When I was capable of love...and fully aware of the concept.

It was a small town in southeast Wisconsin, called Watertown. Between Milwaukee and the state capitol, Madison. And 120 miles from Chicago. A very nice small town of 10,000 people. The family moved there from Chicago, when I was in the first grade. I attended kindergarten and part of the first grade in Chicago. In Chicago, we were living in the basement of my Uncle Carl's house. Along with my paternal grandparents. Those were tough times. The Depression Era. Before we moved into that basement, we were homeless, and lived out of my dad's car, I'm told. I was too young to remember that time. But my mother told me that my dad would take me into the public restroom at a Chicago park every morning to clean me up, give me sort of a bath, I guess. I must have been 1 or 2 at the time. We were still living in Chicago on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. My mother was pulling me on a sled that night. And I still remember that we returned to the house, and my dad told us of the attack. I didn't really understand the significance of it all at the time. But I do remember that my parents were very upset, and that it was a big event. I would have been 6 then, and attending the first grade in a Chicago school. By next spring, we were living in Watertown. I can remember riding a train to Watertown. Anyway, I was a conscious being at that time. But I don't think I was all that much aware of myself. I was still going through the motions of trying to figure out what life was all about, and what was I doing here in the first place? I still wonder when was the first time that I consciously knew that I was alive and breathing. And better yet, when I was capable of love...and fully aware of the concept. --Jim Broede