Childhood Play

My father, William, finished training, and had an early position at Yale University. He then got a job as head of the Department of Medicine at Marquette University in Milwaukee (now labeled Medical College of Wisconsin [MCW] in Wauwatosa) in 1950. My father was the first full-time member of the department back when the country developed more structured medical teaching. He contacted Betty, our mother and his wife, and told her that he purchased a house in Elm Grove, Wisconsin. My mother, sisters and I flew on an airplane from the East Coast to Milwaukee. My father took the small automobile to Elm Grove from New Haven. I was two years old, and my sisters were four (Ann) and one (Sara).

The house was built in 1845 by John Pfister (a Bavarian soldier), and was a farm house back in the old days. Over the years all the empty lots in our region of Elm Grove were sold, and houses were built. One of our favorite experiences was to go to a house under construction -- we would go after-hours or on the weekend. We would sneak inside and see what this new house was starting to look like. During one visit to a house under construction, a neighbor boy fell down and lost consciousness for a few minutes.

My parents wisely chose not only the house but the lot behind it. The lot was basically trees. The ditch sometimes had a heavy water stream after a storm or in the spring. My sister, Ann, has a memory which I do not have. Shortly after we moved to Elm Grove, I fell into the water and could have drowned. She stopped a car that was driving by, and she and the person driving the car saved my life.

My parents would hire a group to take care of the house windows. These men would change and clean all of the windows, once each in the spring and fall. My mother would bring them lemonade or water, and lunch.

I often built wooden forts in the lot. After a while, I would take it down and use the wood to build another little fort. I believe that my parents thought that my forts were ugly, and they feared that friends visiting the house were not impressed. My father bought me some nice wood. I think I disappointed my parents because I put this nice new fort into full view of the family room. However, they did not make me move. The inside of my well-made fort stayed dry even if it rained.

We often played in the woods with our neighbors. Sometimes we played “Hide and Go Seek” in which one person was “it” while the rest of us would hide. One time, I was in the ditch underneath a leafy branch. The kids stood above me and still could not see me because of the branch. I felt very proud that they could not find me.

I helped dad cut the grass with the lawnmower. I would take all the branches off the lawn, and would walk behind him the entire time to help out in any way. It was a big change in second or third grade when he allowed me to play with a friend (“Junky”) rather than walk behind him.

After cutting the lawn and taking care of other outside duties, dad laid down outdoors and slept.

My sisters and I enjoyed playing on the swings and ladder in the back. We also sometimes raced around the house; Sara started to display her lifelong excellent coordination and speed.

My mother often worked hard on the garden. There was a long garden from our uphill driveway all the way down the hill, and it was five or 6 feet wide. She’d go from one end to the other, take out all the weeds, and then repeat herself. It was absolutely gorgeous. It no longer exists. I often went to the garden after breakfast, and before school, and picked up some flowers or tomatoes for mom.

In the fall, my parents raked the lawn. Most of the leaves at the front of the house landed at the bottom of the hill, on the driveway, near our neighbor’s house. We built “kilns”, or ovens, inside the burning leaves. Ann, Sara and I loved to play with the fire, which seemed to last for hours, perhaps into the next morning. We used a tarp to carry some of the leaves and sticks back into the woods.

One summer, when carpenters were making the new addition, there was a wasp nest behind the house. Regularly, we threw pieces of wood at the nest, and sometimes had to run as far away as our neighbor’s house, across the road, to avoid being bitten. By the end of the summer there were several small pieces of wood (which we had thrown) under the wasp nest, and the nest was still active. Dad finally destroyed it with some sort of fire.

One summer we kids were expected to paint (white) our lengthy fence. We did rather poorly.

As we got older, we set up a nine-hole golf course around the house. The key part was the hole itself, with a nice little cup. We played with regular golf clubs, but used whiffle balls. We got quite good.

One spring morning we finished eating breakfast and had not yet gone to school. There was a thunderstorm. Suddenly, a huge lightning bolt hit an enormous tree right behind the house. I believe that Sara and my parents were sitting in the family room, and the lightning bolt hit right in front of their eyes. Sara started screaming and crying. Ann and I went to that room and, about a minute later, another lightning bolt hit a different huge tree adjacent to the other tree which had been hit a minute ago. It was another massive bolt. Photographs of the destroyed trees on our property were published in the local newspaper.