I was born in 1940
on a farm a mile from Brookville and my sister was born in a house near
Pearl City in 1932. The picture on the right was taken 
around 1938 and is the only known picture
of the house where I was born. My grandparents, Martin & Anna Peterson,
parents of my mother, are
standing in front of the house!
A month after I was born we moved to a farm half a mile from the house I was born in and my parents then bought this farm. We moved within a year to Pecatonica on a 500 acre farm we rented along with owning the farm near Brookville. I went to a one room school house near the rented farm and my sister graduated from the Pecatonica High School and moved to Rockford.
My parents and I moved back to the farm near Brookville around 1950 where I finished grade school in another one room school house and I graduated from High School at Polo in 1958. I then worked at Freeport (my first computer job), Rockford, and was drafted and worked as a computer center supervisor at the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco in 1963 where I have lived every since!
1940 ~ When I was born on a farm near Brookville Illinois my sister said she was in the next
room and heard my first cry. 
They had
plowed the snow off the gravel road just in case the doctor was needed. Our father went
to the neighbors to call the doctor to come out. I weighed 'ten' pounds and as
my sister said, "I wasn't red like most babies, I was white and had rosy
cheeks and curly hair!"
Our dog Scrappy would check the basket I was in to make sure I was all right! Within three weeks we moved to the next farm which my parents had bought!
The only thing I remember about the farm before we moved to Pecatonica where we rented another farm, was our Christmas tree decorated with candles just like the old German Christmas trees. The candles were lit for only a few minutes, then blown out for safety! It is strange how I can remember that so clearly and nothing else during those early years!
1944 ~ The inserted newspaper clipping from 1944 brought back many memories since we had moved to Pecatonica, Illinois, a 500 acre farm we rented after buying the 160 acre farm by Brookville! When I was four years old I was running around the yard and suddenly I was dreadfully ill. My stomach ached and I lay on the couch and felt like I was dying. We called our doctor in Pecatonica and his diagnosis was, stomach flu! Well after several days they thought I was going to die so off to the doctor. Now he said I had a burst appendix! Great!
So off to the hospital for an emergency
appendectomy operation. My insides were full of peritonitis and I was unconscious and
expected to die. I was told they took a lot of my insides out and washed
my insides but to no avail. So they were going to write me off as I had
been unconscious for a week. I found 
out later, penicillin had just been
sent to Chicago in 1944 after being used in the Pacific war zone with miraculous
results! The penicillin was rushed to the St. Francis hospital and given
to me just in time. I was so weak I was in a wheel chair for weeks, too
weak to walk. I remember coming home and having to stay in bed.
Yvonne of course, was in school and my parents told my I had
to stay in bed as they had to go out and work the farm. I, of course, knew
better so I tried to get out of bed to get something. I fell on the floor
and that was that. I couldn't get up so laid there for a few hours.
My mother came back to check up and of course, there I was. Well no
sympathy for me! She just got me up and back in bed. She
figured I probably had learned my lesson! So here is the news item, seems
awfully small for such a major operation and almost the death of me!
1946 ~ My big year on the farm as a celebrity. Life Magazine decided
in 1945 to run a sequence of photos of a one room school house in the mid-west 
so the people over seas would remember what they had been fighting
for! Our one room school was picked in Pecatonica and the teacher was Miss
Meyers. It was the old story younger people have heard too many
times. I and my sister would walk to school in all kinds of weather.
And our teacher made us mind, or else.
Life Magazine sent out a reporter for several weeks in 1946 and of course we were all excited as he had the latest cameras and flash bulbs! But after a few days, we forgot about him and went on with our lives. So he was able to get fabulous shots of us doing our daily schedules. There are about four pages of pictures in the magazine and I am in almost all of them!
We used to go to town on Saturday night, our big night out after taking our bath in the big tin basin in the kitchen, to shop and if lucky, go to the movies. I remember that since I was on the cover of Life Magazine people like the check out ladies in the grocery store, would pat me on the head and say what a cute boy I was. I, of course, disliked the head patting and tried to ignore it. So much for fame and fortune! By the way, my sister graduated the year before I was on the cover and told me if she was still in our one room school, she would have been on the cover, not me! I always wondered what the meant, would she have pushed me aside? No, she said, she was cuter so.....
One has to laugh as one looks through old pictures and newspaper
clippings. We
lived on a farm and I always thought we were in the middle of
no-where!
Then I see the local newspaper clipping and had a good laugh! We had birthday
parties and of course, our uncles and aunts were invited and they came to
Pecatonica from Polo, Freeport and Brookville. And they attended dinner
and brought presents for my sister and myself! Well that sure makes me
wonder about how things got into the newspaper. Someone had written Feb.
3, 1946 on this clipping!
1947 ~ A second clipping I found is interesting also as it details a Sunday entertainment as a
six PM dinner. We were on the farm so a six PM dinner seems strange to
me! Our aunts and uncles were there, all Buntjers. Mr. & Mrs. Marvyn
(Babe) Buntjer, Benny Buntjer and family, Faye, our father's sister and husband
George Copoulus and another sister of our father's, Elizabeth and her husband
Tony Agiou of Freeport! My sister and I were 'honorees' and received many
gifts and wishes for many happy returns of the day! Here is a picture of
me at seven years old!
So I guess we weren't quite in the back waters of the farm land as I thought, especially since I was on the cover of Life Magazine in 1946, my 15 minutes of fame!
1948 ~ I remember all the great family reunions we always had each
summer. Everyone would come and sometimes the reunions would be at our 
grandparents houses or later in Freeport at the big park.
Everyone brought food and all we did was eat and relax, except of course, the children. We had too much energy just to sit around and I do know some aunts were grumpy and thought we should be seen and not heard! Well of course that didn't last long.
Also, we children had to sit at our own table so as to not disturb the grown ups! Excuse us! Well, we would have been bored sitting there listening to them talk! So here I am with the Peterson boys at our own special table! This was at our grandparents Petersons near Pearl City Illinois! My uncle and aunt Johnny & Vera and their eventual seven children lived down the road from my Grandparents Petersons.
This picture reminded me how much had changed on the farm in a few years. In 1944 I remember helping out in the field walking behind a combine pulled by horses and picking up and stacking the sheaths of oats into small pyramids. This was done in case it rained, three or four sheaths were stacked together and a last one put on top, if it rained, this would protect most of the grain (we hoped!). Within two years after the war was over, 1947, we had a new tractor and a combine that cut the oats, separated the grain from the shaft and put the grain in a container to be picked up later, and the straw went out the back. Our big farm horses were suddenly out to pasture and everything was mechanized. (But our toilet was still out back of the house!)
1950 ~ This picture taken around 1950 is the Buntjer family in
front of our house on the farm that we owned near Brookville and before we did a major
remodeling job on the house and build a
new barn and machine shed.
We had all the latest in house wares, beautiful kitchen and bathroom with all the latest fixtures.
This was a lot different than when I was small and had to use the 'out' house! Especially bad in the middle of the winter at night!
This picture was taken in 2004 on my sister and
my mid-west tour of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri.
We drove to Polo and then to Brookville to see the farm.
We were pleasantly surprised to see the entire farm almost the same as it was 50 years ago! Even many of the large trees are still there!
The house has been taken care of remarkable well considering how many farms around were left to fall apart or were torn down to build newer ranch house style homes.
1952 ~ This was a big occasion as my sister was getting married to Kenneth
Burt in November. A beautiful wedding was held at the Brookville Church
with candle stands all along the windows of the church and by the alter.
My cousin Randall Peterson and I were the candle lighters and were dressed in tuxedoes. (I was told in a Protestant Church, the person lighting the candles is commonly called the acolyte - how is that for trivia!) My cousin Nancy Agiou was the flower girl and my sister had the most beautiful wedding gown. It was a fantastic time and we all seemed to enjoy the occasion. After wards there was a grand set down dinner for guests!
So here on the left is Randall, Nancy, and myself looking dashing for the wedding!
And of course, on the right, Ken, Yvonne, and our parents, Walter and Edna Buntjer!
Check out the next picture taken of me five years later in the army uniform looking much older and very professional if I do say so myself.
My high school days were busy as I had a car and was able to go and do what ever I wanted to with a little help from my father's gas tank on the farm! I wonder how many tanks of gas I went through dating and going roller skating at the White Pines National Park, the drive in movies, dancing, and just plain goofing around!
Presidio Army Base
in
San
Francisco. I
was sitting in a bar after working an eight hour day at a company in
Rockford Illinois called Amrock. This was an up and coming business
with the latest computer equipment. I remember even then, they had
the latest disk storage memory in the country. It was the size of a
large refrigerator and had about 12 huge magnetic disks. There were
12 read/write arms, one for each disk. So when a record was read,
the entire system of arms slid back and forth to find the data to read or
write!
So with my training in computer systems, I was lucky enough to be the swing shift supervisor at the Presidio, over looking the Golden Gate Bridge and my barracks over looked down town San Francisco! Most of the other men in basic training. (Fort Knox Kentucky), ended up in places such as Fort Benning Georgia, not a ery nice place for training. I was the top shot in basic training and received a medal for being a sharp shooter! Due to my high IQ and computer ability, I was asked to go into officer's training but decided I was better off as a civilian and working in the open market rather than living a regimented life that I would find hard to follow.
1969) and at Blue Cross as an analyst for five years.
I then became a consultant working for major companies around the bay area through the 90s during the dot-com era.
Check out this link on a history of the club scenes and life in San Francisco during the 1960s through the 1980s as lived by me! It makes great reading if I do say so myself!
there
in 1976 and lived there until 1992 when I moved to the 28th floor of the
Fox Plaza downtown San Francisco with another spectacular view of the
City.
On Twin Peaks I needed a car to get around. The view was tremendous but owning a car in the City is exorbitant and one gets parking tickets every time you go shopping. The weather is another factor in moving as it is very foggy and windy on top of Twin Peaks.
At this time I was busy driving to Sunnyvale and Silicon Valley working on large projects for Boole & Babage and Sterling Software development. I sometimes worked 12 or more hours, (getting paid for over time so made out like a bandit), and driving over two hours round trip a day. This is why I look so thin in this picture! I also was dancing five nights a week so I was not only trim but very healthy, if not tired! Ah, to be young again!
the 1990s:
- Boole & Babbage Software
- Sterling Software
- IBM
- William-Somoma
- Deltanet
- Wells Fargo
- Visa
- Schwab
- Banc of America - Y2K Fix
- Franklin Templeton
- and many other corporations in the Bay Area
a business
partner in a senior residence in Woodland
Hills,
California with my friend Viviane. We met on a trip in 1999 on a
cruise through the Magellan Straits in Tierra del Fuego, South America. In
this picture I am wearing a shirt and cup with the Astoria Senior
Residence name printed in gold on a blue background. Our advertising
budget for the year!
I had to take a California State test to have a license as a care giver manager for a facility and I work part time in running the business which means frequent flights to LAX or the Burbank Airport.
I am also active at the local YMCA and serve on various committees and is associated with several of the local museums.
Current Date ~ Here I am sitting at the outdoor cafe at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 2004. The art work in this building is the second biggest asset the City has. The first in importance and value are all the public buildings owned by San Francisco, the art work in this museum is valued at Five Billion Dollars!
As you can see, semi-retirement is certainly a good life as far as I am concerned!
