My father had grown up in Cedar Rapids, where his father, Dr. Stephen Stookey, had been professor and dean of a small college, which later became Coe. They moved for a while to Nebraska, where Grandpa Stephen taught at Bellevue. That's where Dad went to college, was pitcher on the baseball team and quarterback on the football team; and where he fell in love with Hermie Lucille Knapp, our mother. Later, Stephen became a professor at Coe again and was teaching his last year when I was a freshman. I ducked his geology course, figuring he'd be either too tought or too lenient.

Because of Dad's job as a real estate salesman, we moved from house to house as Dad sold the preceeding one. We usually lived on the outskirts of town, raised a Jersey cow for its rich milk, had chickens and a large garden and orchard. Mother canned hundreds of quarts of fruits and vegetables, and we had potatoes, carrots, and onions to feed us through the winter.

Each of us learned to work hard, but our parents worked harder. My boyhood wakeup memories were of Dad working outside and Mother cooking breakfast. Both Dad and Mother loved hunting and fishing. (He had given her a shotgun and a set of Shakespeare for wedding presents). So our table fare was enhanced by bass, catfish, and trout in summer, and pheasant, wild duck, rabbit and squirrel in winter.

During Dad's annual two weeks' vacation, we always went camping and fishing in Minnesota. Our leaking old tent was easily penetrated by mosquitoes and rain; and moquito repellent hadn't been invented! Later we build our own camping trailer with a canvas top that we could raise and lower. The tires were pretty old and we had lots of flats. One time we wore the rim and wheel down to the spokes!

One winter we built a fine fishing boat. It was made of Philippine mahogany, with hundreds of brass screws. Usually, we used a ten horse Johnson motor, but one time, Dad borrowed a powerful sixty horse, with pushbutton start and stop. The first time he tried it, the flat-bottomed boat skimmed the lake like a racer, but when he pushed to stop button, the boat would stop within a few feet. It was unwieldy to row, so he decided to keep going at full speed until he was close to shore. Unfortunately, he hadn't learned that the stop button had a slow reaction time. When he pushed and released it, the boat didn't stop but kept going at thirty miles an hour, up over a sand bank and a log, coming to rest quite a distance inland.

One lake had thousands of Carnelians lining its shores. Carnelians are semiprecious stones related to agate. Dull gray on the outside, when broken open, they have a glassy fracture, striated patters with lovely colors -- red, orange, yellow, brown and white. I'm sure we could have made a small fortune, if only we had been smart enough to collect those Carnelians. If only I could remember where that lake is!

Those family vacations brought us together as nothing else could have. Fortunately, the tradition has continued to the present. My brother Dave (until his death of cancer), our sons and grandsons, have made many fishing trips to local streams and lakes, to Canada, and to Florida and Mexico for ocean fishing. Dave's dying wish was to have his ashes spread on a wilderness lake, and we fulfilled his request.

My sons, their friends and sons, still enjoy an annual deer hunt in our local forests.

In 1932, I started at Coe College. I think I received a nominal scholarship of $100, and earned the rest of the costs working at roughneck jobs at the college for twenty-five cents per hour. Freshman camp turned out to be a fortunate event, because I met Ray Watterson, who became my best friend for as long as he lived; and next summer, when I was visiting his home in Greene, Iowa, I met and fell in love with Ruth, his sixteen-year-old beautiful sister. Several years later, she finally agreed to marry me.

The summer after my sophomore year, Ray and I took a one week canoe trip around the Crow-wing lakes, a ring of six lakes connected by short channels. From the day we started until we completed the circle, strange as it seems, the wind blew against us every day.

On the last and largest lake, at the far end of which we were to meet the family in the car, the headwind blew so hard that quarts of water slopped into the heavily loaded canoe with every wave. As we sunk lower and lower, it became obvious that we weren't going to make it to the far end of the lake. Praying that we wouldn't swamp, we turned around and went flying back to our starting point. The canoe sank gently, a few feet from shore.

Fortunately, it was a warm sunny day, and we were able to partly dry our water-soaked gear. That night the wind subsided at last, and next day we were able to cross the lake and meet the car. But we had been paddling so hard and long every day that we had no time to catch the fish that were to have been our mainstay. We had to live on canned food. To this day, I can't look Spam in the face!