Kent and Me - Early Early Years

My brother Kent is two years older than me.  When we were little we played a lot together.  I looked up to him and believed everything he told me.  We liked to play in our wading pool out in the yard at the home we lived in in View.  We had a black, step ladder that we would put next to the pool.  It was our diving board.  We also had a sand box we liked to play in, though I do recall a few sand fights.  There was a big lilac bush in the back yard that was neat.  We could climb through the branches into the center where there was plenty of room for one or two kids to hang out in or to hide.  Also in the back yard, was a tree that at a certain time of the year became the home of hundreds of furry, brown caterpillars.  We loved capturing and playing with these fuzzy creatures.  In the spring and summer we liked to catch polliwogs or skippers.  We would keep them in a round watering trough that we had in the yard. Kent and I shared a room in this small home in View, which was also the home in which that my mother had grown up.  We had a bunk bed.  Kent slept on the top and I slept on the bottom.  Our room was also the laundry room.  Kent and I got along pretty well in those early years, except for at meal times.  He sat across from me and had some sort of problem with my eating habits.  Apparently, I was a bit messy as he would get mad at me and complain to mom and dad.  Because I knew that it bugged him, I would just try to be messier.  Often, one of our parents would get out a cereal box and put it in between us so he did not have to look at me.  We both loved our home in View next to Grandma and Grandpa Wrigley.  We had plenty of cousins around to play with and we loved going across the lane to grandma's house and spending time on the farm.  Also during these times, while dad was going to school, we lived in Pocatello, Idaho.  We lived there in a small trailer.  It had a bedroom for my parents, but for Kent and me, the small couches were converted into our beds each night.  There was a playground in the trailer park that we liked to play in.