Growing Up in North Dakota

I thought she was beautiful, and I remember she wore a different dress every day. Girls then were not allowed to wear pants to school, so on cold days we’d wear snow pants under our skirts and then take them off once we got to school.

We didn’t have P.E. in North Dakota, which is one reason I think I’m so unatheletic, though we were offered baton lessons here, which I took. None of the towns I lived in were big enough really to have clubs like Brownies or 4H (except for Bowbells, where I was a member of 4H for a while). We went to a Lutheran church that was somewhere out in the country nearby – I remember

one event at the church where the kids were playing tag outside. Some boy kissed me – I think that was my first kiss. I don’t remember much about it except that I thought something kind of “naughty” had happened.

My brother Jon was in 1st and 2nd grade when we lived here and I remember two things about him. One was that he couldn’t say the sound “j” and substituted “d” instead, so he said that his name was “Don.” Another is that Jon had rheumatic fever when we lived here, which was very dangerous. Leif was a very young child.