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FROM THE LAYOUT VAULT: 2004 When my father died unexpectedly in 1999, I felt like I was on a mission to preserve everything I knew and remembered about him. I kicked myself time after time for not asking him more memories about his younger years and then recording them. I began to try to get stories about our time together on paper as often as possible.�
especially the brown crock of baked stop was one of the dime stores on the beans. Charlie often ordered chili, which square, usually Newberrys, where we came with what we thought had a chocolate were the cutest little round milkshake or cold drink at Because our mother crackers. the soda counter. was a stickler for unWe must have repeated At the end of the day, mussed hair, these this Saturday ritual Charlie would be waiting shopping outings hundreds of times as I was for us in one of the in the summer growing up. In later years, parking spots on Battlefield Mall replaced the the square. Our required that square as the shopping favorite place to the long trip mecca of Springfield, and I stop for supper be made with learned not to worry about was at the Steak no windows my hair getting blown. But and Shake on St. rolled down. when I think about the Louis Street. If we things the four of us did as were really tired, we ate in the car, but we usually went inside. It was a family, I always remember those trips, with my dad as chauffeur and my mother always a treat, because we loved their leading the charge around the square. steakburgers and tiny french fries, and
my family