The disability that would afflict him for much of his future was not yet imagined. His huge old house, once home to a thriving family of eleven, had gradually been stripped of its furniture as one by one those children moved out leaving Dad, the youngest, at home to care for his aging parents. Now they were gone and he could marry.

The couple struggled to keep the farm producing through the worst of the Depression with two young children before I came along. Six years younger than my sister and nine years separating me from my brother, I came as an unneeded addition. As Dad’s health failed, he became desperately afraid of the day when the loan came due and the bank might claim the farm. The cold charity of the county was his worst nightmare.

The new baby, in 1936, nearly broke my mother’s health and sanity. Over the next years, she struggled to care for three children and to take on more and more of the farm chores that Dad found increasingly difficult — tasks for which she was totally unsuited.

Dad’s pride kept him from going to any of the relatives with hat in hand. They lived day to day and the helping hand was busy at its own survival.

Once I was too old for my baby sitter, old lame Rex, to control within the limits of the yard, I was everywhere, crawling over the horses’ backs, hunting eggs in the hay mows or exploring the river that bounded the farm’s east side. I slipped away like an afterthought, mostly forgotten, a stranger on the fringes of the real family.

I became the observer, the recorder of family life, the critic, although I was careful to never give voice to my thoughts.