The Bauer Confidential

June 25th is my grandparents’ wedding anniversary. This year they will celebrate 59 years together. I can’t think of them without smiling. They are quite the pair, very special people; loving and kind, warm and funny, the best kind of grandparents anyone could possibly have. Their story is fairly typical for their generation in many ways, but extraordinary for mine.

My grandmother was born during the dust bowl, my grandfather a bit before. They grew up in the rural Nebraska Sand Hills. The oldest daughter in a family of many children, my grandmother married my grandfather at the tender age of 15. Grandpa was a few years older; he graduated from high school, which was pretty rare for that time. He bought my grandmother’s wedding dress for her and a stove as a gift for her family. Their first child was born when my grandmother was just 16, and they went on to have five more; my father is the second oldest. Growing up my father and his siblings lived on a farm outside of town, they tell many amusing stories of the place, the animals, the joy of growing up with so much space to be free. For reasons I’m not privy to, the family moved into town and into the house my grandparents still occupy.

The children grew up, got married, had children of their own (16 of us, and 3 step-grandkids were also welcomed into the mix), and those children have had their own children as well. Though money was never plentiful, the family life was always rich. Grandpa bailed hay until only a few years ago, driving huge bailers and mowers all day in the hot Nebraska sun. I remember as a child the equipment they used, some of it was parked at my grandparents house. It probably wasn’t safe to climb over sickles and other pieces of large farm equipment, but at some point in time I think pretty much all of us grandkids old enough to have been around then did it anyway. A lot of family members worked with grandpa in the fields. My father, a teacher, used to spend the summers bailing hay with grandpa, several other aunts, uncles and cousins did as well. One hell of a family business.

To be continued….

Disclaimer: any factual errors are the result of my fuzzy memory and not an attempt to embellish or alter the truth.