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    Lessons in Churchville
    Lessons in Churchville
    Lessons in Churchville
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    Lessons in Churchville

    By John DiCredico

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Remember when you built your first tree fort? Or broke your neighbors window playing ball? Or raided your best friends refrigerator? Relive the time of growing up as a late baby boomer in suburbia. Each story is accompanied by a lesson learnedwhat the author walked away with after getting into trouble or encountering new people who expanded his world view. See how these lessons shaped his morals and mindset amid the fast-changing times of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

    Experience the actions and compassion of a dad who was ahead of his time in many respects and was involved with his sons activitiessports, music, and tinkering with cars and machines. Regularly attending their games, he snapped photos, jotted notes, stored the press clippings, and had his own man cave, complete with sports, Civil War, and personal memorabilia. His child-rearing strategy was unique. The writing is heartfelt and opinionated.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateOct 27, 2011
    ISBN9781449722753
    Lessons in Churchville
    Author

    John DiCredico

    John DiCredico is a lifelong resident of Bucks County Pennsylvania, and grew up in the village of Churchville. Currently John works as a software analyst and technical writer in the life sciences area, while writing and playing guitar in his spare time. He currently lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Martha, and their two children, Lea and Philip.

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      Book preview

      Lessons in Churchville - John DiCredico

      Copyright © 2011 John DiCredico.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-2274-6 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-2275-3 (e)

      ISBN: 978-1-4497-2276-0 (hc)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913228

      WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1-(866) 928-1240

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Printed in the United States of America

      WestBow Press rev. date: 10/24/2011

      Contents

      Preface

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      9

      10

      11

      12

      13

      14

      15

      16

      17

      18

      19

      20

      21

      22

      23

      24

      25

      Acknowledgements

      Bibliography

      Preface

      While standing in an Iowa corn field in the middle of the movie

      Dana and I became friends from the get-go. We had a lot in common and probably more not in common. Both the youngest in our families and born the same month, we had older brothers who didn’t particularly like little squirt kids around. For all intents and purposes, we may have been, the mistakes. You know, the family settles in with two or three kids and thinks they have it made with no diapers, crying, late night bottle feeding, etc. Then one day Mommy tells Daddy, Ah, do you remember the crib you gave to Cousin Harry?

      Yea, says dad.

      Ah, get it back, Mom says and Dad turns yellow. Yes, Dana had three older brothers-twelve, eleven, and six years older. I had a sister ten years older and a brother seven years older.

      We also had a lot not in common. Although we were the same height at age four, Dana grew six feet before he reached age five. No, actually, it only seemed that way to me. Since I was on the shorter side (OK, I was SHORT) and Dana, well, Dana was Big Foot. His dad started calling us Mutt and Jeff after the old cartoon characters.

      Even as a kid Dana could take things apart and reassemble them. He may not have used all the original parts, but he could get the thing to work. I, on the other hand, was the kid who just took things apart. I was also the kid that was sure the square peg would fit into the round hole; just give me a hammer and I’d show you. Since I was small, I could run a lot faster than most other kids, and that was a good thing since I had a big mouth, but Dana was the quiet type. Dana’s dad was a huge sports fan who was mechanically challenged to a degree, but Dana did not share his dad’s enthusiasm for a good ball game as I did. If we had been born on the same day, people would swear we were switched at birth based on our personalities.

      As you read the following stories, you will plainly see the character of folks who were born and raised in Iowa (and parented by). They are the salt of the earth: honest, hard-working, neighborly, competitive, calm, funny, and humble, and I had the privilege of living next to an Iowan while growing up in Churchville, Pennsylvania.

      missing image file

      Dana comes home from Abington Hospital in late January, 1961.

      missing image file

      The Stable and Sheriff’s Office. My house is in the background.

      missing image file

      John at home in mid-1961.

      1

      JPO

      JPO stands for John Palmer Osterman. JPO’s father Palmer died of the flu shortly before JPO was born. He was raised by his mom Fran, known to us as Granny Franny, his grandmother, and various aunts and uncles in Waterloo, Iowa. That’s one of the most interesting ironies about JPO-he grew up without a father, yet became a role model for his sons and many boys in the neighborhood.

      After his father died, his mother moved back to her parents’ home where there were lots of relatives to look after little Johnny. His memories of his early years were a lot of people, lots of places to explore inside and outside, and lots of attention and love. Since his mother worked as a bookkeeper for her father, John G. Miller, he was really under the supervision of his Grandma Miller. She was a wonderful, kind, and patient lady who had already raised ten children of her own with the two youngest still in grade school. They all had a direct influence on raising JPO.

      The house they lived in was quite large with three floors and a basement which JPO described as damp, dark, and spooky. His favorite place in the home was the third floor where it had one long boy’s dorm, two long bedrooms, and another room with an outside deck. They were always afraid of falling off at such a scary height, but it was a great place to launch missiles like stones, paper airplanes, and model airplanes.

      The property had many trees, bushes, and a clay tennis court. JPO liked to play in the weeping mulberry tree next to the driveway. He could hide in there without being seen while snacking on the berries. Toward the back of the property there was a large barn that used to house horses,

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