1. Mary Lou's Birthplace

1. Sparrow Hunting

[Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann arrived and joined the discussion]

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Where were you born, Mary Lou?

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - On Dixon Road at the Wakefield place.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Where Betty and Rachel lived?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No, there was an old house down by the ditch that crosses the road east of Ma and Pa’s farm. Edna and Henry (left) lived there when they were first married.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Heinie Heiden lived there for a while too. And, the Weaver kids, Arthur and Gilbert.

Mary Lou - That house burned down. There is a new house there on the north side of the road now.

William Frank Heiden - We used to go sparrow hunting with him (Billy Miller) back when there was a bounty on sparrows. He used to put the dead sparrows in his pockets and he’d go to divide them up and we’d sneak into his other pocket and take one out while he wasn’t looking.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - I used to hold the flashlight for Art and Heinie Heiden (right) when they would go after sparrows at night. They got 2 cents a piece and I never got anything!

William Frank Heiden - I used to go into that house a lot of times. There was a barn across the road on the south side. They had a corn crib and chicken coop on the north side where the house was. The red garage out in our drive came from that house when they tore it down. The beams and things came from that old house.

English sparrows are a non-native species and in 1887 Michigan paid a bounty of 1 cent per dead bird brought to the county clerk's office. I was unaware of it as a boy growing up in the 1950s and 60s but technically, the law was still in effect until repealed in 2000.