My mother Imagene "Jean" Joyce Halbert with my sister Sue and me (Mike) — At the time this photo was taken we were living in a one-room apartment within the city limits of St. Louis, Missouri. As a kid there wasn't a lot to do in the city. You could stay in the small yard and play, or maybe roller skate (metal roller skates with the all important key) on the uneven brick sidewalk in front of the apartment. As I got closer to school age, collecting and trading baseball cards was an enjoyable pastime. It wasn't unusual for me to have several stacks of ball cards, so thick they would barely fit in a boy's hands, at any one time; unfortunately, I don't have a single card now. Wonder where they went? When I was about seven we moved into a small 4-room house at Belgrade, Missouri, that my parents bought from Harry and Mildred Jenkins (my mom's aunt and uncle). Belgrade was a small town of about four hundred people (still about the same population today) and we lived 5 miles west of town on C Highway, which was still a gravel road at the time. When we first moved there we had an outhouse, no indoor pluming, no hot water, a wood burning stove and lots of room outdoors for a young boy to play—it beat the heck out of living in the city. I started second grade at Belgrade Elementary and soon had many wonderful new friends. My new school had dirt and grass covering the playground, instead of asphalt like the city playground. We played on the swings and slide — going down headfirst for the brave and sitting up for the timid. We played Tag and Dare Base, and shot marbles. Shooting marbles seemed to take the place of flipping baseball cards.