My Steam Shovel

As I mentioned previously, I was always the first one in the family to get sick. I think it was because I was a weakling. I was malnourished - we had just the basics, flour, potatoes, meat, eggs... My mother would make sauerkraut, our meat was mostly pork and bacon. That might be why my diet was insufficient for a typical healthy body. I was really thin and my ribs were visible. I always said I could play a tune on my ribs as if it was a xylophone.

So, I was ill. My dad had a lot of compassion, and how he ever got the money I don't know, but he went downtown to Jone's Hardware in Cle Elum to get something I really wanted. This had to be sometime after 1927. I had admired the steam shovel that had dug the canal past our place for irrigation purposes. I saw that steam engine drop a bucket, pick up a load of dirt, swing over and dump it and so on. I admired that machine so much that I began to make one that I could play with out in the dirt. I made a bucket out of a can, with teeth, and it looked authentic, but with no crane or wrench. As I said, my dad was compassionate, and wanted to get something to cheer me up. He bought a steam shovel that was quite a replica of the machine that dug up that ditch. It was big as a goose.

When Donald saw that Daddy bought this for me, he became insanely jealous. He demanded it. He'd chase me around the barn, around and around, and I was sick, running out of energy. There was a hole in the barn floor and I quickly hid that steam shovel under the boards in the cow barn and I ran out the other doorway. I jumped out and was running towards the house and Donald was in the doorway of the barn and saw that I didn't have the steam shovel under my arms. Being a smart little bugger, he put two and two together and figured it had to be in the barn and found it in the hole. He came out carrying my steam shovel, which was red like an International tractor, and a big smile on his face. He was carrying it like a goose. He was happy, and of course, I was not. That was proof that he had to have everything I had, and anything I had he had to have his share of. That included guitars, and practically everything.

When I tell these stories I say 'we' because he and I were inseparable.