Growing Up in North Dakota

I remember we made a post office out of a big cardboard box for Valentines’ Day – VERY exciting. And we also made a big doll house for that classroom, made furniture for it, sewed curtains, etc. It was all very wonderful. I remember the school playground had a teetertotter and a merry-go-round.

My male classmates in late spring would retrieve frogs from the school’s basement window cutouts and run after the girls. I remember screaming and enjoying the chase.

It was when we lived here that we got our first television – probably had one channel and the reception was undoubtedly snowy. (I thought the snowy reception was from the actual snow we got there - how I thought that true for the summer too, I don’t know!) I also remember listening to a record that we had – it was see-through yellow plastic – and told the Cinderella story. That was the scariest story I ever heard!

I remember being terrified too of a particular thunder and lightning storm that we had when we lived in Max. My dad sat my brother and me on the low chest in front of the picture window, and we counted the seconds from