Chapter X

Now we come to the next generation. Gideon and Gloria Grenz had four children within 3 ½ years of each other – Deane, Dawne, Merle, and Marjorie.

Dean was born on November 21, 1945.

Dawn was born on March 5, 1947.

Merle was on June 17, 1948.

Marjie was born on May 28, 1949.

Deane was called Deanie for many years by North Dakota relatives, often teachers on initially reading his name in class would pronounce it Dee Ann, and the other students would promptly laugh so when he realized he could spare the needless embarrassment, he changed the spelling of his name to Dean.

He had dark hair and brown eyes. The Bauers had dark hair and brown eyes.

Events recalled from childhood are few. He did not talk at all until he was two years old and then he spoke in full sentences, but still sparingly.

At age three he was bitten on the nose by the farm’s dog.

He also recalled where his father had placed pliers the previous fall, lead him to them at the edge of a field, near the gas tank.

He was found about a mile down the road toward town, he’d left on his own to find his father.

He recalls being instructed to look at the big dipper and being unable to decipher any thing worthy of note.

When he was nearly four, he poured motor oil left unattended onto his sister Dawne’s head, then led her over to windmill’s water pump and tried to wash it out with the cold water.

At age five, he pushed his brother’s crib over the heater. It caught on fire. Luckily his mother promptly rescued Merle from the crib and got the fire out with little damage done.

At nearly six, just before they moved to town, all the siblings stuffed paper bits into his ears apparently to his great delight. His parents were unable to remove the paper so a doctor was called upon to make a home visit. Home visits were in those days fairly common.

His mother recalls that he was given the baby clothes her own mother had received at the baby shower for her last child, who’d died shortly after being born. An aunt of hers had given him a Humpty Dumpty blanket she’d sewn. She kept it until he had children of his own, then she gave it to him.

She also remembers leaving Deane with her parents when she was giving birth to her second child. And she suspects that during that time her parents had him “sprinkled” in the Lutheran Church against her wishes.

He recalls being driven down a country road to watch his father “walking in fire”. (The brothers were burning the dried grasses of the East Pasture.)

A favorite recollection of his father’s had been the gander story. He’d never taken a picture of Deane and the gander. “It would likely have been printed on the cover of The Farmer’s Journal.” As a two to three year old he would walk about the farmyard accompanied by the gander who would hiss at all others who dared come near. Deane would put his arms around the gander and suffer no consequences.

When he was five, the family moved to town. He remembers crying when left in the first grade classroom by his father, but he quickly adjusted and was among the class’s best readers. Miss Zotnick was his favorite North Dakota teacher.

He did well in school, but recalls an incident that resulted in injury. A classmate, standing directly in front of him, sidestepped an attack from a third student, knocking Deane flat on the ground. For some reason he associated poor vision with that incident.

He excelled at playground sports, despite his poor vision. And he learned to squint or peer through a tiny hole made by bending his index finger. It wasn’t until he was in the fourth grade that any teacher discovered his poor vision. His parents were informed but he got no glasses.

Hopscotch was a favorite after school hours’ game. The swings had wooden seats and he often shinnied up the pole to the top of the swing set. Snowball fights were a regular part of playground activities. Two lines would be formed. Any child hit with a snowball would have to join the opposing line. King on the mountain was also very popular. And 1950’s school children were fierce fighters.

“Deane” was, even in those days, a loner. Mother tried to arrange a friendship for him with Dennis Schauer. Together they took a picnic lunch to the North Woods, walking through the cemetery and into the country. That hike figures still sometimes in his dreams. With it came the sense of being out in the big world.

But the friendship didn’t survive beyond that hike. Who it was that got him to participate in drawing a nasty picture, duly reported to the teacher, he doesn’t recall, but he does remember “staying after school”, then sneaking out of the classroom before putting in his full sentence. (This incident also loamed large in his later years. It marked for him the death of innocence, and the beginning of intense guilt that proved to be debilitating.)

One walk across the alley through a neighbor’s yard on a wooden boardwalk resulted in his first encounter with a bully. The boy was two or three years older, threw rocks at him, then “captured” him, and made him a prisoner. He would try to run away only to be captured over and over, much to the delight of the boy who finally tired of his game and allowed his victim to “escape”.

Games of kick the can in the evening dark with neighborhood kids were big adventures because they could hide anywhere in a two block area. And he remembers climbing dangerously tall poplars in the neighbor’s yard. And that walk with much younger brother and sisters along the railroad track into the country, was that safe? And playing hide and seek in the railroad’s storage sheds, how safe was that?

A blue pop cycle that cost 5 cents each was a favorite. And strawberry Nehi pop from his grandmother’s cellar was another favorite. The siblings would stop at a corner grocery on their way home from school and buy two gum bears for a penny, or a tootsie roll.

He remembers names of neighborhood friends: Roger and Ronnie Lehr, Norman Wentz, Hugo Meckler, Judy Bitz, Arliss, Arlinda, and Roger Zimmerman. He remembers chickens being butchered. He remembers watching westerns on the neighbor’s TV. And he remembers being scared to death watching “I Led Three Lives” in a farmhouse where they were visiting. He hid behind a couch, peeking out to see if the bullets had succeeded in killing the hero who was swimming away from the villains. He thought it all was real.

He remembers being told later by a cousin that if you looked into the tubes inside the radio, you would be able to see tiny people in there performing, and he did try to see those people when he was alone with the radio. Grandma Grenz kept lemon drops in her cupboard, and halva in her breadbox. And they could help themselves to either whenever they wished.