Happy Birthday

She was due on December 25 but Nancy came in her own good time, on January 3, 1952, less than two years after Michael's birth. Ron borrowed a hundred dollars from Roland Wylie to remodel the garage on the lot next to Carrie Sherer’s when our second baby was expected. The door opened to the kitchen which took up the southern most part of the building. There was no plumbing. And the well was far behind Carrie’s house. I carried water from a pump that stood on a slab above a six foot deep hole dug and reinforced with convex concrete blocks through which a four inch cylinder was driven into water bearing gravel. I wore a deep path to supply water needed for the many cloth diapers washed during those baby days. We had a stove and refrigerator. Our double mattress folded up to the wall during the day. Michael slept in an alcove in the southwest corner. Ron worked at the paper mill which paid well. His mother thought that was the most wonderful security to which any man could aspire. He had attended St Cloud college on the GI bill with but one quarter left of the four year requirement. I encouraged him to quit the mill job and finish that last quarter. Michael and Nancy sat beside me as he received his BA degree. In-law criticism was not worth facing so we left Minnesota and went west. Nancy received her BA degree some years later from Western Washington University in Bellingham, a rainy coastal city where she still resides. Happy Birthday.
Naomi Sherer