Foreword Leo Carlson, my dad, was born in 1924 in a small town in Iowa. He was just five years old when The Great Depression erupted throughout the world and changed everything. That’s not the only thing that erupted in 1929. His parent’s shaky marriage blew apart that same year. Dad’s father was a drinker and a rough guy to live with. He ran a one-man barbershop and had no interest in caring for a child. His mother wasn’t a box of chocolates either and soon ran off with another man to build a new life together. Dad was suddenly another child among hundreds of thousands of children that were unable to be cared for during the brutal days of the Great Depression. Dad was on his own. To my grandfather’s credit, he had no way to care for my father so he passed him around from family to family, neighbor to neighbor until Dad was old enough to survive on his own. From then on Dad slept in people’s hay-barns to survive the biting cold of Iowa winters and bummed or stole enough food to survive. Alone, unwanted and in the way, Dad longed for two things - a home and a family. It's hard for me to imagine a boy who didn’t have a home, didn’t have a bedroom, never had a birthday party or friends to invite to one. He was truly an orphan. At age 18 Dad joined the WW2 war effort, both because it was required but also because it provided a bed, clothing and three square meals a day, something he’d never had. As the war ended, Dad returned to Iowa, fell in love with the woman who would become my mother, and started a family. In 1963 Dad began building his own home that cost him $13,500 on an annual income of $1,368. I have great memories
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