I was born and raised in Sterling, Illinois, a small dingy little town in the midwestern region of the United States which was dominated by Northwestern Steel and Wire that employed most of the other town folks.

     I was the last of my mother's seven children and I was the only one born in a hospital. Jean was Pop's seventh child.

    This irritated Pop, my father, and he refused to go to the hospital to see me. He hated hospitals. He really hated hospitals and was quite angry at my mother for insisting on having a child at the hospital.

   He is reported to have said, " The other six were born at home. And, if it was good enough for them, it sure as hell is good enough for this one too."

    My older sisters did go to the hospital and when they asked the nurses to see Dean "Wid-yit" or "Wid-git". The staff had no clue what they were talking about. Everyone got quite irrited until finaly it dawned on one of the nurses that the girls were talking about "Dean Woodyatt".

    "Oh!" she blurted out realising their mistake. "They want to see Butch".

    You guessed it. I was a huge baby and the name stuck. From that day forth, I was called Butch by everyone in the family and most everyone else too. I even told people my name was Butch. I didn't know it was Dean until I went to school.

    Now this irrited my mother as she had named me Dean because she was tired of all her children having their names shortened. William was Bill,  Robert was Bob,  Junita was Nita, Dorothy was Dot,  Joanne was Jo. She forgot they nicknamed Jean "Chloe". Anyhow, she called me Butch also.

    When I was a little older, I had blue eyes and long blonde curley hair that tumbled down past my shoulders. My older sisters thought it was cute to dress me in their hand-me-downs and parade me down to the local soda fountain shoppe to bait the local boys into conversation.

    I was probally the first cross-dress boy named Butch ever.

    It wasn't my idea, but I went along with it for the free ice- cream sodas.

    When Pop found out what was happening, He quickly put an end to it. He gave me a Butch haircut and my sisters remarked that he had turned a sweet little girl into a mean little boy.

    When I was just a little older, Someone gave me a fuzzy pair of "Tom Mix" cowboy chaps covered with fake sheepskin fur. One day, I went too close to some trash my mother was burning. A flying ember ignited those chaps and they went up like a gasoline fed infernal. Doctors were called to the house. My legs had third degree burns, bones charred, etc. The cords behind my knees were so shrunken that my legs were pulled up tightly against my ass. All the doctors claimed that I would never walk again. They wanted to cut the cords so that my legs could be streightened out.

    Pop would have none of this! He threw the doctors out. He then proceeded to enjoy tormenting me for several months by applying some of his homemade concoctions and painfully stretching those cords.

    It worked! Within a few years, I did not even have a scar to prove that it ever happened. Druid magic?

    One day when I was a little older, I was slurping the last of the milk from my oatmeal bowl sitting on the table. This irritated Pop, so he whacked my head driving it into and breaking the bowl. My mother had a doctor lance and stitch the huge boil that formed on the front of my upper gums. As a result my two huge front teeth came in quite protuded looking very much like they belonged on a beaver or a rabbit.

    No one ever dared to nickname me "Beaver".  At least, not to my face.

    Also, whenever Pop had a problem with anything Joanne or I was doing, he would immedately whack us up along side the head. I only ended up being tone deaf whereas Joanne seems to be a little hard of hearing beside having a phobia about anyone touching her ears.

    Mother, also, gave me a little gift,  It seems I am a little bit color blind.

     I am also a little bit dyslexic, perhaps caused by also being whacked on the head. Who knows?