Valley Junction, Iowa - January 17, 1942

My father's favorite family story is the one he tells about the day I was born. It was January 1942, and the coldest winter in memory. A Canadian blizzard had blown into Iowa shortly after New Year's Day and stayed. It was so cold that the frozen milk bottles had cream standing two inches above the bottle with the caps perched on top. It had snowed for a week without stopping, and the drifts against the house were so high that from inside of the house only a small strip of daylight was visible along the tops of the windows. All business had halted-there was no public transportation, the schools were closed, and the trains had stopped running.
The coal burning stove that heated our house had been hot for so long that its skin had turned bright orange, and was almost transparent. Sparks that flew off the coal as it burned were visible through the skin. The water pump was frozen and my father did not want to prime it every day with hot water, so he melted snow for household use. He said it always surprised him to see what a small amount of water came from a bucketful of snow.
My father had just bought two hundred baby chicks at the feed store that he planned to raise for eating. The feed store had to sell them cheap, or go into the egg business, because no one wanted to buy baby chicks in such poor weather. He could not keep them in the chicken coop so he had built a small enclosure for them behind the wood burning, cast iron stove in the kitchen. He was sorry he had bought them because they kept jumping over the walls of the pen he had built and they were running all over the house and making a big mess.
My mother went into labor about ten o'clock at night and my father decided to go for the doctor because he did not want to take her out. He knew that he would not be able to drive his 1936 Ford to the doctor's house, so he built up the fire and set out walking. He had to force the door open because of the weight of the snow against it, and tunnel his way out with the coal shovel to reach the driveway. The car and the coal shed were completely covered, and only large objects like trees and houses stood above the snow.
He walked more than a mile to Doctor Sternagel's house in snow that was waist deep. He woke the doctor and his wife, and while the doctor got dressed he sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. He and the doctor walked back to the house, down Maple Street, across the tracks, and followed a path that was a shortcut to our house, which lay at the end of South Fourth where the woods began. They were both exhausted from walking through the snow when they got back at one in the morning. They had to dig their way back into the house with their hands because the snow had covered the shovel and they could not find it in the dark.
When they finally entered the house, the doctor went to tend to my mother while my father boiled snow water to make coffee. My mother was in labor for about seven hours, and my father and the doctor sat in the kitchen talking about fishing and hunting and the war. The doctor was really surprised to see the chickens in the house, and he and my father sat making jokes about my mother being in labor so long that they could have fried chicken while they waited. They drank coffee all night, and about seven thirty the next morning I was born. Doctor Sternagel refused to accept his fee for the delivery because my father had just enlisted in the Marine Corp. and was leaving for basic training in three weeks Together, they walked back to the doctor's house.