Where did you live while growing up?  I lived in Emlenton, Pennsylvania, a small town along the Allegheny River in Western Pennsylvania.  Emlenton is 60 miles north of Pittsburgh and 60 miles south of Erie.

What was your house like?  Following my September 17, 1950 birth, home was a second-story apartment on Main Street in downtown Emlenton.  That building no longer exists.  Emlenton's medical center now stands on this site.

On October 7, 1953--three weeks after my sister Denise's September 17, 1953 birth, we moved to our newly-built home in Emlenton.  Our red brick, ranch-style house was located on the corner of Walnut and Hickory Streets, and was one of the first homes built on Walnut Street.  Our front and back yards were quite large, and for the next 40 years, we enjoyed having a vacant, verdant field behind the back yard.  It yielded purple violets in early May; strawberries in June; summer wild flowers; sumac/Queen Anne's lace/dried grasses for autumn bouquets; and a ready supply of pine branches with clusters of cones for wintertime decorating.

Our house contained two bedrooms, two baths, a den, kitchen, living and dining rooms.  We had an attic; a basement; a two-stall, attached garage; front and back porches; and a side patio bordered by flower beds.  In the late 1980's, the trio of brothers who built our home, remodeled the basement.  That provided two additional bedrooms, a full bath, living room and kitchen/laundry.

Mother sold her 428 Walnut Street house in March 2001 when she moved from Pennsylvania to New Mexico.

What was your school like?  I attended several school buildings between 1956 and 1968.  We did not have kindergarten in the mid-1950's.  I entered first grade at the red-brick Emlenton Elementary School in September 1956.  That's also where I attended second and third grades.

For grades four and five, I walked one mile from our house to the Emlenton school, then rode a school bus five miles to St. Petersburg, Pennsylvania.  Our father, Charles William Sheakley, attended this St. Petersburg school building in the 1930s.  It is across the street from the St. Petersburg Cemetery, where most of Denise's and my paternal ancestors are buried.

For sixth grade, I rode the school bus to Foxburg, Pennsylvania, about four miles from Emlenton.  Three sixth grade classes occupied that run-down building which subsequently was demolished.

My "junior high" years were in Parker, Pennsylvania, a seven-mile bus ride from Emlenton.  Grade seven was in a two-story building.  My eighth and ninth grade classrooms were a series of Quonset huts, several blocks from where we attended seventh grade.

In 1965, when I began tenth grade, the new Allegheny-Clarion Valley (ACV) High School, across from the Foxburg Golf Course, was completed.  I was a Rotary International exchange student to Tomelilla, Sweden, during my junior year (1966-67).  I returned to the United States for my senior year of high school and graduated from ACV in May 1968.

When I think of my elementary school years, I recall white chalk, blackboards and chalk erasers which we students took turns cleaning at the end of the school day; the smell of caramel-colored school glue and white school paste; freshly-waxed floors; individual wooden desks with attached seats.  Instead of backpacks, we carried books/lunch boxes in our arms or in book bags.  We stowed our school supplies beneath the lids of our wooden desks.  Those desks contained ink wells.  Once a week in fourth through sixth grades, a writing instructor visited our classrooms and taught us penmanship.  Using bottles of ink, steel-tipped pens and ink blotters, we practiced rainbow and rocker curves and perfected our cursive writing skills.

What is your favorite memory?  Our frequent family gatherings are happy memories.  Great-Grandpa Fred and Lieucetta Farringer, Grandparents Farringer and Sheakley, aunts, uncles and cousins usually came to Emlenton for Labor Day, Christmas and New Year's celebrations.  Grandma Florence Farringer often hosted a dinner marking Mother's and Aunt Helen Morrison's 5/4 and 5/9 birthdays; Mother's Day; and Aunt Edith and Uncle Ken Duffee's 5/10 anniversary.  We spent many Memorial Days at Aunt Ede's in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania.  Aunt Helen and Uncle Bill Morrison typically hosted Thanksgiving dinner.  Denise and  I usually ate Thursday suppers and Sunday dinners at Grandma Mildred and Grandpa Llewellyn Sheakley's Foxburg home.