Chapter 1

INFANCY

 

I suppose an autobiography should start; " I was born-----". Well, so what! Who, besides Adam and Eve, were not!

 

However, I was born during the roastin'-ear season, September 4, 1909. I was riddled into a NEST that my father had just built on a lot along what is now called Spruce Road near it's intersection with U.S. 322 in Earl Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

 

House of My Birth in Earl Twp.

My father at that time was a journeyman carpenter, and until then had lived in rentals. That summer, as he told me later, he bought and razed a small two-story frame office building in New Holland, Pennsylvania. The material of this building he hauled to the site of the new house with his spring wagon. This reconstructed building with the addition of a two-story section to the rear and some porches made a very serviceable house that is still standing.

I have, of course, no recollection of the first period of living there because we moved out temporarily when I was twenty-five months old. But I do remember of later hearing my sister, who is four and one-half years older than I am, and my parents speak of the first months of life in an unfinished house. Before a stair to the second floor was built, the only way to the bedrooms was by an outside stair through a window.

Now as you will find if you plod through this story, that is similar to many situations to which I subjected my wife and children in our many new NESTings. Even living in a basement for two months.