Entertainment in the 1940’s and 1950’s included going to church and visits to relatives. Our religion restricted us from going to movies, a dance hall or spending time at a bar for even one drink of alcohol. I think the first movie I saw was Albert Switzer with my school mates at about age 10. I was so nervous that I would be exposed to some strange happenings, that it was kind of a let down to see the inside of the theater and wiggle in the wooden seats for a couple of hours to listen to the biography of Albert’s life.
Up to about age 6 or 7 we visited my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Swede (my dad’s brother) and their five kids. My brother, Alan, was about the same age and Lynnette who was nicknamed Tiny. Alan probably hung around outside their home in the backyard lot that was set up as a Kiwanis basketball court with his cousins Gene who was a little older and Brad who was a little younger. Uncle Swede was instrumental in arranging for the basketball court to be built on that empty lot. It made it handy for his three boys and other neighbor kids to play good clean sports. Brad the tallest of the bunch really got good at basketball. I remember watching him play basketball at University of Northern Colorado with my parents several times. Dad always liked basketball too. When he was a young man going to College High he was on the basketball team. I’ve seen a photo of him in uniform with the basketball in his hand. I wonder where that photo is today?
Alan played basket ball, but wasn’t tall enough to really go after the sport. In addition, at home usually meant more chores like milking the cows, feeding the calves and cows, fixing the machinery and so forth, if there was any free time. We did have a basketball hoop on our barn. I’m sure it wasn’t really regulation height, but still provided some fun from time to time. I think the Howard boys, Gary, Wayne and Joe who lived about a half a mile north of the Tipton farm might have come occasionally to play basket ball. The ground in front of the hoop was dirt so you can imagine how fun it was to bounce the ball in dirt. You really had to work to get the job done.
When we visited Aunt Ruth and Uncle Swede, Nancy my sister ten years older than me probably visited with Tiny or hung around my Aunt Ruth and Mom to help prepare something for us all to eat. I remember stopping by one Saturday. Aunt Ruth had a cotton print scarf tied around her pin curled hair from the back to the knot at her forehead; Aunt Jemima style. She had just made some kraut burgers, which are home made bread dough rolled out into squares, then filled with cooked cabbage and hamburger. They were yummy. I still make those today for my family. We were Swedish so this German dish was a change. Aunt Ruth was also known for her homemade rye bread that she often baked in a coffee can tin and her little square cakes that were frosted on all sides and then rolled in nuts.
At the time I thought their home was huge as it had all these bedrooms upstairs, hallways and closets. When I look back I see that it was a two-story cracker box filled with kids.
Corky and Pam were born a year after me in 1945 and about a year apart from each other. So we hung out together. Corky probably went out to play basketball or to chase the out of bounds balls. Pam and I looked at Tiny’s stuff for a while, but lost interest easily as Tiny was into finger nail polish, hair curlers and trying on clothes. Pam and I would walk around the block to the small corner grocery and buy a few pieces of candy. Pam was really more of a Tomboy than I was and always was turning cartwheels along the sidewalk and doing flips. As she grew up she was really good at baseball and joined a women’s professional league for a while before she settled down with a husband and raised three really pretty girls who looked a lot like their mom.
Something happened along the way with the parents as about the time I was eight or so in 1954 we stopped going to each other’s homes. Before that we spent every birthday together for both sets of parents and all the kids. These tight family get-togethers mostly included the Grandparents, Carl and Anna Swanson too. Well, life goes on and I guess I was too little for me to be privy to this issue between the parents.
My dad had a sister, Belva, too who lived with her family in New York, Alabama and then Denver. We infrequently visited them. Their kids, Brenda (nicknamed Bunny), Mark and Mike were about 10 or 20 years younger than me. Belva’s situation is another story unto itself.
My Mom had several sisters and brothers. Her sister Shirley was younger than Mom and had four boys. I remember spending quite a bit of time over at their home after the falling out of Dad’s family. By this time Nancy and Alan had mostly gone off on their own at about the age 14 and 18 so I don’t think they went along to visit much unless it was a family picnic in the summer. Aunt Shirley and Uncle Don lived on 10th street, right were the Greeley 4th of July parade passed. Sometimes we would all visit that morning and maybe have a potluck picnic after the parade to celebrate the day.
Other times Mom would visit with Shirley about all the sewing projects she was working on and Dad would chat with Don. I would go upstairs where the boys had their bedrooms and learn what was new. Don had the biggest bedroom by himself. Now that I think about that family I think that Don would probably be in the gifted and talented program today if he was born in a different generation. He always had something going on. As a young kid about 10, he would be growing plants. He had little pots all over every desk, bookcase and window sill. Next time he would be growing orchids that he had ordered from a catalog. He knew their names and had researched all the details about their differences. I was still spending time currying my horse and riding her around in my spare time. One time he had many fish tanks where he was breeding guppies. He had books of stamps, which I also had an interest. He knew all the countries and had the maps memorized.
I didn’t get to know Don’s brothers, John and Tom too well. His little brother Doug mostly stayed by his mommies side when we visited. Don was born the same year as I and was in the same junior high and high school. After a while his nickname at school was Icky as he was so different. Aren’t kids just horrible?
We all went off to college. I went to Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins and Don and John went to Colorado University (CU) in Boulder. After we had gone our merry way as teenagers from several years we had one of those family gatherings at Aunt Shirley and Uncle Don’s on the 4th of July. I hadn’t seen Don for several years and was interested in how he was getting along in school now that we were more grown up. CU was about a year or so ahead of CSU in the 1960’s drug use by the students. Evidently Don had tried out some along with some fringe religious sects. To each his own I suppose.
Our family seems to have the thread of mental illness maybe running through my Mom’s side of the family starting with Aunt Hattie. I don’t know much of anything about her, just that people would call her crazy Aunt Hattie.
At that 4th of July picnic while watching the parade with Don and trying to carry on a conversation about college experiences, I noticed that Don was also carrying on a conversation with invisible people. At least invisible to me. I would stop him and ask who he was talking with to no avail. He just kept on talking away. Later I found out had had gotten married for a while and then surprisingly divorced.
Years of embarrassment and quiet family discussions later revealed that both Don and John had schizophrenia. It must have been a struggle for Aunt Shirley and Uncle Don as health care didn’t always pay those costs for treatment and the general public really didn’t’ understand the issues. It was the quiet, not talked about illness. My cousin John had also married and had a little girl Holly. Then his life fell apart with mental illness. I thin he was one of the attendees at Woodstock so no telling what the trigger to find that mental illness thread. He was hospitalized for year as a mental institution in Pueblo.
Don had also been diagnosed with schizophrenia. After his divorce and figuring out he really couldn’t mainstream into society he took up a Section 8 apartment. As an adult he was obsessed with piano playing. He had never played the piano a lick as a kid, but became a virtuoso as an adult. He would play the piano for hours on end to the point where his dad bought him a piano that connected to ear phones so he would hear the music, but neighbors would not. He wrote music too and played my one of his symphonies that I video recorded one year. I’ll need to convert that to digital some day.
I visited my cousin Don occasionally with my Mom over the years. I would bring him some used clothes from my son John. Don was happy to have them, but always concerned if there was a worn spot in a coat pocket.
I think both Don and John live in separate apartments in Greeley some how surviving through the treacheries of mental illness.
I don’t see my cousins anymore as we have all gone our own ways. It was interesting to think about how these people have touched my live over the years.