If You Carry Your Childhood With You, You Never Become Older

Me and Some of My Buddies
Friedens Lutheran School, Kenosha, WI
circa 1960

There is nothing especially special about the picture - it's a B/W and not centered very well, and its not even that clear. It is a favorite of mine though. 

This is the only picture memory I have other than official school pictures (you know, the ones everybody usually hates because you always seem to look dorky!) of my three years at Friedens Lutheran School in Kenosha. That makes it a keepsake - in my humble opinion anyway. I don't know  who took it, or why, or how I ended up with it. But I like it.

When I came across the quote on the top of the page, this is one of the pictures I  thought of that I could use for a vignette that would illustrate the thought. I attended Friedens for 1st, 2nd, and 4th grade. This is  either 2nd or 4th grade - probably 4th, huh? Our Saviors in Zion had no school yet, and  this was a good example of the kind of stuff Pastor Carl Leyrer brought to Our Savior's in Zion - love and desire for Christian education that would not see carpooling a bunch of kids each day to Kenosha as an obstacle. I'm sure that our family connection to Friedens (with Gramma Haubrich and Uncle Kelly and Aunt Norma living just down the street) didn't hurt. 

The quote was in my email inbox today (Goodreads Quote of the Day) and caught my eye. Perhaps it can help give you another explanation on why I do the things I do with  the things of the past. I wonder how many times in my life I've been told to "grow up." But I don't want to - so there!! And isn't it true? If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. Is that such a bad thing?

(The Picture: The faces are all familiar, even though I'm not sure of the names. On my right is Richard Kellner (sp). I remember that  his Dad died when we were in 2nd grade, and I remember him breaking down in class one day and got sent home. The 2nd from the right was by best friend at Friedens, Bobby Hoffman, the grandson of Gramma Haubrich's good friend, Emma Hoffman. The other two guys I remember so well, but the names not so much. One of them I am pretty sure was another Richard - Richard Lemke. Even the girl in the background, although not part of the picture, I remember  her face, but not her name.)

That's all I an say  about  this picture for now.

(The Quote: Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever (born July 15, 1913) survived Lithuania’s Vilna ghetto during the Holocaust, producing some of his finest work during that time. He eventually settled in what would become Israel, where he founded the country’s leading Yiddish literary journal and devoted himself to keeping the Yiddish language alive.)