Dad without the war

Dad had quit school after the eighth grade to and went to work to provide for the family.  The family moved into a house that had been occupied by people that had the 1918 flu. Notice I don't call it the Spanish flu as it was everywhere but Spain was the only one to report how bad it was, everybody else was afraid the reports would make their country look weak. World War one was going on. Everybody got sick and dad's father died, working to take care of fourteen kids wore him down.  Dad would work, bring the money home and take a little for himself.  He would go to the junk yard every week and buy pieces to build a motorcycle. He would use it to get to jobs around southern Minnesota. The bad thing about this is he liked to go fast and would over shoot the turns on the road, remember the roads were just paths through the country.  His ability to see something them go copy it kept him out of at least one demonstration, which he thought was funny.  They told him he couldn't come in because "he would just go home and build his own".  

I remember a cattle drive when we first got to Webster, Dad deciding he was going to put in a road through the woods, the time he bought all of us an ice cream cone but forgot himself, the story behind the new van and the four hour trip, taking care a robin and her nest, his lawn mower trying to pass us going down the highway, etc.... Will have to do these stories later, I'm short on time today.