Gary Horsager third son of Blaine Horsager

Well let me start out by saying i have always felt very blessed for having grown up in Berlin. The small town life has been very good for me.
I think the earliest memoires that i have are of holidays spent down at grandma's house,all the kids and parents always managed to squeeze into that little house. Harley and Bryan always seemed to have something to keep all of the grand kids occupied with,like the fake can of peanuts with the spring in it or the hand crank generator that you held onto to see who was the toughest .
I also remember the whips the uncles had and they were very good with them they could wrap them around you and never leave any marks or whip the leaves off the branches or maybe a crabapple or two. Speaking of crabapples the jellies and jams that mom and grandma made were out of this world with flavor.
One of the most exciting times in the town had to have been the last weekend in June when Berlin legion put on the fourth of July celebration.We would spend most of the day setting up and then try to find the best place to watch the fireworks from. The line of cars leaving town at night was like a parade itself with everyone in a hurry to go home.
Going to school in Berlin was special for the first two years I was the only boy in the class but from the third grade on there were two of us and six girls. Our school only had one major sport to participate in and that was basketball and believe it or not we were pretty good . But when spring rolled around the bats and gloves came out and many a game was played in the school yard. We did have a babe ruth team that played on Sundays and even came close to going to state one year.
Well enough of sports some highligths of my youth that bring back fond memories are learning to ride my bike with the help of my father who got me started going down the hill south of our house then he let go like all fathers have to do sooner or later so I promptly drove starightdown the hill and across the intersecting road then into the ditch. Where I then crashed.
But I was hooked on riding by then so I kept at it until I could go it alone and life has never been the same.
Then came the day when it was my turn for the big stepup to driving the hoist truck around the block rack to load up the equipment needed for dads next moving job. I was pretty thrilled with the aspect of this new adventure, of course with this new talent came more responsibilty and before i know it i was my dads right hand man on all his moving jobs for the rest of my summers from the 7th grade throught my senior year in high school. Thank goodness he finally sold the outfit the week before i went to college. But i will always cherish those days i really came to know my dad in those years. I must also say that my older brother Denis and i did move acouple of jobs by our self although the boss had to come and see how we were doing!!!!!!!
In the days before i was working for dad it seems that our biggest concern for the day was to find enough employment to be able to buy our coke and bag of peanuts. We would usually find work at the elevator. We could sweep out the driveway,or board up some box cars,unload fertilizer and a number of things. Butalot of days was still spent just hanging around town shooting B-B guns at bottles and cans at the dumpground or football up at young's house in the back yard.Then there were a few hikes out to the gravel pit in youngs pasture to try and snare some gophers,
I'm sure i could come up with a few more memories but it took alot of thinking to get this far I'll save the rest for later.