MEMORIES
Boys, do you ever think back to the time when you were young? Do you remember the things you liked best in that old home, things connected with old Dad and Mother? Of course you do as I suppose everybody does.
Our family was just one of the ordinary, poor ones that you’d find at that date in a new country, struggling along to make a poor living, handicapped by the formation of the land, which consisted of bluffs and gullies, all hills and hollows, covered with a thick growth of timber. There, in those days, you would find the white oak, red oak, popple and ash to say nothing of all varieties of bushes. This description would fit almost anywhere in central Wisconsin, several decades ago. Game was numerous, there being plenty of birds and animals for those who cared to hunt.
How different it is now, with few birds compared to the many of that time. It is seldom that we see a brown thrush and still less often that we find a fire bird. In those days, these birds could be found in great flocks.
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Our family was composed of seven children, three girls and four boys besides Mother and Dad. As this is not a family history, we shall not say much about them except to say that it kept Dad and Mother busy to feed us. The question of clothing for those seven was not much of a worry. Talk about the few clothes the modern flapper wears had nothing on us. We were born with tough, healthy hides and warm Irish hearts. The greater part of our anatomies were clothed in atmosphere, so clothing was the least of our troubles.
I well remember my first pair of boots. That first night that the boots were in my possession, they were my bed fellows as I insisted upon taking them to bed with me. They were copper toed and had a design in red on the front of the boot legs. It was as rare in those days to see a pair of boots made in shops as it is to see home made shoes and moccasins now days. A combination of deer and calf skin was used in making shoes in those days. The skins were tanned at home, the pelts were tacked up on the outer walls of the house, farm buildings and even on the trunks of the trees.
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