My children have asked me to write my memoirs so I started June 1995 and here they are.     I was born in Wells County Indiana one mile and a half Southwest of Vera Cruz on RR #116. I was born on January 11, 1913, and named Lula Mable Meyer. I will be 83 years old on my next birthday. When I was born, I resembled my Dad. It was the year of the great flood in that area.     My Dad was Albert Meyer. He was over 6 feet tall and had black hair, blue eyes and a mustache. My brother, Charley, and my brother Ed's son, Max Meyer, were the ones that resembled my Dad the most.      My Mother was Sarah Schwartz before she was married. She and my Dad met at a barn dance. He played a violin and as Mother was dancing, her skirt flew around and caught my Dad's violin and threw it across the room. Mother was nice looking. She had dark brown hair and brown eyes. My sister, Marie, resembled her the most. My Dad owned an 80-acre farm and after he and Mother married, they built a log cabin along a creek near a woods. Later when their family grew, they built a four-bedroom home closer to route 116. The house and barn are still in good repair and are owned by a family named Isch. I wish it could have stayed in the family. It was a nice home. It had a porch around two sides but it has been remodeled and now the porch is gone.     In those days, people had porches where the family sat out and enjoyed the fresh air after a workday and had time to visit with each other. Now we have air conditioners, television, refrigerators and telephones. Back then telephones had just been invented. I remember when I was in my early teens and visited my sister, Marie, in Fort Wayne. She asked me to answer her phone when it would ring. It scared me to death to lift the receiver and answer. I don't have that problem anymore.      So many things have been invented since I was a child. We had doctors but no medicines like we have now. My Mother had typhoid and had to have all of her hair cut off because of the fever. My sister, Em, had a ruptured appendix when she was sixteen and had to be operated on in our living room because there were no hospitals in Bluffton,I was only four years old but I remember it. They covered the furniture and scrubbed the floors. Our dining room and porch were crowded with relatives and friends waiting for the outcome of the operation. My sister, Fan's husband, Reuben Moser, took me upstairs so I could watch the people through the floor register. I could really see everyone good. Em had a nurse named Margery Hall and when I wanted to go in to see my sister the nurse would say, "Git while the gittings good", so I didn't get to go in every time I wanted to. Every one thought that Em would die because her appendix had burst but she is now 94 years old and has out lived all of her brothers and sisters except me.     Later in life I lived in Linn Grove, Indiana, and would shop at Giffords grocery store in Berne, Indiana. The first time I saw Mr. Gifford I told him who I was and he said, "Oh, I was at your sister, Em's operation years ago."     Our neighbors were John and Minerva Studebaker. Their daughters, Lela and Chloe, were my sisters Fan and Em's friends. Our Mothers were good friends and helped each other when sick and during childbirth. One time Minerva and Mother were sitting on the porch and I ask them where I came from. Minerva said that they found me by the river under a rock. We lived close to the Wabash River. Strange what a child remembers. That stayed in my mind all of these years. Guess we better be more careful what we tell our little ones. After I became a Christian, I learned we should be more like a worm. I knew they didn't find me under a rock because I was born with a temper like my Dad. When I was growing up and would get mad, my sisters would call me "Albert". After I joined the Apostolic Christian Church, I knew I still didn't have all I needed because I still would lose my temper. After I had a real born again experience, God's sweet Spirit took control.      One of my earliest childhood memories was a terrible blizzard that blew the laundry that my mother was hanging on the line, way out into the orchard. The sheets were hanging on the trees. We had real cold winters and much snow in those days. We had a hard coal burner and I remember how cozy it looked around the stove and how good it felt. My brothers and sisters would sit by the stove and warm their feet. The hard coal burners had shiny nickel-plated sides you could sit and put your feet against. It felt so good when you came in from outdoors and were nearly frozen. When they had me vaccinated the doctor came right to our home and did it there. He told me to go over to the stove and hold my arm up. It felt good. We had another stove in the kitchen like the Schlatters had in their summer kitchen. Those two stoves kept our whole house warm. The bedrooms upstairs all had registers that heat came through. Of course we had big wool blankets and feather ticks too. I think that's what they called them. We stayed warm that's for sure.     My parents had eight children. Three sons, (Ed, Levi, and Charley) and five daughters (Fan, Pearly, Emma, Marie and I). Pearly died at age 8 months and is buried in the old Apostolic Christian Church cemetery. My grandmother Mariah Schwartz, my Mother's Mother is also buried there, as is my brother Levi. Levi was killed in World War 1, October 1918, a month before the armistice was signed. He was given the "crux de guerre", the hero's medal for bravery.     I can remember when he left to go to the oil fields of Oklahoma. He was wearing a mackinaw jacket and was walking toward route 116 to catch the interurban that would take him to Bluffton, and on to Oklahoma. While he worked in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, he was drafted into the army and was shipped to Europe. He wasn't given permission to return home to see his family before being shipped out, and it broke my family's heart. Levi refused to carry a gun, so they gave him a job carrying messages to the front lines. I think they called them "runners";. It was a very dangerous job. He was honoring his Mother's teaching not to kill. We do not know if he ever gave his heart to God before he was killed, but I know God answers prayer and my Mother prayed for her children. God can speak to a man on a battlefield and he can have an experience with God. I want to believe that my Mother's prayers were answered for her son and that we'll see him again. Levi wrote to me. I was only 4. He said he would bring me a doll from France. Of course, he couldn't, but my daughter, Mary Lou, remembered last year when she was in France, and she brought me a beautiful doll. I appreciate the thought "thanks, Mary Lou."     Like I said, Levi had a job as a runner. He had discovered a machine gun nest and was on his way to report it to the front. Being very tired, he jumped into a foxhole where he met another American soldier. They talked of home, showed each other snap shots. Levi was offered food, but refused as he was very out of breath and needed air. The other soldier told him the fighting was bad right then and he shouldn't stand up. They continued talking, and then Levi did stand up and was instantly killed. He had been hit in the forehead with shrapnel. Later when he was sent back, my brothers asked that his coffin be opened to identify him. They did and it was Levi. He had been hit on the forehead and they identified his teeth. The American Legion played taps and shot guns over the grave. They always put a new flag on a soldier's grave every Memorial Day. It was a sad funeral for our family. Levi was only 25 years old.     Later my Mother tried to contact the soldier that had been with Levi when he was killed. She asked many men that had been in his unit, but no one could give her any information. So finally, she put a notice in the American Legion magazine asking for information concerning her son's death. She received a 12-page letter from Ben Hardison from Childress, Texas, with all the details of Levi's death. Mother corresponded with Ben for years and was so grateful to Ben for delivering Levi's message to the front and making it possible for Levi to receive the honor and the heroes medal. When Mother was dividing Levi's possessions, I received the medal, some buttons from his uniform and the 12-page letter. Marie received the American flag that covered his coffin. Em got his big framed picture which she later gave to me when she went to the "Christian Care Nursing Home" and couldn't take it with her. I don't remember what was given to my brothers or my sister Fan. I know they each received a remembrance of their brother. Levi looked a lot like my sister, Fan and Kenny, her son.     After I was married and had four children, we took a trip to Oregon. On the way home, we went through Texas and looked up Ben. We had a nice talk with him and he gave me a full account of Levi's death. He was really a nice man, a "scout" leader who encouraged my sons in their "scout" work. I believe he was mayor of that town for several years. Levi was 25 years old when he died. He would be 102 now. My Mother would be 125, so she was 23 when Levi was born. Today is June 1, 1995. The insurance Mother received from the government after Levi's death supported us for many years. She received ten thousand dollars. (Seventy-five dollars a month for eleven years.)     Mother knew how to manage and she paid her bills on time. Regardless what you were doing, if she owed you anything, you had to stop and take it. One time I was doing dishes and had my hands in the dishwater, and she stood there holding out what she owed me until I wiped my hands and took it. Maybe the world would be different if the same principles were applied today.     She could take cheap boiling beef and make it tender as sirloin steak. I don't think we even knew what sirloin was in those days. I remember after I was married, Harold took me to his parent's farm. They were butchering beef and they put the sirloin steaks into hamburger. It was the best hamburger I ever had. While I'm on the subject of butchering, I remember how sick I got that day when they brought the meat in and put it on the kitchen table. I hadn't told Harold's parents I was pregnant, so when I saw steam rising from all that meat and smelled it, I got so sick I spent a lot of time in the bathroom. No longer a secret. Seven months later our son, Harold Sidney was born on September 16, 1941.      My brother, Ed, was a farmer. He married Flonie Chris, and had two sons, Max and Paul, and four daughters, Freida, Evelyn (Juanita), Hazel, and Virginia Bell. Ed was a hard worker and could do many things. I remember at one time he had a blacksmith shop in Vera Cruz. He also made brooms and he let me sell some of them. I would get 5 cents for every one I would sell. I thought I was in the money and I could buy nickel Hershey bars and grape suckers. Those were my favorites. When I was 16, he taught me how to drive. We had a model T Ford and he took me into a harvested hay field and told me to go to it. It wasn't too hard to learn. I can remember how he had to laugh. I probably acted scared.