Page 79 - Armstrong Bloodline - ebook_Neat

the 2 or 3 wildest and toughest young men in town so he was in his element. He was 20 or so. Nora was a
teenager and was very pretty but a little hefty, as were all the Bulen women. She was well liked by boys and
girls alike. I don't think she went to high school, at least not much. Wayne was a good looking kid but also a
little pudgy. He must have quit school, too, because none of my school pictures of those years has him in them.
What he did for money is a mystery. I don't recall him ever having much of a job. Those were depression years
and even the family men could hardly make a living.

Provided by Robert Bulen – at this time Wayne Armstrong was a sophomore and Robert Bulen a senior

He was an avid reader and spent much of his idle time, of which he had a lot, with his nose in a book. Good
books like some of the classics and he could recant the plot, characters and story line of every one of them.
Every farmer had a few goats and Wayne had his pets trained to pull his coaster wagon. He removed the
handle from the wagon and built some shafts and made rope and leather harnesses for the goats. It was
hilarious to see him coming down the road sitting all cramped up in that little wagon with the goat leaning into
the traces. Another of his summer hobbies was to snare gophers when they stuck their heads out of the hole
and put them in a cage. If they appeared to be a new mother he would dig out the nest and take the little guys
home and feed and train them. He would make tiny little carts and string harnesses and would get the gophers
to pull them all over the place. Everyone thought he was nuts, and he probably was, but he was having fun
while I was hoeing corn. Who's nuts?

His affinity for the girls was legend. The word wasn't known then but today he would be called Mr.
Testosterone. No girl disliked him and he was a very good dancer but most girls would not go out with him.
They all said he had 3 hands. I used to wait in the car while he took his girl to the door and it either took him an
hour to kiss a girl goodnight or he kissed her a lot more than once.

In a telephone conversation with Robert Bulen, he recalled that he had visited my father (who he described as
being very personable) and his second wife who he remembered as being a beautiful woman (my mother). He
also recalled that when my father married his first wife she was pregnant at the time. I questioned my father
about this, thinking that I may have an older brother or sister I never knew about, but he told me that his first
wife – Rosalie – had subsequently had a miscarriage.

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