I remember how pretty the strawberry fields looked after they were plowed and weeded in the summer.

I remember during harvest time, our fingers remained a dull reddish strawberry color during the month of May, even after washing them.

I remember 1956 was a bumper strawberry crop and our biggest harvest ever. 

I remember the daily whirl of activity on the farm every May as we worked nonstop to pick the luscious strawberries before they rotted within a couple days after ripening.

I remember my mom seemed to always have some chewing gum in her pocketbook when we were getting ready to take a trip and would sometimes split a stick in half for each of us.

I remember walking Diana back to her dorm from a school carnival in the gym parking lot during freshman orientation week at St. John's College in 1964.

I remember reading an article Diana wrote in The Lutheran Witness around Christmas 1963, and finding out she planned to attend St. John’s College the following year, same as me.

I remember stepping in front of Diana in a volleyball game to “help” her out at Camp Lutherhoma in 1963, soon after we first met.

I remember once when Uncle Otto visited from Sacramento he bought steaks for everyone in our large family and Mom fixed them, and it was the one and only time we had steaks when I was growing up.

I remember about 1957 we went to Tulsa for the first time to see Hazel and Johnnie, and the busy highways and big buildings were quite a sight to see.

I remember most of our traveling when I was a kid was to Kansas to see Wanda near Louisburg, Aunt Anna and Uncle Willie near Gerard,  and Grandma Luethje, Uncle Herman, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Louise and Uncle Fred in Independence, and of course we made trips to the panhandle of Texas and western Oklahoma all during the 1950’s to pull cotton. 

I remember going to see Mom’s cousin Arvezina in a suburb of Kansas City, where she lived right on the state line between Kansas and Missouri with part of her lot in Missouri and the rest in Kansas.

I remember in maybe 1957 when Bill Acorn and Daddy took their pickup trucks full of school kids 50 miles to Muskogee for the state fair, and Mrs. Couser and Mrs. Harris also drove their cars full of kids.

I remember walking down the spine of Spade Mountain, which separated the Mulberry Hollow and Rabbit Trap communities, with my brothers Willie, Russell, Arnold, and Charlie one day and locating the gangster Tom Johnson's old hideout cave high on the bluff.

I remember one day after working picking cotton in Shamrock TX, I decided I would walk barefoot the short way to our house instead of riding home in the truck, not realizing all the goatheads and prickly pear stickers strewn along that crooked sandy trail -- my poor feet were a mess and I never tried that again.

I remember hearing the chug chug of the old black steam engine train in Shamrock TX, and seeing the belching steam that billowed out of it as it passed our cotton field, which was the only time and place I saw the old type trains. 

I remember the old three room vacant house where all nine of us stayed for four weeks to pick cotton in Shamrock TX, and I still remember the smell of the kerosene gas stove Mom cooked on, which was fancy after using wood at home.

I remember the first time we went to Shamrock, Texas in the fall of 1954 to pick cotton, we drove all night when it was cooler and less traffic, and we got there the next morning at the farmer’s house and his wife fixed breakfast for all of us.

I remember one time Daddy and I drove to Texas to see Norman and camped out in the back of the truck one night on the way.

I remember driving with Daddy to neighboring towns and selling fresh strawberries from the back of the truck.