9: Fields of the grandparents: Splendid icing on childhood’s cake
Brian R. Wright

[Link to Episode 8]

Note: These columns are a series I am making into a volume of my memoirs, working title: Volume 1: Overland Park Ways. You may follow the links at top and bottom of page to go to preceding or succeeding episodes. The series starts here. {If the [Link to Episode <next>] at the  bottom of the column does not show an active hyperlink, then the <next> column has yet to be written.}

Note: Image showing my brother, Forrest (L), then Grandpa Fobian, then me (R) with barn in the background. This was a fully working family farm of roughly 500 acres, near Centerville, Iowa.

In the 1950s and very early 1960s my brother Forrest and I would go with Mom and Dad to my grandmother’s farm in Iowa. These were annual golden interludes, usually of a long weekend, sometimes longer, in my childhood… most of the photos of this chapter are from the week our family was at the farm in the summer with my mother’s sister June’s family—Forrest and I had four cousins who lived in Battle Creek, Michigan: Jim and Karen, twins, two years older than I, Marie, one year older, and Marsha, one year younger, close to Forrest’s age. This visit was much like a rare family reunion; even my aunt Donna, single, a public health nurse, came down from wherever she was at the time… might have been Des Moines.

What a great week. Fun and games for us city kids: catching tadpoles in the pond behind the house, jumping around on the hay in the barn, warily watching Big Hog Tommy in his pen, making the rounds of the chicken coop and machinery garages, riding on the tractor with the men—Grandpa Al Fobian had three sons: Kenny and Lee, lithe and strong-backed 20-22 year-olds about to spread their wings, who did the lion’s share of the farmhand work… then Darrell, maybe 16, still in high school. Continue reading →