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Show FAR SIGNALS Chapter 1 Filed in that computer called the brain must be my first memory of Father. It would be violent-his paddling my bottom to shock me into drawing my first breath. For Father, with necessary help from Mother, brought me into the world. That day he also signed the birth certificate I have before me now. Father was the only doctor in St. Ansgar, Iowa, and encircling villages. He'd come to the upper Cedar Valley fresh out of medical college. A year later he married the youngest daughter of a tall bearded Norseman who had pioneered there in the early 1850's. For his brown-haired brown-eyed 19 year old bride the young physician bought a snug little house, yellow as sunlight. It had a humorous touch of grandeur in a small turret at the end of the front porch. As a baby I liked that round room in the turret and so did my sister El Vera, born the same day of September I was but four years earlier. We didn't however, stay many years in that cottage after my birth. Midnight phone calls stole too many hours from Father's sleep. At any time of night he might be roused for an illness or an accident in our town or at one of the surrounding hamlets and farms. He'd dress hastily and seize his black bag. In summer he'd hurry out to hitch his horse to the buggy. In winter he drove the sleigh.. Sometimes the north wind whipped snow into drifts that hid the roads and piled over the fences. More than once in a wild night blizzard the horse floundered with him over buried fence rails and wires. Father's cheeks carried marks of frostbite suffered in sub-zero weather, because he habitually treated his patients before he took care of his own needs. Those spots, redder than his naturally ruddy complexion, added highlights between his abundant black hair and black mustache. Black hair, red cheeks and |