My Brother & I
On Saturday my little bro moves down to
I was born in July 1981, Doug was born in July 1982. From that beginning we were inseparable until we started school. It was a time before school, work, & girls made life so stressful. To nobody’s surprise, I was the talker out of the two. My bro actually didn’t begin to speak until he was 4 or 5 because I always did the talking. He needed Cheerios, he let me know & I hooked him up. It worked like that for everything. I may have been the talker but he was more of the trouble maker. His nick name was fingers because he swiped everything. To this day, had he not been born, I would have been in trouble once. My angelic little mind could never come up with a bad thought. On top of being the speaker in the pair, I came up with the big ideas. My little bro was the one that made them happen. For example, I would be like, “that’s a huge jump. We should jump that beast with our bikes.” My bro would do it & get hurt. Just about every pic of us from this time features him with some badass scab, me without a scratch.
My earliest memories are of us building stuff in our sandbox. We were such big fans of it that our dad built us one in the basement just so we could push sand even in winter. To my knowledge, no one has ever had such a luxury other than us. Our parents bought us literally every Tonka truck on the face of the earth. The dump truck & crane were literally worn down to nothing but rusty metal. We built absolutely everything you could imagine.
Our dad was a big racing fan so his sons pretty much didn’t have a choice in the matter. I have so many memories of our family sitting in front of the TV watching Dale Earnhardt dominate. He was always our absolute favorite driver. We also watched open wheel cars also & couldn’t wait until dad deemed us old enough to go to
Everyday the Schwartz boys religiously watched Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood & Sesame Street. I still remember my favorite episode of Mr. Roger’s. He built this sweet fort out of these wooden crates. It was awesome. As for
As mentioned before, we spoiled our neighborhood with trouble. We went through big wheels like other kids our age went through diapers. My favorite model was the CHIPS version. It was the envy of the neighborhood. We also had not one, but two wagons & tore those babies up. My dad pulled those things into the shop on a weekly basis to fix them. I remember going around the hood with our plastic tool kits looking for spare wood to start our construction business. We were ambitious even then.
My family always went out for bike rides. We had this thing called a buger that was towed behind my dad’s bike. Our favorite experiences were when dad hauled us down to a construction site to see stuff build or a road being paved. We were awe struck by the heavy machinery. (They even captured us once in the DePere journal, stars were born.)
I remember going across the bridge over to my Grandma & Grandpa Schwartz’s to get ice cream. They lived in West DePere over by all the action. We used to always go & swing over at a park across from the SNC. There were also train tracks just down the block & we loved to watch the trains go by. This lead to Santa bringing us a train set for Christmas. My dad slowly added on to the thing until it expanded to 2 sheets of plywood. We had the sweetest set. I think my dad loved it more than we did because he went & bought more stuff for it than we ever asked for.
I will always look at these times as the best in my life, a time so simple & so carefree. As my brother & I have grown up & become our own men, these memories will always bring us back to a time when being just like your brother was all you could ever ask for.
I have been working on a Blog about my buddy Clarence for a couple weeks now, hopefully that will be the next one I finish... Until then...
