[I originally posted this in March of 2007.]

It was March 24, 1999. David, my brother, was in the hospital because he had appendicitis. The department of Children and Youth had sent two caseworkers to our home. Their names were Joe and Nicole.

There was a lot of clutter on the floor. We were picking it up. We were trying to finish before Joe and Nichole came. We were not expecting them as soon as they came, and we had not finished when they came.

When they came, there was a tarp on the roof. It had been put there to try to prevent heat from escaping. Joe and Nicole may have decided they did not think we should live there when they saw it. My mother saw them but did not know who they were. She asked them to stay outside, but they said they had to come in. Joe asked my father if he sold milk. (Apparently, they had seen the cows.) He told them no, that we have beef cattle, and that he sells rocks. Then, they looked in our bedroom and saw the light-up cow posters. They were probably paying more attention to the unmade beds and clutter on the floor. Next, they wanted to see the bathroom. I explained to them that the bathtub was dirty because water from the toilet had come up the drain when the pipes were frozen a few days before. Just before they left, they told my parents to take me to Children and Youth building the next day, but did not tell them why. My father decided to get me a new pair of pants to wear when I went there.

After they left, my mother cleaned the bathtub so it could be used. I went out to collect the maple sap. We had tapped several maple trees, using pop bottles and coffee cans to collect the sap. We made maple syrup from it.

I have a pet cow named Sylvia. She looks like a black Polled Hereford. When I eat an apple, I give her the core. That day, I got an apple and went looking for Sylvia. I went much farther away than she was. I found her with the other cows, petted her, and gave her the apple core. I did not know at the time, but that was the last time I would see her for about a month.

When my father went to buy the new pair of pants for me, I asked to go with him because I wanted to buy a copy of "Come On Over" (Shania Twain's newest album [at that time]). I thought I might be able to buy it then. I was right; I did. I did not know it at the time, but it would be a few days before I would get to play it.

When we went to the Children and Youth building, we found out that the reason they told us to go there was that they were putting both David and me in a foster home until we had what they consider a fit place to live.

The foster home was near the far corner of the county. Our foster parents names were Zane and Kate Snedaker. We stayed at the foster home until late April. My parents had to borrow money from my brother Tom, who drives Yellow Freight trucks, to buy a new trailer. They still haven't paid him back. My mother has said she intends to pay him back out of her social security.

While we were at the Snedakers' house, we got this letter from my mother:

4-16-99

Dear William + David

Yesterday, we learned that we'd missed seeing you Tuesday. No one had ever told us. We are so very sorry and disappointed. We'd kept asking ourselves when etc. Nothing would've kept us from being there, had we only known....
The new trailer is in place + unless the rain prevents it, today it will be leveled + set up. Yesterday, we bought new mattresses for you.
Our well is 250' deep + has 5 g.p.m. (Hard to say what our electric bills are going to look like.) The water will be hooked up in a few days. Mon. or Tues., the fuel tank will be delivered.
Your mattresses came from the Western Auto in Nicholson. Mr Phillips gave us a good deal + delivered them. They're the first items put in the new house.
Francis had her calf on the 13th. He looks a little like Heifer's, but has more dark. He is still very white.
Dagmar had hers yesterday. He was breech. Very small -- good thing.
Daddy thinks Lily + Sonja are in a race to be next.
Sylvia misses William. Clara misses David. Bessie misses you both. She sleeps in David's bed a great part of the day -- poor dog.
But not any of the animals miss you as we do. It is so hard to understand and so hurtful. We feel so helpless and bewildered. We love you both so much -- how could anyone think we would do wrong by you?

The new house looks like the diagram below, but nOT TO SCALE (PROBABLY) --

[map of the new trailer]

If both of your bedrooms could be the same size, it'd make assigning them easier. We hate to make either of you feel like you got cheated. But that is the sole problem with it + the others to choose from had 2 bedrooms instead of 3.
I guess we'll see you Tues. Take care + try to cope. I know it isn't easy.
Love, Mom

After that, we went to the Children and Youth building on Tuesdays to meet our parents there. Once when we were there, my mother said that Dinah had died trying to have a calf that was too big for her. Dinah was only one year old at the time, and heifers normally have their first calves when they are two years old. Also, my mother had found the second set of prints of the pictures Tom took of the cows in 1988 (including one of the pictures of Calf and the picture of Calf's daughter Red). I took those pictures with me to the Snedakers' house and put them in my photo album. When we finally got home in late April, we were told that the same thing that happened to Dinah had also happened to another heifer, Gorgeous. Gorgeous was Beautiful's daughter and Calf's granddaughter.

The whole time we were living in the old trailer, we didn't have running water, and we didn't have a telephone. We got our water for some purposes, such as drinking, cooking, and washing dishes, from my grandmother's house. It was brought here in a water jug. We used five-gallon pails to carry water from the water hole or spring to wash our clothes. There are two additions on the old trailer, and we heated it with wood stoves in the additions. We haven't used the furnace in the old trailer since the mid-1980s.

When David and I got back from the Snedakers' house, the water pump hadn't been hooked up yet, so we still didn't have running water for a few more days. We had been wearing the same clothes for several days at a time, but the Children and Youth caseworkers insisted that we put on clean clothes every day. That was part of the reason for getting the well drilled, and the main reason for getting the new clothes dryer. Tom was surprised my mother would want another GE clothes dryer after what happened to our old clothes dryer, which was also a GE, but all she had really said she didn't want was another used clothes dryer.

In the fall of 1999, we got a telephone and our first computer. When we got the computer, we had already had a telephone line run, but it hadn't been hooked up yet. We did not originally intend for the computer to be connected to the telephone line; we didn't get Internet service until December 2001.