Call me Pika, Background

Dear reader,

What would you do if your kids asked you to write down some of the things that happened to you when you were small and how it came to be that you wound up in America in 1949 as a kid of 13, having been bounced around by World War II, originally from Latvia and having lived in Germany for five years during and after the war? Well, here's what I did. I wrote up an account of about 100 pages, taking me through early life in a castle in Latvia, the trip to southern Germany while the war was grinding to a halt, life on a German farm, continuing on in a displaced persons camp in Bavaria, then emigrating to the United States, learning how to pick cotton in Mississippi and finally winding up as a freshman at Yale at age 15. That's how far I am at the moment, and that may well be as far as I want to go, because beyond that comes another story and another focus. So now comes the question of what to do with the manuscript from here on. I figured that I would park it in a semi public though not published format by putting it into a blog where my family could read it, as might anyone else who might run across it. So, let's get this thing loaded and see what happens.

Valdis Kibens (Mr.)