I believe the first time I was taken to jail was in 1977. It was in the summertime, I was staying at my grandparent's house along with my cousin who was six months younger than me. A simple fact, he was never allowed to live down much to his dismay.

On the day of the crime, we did our usual, have breakfast with Gramma and Grampa. Grampa would then go out into the garage to tinker on various projects and eventually find his way into the massive gardens of which my Grandparents were known. He would complete the mundane gardening jobs, weeding, watering, and general maintenance. He often would be lost in the huge gardens most of the day.

My grandma would be in the house either cleaning, baking, or reading her favorite novels - cookbooks. She loved baking and could bake the world's best cinnamon rolls, orange rolls, and bread. Cakes were sometimes noted to be 'iffy', not due to her baking skills but because she may not have had all of the required ingredients and she simply used the next best substitution.

My gramma was not a fussy person and grew up in Depression days. She had thirteen other siblings and knew what it was like to go without. It never dawned on her to purchase new what she would think of as luxury items. Her bath towels, for example, were threadbare, and many had holes, my mother, frequently pointed this out to her. Gramma would simply reply, "Oh, well, it still dries your body off."

Grampa, on the other hand, was a troublemaker, he was known for playing tricks and jokes on everyone. He would tell stories from when he was a kid in a small farm town in Minnesota. Grampa kept pretty busy even though he grew up in an isolated area. He and his friends would go out and tip cows while they were sleeping at night. On Halloween, they didn't go trick or treating like kids nowadays do.

"No, we would work ... One Halloween, we got an old hay wagon, took it apart, hauled it up on top of the old school, and put it back together again ... piece by piece. That was a lot of work! ... Kids these days just don't know the meaning of work," he would say shaking his head. "Oh, another Halloween, we painted ol' Herb Carlson's chicken's butt's green, that was a job too. Yes, we worked ... Nobody gave us any candy."

Together, my grandparents loved to play games. They would play any card game, marble game, or any game of luck or chance one can think of. Neighboring couples would come over for an evening of card playing at the kitchen table. Bonnie and Stanley were over the most. You could hear lots of banter back and forth.

The men, of course, were always against the women. Stanley used the excuse his fingers were too big to draw cards from the stock card pile, forcing his wife to draw the cards for him. This intentional helplessness set Bonnie up to be blamed that she had given him bad cards deliberately. The women would retort, "Well, draw your own damn cards then!" So on and so forth for the entire evening, it was quite amusing listening to them from the other room.

In the absence of adult friends coming over to play cards, kids were often "grabbed" to play games in their place. It didn't matter if you knew what you were doing or not. You basically were a cardholder and my grandparents would play the cards for you.

Cribbage was a favorite game. The adults would take their turns respectively and then play our cards respectively. When the play ended, they would count up all the points. We really didn't have to do much of anything other than just sit there and hold cards. I will say all of the grandkids did learn how to play cards at a rather early age through this method.

My grandparents lived on forty-four acres of forest. It was a lot of property covered with pine trees, birch, poplar, and lots of brush. My grandfather had three huge gardens, two were down by the house and one was up on the hill. They grew vegetables, fruits, and fun things such as pumpkins for carving on Halloween.

My grandmother canned the harvest in late summer and autumn. It was not unusual for her to can over one-hundred some jars of tomatoes, pickles, or something else. I can recall a photograph my grandfather took of Gramma, sitting on a picnic table in the yard, next to thirty-some laundry baskets of tomatoes. They loved their gardening.

On the day in question, when Grampa came out of one garden and looked at my cousin and me, and said, "Okay, I am taking you two to jail ... get in the truck." Our hearts dropped, we didn't know what we had done to deserve such punishment. We were riding our bikes around the driveway minding our own business after all. Okay, we did sneak into the raspberry patch earlier but I don't think anyone saw that.

"I am going to let Gramma know where I am taking you two. Put the bikes away and get into the truck," he said as he walked toward the house.

I looked at my cousin, "We have to."

We placed the bikes next to the shed as we were told.

Grampa soon came out of the house and got into the truck. He turned the ignition and started driving down the road. My cousin and I sat in silence. We didn't know what to think. Why are we going to jail?

We drove along the highway for approximately fifteen minutes before Grampa said, "I don't think I have enough gas to make it to the Jail today. Let's just stop at the Dairy Delight instead."

Relieved, my cousin and I immediately agreed this was a much better idea, "Yes!"

We stopped at the Dairy Delight and picked out four ice cream cones, one for each of us, and one for Gramma.