At age 63, I still get a queasy stomach prior to back to school.
Possibly due to this memory from 55 years ago.
I was a happy kid as Christmas 1967 approached. Santa would soon be delivering his goods, and I was doing well as one of Miss Eileen Shirley Anderson’s third graders at Malcolm Public Schools located northwest of Lincoln.
I also had lots of friends and loved living in the country.
Then Dad called a family meeting. I think it’s the only family meeting I can remember him calling during the 18 years I lived under his roof.
“We’re moving,” he announced.
Intense queasiness immediately set in.
I don’t remember much about Dad’s description of our new home other than it had four ponds. My love of water heightened my interest in his announcement, which led to a grilling. I pelted Dad with more irrelevant questions than those posed at a U.S. Presidential Press Conference.
Our new home was in the northwest corner of Lancaster County, or about five miles southwest of Valparaiso, Nebraska (population 390) — or roughly eight miles north of our rural Malcolm home. It would be on 200 acres of land purchased by Norden Laboratories as a research farm. Norden paid $40,000 for the land and the buildings, and the locals thought the Norden decision makers were nuts. 35 years later, the company sold it for nearly a half-million dollars.
Dad would manage the farm, which was a nice promotion for him and probably the high-water mark of his 39 years with Norden. He would also continue to manage Norden’s small animal and livestock campus in Lincoln, which would mean a 45-mile round trip each day.
The first day of my new school in Valparaiso, Nebraska, was January 3, 1968. It ranks as one of the more fearful days of my life. I had settled into a real comfort zone at Malcolm and was extremely uncomfortable with my new surroundings.
Plus, my eagerness to make new friends resulted in alienating a lot of my male classmates. I talked more than I should have and probably shared too much personal information.
I immediately picked up on the negative vibes when the rest of the third-grade boys learned I was of German descent and was a member of the Lutheran Church. Valparaiso had no Lutheran Church, and at least 75 percent of my classmates were Roman Catholic. And few, if any, were German.
Several days as a student at my new school, I learned that I was to be the target of an after-school brawl.
Ron Kubalek, who would become one of my better childhood friends, tipped me off. Sure enough, eight or nine boys chased me across the playground until they brought me down like a pack of lions hunting a wildebeest. Much to their surprise, I fought back as they jumped on me and punched me. But someone managed to bend my fingers back toward my forearms, and the intense pain caused me to cry. Once they saw tears my attackers left me alone. What I did to provoke their abuse will always be a mystery to me, but my guess is my openness about my background and ill-advised bragging about my athleticism probably provoked my attackers.
When spring came and I got a few base hits on the softball diamond, my classmates seemed to change their attitude about me.
Probably the commodity that excited me most about my new school was its hot lunch program. Malcolm didn’t offer hot lunches, but Valparaiso did. Hot lunch cost 25 cents a day in 1968, or two dollars for a ten-day ticket. Since two dollars would buy a lot of groceries, my parents would never buy me a two-week ticket. But once or twice a month I would convince Mom or Dad to part with a quarter for lunch. If I wanted to purchase the half-pint of chocolate milk for two cents, though, I was on my own.
I hated being poor.
However, I love the rich memories.
Even if they are a bit queasy.