Growing Up in North Dakota

the lightning to the thunder sound. Somehow that seemed to help.

It was also when we lived here that we received polio injections. Polio was a disease that afflicted many children and adults and Jonas Salk had recently invented the vaccine to prevent the disease. In order to get it to the masses, huge injection clinics were set up across the country. We had to travel to a nearby town on Saturday for the initial injection and then the booster shots too – we went to a large gym or community center there, I remember, and there were long lines of screaming, frightened children waiting to get their shot. I was afraid of needles for a long time after that (not so now, I think).

It was the Max High School basketball team too that kept our family busy. Dad was the coach and it was this team that won the second-in-the-state championship for him. The Hoosiers movie about the high school basketball team is really very much like it was in N. Dak. – basketball was the thing that brought everyone in town together – and it was basketball, rather than football or baseball, because the teams were small, with five players on the court, so every school could “field” a team, so to speak, and it was played indoors, so you didn’t have to count on good weather. My brother Jon has some of Dad’s memorabilia from this team, and you, Jon Michael, have Dad’s little silver basketball.