V: I was born in a farm house in Minnesota, and my grandmother on my father's side delivered me. Right out there, in a little prairie in Minnesota. was in 1919.My father and mother had lived across the river from each other and met at a skating party. They fell in love and got married.M: How old were they then?V: In their early 20s. the youngest in my family. There were four of us. My sister Evelyn was the oldest, and then my brother Roger was next, and our sister Veleda was the third, and I was the baby. Anyway, my parents decided to move to Montana. So we packed our Ford touring car and, actually, I think they lefttwo of the children with relatives in Minnesota and took my sister and me. In the course of going to Montana, it was getting pretty cold, you know, and I was covered with a blanket in the back seat and somehow or other, the fumes from the gas came in and they thought they lost me.M: Oh no!V: So it probably had a lasting effect on me up to today!M: happened? How old were you then when they moved and this happened?V: Gee, I guess I was three or four.M: So they leftthe other ones behind because . . . ?V: Because there wasn't room for them in the car! They leftthe two oldest ones with their parents. So, we didn't have much money, and I remember one night we didn't have money for a motel so we slept in a barn. The straw was nice!M: So let me see if I understand this right. Your father had a farm in Minnesota and he sold the farm?V: Actually it was his father's farm.M: So he was farming on his father's farm and he wanted to strike out on his own?V: Yes. So we wended our way to Montana. We had some relatives there and my uncle Gus was a well driller, he drilled wells for water in Montana. We lived with them for a while and then Dad staked a claim on some land and we were farmers again.M: When was that do you think?V: That was in the early 20s.M: Did you ever get the other children back?V: Oh yah. Eventually, when we established ourselves on the farm, they came back and my sister completed high school. There was a little country school nearby which my mother took me to. I had taught myself how to read when I was three. My mother had run a hotel there. One time, my brother was sitting in the kitchen doing his homework and he asked how to spell a word, and I was sitting on the stairs listening to him and I spelled it for him! And mother said, Where did you learn that? and I said, It was in a book I read! I was three.M: Could you tell us any more about how you learned to read?V: Well, I listen very carefully and was intrigued with the written word. Well, we lived on a farm and every Saturday night the neighbors would come and we'd play whist. Well, I would sit at the kitchen table and write. One time my Dad came out and said, What are you writing Verna? I said I'm writing some words that I saw on the toilet, on the other side of it. turned out they were all bad words, so he spanked me!M: Hmmm. He spanked you?V: Yes, he did, so I never wrote those words again.M: So you learned to read early? Did your parents read to you?V: Yes they did. Both my mother and father loved to read. Yes, they read to me and then I learned how to do it myself.M: Do you remember some of the books that you liked when you were little?V: Three Little Pigs! Really, actually, there was one book that I was not supposed to read called Scarlet Sister Mary.Mother caught me reading it (laughing) and she said, Where did you get that book, but I read it anyway. We had a garden and I got to feed the chickens and put the hay down for the horses, of course I rode a horse also. Somebody lifted me up. They let me take the horse out on the hills you know, and I found this particular place that I really liked. There were Indian beads there. So I made rings out of the Indian beads. …