I was born in the hospital in Waverly, Iowa and lived with my parents on a farm North West of Clarksville. We milked cows, raised pigs, grew corn and soybeans. It was a large two story house. We had a coal furnace and an indoor bathroom which was good for that era. I lived there until I graduated and moved to Ames, Iowa to go to ISU. It was a basement apartment I shared with my cousin Darrell Edeker and a high school friend Roger Heise. After going to college for one year I decided to move to Waterloo to get a job. I moved into an upstairs room in the home of an elderly lady. This was on West 4th street. Her main concern was that I put the stool lid down and not stay out to late. I lived there for approximately 2 months and then moved to an upstairs apartment on West 2nd. And remained living there after we were married. We lived there for a little over two years. It had outside steps and four bedrooms which were made into kitchen, bedroom, living room and bath. Rooms were so small that if four people were in kitchen the one in back side of table crawled under to get there. Our rent was $60 a month. My Grandma and Grandpa Kollman then asked us to move to their farm in rural Allison. The house had no bathroom or running water but they agreed to modernize as soon as possible if we moved. We did live with an outhouse and carrying water for a few months until the work was finished. The house was so cold that once we had a carton of pop freeze behind the oil burner. We never did get a furnace in this house. Just two oil burners and a kitchen trash burner. We then built a new house and tore down the old one. It was in 1972 when they were telling people to conserve energy. Didn’t conserve well because we were just happy to be warm. In 2001 we retired and moved to our present home in Clarksville.
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