Lavern "Dutch" and Hildegarde (Andrews) "Sallie" Berns and their son Galen moved here in around 1950. There was a two story brick house on the site which has since been razed. While here, they had three more children, Darrell, Elaine (Eichbauer)  and Joanie (McCoy).

In the late 1950s, Dutch and Sallie built a house on South Custer Road next to his parents, Edna and Hank Berns' house.

His older brother, Walter Berns, his wife Madelyn and their children, Karen, Lauren, Allen, Margie and Gwendolyn  lived in the house for a short time.

According to Karen's wedding announcement of June 25, 1966, the Walter Berns family was living at 8031 Dixon Road. We had previously thought the address was 8090 Dixon Road. If you have personal experience with this location, please send an email.

Galen and I were the same age so I would go to his place to play often. To the right of the barn was a driveway that led from Dixon Road back to a commercial stone quarry. Although we were probably not supposed to, we sometimes went back there to play if the men weren't working that day. They had to constantly pump water out of the quarry and this discharged into a ditch to the south. The water was very cold and we were always warned not to get into it because of the fear of polio at the time. There was a belief that, for some reason, swimming in cold water could lead to polio. Oh, well.

Also, another relative, Fred Milhan, owned the property the bordered on the south of this farm. His frontage was at 7800 South Custer Road. When Fred came to America in 1873, the story was that he built his first house from the trees on the property and used the stone from a quarry on his property for the foundations. We don't know for sure but it would be easy to assume that this is the same quarry.

The picture is of Galen (left) and me (right) in a Radio Special wagon in 1950 or so.