Tribute To Huey From the time I learned to walk, little brother Huey was always there. We were only about a year apart so most of our lives growing up was spent in tandem. We were almost like twins and many people had a hard time telling us apart in the early years. My memory starts in Fillmore, Illinois where we lived in a large 2 story house on the edge of town. It was an old farm with some acerage but Dad worked as a coach at the local high school. Most of those days are a blur in my mind but I remember playing a lot in warm summer days, a rocking horse we used to fight over and nights spent with John & Hugh in the upstairs bedroom looking out the open window and talking ourselves to sleep. After that we moved to Hillsboro, Illinois and I have more memories from there. We had a little 2 bedroom house with an upstairs attic area that had been remodeled into bed rooms and storage area. The house was located in town on the south side right on route 127 across from a grocery store and next to a Marathon station. The block we lived on was sort of a triangular shape with the house and a garden area on our side and the station on the other. There was a large lilac bush and tree at the edge of the road where we used to play a lot and get in trouble for playing too close to the road. We spent a lot of time with John and Dad in the garden mostly pulling weeds and hoeing. We had all kinds of vegetables, sweet corn and melons from the garden every year. We both started school at Beckmeyer Elementary which we could walk to with other kids in the area. Hillsboro was definitely hilly and we spent a lot of time with the other kids sledding in the winter and skate racing in the summer. We also spent a lot of time hiking around town and exploring the big ditch through town and the most exciting was the giant cliffs off into a wooded area to the southeast. The sandy clay material made an excellent sliding board and we got really dirty. We had encounters with the local bully who always chased us and tried to beat us up. This was in the late 50's and we didn't have a TV so we spent a lot of time at the Markels next door watching their TV. The old man couldn't hear very well so he always had it turned up extra loud but we didn't care. Eddie Markel, their son, who was older and closer to the girl's age used to come over and tell ghost stories and made the girls scream which all of us really enjoyed. My favorite one was about James the butler and the coffin. Since then I have adopted that name for myself since my middle name is James and most of my life has been the role of a butler;always serving others but rarely being served. From there we moved to Morrisonville, Illinois where most of our growing up took place. Dad bought a little 4 acre plot about a mile outside of town and built a new house. Dad & Mom both taught at the local school and we all went to the same school in Morrisonville. I started in the third grade and Hugh started in the second. John, Georgia and Sylvia started in their respective grades. We all ended up graduating from the Morrisonville school. Dad taught Biology, World History and Economics while Mom taught music. Having your parents teach at the same school you attend was stressful from many different angles. The other kid's treat you different and not only did our mailbox get shot up with bullet holes, on one occasion a local group of thugs from Palmer tried to attack our house one night but Dad broke that up. Dad was mostly into developing a small truck-farm as we called it. He built a greenhouse and we had a massive group of gardens where we grew everything imaginable plus a very large strawberry patch. I'll never forget pulling weeds in the strawberry patch: 3 boys wearing white t-shirts throwing strawberries at each other. At the end of the day we each looked like we had been hit by a machine gun. Dad put each of us boys in charge of a particular area plus responsibilities for whatever was needed on any one day. Different seasons have different produce. In hind site, us boys had no real appreciation for the enormity of the situation and Dad had to constantly be pushing us into doing our part. From our perspective we just wanted to play and frequently ran off to the back creek to keep away from the whole scene. The house had a fireplace and in the winter the "Ol'Man" as we called him kept us busy chopping wood. Hugh and I were very frequently on opposite ends of a 2 man saw and constantly fighting over whether to push or pull. We never went without a big Christmas and that fireplace was always the center of everything. I should commend my father for providing us kids with such an incredible place to grow up as far as the location in the country is concerned and for the incredible toll it took on him and Mother to manage 5 kids. We had our share of hard times. In the summer we hiked around the countryside for miles. Most of the time we were down at the creek outside of our property building dams, small log cabins, walking in the middle of the creek searching for turtles and snakes, swimmimg at the neighbor's pond and playing king-of-the-raft. Later on dad put in a large dam and we had our own pond to swim in but the pond was mainly for water for the greenhouse and other garden needs. We also had a treehouse of course and that was the site of many a bb-gun fight. The house had a garage for the original plans but it was converted into one big bedroom for the 3 boys. We had model planes hanging from the ceiling and once and a while we would shoot one down with a bb-gun. It's strange how we each had our preference for what branch of the service we would join when we grew up. John wanted to be in the airforce,Hugh wanted to be in the army and I wanted to be in the navy. As it turns out John and Hugh were in the Navy and I was kept out because of a head injury. When the house was being built I was helping dad put planks in the attic so we could walk around up there without falling through and I fell through. In the winter we had giant snow drifts to play in and as we got older we learned to drive the '49 Chevy pick-up which had a large board for a bumper and we could plow the roads with it. With mom being a music teacher and giving piano lessons and voice lessons at home, we were all very much musically inclined. We did have some great times when the whole family would gather around the piano and sing together with the fireplace going. The girls would have their friends over and everyone singing together was a site to behold especially on Christmas. Hugh and I just sat in awe much of the time. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Young twins, Cheryl & Carole for their tremendous uplifting spirit and contributions that will never be forgotten. All of us kids were in the band at school and the choir. Hugh played the trumpet, I played the french horn and John played the tuba. Georgia played the oboe and Sylvia played the clarinet. Both girls played the piano very well too and we were never without music of some sort in our home. We were in sports too, mostly track & field. Hugh's specialty was pole vaulting and quarter mile, mine was just about everything else. I did well in the broad jump, the 100 yard dash, the 220 yd dash, the discus, the 220 yd low hurdles etc. We all dressed up and went to church on sunday at the Harvel Christian Church. Mom always played the organ and sang a special song. The boys passed the collection plate and argued over who got the most money. We would always go to someone's house for sunday dinner or to the park for church socials. The Harvel Christian Church and all of those fine people will forever remain as some of my fondest memories. Then there was church camp, boyscout camp and music camp. There was long haul vacation trips where the whole family went out west to the Wyoming mountains and down south to Lookout Mountain and other vacation trips full of fond memories. In the summers and after school Hugh worked for Leland Bockowitz in Morrisonville and learned the art of repairing automobiles. He had to work for free at first to learn enough to be helpful but eventually he became so valuable that "Brock" couldn't do without him and started paying him. I was duely impressed by Huey's capability at fixing cars and his willingness to work for free. He taught me a lot about cars which has come in handy ever sense. I used to go to the shop just to listen to those two working on a car because of the conversations and the bickering that went on.