The births of the ten children of Hilda and Linus Mertz spanned the 18 years between 1911 and 1929. The Mertz household had teenagers all through the '20s, '30s and 1940s. We were a large family that became small. The oldest children tell tales of little brothers and sisters and of when times were good. The middle children remember both the big family and the small family. Of how the crops and the family finances diminished with the depression and the drought of the '30s. The oldest ones were leaving home by the time Bruce, the youngest, was four years old and by the time he became a teenager in the '40s he was an only child. To each of us the family was different because our placement by birth. These are the tales of the Mertz brothers and sisters.