Junior (2), Danny (4), Darlene (6), Dale (6), Doris (8), Donald (10), Delbert (12)–the seven Wilson kids who grew up together. Old Creamery Road, Madison County, Iowa.

Leora Wilson raised Leghorn chickens at this place. A feisty rooster would scare Junior until he learned to use a stick on it when it got near.

In July Danny had to have surgery in Des Moines for a mastoid behind an ear. He was in the hospital 10 days. His parents were told he would get along better if they wouldn’t come to visit him. When he saw his mother come for him, his whimper stayed with her the rest of her life. The nurses had painted his fingernails.

Darlene and Doris had just gotten their hair curled with a hot curling iron, probably heated in the chimney of an oil lamp. Doris is wearing the baby locket for which her Uncle Wayne had sent money home from France (where he was in the Great War), and asked his sisters to buy something nice for their first niece.

Donald and Delbert had gotten guns, but they’d mistreated them so their dad Clabe broke them up. The brothers became avid hunters (they helped feed the family that way) but never mishandled guns again.

This was the summer of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight from New York to Paris. He was Delbert’s hero for a long time.

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