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To: Tax-chick

I’m sure that I will too. That’s a sobering thought!


27 posted on 10/02/2012 1:47:22 PM PDT by Constitution Day
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To: Constitution Day; Monkey Face; LibreOuMort

My father has Alzheimer’s Disease, and it’s getting to where he doesn’t even recognize Mom, except as “that familiar household person,” but he was symptomatic for more than 10 years before now, and very spotty with his memory. One thing he remembered was how he got a bicycle after World War 2; he was 10 in 1946.

You had to put down a deposit at a store to get on a list to get a bicycle. His family could only afford one deposit, so they put it at the store in the county seat. Another boy, “Claud Junior Otto” - “Junior” was his legal middle name, and his father had a speech defect and called him “Quad” - had a rich father, and they put down deposits in all the towns around Shelby County (Missouri).

Well, Quad got one of the first bicycles that came out, and it was six months or so before Dad got his ... but Dad’s was a SCHWINN, and it was better than Quad Junior’s! Dad remembered sixty years later, when I read something from my great-aunt’s diary about his riding a bike with his cousin, that he had a BETTER bike than Quad Junior!

Later, Dad worked for Old Farmer Otto, and one day Mr. Otto decided he wanted a new car. He had Dad take him to the GM dealership in Edina, and picked out a car he liked. “I’m going to give the Model T. to Quad!” When the dealer asked him about financing, he said, “By Dawe! (old German farmers don’t take the name of the Lord in vain) I will pay!” and he took cash out of his overalls pocket and paid around $2,000 for the new GM car. This would have been in the early 50s ;-).


28 posted on 10/02/2012 3:24:45 PM PDT by Tax-chick (Optimism is much shallower than hope.)
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