Chapter Two

Writer's note: Since I'm a few chapters ahead in my writing I decided to post a new chapter on Mondays and Fridays.

Chapter Two
Abilene – Cattle and Eisenhower
Abilene, Kansas was the trail’s end for cattle drives bringing their livestock to the railroad for transport to the slaughter houses. The 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, attended and graduated in 1909 from Abilene High School. Memories of Abilene are a mixture of things I actually do remember and things I’ve been told.

Things I’ve been told include a tale of me watching our pet dog give birth to a litter of puppies and saying "poop, there’s goes another one!". Also, I’m told I walked to town (across the street from where we lived) on my own and went on a shopping spree using make believe money. In addition to shopping at the nickel & dime store I bought my mother a car. Abilene was and still is a small town and I guess many of the people knew me or at least thought a child buying things caught their fancy. It apparently even made the front page of the local newspaper; you see, I couldn’t have been more than 4 years old. (Ah, more stories like that and the newspapers wouldn’t have to go out of business. :-) )

Things I do remember is a flood that that creek where Gary had fallen through the ice (remember I told you earlier it would come up in the Abilene section) overflowed its bank and flooded our part of the town. I remember seeing a guy go by in a rowboat where the street by our house should have been. We lived in a house on a corner lot and the house was on a small rise of land. Still, the water got high enough to get into our basement(any of you readers who live in the Midwest or the East know what a basement is). I remember going down the basement stairs after the water had receded and seeing a layer of caked dirt up to the bottom of the stairs.

I remember a "night crawler" adventure in our backyard using flashlights to search for them; "night crawlers" are juicy earthworms that are good for fishing bait. By the way, this was not just a bunch of kids engaged in this nocturnal event; there were adults too.

My dad worked in a cleaners shop and became a part owner or something - my memory is faulty on this matter. But more on the equipment from the cleaners later. That’s pretty much it for Abilene. I was about five years old when we moved to Topeka.