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| Lincoln Infographic © Jordon Deutmeyer 2015 |
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Richard Critchfield, Those Days: An American Album (New York: Dell, 1986), p. 342—
Just after we moved to Fargo [ND], the summer of 1932, Mother took Grandma Critchfield down to Knoxville, Iowa, to visit McLain in the veterans hospital. He'd been there ever since his brain was injured in that plane crash during World War I. Mom took the three boys along with her. We'd moved into a house on the north side of town and the Hopes were visiting… Mr. Hope had fallen asleep at the wheel and woke up when his car hit a passing train at a crossing. He walked for help with a shattered kneecap. Anyway, the whole family of Hopes came to our house in Fargo to recuperate. When Mom got back from Iowa, she hunted all over for the toilet brush and found it in the kitchen. Helen had been using it to scrub vegetables.
In that first house in Fargo, a family named Hilliard lived next door… Mr. Hilliard wore shorts and a goatee. The shorts came below his stomach and one day his little girl stuck a nasturtium in his navel and he left it there all day. Mr. Hilliard was very congenial. He'd call over, "Yoo hoo! Let's all come out! I've got a good dirty story!" Daddy was always joking too. One time, a man had been chasing girls in the park and Daddy said, "I just wish he'd jump out of the bushes at Betty. She'd scare 'im." Another time, when Aunt Helen was visiting from Iowa with her two-year-old and a newborn baby, Daddy said, "You people in Iowa breed just like rabbits." That didn't go down so well.
