Norb came home from Iwo Jima and Japan on our wedding anniversary February 5th, 1946. Norb's family brought us to Loudonville immediately to enjoy our new home. The kitchen stoves and other appliances had not been manufactured for the war years. Somehow we acquired a Westinghouse slow cooker with a wire burner on top. We cooked on that for a long time.

Anne was born at Brady Hospital December 7, 1946. We had a New Year's Eve party and invited several of the Heslers, Norb's cousins. We made friends with Harry and Kate Donahy at the suggestion of Father Francis and, later with their friends, Bill and Helen Vedder, Norbert and Matilde Nolte, and, John and Mary Jo O'Donnell. We had prolific vegetable gardens. Father Francis built us a greenhouse beside the patio in back. One cucumber vine covered an entire garden space beside the patio. We built a four car garage when Norbert was three.

We wanted to have chickens so we ordered one hundred day old chicks through the mail. We housed them in the greenhouse. They grew very healthy. They were large New Hampshire Reds. We killed the roosters as soon as they crowed.  I killed them under the crab apple tree whose branches spread down to the ground. The feathers came out easily immediately and were caught by the branches and leaves of the crab apple tree. I hung the chickens on a nail in the tree and pulled out the feathers easily. We roasted them or boiled them for chicken fricasse; they were great.

One morning Anne, five years old, came to the kitchen door carrying a big rooster in her arms. She said "Here's your croaking rooster Mommy." Norbert was very quick. When I was baking a birthday cake and he was two, he dumped out my beaten eqq whites before I could get them into the cake. When Norb was putting away the screens up in the attic over the kitchen, he looked out the window and there was Frank at the top of the ladder. He wasn't one yet and wasn't even walking. Norb gingerly reached an arm toward him and got a hold of his arm. Frank would climb out of the baby carriage, drop to the ground, and crawl across the gravel driveway. Anne wanted a baby sister and fortunately she got one. She and Mary Helen were very close. Patty was number 5 and had her own wagon with a 5 painted on the back of the wagon. Norbert used to peddle the wagon around the house from the dining room front hall, front living room and back living room with his tricycle pulling Frank, Mary Helen, with Patty's little rump sticking up in back, around and around the rooms they went. The marks of the tricycle on our baseboard of those rooms are still there today.