(September 1992)
Bud couldmake anything. I could break anything. Bud could fix anything that I broke. We were a team.
Bud was bored with words. I was bored with tools. If I was reading he usually left me alone. If he was making something, I'd look over his shoulder then wander off. Even hoeing in the garden was more attractive.
Anything demanding physical dexterity he could conquer. If I tried building something, I would soon call Bud to finish the job. Usually it meant he had to start over.
Bud was not my brother, but in terms of family I never sensed any difference. His mother --my mother's sister-- died when Bud was a child. After several years alone with his father in Minneapolis, Ma said that he could stay summers with us on the farm. Then, after the summer of 1928, at age 12, he just stayed on until after he finished high school. Bud was a product of a social security system based on love, responsibility and family values.
During one of the early summers, when he was nine years old, Bud arrived and asked Pa if he had any old coils from the Model "T."
"What would you do with a coil?" Pa asked.
"I brought a couple of crystals with me and some old earphones. I'll make you a radio."
I heard this exchange and hurriedly ran to the granary and found the two old coils that were in our junk box. Two days later we had our first radio. In another day we had the second. Bud loved making them. I loved listening and moving the "cat's whisker" (the tuner on a crystal set) to pick up distant stations -- St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Yankton. That same summer was my first exposure to the Republican and Democratic conventions on WCCO, the one station we would always get. I became permanently addicted to the conventions.
Bud and I did do many things together. When I was 11 and Bud 13 we began reading adventure books, our favorite authors James Oliver Curwood and Jack London. Soon we had finished everything they had published and wanted more of their kind of adventure. That problem was solved in the creative way of boys on their own. We made up new stories.
We lived on a small farm. It was late to modernize, so we milked the cows by hand. The twelve cows in the old log barn were ours to milk, one hour, morning and evening. Thus, we were alone to pursue our adventurous dreams. I was wide awake by the six o'clock morning milking so I told the morning chapter. In the evening Bud took over, either finishing the one I had begun or starting a new one.