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My Town I was born before the Vietnam war, before computers, and before seat belts. Come to think about it, I think I grew up long before most of the problems that face kids and parents today. I am not saying my childhood was an easy one. It wasn't, for one thing my Dad left before I can even remember. Leaving just my brother, my Grandmother and my Mom, and of course me. We lived in a very small mountain town not far from the Nevada border. It was mostly a ranching community with logging being the second largest industry. When I grew up the mills owned the town, and everyone who didn't ranch worked for the mill. Mom worked at Walt Wirth's Lumber Mill and the smell of sawdust was ever present in our home and a pair of leather gloves were always drying behind the wood stove. In those days no one locked their doors, worried about their kids coming right home after school or whether your dog was always in your own yard. Everyone called right out the front door when they wanted their kids to come home, and TV was only two channels, Ed Sullivan or Dinah Shore. The music in our home was country western, and I can't remember a weekend that my Mom didn't clean house to the tunes of Chet Atkins, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline, or Hank Williams. I guess we were poor, but most everyone was in our neighborhood, so it really didn't matter that much. ABC Kids Poor children on that dead end street most often got barely enough to eat wood stove for heat, chipped ice for cool but still we lived by the golden rule. |
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