I was born on September 9, 1940 to Elmer and Gertrude Badertscher.  I am the 7^th child born to Elmer and Gertrude, I gave my mother a little trouble before I was born.  It was told to me by my mother I was about to be born breach but I made a complete turn and my mother had a normal birth after all. 

It is hard to tell just what age you are when you realize you have a mother and father. One of the earliest times of my life I can recall would be back in December the year 1942.  I must have been told I was going to have a sister or a brother, the only thing I remember about it is my mother coming home and a baby being brought in to the house.  I remember someone holding this baby sitting in the kitchen.  I can remember standing on my tip toes and this person opened up the baby blanket and there was a little baby girl introduced to me as my sister, Gail.  I remember my mother first.  It seems she was always there. That to me made my life at home complete and secure. 

My father was home on weekends because he had to work away from home during the week on construction.  I can remember my father bring very loving to my mother.  He would go up to her when she was sitting at the table or even if she was setting in the living room chair and give her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the shoulder.  This made me know I had a very loving father.   

When my dad came home on Friday night, I would run out to him with my arms out and holler DADDY!  I would take turns with my sisters giving him a big hug to welcome him home…I felt everything is alright so I could enjoy the two days I had with my father.   

I remember many good times with mom and dad and here are some of them.  When I was tall enough to stand up in the back of a car with out hitting my head on the top of the car.  My father would pack up in the car and we would go for a Sunday ride, it was one of my mother’s favorite things to do.  While we were out on our Sunday drive, dad would stop at a store and pick p a loaf of bread and some bologna, some soda, chips and fruit from a fruit stand.  We would stop on some back road in Austerlitz or surrounding area and my mother would say lets have a picnic.  She would make us sandwiches and we would eat our picnic lunch.  We went at different times like summer and the fall.  We would look for deer and look at the autumn leaves.  My mother had a special way of making us aware of God and all the beautiful blessings we were given that were free and beautiful. 

I used to help plant potatoes with my father and sisters Memorial day.  I would go out to his work shop and watch him use the buzz saw and make trellises.  I remember a big bird house he made for our rose garden.  I also remember having to feed the chickens and pigs.  I used to love to ride over to the Spencertown dump and I would look around at all the stuff people threw away.  I never remember bringing anything back, I could only look.  Every year when the Chatham fair was on my father and my older sisters would take us to the fair for one day.  We could go on rides, have either a cotton candy or candy apple and play one game like pick up a duck or spin a wheel which would stop at a arrow to show you your prize.  It was a fun time and I looked forward to it.  My mother never attended the fair.  She was always busy at home keeping it together. 

Although mom and dad did things with us, sometimes it was together and sometimes we had separate times with mother because she had us five days at a time without dad around.  During the week, we would sit around my mother and she would tell us bed time stories which were passed on to her.  At night before we went to bed we would kneel around her and say a bedtime prayer.  You know the one that goes: 

          Now I lay me down to sleep

          I pray the Lord my soul to keep

          If I should die before I wake

          I pray the Lord my soul to take

          This I ask in Jesus name

          God bless everyone and make me a good girl

          Amen 

My mother also had many songs she would sing to us around the same time we were told bedtime stories.  I can remember having whooping cough and my mother putting fried onions on my chest during the night.  She was there through measles, colds and other childhood sickness.  I only had to hear her foot steps around the room when I was sick and I felt safe.  She would walk by us in bed when we were sick and stop and put her cheek on our forehead or lay her and on our forehead to check for a fever and I always felt so secure. 

Every Christmas we would each get a new doll.  Also, t here were presents which were for us to share.  The doll would always be sitting pretty under the tree with our name on each one.  I remember one year we didn’t see a doll under the tree.  I can remember feeling sad but I started to open my presents and guess what?  I opened this big square present and it was a red cardboard suit case.  When I opened it up there was a baby doll with extra clothes and a blanket with a little baby bottle.  This was the first little baby doll I got.  It was so cute.  You fed the baby water from the bottle and it would run through the baby doll and come out by her bottom which made the diaper wet.  This doll was called a Betsy-Wetsy doll.  Gail and I each got one.  It was a rubber doll that you could bathe and we loved it.  That was one of many wonderful Christmas’.  Every Christmas there was always a stocking filled from the bottom to the top.  Candy and nuts fill the toe than an orange was in the heal after that was a lot of smaller presents to fill up the stocking with a candy cane coming out of the top.  It was always hanging off the top of the fireplace along with stockings filled for my sisters as well. 

A few years later, my mother had another baby.  This was the last baby she  had and after having all my sisters, she finally had a boy.  What a wonderful surprise to our whole family we now had a brother after all the sisters we had.  A new stocking for a boy was hanging with ours and it was for our brother Jimmy. 

My sisters and Jimmy and I experienced quite a sight one Christmas eve.  Dad came while we were trying to get to sleep so Santa would come to our house and leave us some presents.  He said “Santa is here would you like to take a peek at him”.  We were overjoyed and said yes.  We all gathered at the top of the stairs and looked down into the living room where our Christmas tree and fireplace was.  There was Santa on his hands and knees fixing presents under our tree.  All of a sudden something fell out of dad’s pocket and started to bounce down the stairs.  Santa picked up his head and you probably never saw children scamper so fast to bed as we did that night.  I thought he may have seen me and I worried what if I don’t get a present.  It would be my own fault.  But there were still lots of presents for everyone as always in the morning.  I felt lucky and never tried to spy again at Christmas. 

When Easter came, I have a lot to remember.  We never saw anyone at our house color Easter  eggs.  I always thought the Easter bunny colored the eggs with his tail by coloring the egg from the grass or flowers that grew wild.  I never gave it a thought that they were hard boiled.  I guess I thought they came that way.  Every year at Easter our Easter basket was hid and we had to find it.  there would be an egg in the basket with each ones name on it.  There would be a chocolate bunny, chocolate cross, jelly beans, little yellow marshmallow chicks.  Also, a new dress and ribbons for our hair were folded up in the basket to wear Easter day. 

Thanksgiving day was my father’s favorite time.  We would have a turkey with all the trimmings, a large display of fruit , all kids of nuts and candy, fig dates and my father always made sure we had peanut brittle.  While everyone was helping mother get Thanksgiving dinner together, my father would go deer hunting from morning until around 1:00.  When he came back from hunting, dinner would be ready.  It seems every year we always had company.  One person we could always expect was our cousin Eloise and her faithful companion Tom. 

On Valentines day my father would buy my mother a large 5lb heart shaped box of candy.  She would share it with all of us.  It was a great treat.  We went to a one room school house until 7^th grade.  It was next to a church where we put on Christmas plays.  My mother would take a curling iron and heat it in a hurricane lamp and curl our hair into Shirley Temple curls for the Christmas program. 

For Halloween, I can remember a big trunk full of old clothes, hats and wigs which we used for Halloween costumes.  There was enough of everything and mother and my older sisters would dress us up like witches, gypsies, little old ladies, ghosts, pirates, Gibson girls, clowns and old men.  After we were dressed up, we would walk around town trick or treating.  The town people were great, they used to guess who we were if they could.  Everyone knew us in town and  we were safe trick or treating.  While we were out trick or treating, mom and dad had the table all decorated with a carved pumpkin with a candle burning it in and a lot of decorations on the table with some dishes of candy for the other kids in town.  I remember wanting to go out one year but I was not old enough so my mother dressed me up like a witch and let me pass out the Halloween candy from a big kettle which she sat on the kitchen floor. 

The other holiday I remember was the 4^th of July.  Family and friends would gather at our home and we had a big picnic.  I always remember my father kept the watermelons in our cellar to keep them cold.  He would bring them up and slice them up outside and we would all get in line to get a piece.  After we finished the watermelon we would run down back and give the watermelon rinds to the pigs.  Mother always made fresh lemonade. 

Other Things I remember 

Sitting around the kitchen table singing and harmonizing with my mother and sisters and sometimes with friends. 

I remember sitting outside on warm summer nights and my older sisters and their boyfriends going to the Elm Tree in Craryville to buy pizza.  They would bring it home and we would all dig in.  Mother always sat in white wooden lawn chairs.  Some of us just sat on the ground. 

My sister Emma started a little candy and soda shop which later became a soda fountain and restaurant called Valley Snack Bar.  Dot, Emma, Evelyn, Dawn, Margy, Gail and me each had their turn to work there.  It game us some thing to do and kept us out of trouble.  Other kids from the town would come and eat and listen to the juke box. 

During deer hunting season, we served many a deer hunter.  Breakfast at 5:00 in the morning, lunch and supper.  We filled a lot of thermos bottles with coffee.  Mother would make chili con carni, bake a never fail chocolate cake and make homemade doughnuts to serve to the deer hunters.  They really enjoyed this. 

By this time I am a teenager.  I started dating.  Before we could go out on Saturday night, we each had to clean the house and make sure supper dishes were done and put away.  We were allowed to go to the drive in movies, but we had to be home by 12:00.  We always had to leave before the movie was over. 

I can remember when I was a teenager, we would have a get together at home.  We could bring our boyfriends and mom and dad were there and some of their friends would join us.  We would push the dining room table to one end of the dining room and have a dance floor.  We would play records on the hifi.  I think Margy still has mom and dad’s old hifi.  We would have food and drinks but only soda for teenagers  - 7up or coke.  I used to love to watch mom and dad dance the one-step.  Dad would also dance with his daughters. Dad taught me how to do the one-step dance.  Although he didn’t take us to dances like my older sisters, he taught us to dance right at home. 

I was very close and had a great deal of respect for a man named Vernon who boarded at our house.  He would look after us while we were growing up.  He had the approval of Mom and Dad. Vernon bought me my first car.  It was a Crosby.  I used to drive that car on our driveway and around the lawn.  I sold it when I got my driver license.  He said it wasn’t save to drive on the road.  He took Gail, Jimmy and me to Vermont on vacation for a week, we had a great time.  He would also take us to antique car shows.  He was an antique car collector and he would drive us in one of his old cars.  Even after I was married, he would bring me and my children, it was great. 

When I got married, Dad frosted and decorated my wedding cake.  When I had my first born, mother came over every day for a while and helped me.  She would tell me to lay down and rest and she would bathe my little girl Debbie.  She also taught me how to take care and clean baby diapers.  We didn’t have pampers back then. 

4^Th of July and Thanksgiving day were celebrated at mom and dad’s for quite a few years.  My sisters and I with our families would pitch in and have a beautiful holiday. When the families grew too large, we changed and took turns having mom and dad at our house. 

There are many more memories but these stand out in my mind right now as I write.  Dad and mom seemed so loving and close all those years.  They are missed dearly but lift each of us with warm, wonderful, happy moments to remember.