My dad finished college in Kansas and was working at the Jayhawk Works plant outside Cresline, Kansas. (1954)He got an opportunity to help build the Orange Works Plant for Spencer Chemical and then go to work there as an operator. When we first arrived in Orange, we stayed at the Orange House, a hotel on the water in Orange. The Orange Yacht Club was also there. The only thing I knew was that we could go swimming 3 times a day. I don't remember how long we stayed there before we found a house and moved in, probably only a week or so. I do remember they had wonderful pancake and french toast for breakfast.

The house was small, probably 2 bedrooms because all 4 of us boys - Butch,Chuck,Roger and Ken slept in one room in two sets of bunkbeds. There were 2 - 4 drawer chests at the end of the beds. Each of us got 2 drawers for our clothes. I don't remember much more about the house. It had a front porch that went about 1/2 was across the front and there were bushes in the back yard against the back fence that were so overgrown we could get under them and be fairly well protected in rain or shine. With the rain came the mosquitoes. There was a little girl that lived next door to us, Linda Veeder was her name. We used to play under the bushes in the back yard all the time. Don't remember what we played.

We then moved to another house in West Orange, It was on the edge of town. There were some drainage ditches out there....I think newly cleaned out because there was no grass or weeds growing in them. One of the ditches had water in it. about 3 feet across, probably not over 8 inches deep. Butch and I could jump across it ok and not get wet. Roger tried it and fell in. At that point, we of course, had to help him out by going in ourselves. After about a half hour of helping him out, we took him home. He was without one shoe. We got sent back to find the shoe, we stomped and felt around in that water puddle for a hour but could never come up with his other shoe. The folks had a cocker spaniel dog. "Troubles" was her name. She used to bring snakes up to the back door all the time. Dead of course. Didn't know cockers were such snakers. Some were rattlesnakes, a couple of water moccosins the rest non-poisonous. She must have been good, she never got bit.