I remember the cold bitter Wisconsin winter of 1961-62, that particular winter was exceptionally cold. At the Catholic school i attended in Johnsburg in the Wisconsin countryside, that winter was almost always sub-zero weather. The Catholic nuns who were also our teachers, always made the school children stay outside for the hour long noon recess, my fingers often were on the verge of "frostbite", but the nuns i guess believed that "freezing" purged the soul of evil temptations... On the family farm where i lived, that winter there was a shortage of field mice, our barn cats were starving. I remember my older sister Sharon was often "pleading" with our mother to spare some extra milk for the poor cats. But our mother who was also a "Nazi sympathizer" would often with a evil laugh say, "let those dam cats catch mice or starve." That winter our barn cats starved to death...
Our mother Alexia Schneider, was always discordant, trying to turn us children "against" our father Elmer and his father Roland, who were both good men... We always had enough milk, even with us children mother was harsh and violent, if me or my brother Dan spilt a glass of milk at the dinner table it was a "assured beating" if she could "catch us", we did'nt wait around to find out, when she did, with each blow of mother's belt buckle upon upon the flesh of my back i became "enamored" vowing to fight evil, mother's cruel "nasty nature" left us children speechless... In 1979 as mother layed dying on her death bed, a burnt out shell of of a human being, my sister Jean "pleaded" for me to visit her, i reluctantly obliged, and it was like looking evil in the face, as mother was "still" unrepentant and arrogant with me. If what the nuns taught me about the fires of hell is true, mother is there now, burning...
Related "Memoir" View http://temmehausannefrank.blogspot.com/
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