I was born on November 14, 1933 at 1307 Rhomberg Avenue at around 6 AM during the middle of the depression.   As most of the birth's at that time, it was not at a hospital.  Dr. Bacon was our family doctor and he was present at my birth.  Dr. Palen, who was related to Pop, was just coming up the stairs when I left out my first cry.  Paul was downstairs and Dr. Palen told Paul that he had the baby in his bag.  I think Paul believed that for decades.  Mom says she always wanted a black haired baby and she got one in me as I had a lot of it. 

This was a big day in the Andresen family, as the day I was born.  Pop got a job with the police department, to get a steady job during the depression was great, but getting $114.00 per month was even greater.  Of coarse I don't remember any of my early life, evidently we moved to White Street shortly after my birth.  After White street, we rented a house at 1451 Mount Pleasant street for $25.00 per month.  This is where my memories began, as hazy as it was at that time.  It was here that I wasn't the baby of the house anymore, as Mary was born here along with John and Tom at later dates.  It was after Tom was born that Mom had to have a hysterectomy or as Mom said "she would have had babies until the day Pop died".

I do not recall the lay-out of the rooms on Mt. Pleasant Street or where I slept etc., but I do recall the barn behind the house, now we call them garages, but then they were barns as there were very few cars.  This barn almost cost me my tongue. 

I was rolling down the sidewalk in a wagon with my mouth open, tongue out and chin next to the handle.  The wagon hit the barn causing the handle to hit my chin which closed my mouth on my tongue.  This caused a big cut on my tongue.  Mom put on her navy blue veiled had with flower on it and we went over to the corner of Loras and Mt. Pleasant to wait for the bus so we could go downtown to the clinic at 12th and Main, me with cotton in my mouth as my tongue was bleeding like a stuck pig. 

Dr. Bacon put in quite a few stitches in it but trouble with the stitches is that they kept coming out so Mom and I had to make a lot of trips to the clinic before it healed.  To this day, I don't think it healed properly as I still have trouble pronouncing some words.

Another injury I received on Mount Pleasant Street was when we were having a rock fight with the hated Mike Marong who lived on Loras by the alley behind us.  During one of these fights, I was running down the alley which had cinders on it.  I fell and my right knee dug into the cinders.  It made a hole in the knee cap about a 1/2 inch deep.  We didn't go to the doctor for this little injury but I had to spend a lot of time on the porch soaking it with water which was terrible because I had to sit and watch the other kids playing.  Because this hole was on my knee, it took a long time to heal. 

This injury happened on what was called black Sunday as a couple of the other kids were injured.  Margaret got hurt but I don't recall what it was.  Paul had a spring out of a shade and was looking through the center of it while he was stretching it out, when he let go of the spring, it caught on his eye lid, it was kind of comical as he was running in to have Mom take the spring out of his eye lid.