The "Tinkelator" machine.

All of my brothers (except for Alan the oldest, who was perfect) and I were bed wetters when young, so the memories of my youth are tinged with the sweet smell of urine.

At one point in time, my mother had to change sheets on three beds EVERY DAY. Needless to say, she didn't liked doing this, so a variety of things were tried to remedy the situation. We weren't allowed to drink anything after a certain time of the day, and my parents made sure we were all "well drained" before going to bed. But none of these plans worked. Finally my father, the inveterate inventor, decided to take matters in hand and invent something that would work. So he created the "Tinkelator" machine, and at the same time a legend that will probably be passed on for many generations.

Here is how it worked: Two metal window screens were placed under each bed, separated by a sheet or towel. As long as the cloth was dry, the two screens (which represented the negative and positive ends of an electric current) would not conduct electricity and the circuit was opened. As soon as the fabric got wet, the circuit was closed and a bell rang. A very loud bell, in fact, an old school hallway bell.

It worked! While the bed of the guilty bed wetter would get wet, the bell would wake up the others who could then be drained. (Actually, it woke up everyone in the house.) Best of all, it managed to do this without anyone being electrocuted.

Unfortunately the bell also woke up the neighbors! This ultimately lead to the demise of an otherwise splendid invention, and my mother had to continue washing sheets until we outgrew the problem.

Brothers... and a sister!

Brothers are wonderful things, and I am always happy to visit with any of them any time (they are scattered far and wide). But it wasn't always this way. Not exactly. It wasn't that I didn't LIKE my brothers, in fact I wanted to go with them where ever they were going, when ever I could. They just didn't want me! I was a "Tag-along-tuna-fish", a "Slimetooth" a "Stinktiveolich" and "Pigeon Chested". I was also a "moron" and a "pest". How do I know this? Because they me told me every day! Yes, brothers can be brutal, but looking back, I never felt brutalized. It was just the way things were. In some ways their teasing and their punching and persecuting made me feel good... at least I felt noticed. Being the youngest of four boys works out that way. After all I was supposed to be the girl. And at one point I tried to oblige.

My earliest memory of being teased by my brothers was when I got a doll for Christmas (I named her Cherry Cheeks). This happened when my sister Mary was about to make her arrival, and I'm sure it came about because I said something to my mother like "I want a baby too". I really did love Cherry Cheeks, and couldn't figure out why my brothers didn't get dolls.

I don't know what happened to that doll, but I have a vague memory of my brothers eventually dismembering her. But by then I had probably figured out why boys don't play with dolls.

I have quite a few memories associated with the advent of my sister's development and birth, since I was hanging out with my mother the entire time. I can remember watching my mother being examined by Dr. Peterson and wondering what was happening to her, I remember several conversations about the baby to come with my mother, many times speculating if it would be a brother or a sister. I was holding out for the sister. I KNEW what brothers were like. As Huck Finn said, "I'd been there before."

Finally Mary was born, and my Dad, attempting to describe for us what made a sister different than a brother, said "Mary is soft... softer than John's earlobes!"

Well, John had the undisputed softest earlobes in the entire neighborhood, and we tried to feel them whenever we dared, but not often, since John was the toughest and strongest of us all. I did manage to feel them once, they were incredibly soft, and the experience worth the pummeling. So the thought of an entire girl being that soft was hard to imagine. And Mary didn't disappoint. She was (and still is, I suppose) very soft.