Curry Senior Center Tech & Wellness - Prose & Poetry Group

Philip, the manager of the Curry Senior Tech Center att 520 Turk Street decided in 2024 to start a poetry and prose class.

Philip has a history of working with poetry and prose and has written around 8 or more theatrical play scripts. He suggested he might create a book with our poetry, prose, theatrical plays and so on.

In the class we have people who have had their poetry published and Philip thought I would be a good choice to write a story of something personnal. I have decided to write about growing up on a farm in the 1940s and how I almost had a perfect childhood and then a complete reversal of fortune.

Can you believe it, at 85 years old and I am still being very creative! I also have been doing iMovies and YouTube videos besides my website I have been working on for 25 years. Time will tell if I have this story published in the future.

Father with Work Horses 1940 - Charles and Father in 1954

Father Knows Best

Written by Charles Walter Buntjer

Chapter 1 - The Best of Times - 1940/1951

(Growing up on the farm)

My first 12 years growing up on a farm were really like a story you would read about in a book.

I was born on February 4, 1940. My sister Yvonne, was eight years old and my father Walter, was 30 years old, my mother Edna, was 34 years old.

Years later my sister told me I was born in a small house with only two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom that was near Polo Illinois. I’m not sure why we were living there, but Yvonne said my parents were buying 165 acre farm about a mile away. She said when I was two weeks old, my father had finished milking the cows and hitched a horse up to a hay wagon. It was dark and lots of snow on the gravel road, but he drove up to the small house and covered all of us in blankets. We got on the hay wagon with the horse and off we went to the farm my parents were buying. Yvonne thinks that’s why I like to travel, I was two weeks old and already took a trip on a hay wagon with a horse pulling it.

We were only on the farm for a couple of months and then moved to a 500 acre farm near Pecatonica Illinois that’s about an hour away from our farm near Polo. We rented that 500 acre farm and used all the profits from it to pay off the farm near Polo. We eventually tore down all of the buildings and built new ones on the 160 acre farm near Polo. A fabulous house my mother designed, barn, machines shed, chicken coop, a pig pen, and storage for grains.

The closest neighbors were over a mile away and my one room school was 2 miles away, so I grew up pretty much alone. My sister was so wonderful. Before I started the Wagner One Room School, she taught me my alphabet, my numbers and how to read. I think that’s why I love to read about everything that I can, astronomy, history, physics and travels. Of course, I had my dog Buster, my favorite cats, and my pony Dandy.

The 500 acre farm was fantastic to grow up on. 150 acres of woods with oak trees and maple trees. There was a high hill in the middle of the forest, and on top of it was an Indian mound. At the bottom of the hill or in the valley, was a swamp. We were told the Native Americans dug the dirt up, carried it to the top of the hill and made this pyramid shaped mound. The mound had an alter in the front with large rocks on it, facing south. I used to play cowboy and Indian on top of that mound. How many people can say they had the ability to do that when they were six or seven years old.

At the bottom of the hill was the swamp that was very damp and wet, but cattails grew there and also tiger lilies. These flowers had stems that were three or 4 feet tall with orange petals with black spots all over them. I used to walk into the swamp and collect these flowers to take home to my family.

In the spring, my father would put me in our truck and we would drive to the back 40 acres. A river ran around the farm and in the back 40 the river took a large turn and in there were lots of short trees. The branches were intertwined and underneath the leaves it was quite dark. But in the shade flowers grew there about a foot tall. Each plant was covered all over the top with blue flowers. We of course, call them bluebells. We would sit there and watch as the breeze came by and the flowers would nod back-and-forth, it looked like we were looking at the ocean with the waves coming at us. What memories!

After my father and I went to see the blue bells underneath all those trees by the bend in the river, we decided to walk around and check out what else was going on in the area. The back 40 not only had lots of trees and grass and flowers, but there were dips in the ground and when there was flooding in the spring, these dips would fill up with water, more like small ponds. My father and I were looking at a pond and wondering if there were fish in it. He suddenly looked at me and he said you know, no one in the family knows how to swim. The river is nasty, full of soil and rocks, tree, branches, and small whirlpools. We did not go into the river so we couldn’t learn how to swim. My father suddenly thought that I needed to learn how to swim so he bent over and pick me up, I was around five or six years old, he spun around and threw me about 15 feet into the pond. I screamed and cried and flopped my arms and legs around and swallowed some water but eventually after flapping my arms and legs around, I ended up on the shore and my father smiled, he said, I knew you could learn how to swim. I was mad. But little did I know within less than 15 years I would be in the Bahamas scuba diving at least 80 feet under the water. Isn’t life strange.

My father, sisters and I went down to visit our friends who owned the farm we were renting.. The two sisters and brother told us that there was a cabin down by the river and people would go fishing and then spend a day or two in the cabin. It was just a wooden building, four walls in a roof and a floor, and a window and door. We thought it was interesting and maybe we should go down and check it out. Now it was spring and the flood stage was going down so the water wasn’t too deep all over the lowlands of the farms. Now those buildings like this one along the river were not only used by people who were fishing, but then, many hoboes as we called them, walked the railroad tracks from town to town looking for work. Many times they would stop and stay in that building in the winter or in the summer when it was nasty, rainy weather, for a few days before walking onto the next town. My father and sister and I were checking out everything around the area and saw a row boat next to the building. A row boat, we’ve never been on a row boat on the river, how hard would it be to take a boat out and use the oars to paddle around, we were going to find out. Our father pulled the boat out onto the water and we got into it and off we sailed, ship ahoy! I assumed that we were going to be pirates and I was excited. We got about 15 feet from the shore and suddenly wondered why our feet felt wet. Well, of course, the wooden boat had holes in it and we were sinking. We already had about 6 inches in the bottom of the boat and we were petrified, is this the Titanic, are we going down with the ship? Our father said he was going to save us, of course he was, he couldn’t swim either. He hung onto the edge of the boat and slowly slid off into the water as we held our breath. Suddenly he smiled, and we wondered what was going on with him, he stood up and we had to laugh because the water was only about 3 feet deep. It came up to his knees, and that was it. So he pushed the boat back to the shore before it sank, but it didn’t matter because we could just walk back to the shore. Now when I take a trip, I go on those huge Celebrity cruise ships or even the Canard cruise ships like the Queen Mary 2. I’ve also taken the Viking river cruises, a cruise on the Nile River, the Amazon River, the Yangtze River and even did a rubber raft down the American River. What a difference a few years makes.

There was a railroad that ran through the farm and usually a few times a week at night, the freight train would go through. The tracks were on a raised area that was built so that the tracks couldn’t get covered when the river flooded the area. In the spring, we would all get together and walk along the tracks because there was gravel along there, and it was interesting, because for some reason lots of wild strawberries grew there. We took our containers and hoped to pick the strawberries and take them back home to have for dessert at dinner. Of course, we had to laugh, because the strawberries never made it into the containers, only in our mouths. We also had blackberries and gooseberries on bushes in the woods plus mulberries on a tree in our front yard.

One thing I thought was quite interesting, when I walked to school, there was a hill on the south side of our farm that looked like a glacier had cut away the land and only rocks were left there. I would climb over the fence and go into the field and look for areas where the sun would melt the snow. This would be in March. In the little areas that were melted there would be a small patch of earth and there would be a flower growing, and I believe it was a crocus. It looked like something you’d see in the alpine mountains in Switzerland. The leaves had fuzz all over them to keep the sunlight and the warmth on the leaves. The flowers were on a little stems about 4 inches tall and the flowers looked like a tulip, purple with yellow stamens, I would take them to school and give them to my teacher, I always wondered if she appreciated me doing that for her.

Of course, I learned how to ride a horse at an early age. When I was around six years old, my family decided I should learn how to ride, and I could go after the cows in the afternoon to bring them back home to be milked. I couldn’t put the bridal on Dandy, so my father or my sister would do that for me. Then they said I was on my own getting onto him and doing whatever I needed to do to get the cows. I had a terrible time getting on him, but the fence was wooden, and it was easy to stand on there, and eventually, I managed to hop onto him and off we went down the hill to open the gate and let the cows come back to the barn to be milked. Dandy would walk down the hill like he was 90 years old, step, step, slow, step. I would get mad and kick him in the side, but he could’ve cared less. We’d get to the bottom of the hill just before the gate and suddenly he would stop, turn around and give me an evil look, and get down on his front knees. He shake his butt in the air as hard as he could, and I, of course, would slide off onto the ground. He’d stand up and give me that look, turn around and run up the hill as fast as he could, as if he was only two or three years old now. Once he got to the top of the hill he’d go into the yard with all the other horses and hide in between them and gave me that smart look, I screwed you and you can’t do anything about it. This went on for a month or so and finally I was so mad that I said I was going to fix Dandy one way or another. He went into that same situation as usual, butt in the air and head on the ground, and shake shake shake shake. I tied the reins around my hands and wouldn’t let go. He lifted his head and went to runoff, but he would’ve had to drag me up the hill so he just stood there and gave me the nasty look. I didn’t care. I yanked those reins as hard as I could and hurt his mouth. I normally wouldn’t do that but what’s one to do. Then I had problems getting back on him because there was only a wire fence but eventually I did get on him and back up the hill we went. Dandy was not happy, but I certainly was. Eventually I rode him to Pecatonlca and marched in the opening parade ceremony of a rodeo. A few years later, my sister Yvonne and I were talking and she cracked up laughing. She said Dandy did the same thing to her and she had to yank the reins and hurt his mouth, but she said he still didn’t care because as soon as I got on him, he was gonna pull the same thing. But at least it taught me how to ride a horse how to control them. Danny lived to be almost 30 years old and I was living in San Francisco and Yvonne went to the farm one day and she said she had to laugh because when he saw her, he gave her a nasty look.

One day when I was around eight or nine years old, my sister told me to shape up, get all the chores done in the morning as soon as possible because we were going to Pecatonica. She said we were riding our horses there. I thought she was crazy. But around 10:30 in the morning we saddled up and put on our western outfits, got on our horses, well my pony, and off we rode to Pecatonica, which took about 2 1/2 hours. It was gravel road and people would drive by and honk at us and we’d wave at them and then we got to Pecatonica and the main street was paved. At the end of the main street was a bridge and a river and the Winniebago County Fairgrounds where they were holding the Big Hat Rodeo. We got there and they signed us up and said that we were going to march in the grand parade in the rodeo's first event. About 200 or more horses got in line and I followed my sister as we walked around in that figure 8 while hundreds of people in the grandstand clapped and cheered. We then watched the calf roping. bucking broncos, bull riding and so on. We really had a great time, and then it was time to ride back to the farm and do our afternoon chores. Now, how many people today could say that they ever had and experience like that.

Of course, I was alone most of the time. But we were lucky because if we could take time off from the chores, we would go visit my aunts, uncles and grandparents. I got to play with my cousins and we also celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and had huge family reunions. We also had wonderful holidays and we almost always had big family Sunday dinners.

It was 1944 and after the cows were milked and we could relax over breakfast, I would be excited because it was Easter. I was four years old and we all sat down for breakfast. My father had a strange look and I wondered what was up. He said he was milking the cows and looked out the barn door. The barn doors were split, upper and lower. The upper could be open for fresh air and lighting, the bottom shut to keep in any loose animals! He said he thought he saw a rabbit run by the door and into the hayloft. The cows and horses were in the bottom of the barn and on the second floor was a huge haymow with bales of straw and hay stacked up to 25 feet tall! As soon as I heard my father say that I rushed out the door. Down the gravel path to the haymow. I looked all over and there was a big nest made out straw, full of colored eggs, chocolate bunnies and those yellow chicks and candies! Wow, what a load of goodies. I gathered up a big armful and rushed back to the breakfast table and announced I had made a haul and the Easter Rabbit was wonderful and I could share all the eggs and candies with the family! Of course, at that time I didn’t realize with all the hard work my family had to do on the farm, they still found time to dye the eggs and so on and even make nests for all the goodies!

Now I am five years old in 1945 and we are at the Easter morning breakfast and as we were eating my mother said it was strange, as she was making breakfast, she thought she saw a rabbit run by the kitchen window and go to the front yard where there were a bunch of lilac bushes. I flew out of the kitchen and over to the lilac bushes. The dogs and cats, when it was hot, crawled under the bushes and made an area to lie in as it was cooler for them. I got down on my hands and feet and crawled into the bushes. There was a nest made of colored strips of paper and it was again, full of goodies. That Easter Rabbit was certainly good to me!

Now I am six years old in 1946 and in first grade, still believing in the Easter Rabbit! The night before Easter my mother told me to go to bed and have a good sleep as tomorrow was Easter and everyone was going to bed early so we could all relax the next day.Easter Rabbit I put on my pajama bottoms and off to bed around 9 p.m. I woke up around 10 p.m. because I heard laughing and people talking. I wondered who was making so much noise and laughing so much. I remember I walked to the kitchen and the door was shut and a light was coming out of the bottom. I was rubbing my eyes, trying to wake up and opened the door and my sister, then she was 14, and our mother, both got mad and said I was a bad boy and should be in bed. So back to bed I went but after getting in bed I realized there was a big basket of eggs and glass bowls with various colored dyes in them. Wait a minute, eggs, dyes, a bunch of chocolate bunnies and yellow chicks. Uh oh, I realized the Eater Rabbit was my parents and my sister. The next morning there was a big basket of eggs and goodies but this time in the middle of the breakfast table. No middle man this time, and no Easter Rabbit. So I would not be too devastated, they said next year I could help dye the eggs. They said maybe I could take wax and make decorations on the eggs so the dyes leave those areas clear of the dye. Now I had something to think about for the next year, I would be the Easter Rabbit’s helper!

A few weeks after the 1946 Easter, I was walking to my one room school about two miles away from our farm. The gravel road ran south and another road bisected it east and west. Carol and Marilyn lived down one way and sometimes we met at the cross roads and walked the rest of the way to school. We were in first grade. They were going on about Easter and I was walking a few feet behind. Carol said to Marilyn, parents must think we are so dumb. A rabbit hops around delivering eggs to children all over the world. How dumb do they think we are? They suddenly stopped and asked me what I thought. Since I wanted to be thought of as in the know, I agreed and said that parents were very dumb to think we believed in the Easter Rabbit. Good thing I found out on my own the truth. But sadly, things were going to get worse! We continued to walk a little further and then Marilyn said to Carol that it was the same story as the Easter Rabbit. Did parents really think they believed in Santa Clause. Reindeer flying around the world, Santa bringing presents to all the children in the world. Carol said parents were so silly. I had a trauma, not only no Easter Rabbit, but no Santa Claus, all withing one week. They again turned to me and asked my opinion. I had to think quickly, then said of course we all knew there wasn’t an Easter Rabbit or a Santa Claus.

On Saturday nights in the 1940s after we had chores done and after dinner we would get in the car and go to a small village called Ridott. Ridott had a few houses and a general store. I think the owner of the general store was the one who came up with the idea of having Saturday night movies. This would help his business of course. Main Street was gravel and around 8 o’clock at night they would block the Main Street and put a small table in the middle of the street. They put a movie projector on the table and ran the cord across the street into the store. They put up a small white sheet or projector screen about 6 foot by six foot about ten feet from the projector. As the sun set they would start the film, probably three or four reels so lots of fun as they had to change the reels each time one was finished. We all sat on blankets and pillows and snacked away on all the things that we had bought at the store. By then it was probably 10:30 pm at night a time to go home so that we can get a good nights sleep to get up on Sunday morning and do chores and then have a nice Sunday after noon dinner.

It was 1945, and I just turned five years old. I realized the 500 acre farm we were renting near Pecatonica Illinois, was owned by two sisters and a brother who had moved to Illinois from Germany around 1920, after World War I. They must’ve had a lot of money because they bought around six or 700 acres of land. The house we were living in was already there, but they built a large house a mile away on a hill overlooking the river. The house was unbelievable, the dining room had furniture from England and a chandelier over the table. The living room was also huge with wonderful furniture and there was even a den with large leather chairs and a library in it. The books looked like something from the 1800s, huge Atlas covered with leather bindings, was I impressed. They never seemed to go anywhere so my mother invited them for holiday and Christmas dinners. We did the chores early and then had time to have dinner and opened the presents. We all had a wonderful time. Now the brother was the quiet one in the family, the sisters talked all the time, but he usually stayed in the barn or somewhere else as he worked. After we had dinner and opened our Christmas presents, he said he wanted us to go outside as he had a surprise for us. He said we should put on our heavy coats, scarves, hats, and gloves. We wondered what was up. We went out the front door and there by the gravel road was a sled with a horse hitched up to it. The horse had wonderful black polished harnesses and every four or so inches were silver bells. We all got into the sled and off we went across the road into a pasture with about 10 inches of snow on the ground and oak trees with icicles hanging from the branches. There was a full moon, and as we glided around the pasture through the snow we were in disbelief as the bells kept ringing. It was so fantastic. After the sleigh ride, we ended up back in front of our house and the brother told the sisters to get in and off they went down the pasture to their own home. It is something that I will never forget.

The first big thing that happened to me was in 1944 when I was four years old. We were doing spring house keeping and my sister was chasing me around the rugs we were cleaning. I suddenly fell down and cried that my stomach was hurting. After a day we went to the local doctor in Pecatonica and he said I had the stomach flu. A few days later I was in horrible pain and off we went to the hospital in Freeport. The doctors were mad, they said I had burst appendix and why had my parents waited so long. They operated and said my entire internal organs were infected. I was unconscious for four days and my family was told that there wasn't much they could do. A young doctor called a doctor friend in Chicago and he said they just got penicillan in the hospital, a wonder drug. He said he would drive the 100 miles to Freeport with the medicine. They started the medication but I didn't seem to respond to it. Finally a priest came in and asked if he could give last rites. My family thought it couldn't hurt. The priest was chanting and swinging his beads and suddenly I woke up. What is going on I wondered. It was a miracle. I was in a wheelchair for a month but then I was all right and life went on.

In 1946 the one room School I went to had about 14 students in it. The first grade I was in had three people in it, the largest class in the room.. We had wonderful times in the school and every month there would be a get together at a PTA meeting for parents to discuss how their children were doing. We also had games to play and then we would have a potluck, mostly deserts. I started my first grade at the one room school and suddenly a reporter and a photographer visted us from Life Magazine in New York City. The magazine was looking for the perfect school in the USA to feature in their magazine. This was to celebrate the end of World War II and the reason our troops were fighting, to save democracy, mother, apple pie and of course the children. After a few days the only thing we students were interested in was the photographer's camera and the flash bulbs he used to take photos. We loved to gather them up just to look at them. Flash bulbs! That was our main interest.

My parents were asked if they could put me on the cover of Life Magazine. They agreed and I ended up on the cover of Life and in most of the photos inside the four page spread. I received thousands of letters from around the world and gifts. I started to write to a boy in Holland who was seven years old, one year older than I was. And to top it off, I am still writing to Frans after 80 years! Years later my sister laughed and told me she graduated from the eight grade the year before I started first grade. She told me I was lucky because if she was still in the one room school, she would have pushed me aside and she would have ended up on the cover of Life Magazine. Isn't my sister Yvonne, so sweet! We had a good laugh about that!

We used to go to Pecatonica every two weeks or so on Saturday night to go shopping and if lucky, a movie! I would be in the grocery store and women would come up and squeeze me and tousle my hair telling me how cute I was and so on just because of the Life Magazine article. I would get cranky! My 15 minutes of fame and I didn't even realize it as I was only six years old!

It was bad enough. We didn’t have running water in the house, we didn’t have a bathroom either. The outhouse was about 50 feet in the back yard. It didn’t matter what the weather was like, we were told either use the outhouse before going to bed or hold it. Being a boy wasn’t so bad because I could just open the window in my bedroom and pee out the window into the snowbank. Now it was funny because we had no toilet paper, usually just the Sears catalog or some other magazine. Not exactly the best thing to use to wipe ones behind. One day in the late afternoon, it was 10 below zero and I was freezing. My parents said too bad so sad. So if I went to the out house and sat there for a while, trying to keep warm. I had matches with me which I think most children on the farm had, we did have something about fires I can tell you that. I decided to take a bunch of pages from the Sears catalogue and rolled it up into a torch. I lite the end of the paper and held it in one hand and warmed the other hand, and then switched hands. Did it feel great. Of course the fire got close to my hand and I threw it down the toilet. I should say toilet hole because ours had two holes in it, why two holes I don’t know. I didn’t think too much about it and then suddenly smoke started to come out from the other hole and it also had a strange smell. Of course, all the papers that were in the toilet started to catch on fire and I was running around, trying to stop it from burning down the outhouse. I got a lot of snow and threw it down and managed to stop the fire, but of course my parents could see that there was smoke coming out of the outhouse. They came down to see what was going on, but the fire was out, but I was in big trouble. They told me, if the outhouse burned down, I’d have to go in the barn or someplace and do my thing, that’s what you get for playing with matches. My sister said she loved to start fires also. We loved those farmers matches.

There were lots of other experiences I had growing up on the farm, but I think I’ve said enough so far. Now, as life does sometimes, it threw me for a loop, after 12 years of wonderful living, there was suddenly a drastic change in my life,

Chapter 2 - Cry Me a River - 1951/1953

(Mother/cancer)

Verbiage.

Chapter 3 - Incident on Highway 20 - 1955

(Threatened by father)

Verbiage.

Chapter 4 - Home Alone with the Cows - 1956

(16 years old alone and doing all the chores)

Verbiage.

Chapter 5 - My Stepmother- An Angel in Disguise - 1957

(Father remarried to a wonderful woman)

Verbiage.

Chapter 6 - Goodbye Illinois- Hello California - 1963 and Beyond

(Army Computer Technology and Travels)

Verbiage.

Created on 2026.01.13       Updated on 2026.01.26