My dad didn't reveal a huge amount about his childhood or early adulthood to me, just a little peek every now and then.  I'll try to get several revelations down in this posting.

In 1952 I had a sister born, Mary Elizabeth Pierson, Feb 22, 1952.  She died of an enlarged heart 3 days later.  I was just 3 years old, but still remember her funeral....at least a few parts.  I know we went into a room where there was a little basket with a mesh cloth over it.  I stood on my tiptoes and peeked in.  It looked like a little doll in a doll basket.  I seem to remember a rattle or small toy in the basket with her.   After the graveside service, we all piled back into the car (this is what my dad related to me).  Ned Naylor (a family friend and the funeral director) came over to the car.  My dad told him, "I don't know how I'm ever going to pay you for this."  Ned said, "Don't worry about it, just take care of your family."  They shook hands and my dad looked down in his hand and there was a folded $10 bill.  Dad said they both just stood there and cried for about 10 minutes before they left.  There are still good people like Ned Naylor running around loose in this world, they just don't get noticed too much.  They almost daily commit random acts of kindness.

My dad also said when he was little they had a dog that would follow him every where.

    He said that when he was about 10 his folks rented him out to a neighboring farmer for
$10.00 a month plus room and board.  He moved in with the farmer and worked for him 6 days a week for the summer and his folks got $30.00 and him back.  He said his primary jobs were to weed the garden by the house and take water out to the farmer and the other hands several times a day as well as to take them lunch.  He would take a bucket of water and dipper out in the morning about 9 o'clock.  He would take another bucket of water out about 11:00 and then go back to the house and get the basket of food for lunch and bring it back.  He would repeat the water carrying about 2:00 and 4:00 pm.  He said it was kinda lonely to be gone from the family for 3 months, but he felt he had to do something to help out, the times were hard.....this would have been about 1936...mid depression and dust bowl days.  The picture on the left was taken about 1936 or 1937.

My dad was the youngest of 5 children  The oldest was Dan, then John, then his sister Bessie, then his brother Wes  (Bud).

His brother Dan, the oldest child was an avid hunter.  He also had a strong dislike for crows that would eat parts of the crops that were grown.  The biggest problem with hunting the crows was that they would see you coming with a shotgun and fly off before you could get within range.  Dan was going to sneak up on them by resting the barrel of the gun on the toe of his work shoes and leisurely walk through the cornfield and "fake out" the crows so he could get a good shot.  The shotgun was a double barrel 12 gauge, hammer action.  To save time when he got within range he cocked both barrels so all he would have to do is swing the gun up and pull the trigger to bag the Heckle and Jeckle of his time.  The only problem was that when he started to swing the barrel up, his finger was on the trigger and the gun went off.  He looked down and saw a hole in his work shoe but didn't feel any pain and there didn't seem to be any bleeding.  He went back to the house and sat down.  When he unlace his shoe and took it off, the bleeding started, when he took off his sock, he could see that he shot off his 2nd and 3rd toes.  He did get patched up.  The human body does try to compensate one part of the body that may be defective with another that is made stronger.  What happened with Dan is that his big toe widened to fill in the gap where the other two toes were removed.  I never noticed him favor one foot over the other when he walked or anything. 

Another story he told was of his brother Bud (Wes) and his sister's (Bessie's) husband Bill Ristau (nicknamed "snaky"...don't know why.)  Seems that Bud and Snaky operated a still out in Bill's garage.  One day they got word that the Federal Revenuers were going to raid the place.  Bud took off and left Snaky to face the music alone.  Somehow, Bill got the still dismantled enough and enough pieces moved to other areas of the barn that the Revenuer couldn't arrest him.  I never heard if Bill ever reinstalled it after that.  Bud did pick up the bible after that and became a Baptist preacher and missionary. He would take his family down to southern Mexico every year and spend the winter there missioning to people.  The rest of the year he was carpenter in Kansas City, MO. 

My dad also told me that Bud could take some electrical shocks.  Back in the olden days of being a carpenter, generally the power tools had a two wire plug and if you needed a receptacle during the rough-in stage of building, they usually had light bulb sockets in each room.  Bud carried an adapter that screwed into the light socket like a light bulb, but had a two hole outlet built in.  To see if he had power, he would wet his index finger and stick it into the light socket, touching the hot lead in the center and also to the side of the socket......Yep, this one has power, and then he would hook up.   My dad also said he saw Bud place his thumbs and little fingers on the spark plugs of a running Model A ford while it was running and Kill it dead.  I've gotten across spark plug wires before and although there's not a lot of current, there is over 10,000 volts of power, enough to let you see purple stars for a bit.