to the West Coast to visit Katheen and her family. We had never met Neal so we were very excited at the prospect. The first night we stayed at Billings, Montana, in a motel, called the Sleepy Hollow for $6 a night for a double room, and again a first expereince for us. We spent several nights en route, and finally got to Portland. Kathy and Neal had an apartment near the middle of the city.

Portland is a beautiful city, with snow capped Mount Hood in the distance to the East, and Mount St. Helens (now minus its top) visible to the north.  It is built on hills, and is wooded and green and full of wonderful flowers. I think it is the best city in the States - but then I haven't seen all that many of them. The climate is very much like England - only somewhat warmer in the summer. There are two big rivers that cut through the city, and Neal, who was in the harbour patrol for the police, worked on the Willamette, which brought sea traffic into the centre of the city. He was very sociable and made friends with lots of the foreign seamen, including a Japanese sea captain, who just happened to have children the same ages as Judy and me, so we became penpals with them. I still have my one separated toe-slipper socks that they sent us.

We thought Neal was wonderful, tall, slim, quiet and very good at card tricks. And he taught us to play cribbage, but we never did manage to beat him.

Mark, our nephew was just over two and Kathleen was expecting another baby. We took a trip to the see the ocean (about 50 miles west) - but the place we chose had miles of sandy beach, and I don't think we ever got close enough to the actual water itself or to watch the waves come in. We bought salt-water taffy - wonderful candy. In the car on the way home we played a game with Mark. You take a paper napkin and holding the middle together first make it into a moustache and say in a deep voice:

"Pay the rent!"

Then you make it into a hair ribbon, and in a very high pitched female voice:

"But I have no money, sir."

Back to the moustache:

"Pay the rent!"

Then the napking becomes a bow tie and a middle sized male voice says:

"I will pay the rent."

And back to the hair ribbon who concludes the play:

"My hero."

Mark loved it.

After staying in Portland we went to visit in Madras, Oregon, about 100 miles east, and in the dessert, where two of  Dad's brothers lived. They both worked on a farm that raised seeds.

On one occasion, the adults went out to the Elks club and left Judy and me to babysit our little cousins, the youngest of whom had some sort of mental disorder which was never explained to us.  We were very frightened by her as we couldn't communicate with her. She wanted affection and constant attention and we just didn't know how to deal with her.

The wife of our other Uncle we didn't like at all. When they came back Ruby was really drunk and kept hugging us which we thought was really disgusting. The next day we went over to their trailer and she was making some dark rye bread which she said was called Annadamn bread, because the person who had invented it had wanted to say, Damn, Anna. We didn't like that very much either.

When we were in the 7th and 8th grades we went to a "canteen" on Friday nights This was a sort of disco for junior high kids from all the schools organised and chaperoned by a local policeman called Mac. We went faithfully and hopefully each week, but I never got a dance with a boy.

One time my friend Bonnie Simon was dancing with Pat Fink, and she came away from him half-angry and half-laughing. I asked her what was the matter. She said he's asked her if she used modess.

I decided it was time he was taught a lesson. So I went up to Pat asked him to tell me what he had said to Bonnie. He quite happily and with a silly grin repeated it and I slapped his face, hard.

The next Monday when I went to school, my teacher called me aside and asked me to tell her why I'd slapped Patrick. I told her, quite embarrassed at having to do so, but righteous in my behavior.

She said, "That wasn't really a bad thing to say, was it?" But I felt fully justified. 

Incidentally, Pat Fink later married Bonnie.

Before we'd got our first bras, we went shopping one day with Shirley Zapperdino, who lived on the comer opposite us. She was Judy's age but quite plump and had developed her figure quite early. We went into Sears and she found what she wanted. We all trailed into the fitting room with her. She tried it on over her undershirt, for the sake of modesty. Her mother said, "One day soon you'll be buying bras too,"  in the sort of voice which implied we were rather stunted in our development, poor things.

Mom also tried to teach us to cook. But in this too, I tried to cut comers and finish as quickly as possible instead of doing a proper job. I remember one time when Dad sampled a cake I made he said, "This is awful." I felt so bad. But Mom and I spent a lot of time together discussing recipes and pattems, and she never gave up the hope that I'd do both cooking and sewing well in the future.

When we were about this age, we wanted to have more money. We got 10 cents a week pocket money. So we decided we'd get a job. Judy and I and her friend Liz Cervinski went to a filing station in town and found out they had a very dirty ladies' room. So we asked the man if we could clean it for him. He gave us 10 cents each and we were so proud of our first eamings. But Mom was mad at us, because she said we could catch horrid diseases from toilet seats in public places, and we were never to do it again. When we had to use public toilets we were made to put piles of toilet paper all around the edges first to make sure no part of us touched the seat.

Before the money making exercise, we had been to the library which we did at least once a week as we were all avid readers. We got out a junior cookbook, and when we got back to our house, the three of us did some cooking. We made "Egg in the Hole" which we thought was very clever. You cut a hole in a piece of bread, and started frying that in butter, and then put an egg in the middle and when that had cooked a bit, you tumed the whole thing over. I'm not sure anyone else was too impressed, but we were proud of our cooking achievements and ate our lunch very happily that day.

One summer aftemoon we were sitting around our house when a foreign gentleman came to the door selling Persian-type rugs of great beauty and worth. We didn't want them, and despite the fact that he couldn't speak English managed to tell him we didn't want one, whatever they cost. Then he pointed to a cucumber and asked by sign language if he could have one. Mom said okay he could, and gave him an unpeeled one from the kitchen. He took it and left. Afterwards it dawned on us that that probably was all he was going to have to eat that lunchtime. He probably was selling his rugs for whatever he could get in order to have food. Again we messed up a chance to do a bit of kindness, partly from ignorance and partly from fear of the unusual and foreign.

Mom had a dream about owning a house of our own. She felt that our little house in a rather poor neighbourhood was the cause of my unpopularity. She thought my friends would like me better if we had a smart new house in another part of town. She and Dad tried to buy a house once. They invested all the money they had for a down-payment, but then the scheme fell through and they lost all their money.

However, the Boespflugs were very good landlords and our house was really adequate for our needs and very convenient. We children were never ashamed of our house or our parents and my unpopularity was due entirely to my personality, and had nothing to do with our house.