REMEMBERING EARLY CHILDHOOD

I wanted to add this picture last, but it came up first. This is me crying while Tom and Gerda worked on the house. If you look closely you can see I am tethered to the play pen by a rope. I guess I liked to wander, I think today it would be considered child abuse. LOL So I will just type the information at the top

Sheri, thank you for your encouragement. I decided to write more frequently. This picture was scanned by me. It was before I learned to align the photos to be scanned to the side of the scanner instead of aligning it by eyesight. They all were slightly askew.

This picture was take the summer of 1950. I do not know who took the picture, but it is a picture of my parents, my brother Thomas and my mom and dad. That is Claudia looking at her father. After the war they bought a lot and with the initial help of his cousin, he built the house himself.

They lived in the basement while he and my mother did the framing and all the rest that was required to build the house.. I can remember a kitchen area and a pot bellied stove for warmth. They also had a small bath room, including a toilet and a shower. When I was about four I went running into the bathroom and jumping on the seat in the dark, and my bare butt hit the water. I screamed and they came running. I figured it out much later it was my father who had left the toilet seat up. Later, after the upstairs was finished this toilet area was turned into a pantry for canned goods.