Theme
Animals
Barbara's Chapter · When Clarence was fourteen
Clarence's Long Recovery in the Stone Shed
Dad's favorite full brother Clarence was helping take pigs to market when he jumped out of the truck on a hill, ran alongside it, and fell beneath a tire. After his lower abdomen was run over, the family took him home rather than to a doctor or hospital. He survived nine months of recuperation in a small stone shed without medical care.
Barbara's Chapter
Fluffy by the Chimney and Animals Around the House
Barbara recalls Fluffy, an outdoor cat who liked sitting beside the warm brick chimney. The family also raised pet rabbits in hutches behind the shed. Mom kept parakeets in a cage by the living-room window, and there were lots of mice.
Barbara's Chapter
Treasured Presents, Music, and Bicycle Rides
Barbara remembers Iris’s gift of a comic-book subscription and Bernie’s love of Mario Lanza records and thoughtful birthday presents after leaving home. Bob teased her and helped her do flip-overs; she took Carol’s outfits while Carol worked, and Dee styled or cut her hair before school. Barbara played most with Diana, riding bicycles on 39th Street, where a dog once tried to bite Diana but 'got the wrong leg.'
Barbara's Chapter · When Barbara and the other children were quite young
Plum-Tree Spectators and Garden Treats
Children watched from the plum tree in the Reichenberg’s back yard as Ruth and John butchered chickens. Barbara recalls chickens hanging on the clothesline and having their necks chopped, but explicitly says, “I know this can’t be right.” The children shrieked as headless chickens ran about. She also remembers stealing kohlrabi from the Reichenberg’s garden and admiring Mrs. Britz's gladiolas and chocolate cakes.
Diana's Chapter · After moving to South Florida; before 1995
Fishing, Not Catching, in the Florida Keys
Lee and Diana spent weekends at the Hurricane Motor Lodge on Marathon Key, fishing all day Saturday and Sunday. During their first year, Diana handed Lee her rod while she stepped away, and a huge Sailfish took her bait. Lee landed it, and The Marathon News printed his picture. They declined to mount the expensive fish, expecting more catches like it, but neither encountered another Sailfish.
Diana's Chapter · Through January 28th, 1995, and afterward
Cherished Ornaments and the Comfort of White Birds
Diana remembers Lee's warmth, generosity, love of babies, and reverent annual unpacking of Mom's Christmas ornaments, especially the shamrock and gold fish ornaments she made him. Lee died of lung cancer on January 28th, 1995, Mom's birthday. Two hours before his death, Diana watched white birds fishing in the lake behind their home and felt Mom was coming to take Lee with her. White birds continued to bring Diana comfort in her grief.
Dee's Chapter
Pretty Bird, Fluffy, and the Attic Mice
Mom's green parakeet, Pretty Bird, perched on her shoulder while she washed dishes, chirping with the clanking dishes and repeating his name. Mom loved him, but he flew away when the front door was left open. The narrator also remembers Fluffy, a big white cat who chased mice, joking that he kept them from eating Barb. Barb feared the attic mice would climb into her bed, and she and Diana heard them at night. The narrator was more disturbed by mouse droppings found while searching boxes of hand-me-down clothes in the attic.
Dee's Chapter · Childhood; includes recollections at ages two or three and six or seven
Jacks, Paper Dolls, and a Childhood Full of Imagination
Dee remembers a happy childhood despite wartime film shortages and few toys. She recalls punishment for peeling airplane wallpaper, fear after The Wizard of Oz, Virginia’s ketchup prank, and endless games with Pat and neighborhood children. Paper dolls from Iris comforted her during an ear operation. Bicycle rides, a clubhouse, swings, and imaginative play filled the days, although large dogs frightened her and Hannah’s dog once bit her.
Dee's Chapter · 1942 through the time of writing
An Enchanted House Full of Family Memories
Delores remembers moving at age two into a four-room house on an acre, originally addressed 3209 39th Street. The house, garage, and land cost $2,750, with another $100 for the chicken house; payments were $25 monthly after $500 down. The orchard and yard were a childhood wonderland, while the small house eventually held ten people. She describes crowded sleeping arrangements, hand-pumped water, an outhouse, coal heat, rabbits, and time with her father in his workshed. Her father added two bedrooms and a bathroom without professional help in 1950. Later changes included removal of an interior wall, new carpeting, and white vinyl siding with hunter-green shutters. After three-quarters of the land was sold, the address became 3205 39th Street. Preserving the house helps her keep family memories alive.
Dee's Chapter · At the time of writing
A Mother and Daughter's Butterfly Garden
Delores and her daughter Susy landscaped the entire yard by hand, turning it into a bird and butterfly sanctuary. Susy helps add flowers and shrubs to attract butterflies. They hope to tag Monarchs the following season and follow their migration to Mexico, as gardening becomes an avid hobby for Delores.
Dee's Chapter
To Diana, with Love: Games, Dreams, and Caring
Dee's affectionate poem celebrates Diana's talkativeness and recalls shared mischief, puddles, mud pies, May baskets, hollyhock dolls, and dandelion games. It praises Diana's academic dedication, recalls her bringing home a cat to debone after driving from Wesleyan, and describes her meeting Lee in Chicago. The poem closes by honoring Diana's sensitivity and the caring conversations Dee treasures.
Carol's Chapter
Carefree Days and Dandelion Crowns
Carol recalls happy childhood days spent outside between meals. At about four or five, she watched insects and searched for four-leaf clovers. She and Dee spent hours making dandelion jewelry and crowns, fashioning hollyhock dolls with toothpicks, and plucking daisy petals for an imagined boyfriend.
Carol's Chapter
Elmhurst Visits and a Zoo-Day Treat
The family made short trips to visit Ray and Arjean Moos and their four boys in Elmhurst near Chicago. Mom held a book in front of her eyes to avoid watching Daddy's fast driving and weaving on two-lane roads. The trips were special treats, often including a day at Lincoln Park Zoo.
Carol's Chapter
Remembering Fluffy, the Family's White Cat
Carol remembers Fluffy as a big, fluffy white cat and the only family pet she recalled apart from Daddy's later canaries. Mom said the old, sick cat went into the woods to die. Years later Virginia McFarland told Carol that Fluffy had distemper: Daddy could not bring himself to shoot him, so Dale did. Virginia also recalled sharing coffee with Mom and hearing Fluffy using the children's potty-chair.
Carol's Chapter
Mom's Kitchen, Backyard Roasts, and a Special Sunday Dinner
Carol recalls homemade meals, sweets, Friday-night treats, and bedtime snacks, including Lloyd teaching the children to dunk peanut butter sandwiches into cocoa. She remembers coloring margarine and refusing ten cents to eat liver. After the move to 39th Street, Mom raised chickens, Bob had a pig, and Grandpa Williams raised rabbits. Watching a chicken being killed terrified Carol, though chicken dinners and competing for the wishbone were memorable. Daddy prepared backyard wiener roasts. Restaurant meals never occurred and dinner invitations were rare, making a Sunday ham dinner with Ruth and Tom Johnson especially memorable.
Carol's Chapter · 1940s and later undated years
Summer Visitors and Backyard Memories
Carol remembers meeting Floyd's three sisters from Brainerd and his warning that they might think the family rich and stay forever. Uncle Clarence, Francis, and their five children visited before Floyd's illness and death. Other memories include wartime hand-rolled cigarettes and smoke rings, later chewing tobacco, hunting trips with Bernie and Bobby, and playing house in Floyd's former backyard workshop after he moved into the new garage.
Carol's Chapter
Daddy's Favorite Foods and Familiar Ways
Carol recalls Daddy's food preferences, dislike of milk, insistence on Sayman Salve, warnings about sun exposure and swallowed bubble gum, control of money decisions, and objection to Mom wearing shorts or slacks. He kept canaries, bought a motor scooter, slept in a characteristic pose while watching television, and enjoyed neighborhood conversations so much that Mom sent the children to find him at dinnertime.
Bob's Chapter
Laughter at Oscar Peterson's
During a visit to Oscar Peterson's, Dad and Oscar were drinking a few beers. Dad gave some to Oscar's cat, which acted crazy, making everyone laugh. Bob recalls this as an example of Dad's humor and the laughter he shared with friends.
Bob's Chapter
Bob's Bright Fragments of Childhood
Bob lists vivid childhood memories: neighbors, a gasoline burn while playing with a toy steamshovel, Barbara refusing medicine, Bernie's skating injury, and Tom Johnson knocking out power lines with a falling tree. He recalls visiting the Rodgers in Cordova, swimming at Campbell’s Island, annual Riverside Park picnics, Iris’s wedding, and poker games with Art and Eileen Cordingly. Other memories include orchard camping and spraying, gathering walnuts, toys and homemade kites, fireworks, homemade foods, hauling water when the well dried up, building a house addition, basement heat relief and flooding, coal heating, backyard tomatoes, and the surviving mailbox millstone.
Bob's Chapter
Rabbit Hunts with Dad and Backyard Target Practice
Robert recalls Dad buying a twenty-gauge shotgun when Robert was around thirteen or fourteen, taking him rabbit hunting, and teaching him to clean rabbits safely. Dad told of hunting rabbits in Minnesota and filling a car's back seat with them; Robert wonders whether a photograph exists. Robert also remembers quail and pheasant hunting, backyard handgun practice with Dad and Dale McFarland, his favorite Red Ryder BB gun, and childhood fights using homemade slingshots and green grapes.
Bob's Chapter
A Baby Pig and Fluffy the Wandering Cat
Robert recalled receiving a baby pig from a neighbor as a child. The family raised it in a pen behind the garage, greased it, and rode it before Dad eventually sold it. He also remembered a white cat named Fluffy, which stayed with them a long time and repeatedly returned from days away looking beat up and ragged. His own children later had a dog, a hamster, and some fish.
Bob's Chapter · When the narrator was around twelve or thirteen
A Circus Ticket Earned Under the Big Tent
The narrator asked to help a circus that set up in Moline and helped erect its big tent. He was impressed by elephants pulling up the tent poles with the canvas attached. His payment was a free ticket.
Bernie's Chapter
Long Winter Rides Through the Big Woods
Bernard recalls eagerly awaiting Christmas and snow, and the transformed winter landscape of Ferry’s Woods. He describes approaching the woods by the Frys' farm and navigating a steep, winding sled run with Bob on their shared Christmas Flexible Flyer. They extended their rides onto a frozen creek until a log near a small pond stopped them; the long climb back in heavy winter clothing made this hard play.
Bernie's Chapter
The House and Garden He Built in His Mind
Daddy's talk of buying a two-story house on 41st Street inspired Bernard to imagine its decorations and garden repeatedly, including geese to weed strawberry patches. Talk of moving to Walla Walla, Washington offered similar excitement, though he later understood these plans as only talk. The family did not have top sheets, and Bernard retained a preference for sleeping under just a blanket.
Bernie's Chapter
Hayrides Around Moline
Bernard never went on a hayride because he was too young to have a girlfriend to take, while Iris went on many. He recalls hayrides declining in popularity as horses disappeared from small farms around Moline.
Bernie's Chapter · When the narrator and his companions were about eleven
Billy's Wonderful Pony and One Wild Mount
Billy Johnson acquired Gypsy, an old brown-and-white Shetland pony that was blind in one eye, missing patches of fur, swaybacked, and fat. The children nevertheless admired her as a luxury. While Tom Johnson watched, Billy rode around the peony bushes and then invited everyone to pet her. Ray Rohrer leaped onto her back, alarming the pony and angering Tom. Gypsy was soon returned to her farm because the children could not act civilized around her.
Bernie's Chapter · 1940s
The Dogs on the Ride Home
Bernard rode about a mile to Coolidge Junior High School, where bicycles stood unlocked in large racks. His ride home took him past Forrester's two police dogs. Throwing lit kitchen matches failed to deter them, and avoiding them would have required crossing fences and the ravine in Ferry’s Woods. Dad confronted Forrester about the dogs biting at Bernard and tearing his pants. After Dad threatened a dangerous deterrent involving rags on car wheels, the dogs were fenced in.
Bernie's Chapter · When the narrator and Billy were maybe ten years old
Standing Up for the Kittens
Billy called Bob and Bernard over to watch him kill kittens in a rusty burn barrel with a BB gun. Bernard seized the gun and ran away before Billy could kill them. The gun's sharp sight cut Billy's palm, and Billy became Bernard's enemy. Bernard felt proud to oppose his cruelty.
Bernie's Chapter · When the narrator was about eight and Bob about seven
A Frightening Summer Ride and a Childhood Misunderstanding
On a muggy summer night, the narrator's father took the boys and a .22 rifle to Harry Means's home on Campbell’s Island. Sent by Bobby to listen at the screendoor, the narrator overheard that they had to shoot someone and assumed a man would be killed and dumped in the river. The boys heard a rifle shot and waited terrified in the closed car. Much later, the narrator overheard Harry explaining that his hunting dog had been put down with Daddy's help. Embarrassment kept the narrator from telling the story until adulthood.
Bernie's Chapter
A Reluctant Rabbit Hunter
Bernard dreaded hunting rabbits with Daddy and deliberately missed his shots. Daddy followed up, and the wounded rabbits sickened Bernard. Iris was an excellent markswoman, likened to Annie Oakley, while Bob was a good shot who enjoyed hunting.
Bernie's Chapter · Childhood; ringworm episode after W.W.II
Family Remedies and Memories of Childhood Illness
Bernard recalls ringworm treatments for himself and Bob, crediting Daddy's use of Kerodin with becoming a standard treatment after the Arp doctors heard of it. He remembers Daddy's foot fungus and recurring malaria, Gramps's weather-sensitive rheumatism, and Mom deliberately exposing the children to whooping cough. Despite saying he cannot remember childhood sickness, he recalls ringworm, measles, and chicken pox. Other memories include Mom's sewing injuries, sunburn and bursitis, his own dog-bite scar, a girl's scarlet fever that he tentatively attributes to Carol, and the family's belief that childhood vegetables would protect them from cancer.
Iris's Chapter
Penny Candy, Hollyhock Dolls, and Front-Porch Days
Iris recalls a small grocery store in a converted home's front room across from 1015 29th Street, where bread, milk, and penny candy were available. Living between the river and railroad tracks, the family received visits from hobos seeking food, and Mom shared despite the family's own limited supplies. Grandpa gathered dandelion greens for Mom to cook in bacon drippings. Iris remembers River Drive, Dad's beloved Model T Ford, a short-lived rabbit hutch, and making dolls from hollyhock blossoms beside the garage. One summer she badly hurt her knee falling from her bicycle on a black-cinder-covered street and spent long days recovering on the porch swing and cutting paper dolls. After Carol's birth, Mom was ill and weak for a long time; Iris tentatively recalls Grandpa being there part of the time and remembers Uncle Lloyd's brief visits. Grandpa Williams and Dad exchanged sharp words, while Saturday evenings also brought card games with Mom, Dad, and friends.
Iris's Chapter
Childhood Visits to the House in the Woods
Iris remembers her grandparents’ Minnesota woodland home, built by Grandpa and divided into sleeping and living areas with sheets hung from ropes. She brushed Grandma Olive’s hair outdoors, while Grandpa Dan entertained chipmunks with sunflower seeds in his pocket. Milk and butter were kept cool in a deep well, and mutton stew simmered on the stove—a smell Iris disliked. Weekend family picnics featured strawberries, homemade ice cream, fried chicken, biscuits, and singing; she tentatively recalls the men playing horseshoes.
Iris's Chapter
Precious Spare Time Filled with Creativity and Play
Iris describes her love of designing Christmas trees, decorating their stores, and helping operate the stores' gift shops. Her many leisure pursuits include sports, bird watching, singing learned from Daddy, dancing, and recently begun ceramics. She crochets gifts, including an Afghan for every family member, and reads fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, and books about angels.
Iris's Chapter · Early days of her marriage
A Special Place in Her Heart for Patrick Henry
Reflecting on the special place dogs hold in her life, Iris fondly remembers her first dog, Patrick Henry, a miniature Doberman Pinscher whom she loved during the early days of her marriage.
History of the Guild Family · 1917–1951 and later family visits
From the Old Farm to a New Start in Moline
Family memories follow Dan and Olive on the Falk property, the mysterious driveway inscription, Myrtle's minnow sales, and Bessie's diphtheria quarantine and marriage. After Dan lost the property, Clarence moved to Bessie's home and Floyd stayed with Uncle Bernie, learning horse care and practical jokes. Gus Falk helped Floyd move to Moline and find work in 1921. Relatives admired his success, and visits and reunions continued through his parents' later years. The passage preserves contradictory dates in Olive's calendar account and the boys' refusal to admit writing the inscription.