Mary showed me a picture the other day which I do not ever remember seeing. It is of my birthplace, the spot from which I have my earliest memories: placing an egg in my pants pocket and having it break, a problem I tried to solve by taking Ma's broom and whisking the mess away; taking an afternoon nap and having the ceiling plaster fall on me; watching a crew thresh behind the barn and having Charlie Ufer pick me up and pretend to throw me into the feeder; being told to stay in the house while Ma went with Dad in a blizzard to load hay, and I tried to open the shanty door to follow but couldn't get it to budge. I've been told of other things: being harassed by a rooster in the yard and then picking up a stick and killing him; wandering away from home and being found two miles away in a slough only because my uncle Alfred saw the tail of my companion dog waving amongst the cattails; plus some others.
My folks wanted a new place of their own and built up a farmstead another one half mile south of this location. I was about three or four years old when we moved. Dad always referred to the old farm as the old Adams' place, and after we vacated the Kenneth Bartholomay family lived there and they were followed by the John Warner family. The buildings have all disappeared now just as the new place has to where we moved. On the three mile stretch of township road there were five farmsteads, but now only one remains.
