Father Knows Best

Written by Charles Walter Buntjer

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - The Best of Times - 1940/1951

My first 12 years growing up on a farm were really like a fairytale you would read about in a children's 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.

1940 - The only photo of my sister, mother and me taken with a box camera.

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 near Polo for a couple of months and then moved to a 500 acre farm near Pecatonica Illinois that’s about an hour away from the farm we were buying. 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. An up to date 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.

The first major thing that happened to me was in the early spring of1944 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 was screaming and my sister was laughing and our mother was fit to be tied, she yelled at us to stop screwing around and help do the spring 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.

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.

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

The first decade passed and I had a very wonderful life. So what could go wrong, I thought since I was so young. I was11 years old when we moved to a new house. barn. machine shed, chicken coop, and so on. My mother was 45 years old and she had worked 12 and 14 hours a day, six days a year and even many hours on Sundays. In all those years, she never had indoor plumbing or a bathroom.

Finally in 1951 she was able to move into the new house she designed and we were also happy to have indoor plumbing and an indoor bathroom. Another interesting fact is that I was still going to a one room school. I finished five grades at the Wagner one room school near Pecatonica, Illinois, and now I was going to another one room school in a little village a couple miles from our farm in Polo called Brookville, maybe 200 people. There was a small grocery store there and on the corner there was a gas station with a little café in it that we would like to go to for a snack at lunchtime from the one room school. And on the edge of the little village was a beautiful small white church with oak trees around it, a big grassy area and a small creek that ran behind it. My mother and I used to go to the Sunday service for over a year.

My mother had stopped working on the farm doing chores and suddenly started to dress up several times a week and drive off to some event. I found out she was attending church socials, a woman's club and even belonged to the Illinois Farm Bureau. After 45 years of working day and night, she was able to actually do things just for herself.

The other thing I found out was the magazine Town and Country had heard about the house and how my mother with only an eight grade education, could design such a house and interior. It was the latest in fashion, the bathtub, toilet and sink in a dusty rose and the walls in pink tiles with white accent tiles. The rage at that time was various colors for bathrooms like avacado or tangerine. The kitchen was state of the art and the living room was unbelievable. Men, who specialized in plastering, covered the walls in a light mint color and using boards, pressed them against the wet plaster, creating slight indentations. The carpet was a light and dark green, wall to wall. Special drapes for the picture windows and a fireplace with winged back chairs on each side. Next to the chairs were tables with huge crystal ash trays and large crystal cigarette lighters! They wanted to do a multiple page spread and feature my mother. My father and mother decided against it as the neighbors and family members might think we were showing off. I felt bad, my mother would have been featured in a magazine that was read all over the county but it was not to be. So sad.

My sister was 19 and she had moved to Rockford Illinois, over 250,000 people, with her best friend Virgie from highschool. They both worked in offices, and I was very jealous of my sister living in the big city. She would take the bus from Rockford to Polo and call us up to pick her up to come visit for the weekend. One weekend she didn’t call, and suddenly we saw a car drive up in front of our house and my sister came out with a young man who was about 24 years old in a sailor's outfit. We wondered what was up. She said that they had been dating for a few months and wanted him to meet the family and have him see what we were like. A few months later, she came to visit by herself and she took me aside and she asked me what I thought of Ken. I said he was handsome, a very hard worker, and very nice. I told her if she didn’t grab him somebody else would. She laughed and said she agreed with me and a few months later they were engaged.

My mother was excited to be able to plan this big wedding which turned out to be really fantastic. They decided to put candelabras on both sides of the church and on the altar. My cousin Randall and I were both 11 years old and they asked us at the beginning of the wedding, to walk along and light all of the candles. Then Nancy came along. She was six years old and another cousin, and walked in front of my father and my sister with a basket of rose petals as she tossed them back-and-forth across the rug, so cute. The wedding was a big success and at the end of it there was a sit down dinner for about 40 or 50 people in the basement of the church. My mother did a fantastic job and we were also happy.

Now it’s almost the beginning of 1952 and my sister came home to visit one weekend. I wondered why she was coming with multiple bags for a weekend trip. A few days later we all got in the car and if we went to Dixon, Illinois and to a very large hospital. We went to the waiting room and eventually the doctors came in and talked to my sister, our father and our mother. Shortly after that my mother went with the doctors in the nurses to her room. My sister told me that I should go with her and take a walk around the park that was next to the hospital. My father stayed at the hospital. I didn’t know what was going on. They never told me. I was told my mother was going to be all right, just minor surgery, and my sister will stay for a few days until she was all right. So I never thought anything of it. I certainly was kept in the dark.

I certainly didn’t know what was going on and one night my mother and I were sitting on the couch in the TV room alone. Many nights my father was at the other farm that we still renting. I never new why he was trying to work two farms miles apart. We were watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the second, this was a big event around June 4th 1962. I was sitting close to my mother, almost hugging her, and she smiled at me and asked me if I could do something for her. Of course, I said, why wouldn’t I? She had a container of salve and she opened it and then she took her robe and opened it up. They had cut her entire left breast off and cut into the back of her side to get out the lymph glands. It was all radiated, dark and raw, and slivers of black flesh. I was in shock, I froze and just looked ahead of me, I didn’t know what to do. My mother felt horrible, she said she was so sorry and that she would try to do it herself. We watched the rest of the coronation and I went to bed. Now 70 years later I still have a trauma that I didn’t help my mother put that salve on her, but I just couldn’t do it. No one told me the situation and I just couldn’t stand it.

My mother eventually went to the hospital, but they said that they couldn’t do anything more for her so she came home. We put a bed in the television room next to the kitchen and then I think my sister took care of her. She was unconscious for over three weeks and the doctor came out and gave her pain medication every few days. I would come home from school and walk past the television room and look at the wall because I couldn’t stand to look at her. I heard her trying to breath. My sister said eventually, the cancer was in her throat and she couldn’t breathe anymore.

Now this is really going to be interesting. My father never talk to me about anything that I can remember and suddenly one afternoon we were going to milk the cows and I had to go to the bathroom so I was going to the house. I got about 20 for 30 feet from the barn and heard the door open. I didn’t turn around, I just stood there. My father yelled out at me,

"You know your mother is going to die, don’t you?"

I was so mad but I didn’t turn around and say anything to him. I just kept walking.

Now it’s Thanksgiving morning and I was still in bed as I guess my father didn't wake me up to help with the milking. It must’ve been around seven or 8 am and my sister came into the bedroom and sat down and put her arms around me and said our mother had passed away around 3 am in the morning. We hugged and cried and cried and cried. Then we said we were so happy that she died because she wasn't in pain anymore. My sister said she thought that doctor had come out that night and had given her an extra dose of painkiller because she was strangling from the cancer in her throat.

After that, my father acted very strange to me and I was in a lot of pain. One of the problems was, my sister lived in Rockford with her husband, and we had no close neighbors as friends and our relatives lived miles away. So I was alone with my father and had help do all the farming and care of the animals and the house. I was 13 years old. I think I grew up very fast. Things are going to get even worse with my father but that is for the next chapter.

Chapter 3 - A Confused Father

Before I continue with my story, I would like to do a little overview about my parents, especially my father. My mother was born in 1906 and my father was born in 1910. This story happened around 1951 when I was 11.

My mother and father both went to one room schools, and graduated from eighth grade, but never went any farther with their education. My mother was more artistic, and my father was more down to earth. I think my mother kept the banking and bills payments as well as working 12 and 14 hours a day. My father was good at math, he could look at a container and figure out how many square feet were in it and how many bushels of oats or corn could be held in it. He then would calculate how much each bushel cost and with the total amount would be. I think the only hobby he had was raising and training horses. When he retired, he started raising small miniature horses. I did see him read the weekly newspaper every so often as he drank his coffee.

I think part of the reason that I was so interested in everything was because of my mother. When I was five years old, she already had ordered the National Geographic and the Nature magazines for me to read. When I was around 11 years old, we got Life and Look magazines, and a magazine called Colliers. I loved the Colliers magazine, because during World War II the German had designed the first inter-continental missiles. There were lots of articles about space, travel, and what spacecraft might look like. Also, information about the V2‘s that were brought over to the United States from Germany. I was also interested in architecture, history, physics, travels and so on. My mother also wanted me to sketch, write poetry, and so on. She thought at one point I could become a commercial artist. She even bought me a kit to study drawing but that was not to be.

Now I want to tell you about a situation that happened that I thought was quite humorous. My father was talking to me about fixing something on the roof of the barn, and as we stood there, he was pointing straight up at it. He said he wondered how we would fix this problem. He then looked at me again as I was gazing off into space like I was out of it. He shook his head and asked me what was going on. I pointed up like he did, straight into the sky, and I said this is how we think of up. I then pointed straight down to the Earth and said some people say this is up.

Poor father, he asked me, "What’s up?" and of course I thought that was extremely funny but he was not amused. As I pointed down, I said if you were in Australia, that would be up. I then pointed my arm level to the north and told him if we were in the north or at the north pole, that would be pointing up also. To make matters worse I said there really wasn’t an up or down if you were floating in space.

My poor father just stood there and thought his son has lost his mind. I think he wondered if I was really his son. Of course, in the Midwest, we always laughed about someone’s family, if a child didn’t look like the husband who could be the father. Maybe it was the mailman or it could be the milkman. I knew the milkman was my father so that was ruled out and the mail box we had was half a mile away on a corner with two other mailboxes of our neighbors so I doubt it was the mail man. I guessed my father had to be my real father.

Twenty-five years later, my sister said she was talking to my father one Sunday afternoon and they started talking about me. My sister said I was enjoying life in San Francisco, traveling, going to the theater, and working in a huge computer center. She said my father just smiled and said:

“Well, yes, that’s Chuck!”

My sister and I thought that was extremely funny and very nice of him to say that. I would fly back every couple of years to spend a week with my sister and a week with my father and step-mother. I would send them birthday cards and Christmas presents. It was interesting as the years went by I didn’t really feel any hatred toward my father because life is too short.

And now I will continue to talk about the next few years and how I was treated. It was all very strange, but eventually it worked out as you will see.

Chapter 4 - Incident on Highway 20 - 1954

It’s the middle of December 1953, and just a few weeks since my mother passed away. I don’t remember anything much that was going on for the next few weeks. I don’t think we had a Christmas tree or even gave presents as I was alone with my father. I think my sister and her husband must’ve come and spent a day with us and maybe my sister made us a dinner but not sure if she did that. My sister and her husband then would drive to Rock Island Illinois so he could visit his parents for Christmas.

At the end of December, my father sat me down and told me to pack a bag as I was moving to Brookville where I was going to the one-room school. I had about four more months to finish my eighth grade. We got in the car and drove to Brookville and stopped in front of a house on the edge of town and a woman about 65 came out and introduced herself. My father said I was going to stay there for the next few months and finish school. I had my own bedroom and the woman would fix me my meals. I must’ve had a little money with me because I could go to the grocery store and buy a magazine or snacks and also was able to go to the gas station where there was a small café and have a soft drink or a coffee. I did have a lot of fun with some of the boys in the class as they would come over to the house and we would play in the backyard or in the creek that ran behind the house. We looked for frogs and tadpoles and whatever else young boys do. We had a baseball field in the next to the school and we played baseball at recess, we all loved the New York Yankees! I also found it funny that there was only one out-house so it was coed, we were trail blazers!

I graduated from eighth grade and I had turned 14. I moved back to the farm and I actually was still quite small, maybe 5 foot eight or so, and 140 pounds. I was home for a few weeks and suddenly my father woke me up at 3:30 in the morning. He told me to shape up and get ready to milk the cows. We then, after doing the chores and milking the cows, got in the truck and drove for over an hour to the other farm near Pecatonica. There we had to milk the cows and then do the chores. My father actually hired a young man about 18 years old from Tennessee to work there on the big farm and help my father. The problem was that I had to get up every morning at 3:30 and milk cows, go for over an hour in the truck to the other farm and milk cows and then do this whole thing over again in the evening. I also had to make dinner for us and keep the house up so that was like 16 hours a day and I was worn out.

A month or so later my father woke me up as usual and we got in the truck and were driving past Brookville, passed the gas station and turned onto Highway 20. I couldn't take it anymore. We were going about 60 miles an hour down the highway and suddenly I opened the door up and said I was getting out. I put my foot on the running board and leaned out. My father said no way because we were going so fast and I said I was going to step out and I didn’t care what he thought. He jammed on the brakes and stopped, and I got out and started walking back down the highway in the gravel on the side of the road. I heard him get out of the truck and I started to run. I tripped and fell and rolled into the ditch. I turned around and looked up and he was hovering over me with his fist held high, and I thought maybe his foot was aimed at me.

I was pissed, I managed to get up and turned around and looked at him in his eyes and told him under no uncertain terms if he hit me, he’d never do it again. We just stood there looking at each other and finally, he didn’t say anything, but got back in the truck and sat there. I finally got back in the truck and we went to Pecatonica to do the chores. But what was interesting was that when we came back that evening I went to bed and the next morning he got up and drove to the other farm alone. He never talked to me about what was going on and I never went back to the other farm.

I did have to do chores at home, but that was all right because I was only working 10 hours a day or so. Then I started high school in the fall and that worked out alright. I had to get up at seven or 7:30 and pack my lunch and the bus would pick me up and take me to school so I didn’t really have to do any work in the morning, only in the afternoon.

Of course, things got even more interesting after I started high school as you will see when you read on.

Chapter 5 - Fifteen Year Old Farm Hand - 1955

It’s 1955 and I’m 15 years old. My mother passed away a year and a half ago and my life seemed to return to more normal situations. My sister and her husband came one weekend and we were sitting at the table in the kitchen when our father came in. This was around late summer of 1955 and my father told us he had an announcement to make. Seemed strange to us, and then he said he had met a woman and was thinking about getting married again. We were shocked. Where did he meet this woman, he never went anywhere. He said she lived at Rice Lake Wisconsin, was born in 1910, the same age as he was. Our father also said the woman’s name was Rose, and she had a daughter Terry Rae, who was a year older than I was.

He also said he might visit Rose in the future and my sister and I wondered how he was going to do that. He had vertigo and also had panic attacks. If he drove more than 50 miles or 100 miles away from home he had a trauma. So we wondered how that was going to work.

He eventually did decide to go for a week to visit Rose in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, and left me in charge of the farm. Remember, I was only 15 years old, around 5 foot 10 inches and weighted about 150 pounds. Before I talk about his visit to Rice Lake I want to talk about what it was like to work on the farm, especially when I was alone and only 15 years old.

The first thing I had to do was get up around 5 AM and go out and feed the milk about 30 cows and pour the milk into large metal cans. Then I had to put the cans into a cold water bath so the milk wouldn't go bad before being picked up around 9 AM. I also had to clean the milk machines and the milk cans after they were emptied. Then I would let the cows out of the barn and into the pasture. If there wasn’t enough grass, I had to put hay bales onto the truck and go out and break up the hay bales and spread the hay around the pasture. Then I had to go and feed the pigs and the chickens and then go back to the barn and make sure it was clean. If there was too much manure, I had to shovel it altogether and put it into the manure spreader. I then had to take the tractor and the spreader out into the fields to get rid of the crap. By that time it was almost noon so I had to have something to eat and relaxed a little bit.

Before milking in the evening I also had to feed the pigs again and check the chickens to make sure they had enough food and water. I then had to go and collect the eggs. Then it was time to get the cows back into the barn, feed them and milk them. I also had to get hay bales from the haymow and spread out the hay in front of the cows so they had something extra to eat after milking. By that time it was around 8 PM so I had to make myself dinner and clean up the house and then I was able to sit in the television room and relax for a little bit and watch my favorite shows.

Other things I had to do were as follows:

I had to feed the cattle a ground up grain so if we were out, I had to take the truck and load the back of it up with corn and oats and park it behind the barn. I then had to hook the tractor up to a grinder and shoveled a corn and oats into it. The ground up grain would go into a pipe and be blown into a small room in the barn where I would take a wheelbarrel and load it with grain and scoop it into troughs in front of the cows for them to eat it.

The other thing that was very scary was the fact that many farms had silos. They were made out of concrete slabs and were round, about 20 feet wide and four or five stories high. In the summer before the corn matured, we would go out and cut the corn down to the base, grind it up, and blow it up to the top of the silo and fill it. I had to climb up these iron bars that held wooden doors about 3 ft. wide and they were about a foot apart. The iron bars were very slippery and dangerous and one had to hold onto them and climb up maybe three or four stories high and climb inside and then use a fork to throw out the silage. When you had taken out enough silage, you had to climb outside and try and turn the metal rod to open the wooden door and push it into the silo. Then you had to put another door into the empty space above the new opening and start to throw out more silage. Several times over the years I almost slipped and fell, and you can imagine you would’ve been ripped apart and no one would’ve been there to help you. When I was alone, the only person that might have been there was in the morning to pick up the milk. So I’m not sure what would’ve ever happened to me. Even if my father was home, I probably would’ve broken all the bones of my body, scary.

I do have other stories to tell you that most people wouldn't know about. The cows would be out in the pasture and in the evening I would open up the gate and call the cows. They knew there was grain and a nice place to relax and being milked as their udders were full and could be painful. They were happy to come into the barn. Like most grazing animals, there is always a boss. I assume bossy cow came from this situation. One cow would lead the rest into the barn. She had a special stall she stood in and all the other cows had their own spots. It was a pecking order. Sometimes a cow decided she was moving up the pecking order and went into someone else’s stall. Then there was trouble. The cows would get mad and go at it, heads bumping each other and the strongest won and got the location they wanted. But no one tested the boss cow!

An other story I would like tell you concern’s chickens of all things. On our farm in Northern Illinois near Pecatonica had a chicken house had shelves in it, covered with straw. The chickens would get up there and lay their eggs after they made a nest. During the day, they would go outside and walk around and do their thing and then come back in at night to be safe. But some like to roost in the trees that were outside of the chicken house. All this was happening in the summer of course. Sometimes we would go looking for eggs and find chickens hiding underneath a bush and they’d be sitting on 10 or 12 eggs. They thought they were going to be mothers, but we managed to get the eggs away from them. They were not happy and if you were only five years old or so, and told to get the eggs, you had to fight those chickens because they peck you all over your hands. There was lots of screaming and crying but our parents just said too bad so sad, just get on with it.

Our farm near Polo had all new buildings and the chicken house or chicken coop was state-of-the-art. The chickens in the summer were allowed to go out and do their thing, eat bugs and grass, and sit in the dirt and fluff up their feathers to be clean. Now there was a special place for them to go lay their eggs inside of the chicken coop. It was a tin metal box about 10 feet long 5 feet high and maybe a foot and a half deep. There was a railing near the floor, and about 2 feet up with another railing for the chickens to stand on. Each row had about eight nests in it and there were cut out oval circles about 12 inches across for the chickens to climb into the nests.

It was interesting that the floor was not level. The back of the floor was about an inch higher than the front. The front of the floor had an opening into a covered trough. The floor was covered with some kind of a soft plastic mesh and in the center was a short chain about 2 inches long that was attached to the floor. At the end of it was an artificial egg that looked like it was real. A chicken would walk around and suddenly think it should lay an egg, it would hop up on one of the railings and look into each of the nests and decide which one it wanted to do the job in.

I used to go in there and watch the chickens and have a good laugh. The chicken would get inside of the nest, sit on the fake egg, and look out the door. It would start to cluck and suddenly it laid an egg. It was ecstatic, it stood up to look at the egg it had just laid, and of course, since the floor wasn’t level, the egg rolled passed the chickens feet and disappeared into the covered trough. The chicken never saw the egg again, and it had the strangest look on its face as it kept looking between his feet for the other egg, but it was never going to happen. Finally, the chicken just gave up, walked out of the nest and went off to do some more eating and sleeping and grow another egg. And guess what, the whole thing happened again the next day. The poor chicken never did figure out where the egg went, but we were happy because the eggs were always very clean as the chicken didn’t have a chance to really sit on it.

And let’s not forget about pigs, they’re smarter than dogs and very clean. They’re like hippopotamus, they don’t sweat so they need to cover themselves with dirt or mud in hot weather. Every spring we would take the sows and put them into individual small pens that had concrete floors and had been washed down, the pens were spotless. We put part of a bale of straw in a corner and the sows would come in and check out the pens and push the straw round into a nest in one corner. After she had her babies, she would teach them to go to the bathroom in the opposite corner of the pen. The nest stayed perfectly clean and the little piglet were as cute as could be and the perfect little toenails were spotless.

So this is what I had to do for a week while my father was driving to Rice Lake in the northwest of Wisconsin to see Rose and make plans for a wedding and the move to our farm in Illinois.

Chapter 6 - Home Alone & A Miscarriage - 1955

This all started when my father told my sister and myself that he had met a woman named Rose, who lived in Wisconsin and he was going to get married to her. We were shocked because we didn’t know how he met someone, especially a woman who lived in town, was a secretary to a CEO, and had never been on the farm. She had a daughter and they never lived anywhere but Rice Lake Wisconsin. We thought our father must’ve really given her the sweet talk because why else would she want to move to a farm.

I think it was around December 14, 1955. I was 15 years old, and my father told me he was going to drive to Rice Lake, Wisconsin and talk to Rose about getting married. He said I was going to be in charge of running the farm. He packed his bags got in the car, and off he went to Rice Lake Wisconsin. I was in charge of running everything on the farm for the next week.

I did all the normal chores, feeding the cows and milking them, taking care of the pigs and the chickens and so on. I usually got up around 6 AM and worked until around 7 PM. Then I could go make myself dinner and relax and watch a little television. For some reason about the fourth evening I decided I should go down to the barn and check out everything. I turned on the lights and all the cows were lying down after having a nice meal and being melt and having a good night sleep. One of the cows was still standing and making strange sounds. I wondered what was up. She was pregnant and my father had told me she was not going to have a calf for at least two or three weeks. Well obviously that wasn’t true and I noticed that the feet were trying to come out first.

I took cow out of the stall and put her in the middle of the concrete floor with lots of straw around her. She stood there for the longest time and I tried to put my arm inside of her birth canal and move the baby around because the feet were coming out first, not the head. I tried everything for over an hour and could not get the calf to move. Then the cow lay down and started to moan because she was in such pain. I put strings around the calf and pull as hard as I could, but nothing happened. After two hours, I decided to hook the tractor up to the ropes and slowly pull half an inch at a time on the calf. I slowly was able to get the calf out of the cow, but it was dead of course. Then the cow bled to death so I had a mess on my hands. I tied ropes around the cow in the calf and attached to the tractor, and I pulled them out into the pasture. It must’ve been around one in the morning and I was worn out. I got a fork and pushed all of the bloody straw around into a pile and threw it out the door, and then put fresh straw down and did some more cleaning and finally went back to bed. I got about three hours of sleep because I had to get up to do the milking again. After I got through with the rest of the chores in the morning, I went back to bed for a few hours because I had to get ready to do the chores again that evening.

I didn’t realize it, but my father actually got married to Rose on December 19, 1955, when he went to visit her. He came back by himself, but he told me Rose and her daughter would drive their car to our farm and didn’t need to bring any furniture with them because we had all of that new . They would just bring things that were important to them.

My father asked me how things went while he was gone and I told him everything was fine except what happened with the cow at her calf. I pointed out to the pasture where they were laying. Of course my father got mad at me and indicated I couldn’t be trusted to do anything. He said I lost him a lot of money, the cow and the milk that she could’ve produced, and of course, the calf that could’ve been raised and sold. He then said he wondered what was wrong with me because I didn’t call the veterinarian around midnight. He might’ve been able to come out and save the cow and the calf. I said I didn’t know we had a veterinarian first of all, and I didn’t know what the phone number was or his name. Also, I wondered why he hadn’t given me Rose’s phone number in Wisconsin. I really had no one to talk to so I did the best I could, but obviously that wasn’t enough for my father.

My father didn’t say much more to me because I think he was more excited about Rose and her daughter moving down to the farm from Wisconsin. That was fine with me because Rose was going to be a lifesaver, she always wanted the son besides the daughter so I was just the right person at the right time.

Chapter 7 - My Stepmother- An Angel in Disguise - 1956

My stepmother and her daughter moved into our farm house the first of January, 1956. They seemed to settle in right away. My step-sister Terrie Rae was scared as she had to move to a farm, a new family and all new people in the Polo High School. I told her I already had a sister so for me, she was just another sister. I protected her on the school bus and she thanked me for being so kind and helpful! We had a portable record player and we would play Rock Around the Clock and do the Twist in the living room.

Rose always wanted a son and a daughter so she was so kind to me. She didn't do any farm chores but kept the house and planted flowers all around the house and barn. She planted a garden and did a lot of canning and eventually we bought a huge freezer and she froze many things. Fresh strawberries on ice crean in February, a treat.

She told my father I had to have some time off to do offsite activities. I joined some high school clubs, a class on the weekends on how to qualify to operate a private airport and so on. I even had a summer evening job in a printing plant for producing various magazines. My father eventually bought my first car, a four door Nash and I would take my friends to the Saturday night drive in movies and end up staying for the midnight movie. We also went to the White Pines Skating Rink several times a week. There was a woman playing an organ and I ended up being a very good skater and got to make a lot of friends.

One morning I got up and went downstairs and Rose was standing there in a suit, nylons, heels, and a purse. Looking good I said but, why dressed up like that so early in the day. She said she decided to go back to work and got a job in Freeport as a personnal secretary to a CEO in a large company. I was impressed, my mother, ops, step-mother was working in an office in Freeport, a city of about 10,000 people.

Terrie Rae graduated from high school and went to Freeport to study to become a nurse. I graduated the next year and Rose set me up to go to Rockford College. I stayed at my sister's new home and I studied French, English, History and Art.

After the first year of college, no one wanted to pay for another year so I was worried, I might end up on the farm the rest of my life. My father was hot to trot, took me to visit my grandparents in the little town of Foresston. He thought I was going to eventually take over the farm when he retired. He then took me to the main street and suggested I looked at new cars! New cars! We looked at 1959 Fords and Buicks and he bought me the car of my dreams, the Buick. I was a hot shot as far as my friends were concerned.

Rose had other ideas and one day in August of 1959 she came home and told me I had a job interview in Freeport at Burgees Battery Manufacturing the next Monday morning! That morning I got into my car and Rose in hers and off we went to Freeport. I was interviewed and taken around the office. I then went home. Rose and I wondered why they didn't say anything. A month went by and I was in the barn cleaing up after the cows. Rose yelled out to me from the house, get in here now! I ran to the house and a man said he was the one who interviewed me and they wanted me to come in Monday around nine AM to start my job.

This was just before the evening milking and my father came in for tea and cookies as we always did before finishing the chores. He saw Rose and I with a strange look on our faces. Walter asked what is up with you two? Rose smiled and said Chuck has a new job in Feeport and he starts it next Monday. He just sat down and shook his head, so much for a brand new Buick.

On Monday they told me not to come in on Tuesday as they had setup a parking space for me at the bus terminal and my car would be safe until Friday night. I would take the bus to Chicago and stay at a high-rise hotel and lean how to program IBM Tabulating Machines, work sorters and calculating machine. How to create data on punched cards and produce printed reports.

I worked in Freeport for a year and then decided to move in 1961 to Rockford with over 250,000 people. I ended up at a manufacturing plant with the latest IBM equipment and figured I had it made.

I had a wonderful job, a nice apartment over looking the Rockford River and lot of friends. I also had my sister and her new house and I was over there all the time. We sat on the porch and drank coffee and smoked away and gossiped for hours. A wonderful time.

Now it is 1963 and I got a letter that had a government stamp on it. What could it be? It stated I had to go to the induction center, fill out the forms and be interviewed. The army would send me to Chicago and from there take a bus to Fort Knox Kentucky for eight weeks of training in the Army. My boss was worried, he didn't want to lose me. He told me and my sister he would hold my job until I got out of the service in 1965 because he had big plans for me. He called her off and on to see how I was doing. My sister figured I would never come back to Illinois.

The Army sent me to the Presidio of San Francisco to work in the computer division and once I saw the City, mountains, Pacific Ocean, and the San Francisco Bay, I decided I was never going to leave California.

So, my first job in computers was in 1959 and now in 2026, I have been in Techology for 66 years. All because of Rose, my wonderful step-mother!

Chapter 8 - Goodbye Illinois - Hello California - 1963

It finally happened! I eventually did end up in the big City but it was San Francisco and not New York City. I think I was as happy here as I would have been in New York City.

After two years in the Army I started to work at the IBM Service Bureau for a year.

From 1967 to 1980, I worked at one of the biggest computer centers in the western United States, Fireman's Fund Insurance for 15 years.

From 1980 to 1985, Blue Cross of California for five years and eventually a consultant for many of the major corporations in the bay area. I worked on the Y2K fix for Bank of America in 1999 and retired in 2002 when I was 62.

So far, I have traveled to over 60 countries and at 86 years old, still working on websites and YouTube videos of my life and world travels.

I also am a subscriber to the Opera, Ballet, Museums, the Best of Broadway, and many small local theatrical groups. I also have written a one act play with three scenes, performed at a local Experimental Theatre.

As you can see, I am very busy most of the time.

Chapter 9 - Charles Buntjer's Life Style - San Francisco

Currently I am celebrating 63 years of living in San Francisco. This is my view from the one bedroom apartment I have at Fox Plaza in downtown San Francisco.

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Here is my living room along with a five foot wide by 25 foot long balcony over looking the City.

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I have been celebrating my birthdays over the years in many locations, my 80th birthday in Dubai, Oman, India and Sri Lanka!

Created on 2026.01.13       Updated on 2026.03.28