1967..........

The next place we lived in was a old farm house out in the country close to the Susquehanna River, and about 20 minutes from my Grandparents house. I loved it there the only way it could have been better would have been if we would have actually lived on a working farm.

One of our neighbors had daughters our age, Christine & Lauren Sanders, we thought it was so cool that our sisters had the same name and our names both began with L. Lauren's whole family was involved in the 4-H youth group. She had a horse for 4-H, I thought she was so lucky. My dream then would have been to be able to raise a animal for 4-H but it just wasn't possible where we lived. But I was allowed to join the 4-H, I worked toward my sewing and baking badge with Mrs. Sanders. We finally got to have an animal when someone dropped a cat off along the road. We were also involved in Girl Scouts, mom actually was the Scout leader, she liked doing this, she could do her crafts and things to help us work towards earning our badges. This type of behavior was kind of like Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde with her. She could be all helpful and involved and then as soon as all the others left she could turn into this screaming me me. And you never knew what would set her off, it could be so many things.

My dad was working for a Cigarette company as a salesman at that time. While playing ping-pong one day at my Aunts house, he broke his ankle and couldn't work for about 2 months. We had to go on Welfare while my dad was off. My mother resented this felt that my dad should have sued his sister and her husband since the accident happened on their property.

Around this same time my sister and I were at the neighbors one day playing in the barn, she fell down 2 bales of hay and started screaming, she her hip had broken. They found that there had been a calcium deposit built up on the bone which had made her hip weak at that spot. So when she fell and landed on that side it broke, she was put into a body cast from her toes to her chest. We had to move her with a truck dolly because the cast was so heavy. I'm sure it was embarrassing for her.

Dad finally gets back to work and my sister gets out of her cast too, right around the 4^th of July. We went to the local amusement park with the family to see the fireworks. We all went on the Giant slide and when my sister got to the bottom she tried to stand up and her foot was on the burlap and it slipped right out from underneath her. She fell down on the same hip and it broke again. She had to have another body cast put on, it was horrible for her.

It is in this home that I first remember our family gatherings with the Berk family. Ted and Midge Berk, and their 4 children. Our fathers went through school together and were good friends. We spent a lot of Sunday's alternating homes, having cook outs eating Round steak because it was cheap, making Chef-Boy-R-Dee pizzas and generally having good times. Our parents were usually on best behavior around others. It became a tradition to have Thanksgiving Dinner together, probably mostly since neither of our parents really wanted to go to each others in-laws.