When I came to Earth

I was born in Taft, Kern, CA on 14 July 1923 to my parents, Walter Pierce and Jessie Ventom (DeFriez) Hunter. At the time of my birth, my three olders sisters had Whooping Cough, so Mother couldn't bring me home. I was taken care of by a lovely Lady, Mrs. Ayer, who took care of me for the first month of my life. She wanted to keep me as she had no children of her own. She told Daddy and Mother--'You have all those other girls', but my parents wouldn't give me away.
We lived on a Lease then. The house was the only house on the Lease, which was situated very near the Gas Plant where my Daddy worked. The Plant was very noisy as there were engines running. This place was about three miles from what was called 'Ford City', which was a supburb of Taft, CA.
Near the Plant, there were gas storage tanks. As children we roamed the hills that surrounded our humble home. It had a screen porch on it. In the Spring there were beautiful wild flowers--lupins, brodias. The brodias grew on tall stems topped with a most beautiful purple bloom. There were dandelions, a different variety that grows here in Utah. The blooms were a pretty light cream color. When my three sisters and I roamed the hills, we would pick the dandelion that had gone to seed and blow the seeds off. If all the seeds blew away, it meant to us that Mother wanted us home. Ah, what children think! We scratched our names of the huge gas tanks.
There were oil wells very near to us. One especially was very close to our home. Daddy warned us not to go in what was the 'sump hole', where oil was in a large circle. We stayed away from it.