We lived on a hill, and there weren’t very many hills and North Dakota. We used to ride the toboggan and sled. We use to pig-pile on top of one another to see how many kids we could get onto one sled or toboggan. It was a lot of fun.

As far as siblings go there’s Betty Lou, or Elizabeth. She still lives in Bismarck. She has found her niche in life and that is working with handicapped children.

She’s been driving a school bus for these kids for a long time, twenty-something years. These are kids with special needs but mostly their kids who are wheelchair-bound. Some of them have all of their mental facilities and some don’t. She loves these kids. She’s a natural at not letting things gross her out, and keeps on working. It goes both ways. The kids love her, too.

I have another sister named Jennifer, who worked for years as a lab technician before joining the oil refinery business. She worked on projects for water quality and meeting OSHA regulations. She’s a detail person. She likes to make sure that the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed. Then she goes out and feeds the trout in the trout ponds. She lives in North Dakota.

Then I’ve got a brother who lives in the Olympic peninsula in Washington. He lives in Port Angeles. He likes to hang out by the ocean and take walks and the big trees.

Summers we spent at the pool. I grew up at the pool. We would walk the railroad tracks down to the pool at the Elks Club. At that time there were hobos that would sleep underneath the chokecherry trees and scare us in the summertime. These guys were probably just winos and at first they would scare us, but eventually we got used to them.

My dad worked as an office machine repairman. He also worked for a furnace company for a while. My mother was a licensed practical nurse. I was in utero when she took her license. In fact, she got the OK to take the exam two weeks early because she was so pregnant with me.