We started life together with great hopes.  Walt had horses and a small Fordson tractor to farm our quarter and some rented land.  But the great depression of the early thirties and the terrible dust storms hit us the same years.  No one who didn't live through those dust storm days can begin to imagine what it was like to have a dust cloud roll up from the northwest, envelope the house and turn day into night within minutes.  We hung wet sheets over the windows so we and the babies could breathe.  When the storm subsided we would sweep and shovel up fine dust that had filtered in, sometimes a gallon of it.  In 1935 Donald was approaching school age.  We were five miles from the nearest school with no school bus and an old car.  We had also raised very little the past two years.  The last year we did raise grain we sold wheat for 30 cents a bushel, barley 17 cents a bushel, and eggs for 5 cents a dozen.  So when Walter got a chance to drive the Equity Co-op oil truck for $60 a month he was glad to get it, and we moved to Burlington.  Here the first few years we rented a house for $15 per month and we four lived on the rest.  I supplemented our income in any way I could such as by upholstering overstuffed furniture, $5 for a chair and $10 for a davenport.

     Walter continued to work at the Equity Coop for years and was manager there the last eight years.  He then worked in construction, raising a little wheat working on weekends.  He was active in the United Methodist Church and Rotary Club, and served as a volunteer fireman.

     During World War II, with a great shortage of teachers, anyone who had ever taught school was drafted into teaching on an emergency certificate.  I taught one year in a tiny school 1/2 mile south of Peconic.  The next year I came into the Burlington School where I was to teach a few years until the war was over.  However, through summer school and extension classes I soon earned a life certificate, then issued for two years in a teachers college, and finally got my degree and kept teaching in Burlington for twenty seven years, until retirement in 1972.  The last seven years of teaching I also taught in the summer migrant school where some years we had as many as two hundred pupils.  The last three years I taught arts and crafts to the whole school.

     During these years our boys were growing up, going to school and carrying the Denver Post.  They were both on state championship football teams their senior years, and both became Eagle Scouts.  Don graduated in 1947 and Warren in 1948.

     Walter retired in 1966 and in June 1977 we celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary.  We enjoyed traveling together and did so as long as Walt was able.  Walter died in July of 1985.  I keep busy by doing china painting and oil painting and belonging to a few clubs here in Burlington.  I am also able to share my time by teaching painting to adults in the Burlington area.

by Sally Bauder