Brother

Names redacted at family's request.

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What a dumb-cluck Danny's brother was getting into such a scrape and bringing FBI hounds down on the family to search and harass them in 1971.

They were born 9 months apart, which means that there was a baby growing in his mother's womb right after he was born.

She was overwhelmed.  I was told that Brother was such a handful and Dan was so quiet, that she would leave him in the bassinet so long that his head developed a flat spot.

 Brother was rolypoly as a baby and was so round and overfed that he had difficulty walking at 18 months.  Dan was skinny and long legged and looked slightly undernourished in photos.  I do know that in that family you had to eat quick or the food would be gone off your plate.  The four older children ate hunched over, guarding their plate the first Thanksgiving I ever spent with them.  I had never seen a holiday meal treated like timed trials at a speedway.

Brother used to pound on Dan. He was an angry difficult child, and did not like sharing the space with Dan.   Dan was a quiet defensive one who learned to be passive aggressive to survive and to get around Brother.  I had talked to one of Dan's high school friends who told me it was disturbing how verbally and physically abusive Brother was to Danny.

When we were first married and learning to sleep together,  Danny would have night mares, and scream Brother's name, and punch out into the air or sometimes land a blow onto me or the pillow I would wedge between us for buffer.  As time went on, those dreams stopped and we could snuggle, but the first two years were rocky.  Danny is still a bit passive and won't venture forth an opinion or make a decision unless you patiently coax it out of him.

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 skipping

Father as ww2 decorated hero, compare/contrast
FBI and trial
visiting the federal penitentiary

skipping to the farm
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Dani and I bought a secluded farm in a very rural part of Missouri on the Arkansas border.  Even though it was secluded, we soon noticed that people in town knew of us and were curious to find out if we were Amish or what, because of Dan's long hair and our homemade clothes that we wore.

So it wasn't much surprise when this clean cut young fellow walked into our place, with a knapsack and asked for a place to stay.

Gosh we were trusting.
How did you find us back here?

Asked around...

okay.  Why is your hair so short?  Man it's pitiful.

My last job made me cut it.

Oh okay. and that was that.  Come on in.  our food is your food,   Let's get you fed.

So he stays. and we talk and shoot the breeze. There's not much to show him on the farm, we're keeping bees and gardening a bit. We don't exactly work up a sweat and don't expect him to.

"Do you guys ever get into politics?" he asks, tucked in with a bunch of other questions and stories.  Like what's your family like?

Oh hell no.  we tell him.   Not anymore!   We got a dumb-cluck brother that keeps us from getting anywhere near politics.  We are done with protesting.  War ended.   Brother was just here visiting, (right after his release from prison) but we couldn't let him stay.   He's out in Colorado working explosion details in the mines.

That fellow was real handy. He taught us how to screen dirt for stones and helped build a compost pit.  After a few days he left, walking out the way he came in.

Turns out to have been an FBI agent.  They followed Brother for ten years after his release, just checking up on him now and again.