Growing Up in North Dakota

As in Max, the water we used in our house was brought in, here by a large water truck that put it in a cistern in the ground. I’m sure we had to be very careful with the amount of water we used. When we moved here, we were among the first in town to get a telephone, and it was the old fashioned kind that you see in the antique stores that is made of wood, with an earpiece and a ringer and a mouthpiece. There were two phone lines brought in to the area and we were on one of them, along with several other customers. Our ring was perhaps one long and two short. If we heard that combination, we knew someone was trying to call us. If it was

something different, we knew who was receiving that call. You could pick up the phone and listen in, if you were curious, about what they were talking about (a real no-no, I’m sure).

People had summer flower and vegetable gardens, though I don’t remember my mom ever having either. In Hamilton, though, we did have hollyhocks growing at the side of the house and I remember picking the flowers and floating them upside down in a bowl and pretending they were beautiful dancing ladies, the petals being the beautiful ball gowns. I had a scary encounter with a neighbor’s