Love of horses
I grew up all over Iowa. So we averaged about every two years or so moving. And, so I’ve lived in Des Moines as a second grader and a third grader, but mostly I lived in small towns. And when we moved from Des Moines we moved to a township consolidated school that was out in the country four miles north of Estherville. And that’s when I got my first introduction to horses, and I actually fell in love with that business of horses and horse riding. And then there were a couple of friends that would come to school with the fourth grade teacher and they’d go home with her, and so we would spend some time making up different games. We even designed our own game called Horse where the slowest person in the group usually got chosen as the first master. The master had to catch the horses and the first horse that got caught was the next master. And outside our teeter-totters made good stalls for the horses and such. And we did listen to the radio, but we didn’t actually have a television set in the house until after I was in college.
But it was a lot of fun and we always sang. We always sang. My mother was the organist in the church at Spirit Lake, and in fact gave her organ playing experience as machine operating experience when she applied for a job at the ordnance plant in Des Moines.