My mother, the preacher's wife would never lie, steal or swear. When aggravated she would say, "Dingle dangle it".

However, I learned years later, actually after she had died, that she had never become a citizen of the U.S. She and her family came to the U.S. to South Dakota in 1889, when she was only four years old. They came from Russia, where they had been part of the Volga Germans.

She left home when she was fifteen years old. She had just finished the fifth grade and started teaching school in North Dakota, where she lived with Lawrence Welk's family.

Subsequently she met my dad, who was an assistant preacher at a little church in Java, South Dakota, where she was then teaching.

I am digressing from my subject of my mother's crookedness. I said that she wouldn't lie except to tell the story that she was born in South Dakota. I know that Grandpa became a citizen long after she left home. I know that my dad became a citizen when I was a young boy. So little Momma, you were a crook, who was absolutely, totally faithful to the Republican Party.

I remember going down to the waterfront in Seattle to see the ship bringing President Harding from Alaska. That night we went to the stadium at the University of Washington to hear him give his speech. I, being six or seven years old, don't remember anything about it, except that I was there.

A day or two later Harding was dead.

My mother has been dead for twenty seven years. So there is nothing that can punish her. However, there were a lot of Republican votes that didn't come from the cemetery but came from a crooked little preacher's wife.