Growing Up in North Dakota

eat was the really, really thick cream served on my mom’s freshly baked rolls.

We lived in two houses in this town – and both were three bedroom houses. It wasn’t until then that I had my own room, my brothers and I always sharing a room before then. This is certainly different from what we want for our children today, to each have their own room, but we managed just fine, I think. My dad had made trundle beds for us so that during the day the lower bed could be rolled under one on top to give more floor space. But I must say, 5th grade was a good time for me to get my own bedroom. My brothers and my bedrooms were upstairs and my mom and dad’s was downstairs.

The first house we lived in was an old one with a coal furnace in the basement – there was a huge grate at the foot of the stairs in the middle of the house and that’s where all the heat came through. Dad would have to go downstairs to add coal to the furnace and to stoke it – I remember a big dump truck coming and dumping the coal into the space for it in the basement.