Eduard "Ed" Kramer, my father, was born on November 22, 1892 in Kit Carson County, Colorado near the town of Burlington. His parents, Jacob Kramer and Barbara Christina (Lutz) Kramer were of German descent and had emigrated there from Russia in April 1889. In 1896 my father and his family moved to Brighton, settling on a farm two and one-half miles north of town. On September 12, 1904 his father bought a farm three miles north of Brighton on what is now road 2 1/2 in Weld County.

As a young man, Papa attended Concordia College in Seward Nebraska for two years, intending to be a Lutheran minister. I have a picture from this time which shows Papa and his fellow students eating in the dormitory and another picture of them practicing boxing.

Some lime prior to 1918 Papa met my mother, Charlotte (Lottie) Wagner.  I am not sure how or when Papa and Mama met, but there are pictures taken in 1918 of the two of them on Church outings in Westcliff in the
Colorado mountains and it is likely that they met at church. They were married on January 1, 1919 at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brighton.  Their honeymoon was a trip, the next summer, to Westcliff with the "young people" of the church.  Ed and Lotte were serving as chaperones for the group since they were the only married couple among them.

When Mama and Papa were first married they lived on a farm one mile north of the Great Western Sugar factory and just east of the railroad tracks where the "green leaf" green houses now stand.  It was in this house where I, Evelyn Ruth, was born on April 16, 1920.  A year or two later, Papa bought the farm from his parents at the end of Road 2 1/2 and it is there where he and Mama spent the rest of their lives.  Mama and Papa had three more children while living there; my brothers Victor Eduard and Marvin Carl, born in 1922 and 1924 respectively, and my sister Thelma Charlotte, born in 1928.

Papa raised sugar beets, corn alfalfa, wheat and oats, as well as begetables such as pickles.  He contracted some of his vegetables to the Kuner Canning Company and some he took be truck to the Denargo Market in Denver, where he had a stall form which he would sell to buyers from the grocery stores.  On market days Papa would leave the house about 3:00 in the morning because the market opened at 4:00.  Papa had a small dairy and sent his milk to Ruebel's dairy.  He also butchered and sold veal calves, turkeys, chickens, and pigs.  Papa first farmed with teams of horses, but was one of the first to have a tractor.  His first tractor was a steel wheeled Moline with big wheels in the front and smaller wheels in back, which he used for plowing and to power his threshing machine.

I remember threshing time. First a binder was used which cut the grain and tied it into bundles with twine.  The bundles were then piled together into shocks which were left until the grain was thoroughly dry.  On threshing day pap would then get Mr. Montandon to come out with his threshing machine and all the neighbors would work together, first threshing at one farm and then moved on to the next neighbor until they were finished. The neighbors all came with teams of horses and wagons, two men to a wagon.  Using pitch forks, they loaded the wagons with bundles and brought them to the threshing machine.  The bundles were pitched into the threshing machine. The straw would be blown out into a pile and the grain would be sacked as it came out of a spout on the machine.

After my brother Vic took over the farm and Papa retired from farming, he was a caretaker a couple of summers for the Wellington Lake Irrigation Co. at their reservoir in the mountains above Baily.  Papa was also a ditch rider for the Brighton Lateral Ditch co. for a time.  Papa died on May 11, 1965 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Brighton.