Donald “Donnie” Eugene Smith

Where do I begin. I guess we start in 1958. My parents were living in Omaha NE at 3259 So 74th St, and they already had 3 boys. A fourth boy had miscarried, which explains the gap between Dave (2nd oldest) and Brian (3rd oldest).

I seem fat here, must have been after I ate my way back.

I was born on Dec. 15, 1958 at St Catherine’s Hospital at 03:15 AM (my poor mom). From what my mom told me years ago everything seemed normal until about 6 months when I got the flu. I became extremely ill and hospitalized. My mom had said “You were on IVs for so long that they couldn’t use your arms anymore and started sticking you in the legs instead”. Sounds like a sucky first 6 months. But I survived and thrived.

Now I did end up being the shortest and smallest of the six boys. It could have been because of this early illness. Or it could have been due to the fact that I started wrestling in the sixth grade and was constantly dropping weight for wrestling and trying to put it back on for football (I know, stupid. But such were the times). Or it could have been that I was adopted like my other five brothers always teased me about.

Of course, they now all agree that I look more like my dad than any of the other five. Bastards!!! It scarred me for life.

I don’t have a ton of memories of the early years other than vague thoughts about the farm, some Christmases and lots of bro-on-bro squabbles/fighting.

One story my father often told me was about a night where he and my mom were in the kitchen at our house on 74th, when they heard some loud banging coming from the garage. Startled as they were, they investigated and there I was on the hood of the family car with a baseball bat. I was smashing the hood over and over, putting in some decent dings/dents. Evidently, I really hated the horn in the car whenever my dad used it and I guess I was going to end its life there and then.

Growing up in a family of six boys we did do a LOT beating up on each other. But NO ONE else could harass or punch one of your brothers. I had an interesting introduction to Kindergarten. Though we literally were kitty-corner from St Joan of Arc, it was a 1st through 8th grade school. For Kindergarten, we had to walk down a LONG hill and then up another LONG hill (yes it truly was uphill both ways) until you got to the top and there was the local public school, Westgate Elementary School, which had a Kindergarten class.

Most of us went here for Kindergarten.

It provided some fun little memories. The blue fold out pads we had to take our naps on. The cubby holes to store our stuff in. The cartons of milk that they gave us to eat with our lunches. The “Show and Tell” sessions where I once brought in an egg from the farm in Wahoo that had NO shell. Just the membrane holding the yolk and egg white.

Don and Dave circa 1962, about 2 years before this incident

The not so fun memory though was early on when I first started walking to school on the down hill stretch, Hascall St. And two BIG boys, probably 8th graders jumped out and shoved me to the ground and generally scared the shit out of me. When I went home that night, I told me parents and they had a plan. The next day my older brother Dave, who is six years older and he was a BIG strong 12 year old at that time. Did I mention he was big. Anyway, he followed discreetly behind me, hopping from one bush to the next. Until the two boys once again jumped out (I’m sure they were doing it to all the kids walking to school). But to their surprise there was BIG Dave. He quickly scared the living bejesus out of those two boys. I don’t recall how physical it got, but it was over quickly. And that was it. Never bothered again.

House near St Joan of Arc at 3259 So 74th St

My grade school years were all spent at St Joan of Arc which was just a few houses down and across the street. Made getting to school extremely interesting easy and gave us a few more minutes of sleep but out mom still had to round us up and raise her voice.

As a side note, since we my mom had six boys, it wasn’t always easy to figure out who to yell at. So she would go through most of the list. “Mark, David, Brian, whatever the hell your name is, stop it”.

St Joan of Arc Grade School

My first 5 years were pretty uneventful. We had nuns for most of our teachers. Most wore their “Habits” and we had several priests who taught.

Most of the sports where through the Catholic Youth Organization and my dad did some baseball and basketball coaching.

Somewhere between 2nd and 3rd grade we were on one of our weekend trips out to the farm to visit my mom’s parents and have some great food and fun. During the drive up I looked at the car in front of us and I commented to my mom that I couldn’t read the license plate. We were pretty close to the car so they were surprised I couldn’t read it.

When we got back to Omaha, my mom made an eye appointment and wow, I couldn’t see the big E. So, I proceeded to get glasses that made the Hubble telescope (if it had been around back then) look small. To say that I was picked on — “Hey four eyes” — is an understatement. My parents on the other hand were more concerned with how often I broke them. And I broke them a lot!!!!

I played baseball as my first organized sport and played mostly catcher and some outfield. I wanted to catch because my older brother Dave was a catcher and I always looked up to him. Especially since he saved my ass from those two hooligans on my kindergarten walk. It also meant that there were several used catcher’s mitts around the house that I could use. It was not an easy task to wear a catcher’s mask with big, clunky glasses. Not to mention when someone tried to steal a base and you had to rip your mask off before you threw the ball to catch them stealing. Those glasses often went with the mask.

1960’s Swing Set

It was in the summer of 1969 that I broke my first of many bones. My brother Dale was scheduled to get his appendix taken out and the rest of us went over to the Zuerlein house, close family friends with many kids our age. They had a classic 1960’s A-frame metal swing set. There were some smaller kids on the chair glider and I was standing on the “horizontal cross bar” next to the glider. The kids in there were swinging at a fair clip when they asked to stop. I, being such a bright kid, put my right elbow against the side of one angled part of the A and my hand was ready to stop them the next time they swung back. SNAP. That was the loud sound my right wrist made when it met the glider’s arm. Off to the hospital I went. The doctor who took care of me was our family doctor, Dr. Lanspa. X-ray, put on a plaster cast, maybe some aspirin and I was off back to our neighborhood. The one small problem was that Dr. Lanspa was supposed to be in surgery taking Dale’s appendix out. This was way before cell phones so my parents were surprised that the doc was late for the surgery. They asked and he said “I was predisposed setting the broken arm of one of your other sons.” And that’s how my parents found out I had been an idiot.

I liked science and history as a kid. So I loved collecting rocks, stamps and coins. I still have my stamp and coin collection today.

I loved an early microscope that I got at this age. Looking at blood and dirty water looking for germs and such. Sometimes it would be some sort of plant fiber like a leaf. I also had an incubator that I used several times to hatch some chicken eggs.

But my favorite “toy” was probably a dissection kit. I know, sounds creepy. But I thought it was cool. My most memorable use if it was actually an emergency surgery.

I had an aquarium that I used to house amphibians. My favorite was a newt. It was pretty good at camouflaging itself on the various items I put into its home.

On a trip out to the farm outside of Wahoo, I caught a toad in the cow pond. It was a pretty good size toad about the size of a tennis ball.

Well I had the perfect place to put him and the perfect roommate for him to play with. I put him into the covered aquarium with my newt and I went to bed.

The next day I woke up and went over to feed them and all I saw was the toad, with a newt’s tail sticking out of his mouth. So much for his camouflage. I was mortified but sprung into action. I grabbed the toad and my dissection kit and went outside with a couple of brothers to a picnic table we had on the back yard patio.

We knocked the toad on the head to stun him and I stuck a pin into each foot with his back to the dissection board. I gently used the scalpel to cut his stomach open. There was the newt which I pulled out, but it wasn’t breathing.

One of my brothers went and grabbed a turkey baster. I put the tip of the baster into the newt’s mouth and gave the baster a few pumps. Suddenly the newt opened its eyes and turned over and moved. The toad wasn’t so lucky and did NOT survive the surgery. But that wasn’t part of the plan anyway since he ate my newt.

The newt continued to live for several years. Though Jimmy eventually became the doctor and I became the Engineer, I always thought I had a calling.