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Toddler Years
 
Diagonally across the street and to the right, lived a man that had a wooden leg and walked with a distinct “drag and lift” motion. He was always dressed in overalls and would periodically spit. No, I take that back, it was always a “hacht” and spit. I even found myself walking with a limp and hachting (or at least attempting to).
 
I also recall a time when Lonnie and I walked to Beacon's Market. It was down the street and across a pretty busy road. I remember walking inside the little grocery store and we noticed a man going over to the “pop” machine. Neither one of us could read, so I am not certain whether it was a Coca-Cola machine or Pepsi. But this machine did not have the slots like we have today, where coins can be inserted. In fact, this machine had a lid that you lifted up, and would reach down inside the machine to extract your prize. Well, we intently watched this particular gentleman pull out a soda pop from the machine. He opened the bottle with the opener on the side of the machine, and started gulping away. He then proceeded to go up to the checkout counter where he paid for his groceries. Well, after we both saw that display, we knew that we had to have one of those cold ones, too. Since neither one of us were big enough to open the lid and extract the sodas by our lonesome, we needed a plan.
 
I grabbed Lonnie around his legs and lifted him up. He lifted the lid, removed pops and I lowered him to the ground. After removing the bottle caps, we headed for home. It was not until we got home that we were told by Mom, who had received a phone call from the owners of the store, that we were suppose to pay for the pops before taking them out of the store. Hey, we did not know. It looked free to us.
 
I do remember an incident that happened to me when I was three years old. We had just pulled up to my great-grandmother's farmhouse out in the country near Turner, Oregon. After I got down out of the car, I was immediately approach by this monster of a bird. It puffed itself up at me and hissed and gobbled. It came right up to me and picked me right on the nose. Hey this thing was the same height as me ... and it made my nose bleed ... I hated it for that. You know, this could be the underlying reason why Thanksgiving is such an exciting time for me ... just to eat the turkey.
Hey, barnyard animals are scary to a kid, especially if you have them attack you! My great-grandmother had a younger sister, Alma, whom all of us merely called Auntie. She was married to a man by the name of Albert Crites. Well, one particular day Uncle Albert was standing too close to this cantankerous old mule. This mean old animal bit Uncle Albert so hard that it took a chunk of skin out of his arm. It was sort of neat to see the wound afterwards, though ... but here was another childhood scar as well.
 
My mother had made some hot cocoa ... back then it required placing milk in a saucepan over a hot stove bringing it somewhere near but not quite to boiling. Then she would add sugar and cocoa (this was the bitter unsweetened kind ... smelled great but tasted simply horrible right out of the can). The pan of hot cocoa was on the burner with the handle extended somewhat out and away from the stove. I reached for the handle and dumped the hot mixture down the front of my bare chest. I was screaming, my mom was panicking, but we somehow made it to the hospital O.K., where the doctor on call took care of my scalded (and now blistering) chest. After wrapping me up in a whole bunch of gauze, we were sent on our way home. My mom even let me lay in the middle of her and Dad's bed when we got home. Later that day my Aunt Patsy Barker (my mom's youngest sister) came over bearing a get-well card, coloring book and crayons. That made my day. She was always so kind and thoughtful.
 
I was five years and almost two months old when we went to stay with my mom's dad, whom we called “Pop” and his wife we called “Grandma Ally”. We always enjoyed going over to Pop's farm, but this was the first time that we actually got to spend the night. Pop taught us some really important lessons in life during that memorable stay. We used to not savor having burnt toast, but after Pop explained that it put hair on our chests, we did not mind it so much anymore. Also Pop taught us the importance of sleeping in your socks. This was February and our feet weren't as cold when we needed to get up in the night to use the bathroom. He also taught us to tuck our t-shirts into our underwear. To this day, I still can't tell you what that meant, but hey this was Pop! During that weekend stay my grandmother made us some oatmeal for one of the breakfasts that we ate. Pop had a special technique for eating his oatmeal. He would take some canned milk and pour over the surface of the oatmeal until no cereal could be seen, then he would sprinkle a spoon of sugar on next. He would then eat a layer of oatmeal sugar and canned milk until only oatmeal was showing, then he would pour another layer of milk, and sprinkle another layer of sugar and do the same all over again until the bottom of the bowl was visible. That was a great time for me and I cherish my moments with my grandpa. When my Dad came to pick up Lonnie and I from Pop and Grandma Ally's house, we found that we had a new brother waiting at home. We were told that his name was Danny (he was born on February 10, 1959).
On another occasion, we were out at Pop's farm and my cousins were there, too: Kathy and Kent Barker (Aunt Patsy and Uncle Warren's kids). Now Kathy is about the same age as my brother Lonnie and I think that Kent is no more than two years younger than Kathy. Pop had just built a new shop area off of his garage. In this “shop” he actually had a sort of butcher shop, because he could dress and wrap the meat from slaughtered pigs and cattle. He also kept a really nice fishing pole on the wall above the counter (or work bench). Pop had forewarned us of the consequences of going into his shop and none of us ever wanted to cross him. He threatened to pull my teeth out with pliers once when I bit Lonnie on the arm.
 
Kathy lays blame on me for breaking the rules entering the shop area, but I think it was pretty much done by consent of the masses. There were four of us and I for sure could not slide that big old door open by myself, I needed their help to do that.
 
I had climbed up onto the counter top and had retrieved the fishing pole from its resting place on the hooks and was pretending I was reeling in a big one when we were all scared nearly out of our shorts by a booming, “what are you kids doing in my shop?”.
 
“I warned you”, Pop shouted, “now you're all going to get a whippin'”. He was now brandishing a bullwhip, which he flicked, causing a loud, “crack!” as he whipped it. Needless to say, the other three beat feet out of there in no time flat, leaving me to face an angry Pop. My grandfather lifted me to the floor and placed his fishing pole back onto the hooks on the wall. He turned to me and stated that he was going to crack the whip one more time and he wanted me to let out a really loud scream. He cracked the whip and I obeyed with what I thought was a hair raising scream. Obviously it wasn't good enough for Pop. He instructed me to try it one more time, but even louder, which I gladly accommodated. Afterwards Pop told me that if I went outside and pretended that I had just got whipped, he would give me one of his pink candies. My grandfather always carried around these big thick pink mint candies in his pocket. He was always accommodating to give these to his grandkids when around. When I came out of the shop, the other three met me there. I must have been pretty darn convincing because to this day Kathy still thought that I had got a bull whipping. I had to confess to Kathy that I had not really received the capital punishment that she had originally thought was administered to me.
 
On one occasion, the four of us were out in the barn playing in the hay and on the way back into the house; I decided to climb over the fence instead of under. The climb above was much more adventurous for one thing, though I was unaware of an over hanging barbed wire that caught me just above my eyebrow on the jump down. Needless to say the blood streaming down my face didn't help us hide the fact that we were in a place that was out-of-bounds for us.
 
My father owned and operated a Texaco service station on Lancaster Drive in Salem. I always loved to go there and “help”. I think that my dad gave me chores to keep me busy more then acquiring some assistance from me. I would walk around the service station with a shop rag sticking out the back pocket of by jeans while I was sweeping the floor. The floor could never be too clean, constant sweeping was good, and necessary.
 
A lady pulled up in front of the pump one day, and I proceeded to climb onto the hood of her car to wash her windshield. When I was through she gave me a dime. Whoo-hoo ... I could buy a soda pop for a dime.