Being a man who believes in public service I decided to take training and become a member of the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Mounted Patrol (posse), a non-paying position. With dedication I underwent a lengthy training program...

I was five and six during the 1935-36 years’ dust storms and Depression. At Beloit, Kansas, Dad was a math and science high school teacher. For cheap entertainment our family visited...

At four years old I became ill with plural pneumonia (both lungs) and nearly died. 1934 was before the development of sulfa drugs and penicillin, so there essentially was no treatment or cure...

It was a gut-wrenching scene. Mother was sitting on the couch in tears holding a letter in her hand when I arrived home from school...

Gas stations in the mid-1930’s used the 10-gallon elevated (about six feet) glass cylinder “pumps” to hold and dispense gas between the underground storage tank and the car’s gas tank...

Dad was a teacher until 1942 and worked summers at Camp Wood – a YMCA camp in the flint Hills located on Highway 50 near Elmdale (west of Strong City). Mom, little brother Gene, and I...

Mr. Chestnut, Beloit School Superintendent, called Dad “peevey” from his initials P.V. Dad didn’t like that because he felt it labeled him as “easily peeved.”...

In the 5th grade at Roosevelt Grade School on the way to school I stumbled on a half-dozen mousetraps in a vacant lot we often used as a shortcut...

Before I was old enough to “work” I mowed yards (for a negotiated set price) with a reel push mower (no engine), sold and delivered ladies magazines door-to-door...

After two years at Hutchinson junior College – we lived across the street – and five semesters at Kansas State University...

Current national financial problems--and worse could probably be ahead—call to mind events of my childhood during the great depression...

Any reasoned, thoughtful consideration by someone just over 30, my first day of skiing should have been my last...

The first of many dogs that have honored me by their presence was at Beloit at age two...

I’ve always had a fascination with good writing, words, and rhymes....

I’ve observed that sometimes children (and some wives) had little, or perhaps only a general idea what their parents actually did when they left to go to work...

At Thanksgiving 2016 grandson-in-law, Tyson Babayco, was seriously interested in my remembrances of the war, although fully aware...

I was born in Beloit, Kansas, Community Methodist Hospital. Both Grandfathers were Methodist ministers...