In a very rural town, in the middle of a huge cluster of cornfields, nestled into the endless void of the Midwest, my Dad was born to a hard-working machinist and a stay at home mother and the youngest of two boys at the outbreak of World War II.  As he grew, his kindness and his quiet ways were well-known in the village because he was the loyal paper boy, seen daily on a rat-rod scooter that he pieced together from spare parts and kept running from the mechanical prowess of my grandfather and a little bit of luck.  His natural platinum blonde hair, sky blue eyes and a smile that would light up any gloomy day was known and loved by all.

As he progressed into high school, it was apparent that scholastics wasn’t his strongest suit; it simply bored him and his interests were locked into building cars…really fast cars…from anything he could scavenge or what he could barter or trade for.  When he wasn’t going to school, and since he really wasn’t the sporting jock type, he would disappear into Grandpa’s garage for hours on end.  His greatest accomplishment was that he had built the first licensed, completely constructed (not manufactured) hot rod in our county; a feat that he was proud of his whole life.  He was developing his passion for mechanics and inventing (he would call it “puttering”) and that was all that mattered.

My uncle was dating a young lady from the next village over (15 miles from our town) and she had a friend…who eventually became my mother; Mom and Dad began dating and soon became a couple.  Dad somehow managed to graduate from high school (barely graduated, actually, but since he was such a pleasant person, the teachers slid him along through the system) and went to work in a local trailer factory while my mother finished high school.  She was more “book smart”, as he would say, and school was much easier for her.  Times being what they were, in the mid 60’s, shortly after her graduation, they were married in a simple ceremony and shortly after, Mom became pregnant.  The following June, my sister came along.  She was born with the same blond hair and blue eyes as Dad; she also had a smile that was infectious and would light up a room.  They lived in a small apartment, over a garage, on the south side of town.

Mom settled into the trials of being a young, stay-at-home mother while Dad continued to work like a dog supporting his young family; when he wasn’t at the trailer factory, Dad and his friends began building a house on a 3/4 acre piece of property, in town, that was next to the river that ran through the center of town.  Around that same time, the Vietnam War was escalating and it’s reach had extended to our small town; Dad’s friends that were unmarried, or married with no children were being drafted and sent overseas.  Three years after my sister was born and the house could be moved into, my brother came along in the middle of April of ’68.   Again, my brother had my Dad’s blonde hair, blue eyes and infectious smile but he also grew to have Dad’s flare for mechanics and ripping sense of humor.  It was a blessing that my brother was born but Dad had to sell his precious 63′ Corvette split window coupe; he loved that car as much as a man could but as he would say for many years, “you can’t eat a Corvette and a baby seat wouldn’t fit in the back”.  Another benefit to my brother being born is that he was kept out of Vietnam again, although unintentionally…he was married with two children and the draft board was calling up men that were married with one child; the couple across the street had a little boy my brothers age, Mom and Dad had become good friends with them, and the man next door was drafted.  He came back after a one year tour but wasn’t quite the same.

Somehow, after Mom became completely entrenched in being a young mother with two small children and Dad had gotten another job at General Motors in a city about an hour away (the pay was wonderful but he worked almost constantly and my parents barely saw each other), I came along in the spring of ’72 with blonde curls and sky blue eyes just like Dad.  Mom would later tell me that when I was a baby, no matter how late Dad had worked, he would come into the nursery, scoop me out of my crib and just hold me; I was the one child he named.  Apparently I would also light up whenever I saw him too so the feeling was mutual…