Chapter 42

Our new rented house was located on the far edge of the city of Des Plaines and on the city busline. It was a mile from the High School, and I felt a thrill of excitement when I looked at the newly built Maine Township High School. It was already an established high school and had been in existence for a dozen years or more, but this was the newly built version with the beautiful tower. It served the suburban Chicago towns of Park Ridge and Des Plaines. It was considered to be one of the ten most outstanding high schools in the entire country and I was SO excited at the prospect of starting there in just three months! A generation later, Hillary Clinton would attend this same school along with Harrison Ford and other distinguished alumni! This first summer in the rented house was spent just getting used to the new area and environment in which we lived. It was a happy place for Irv! Just a half mile down the road lived a young truck farmer named Donnie Wendt. He grew vegetables and raised horses which he loved. He only had four (horses) and they would come right up to the cyclone fence which separated our two properties and eat sugar lumps and carrots right out of our hands! Needless to say, Irv spent most of his time there and he and Donnie became good friends. Our house was adequate. There were two bedrooms upstairs. The front one was the nursery and mother and Donald slept there. The other room was larger and became the bedroom for the three girls - Martha and I had our twin beds and Helen her Bo-Peep bed which she was rapidly outgrowing! We all shared a large walk in closet where we kept our chests of drawers. Since Martha was, for the time being, in British Columbia staying with Auntie Nan, we had plenty of room! Irv slept in the three season porch on the front of the house - his bed covered with colorful Hudson Bay blankets from Canada. We were in the house just a month when Irv came back from Donnie Wendt's one day to find that the other end of the porch had a new bed there - Eric Hopf had finally moved in with us!