Part Three

I was born December twentieth, nineteen forty eight.
My very first memories are of my brother Steve and I having our pictures taken in the living room of my maternal grandparents. Winfred "Wink" and Stella Allen. My family lived in a small cottage which probably was more like a shanty, that sat behind my grandparents house on Crystal Avenue in Benton Harbor Michigan.
Back then the Olan Mills man would make an appointment and come to your home and take family portraits.
My grandparents still had a house full of children at that time. Their oldest, Marion (my mom) who lived behind their house, Winfred Jr who was in the Navy, Joseph (I believe still at home helping support the family), Bonnie, Doyle, Beverly, Jimmy Dale and Gerald, who was born three weeks before me.
Yes, I actually walked to Kindergarten with my uncle and we were the same age.
My grandparents had a tenth and final child, Kenneth about four years later.
That was the longest time I lived in one town when I was growing up.
When I was born I believe my dad was working for Studebaker as a painter. He left that job to work for The Whirlpool company.
When I was almost Two and my brother Steve was an infant, my dad had a horrible accident at work that nearly ripped off his left arm.
My mother had to drive until my dad recovered. While on the way to the hospital with my parents for my dads check up, I accidentally opened the back door of the car and went flying down the highway! The End...
Not really, I was in the hospital for a week with a concussion. I'm the reason for seat belts. Kidding
My parents moved back to Missouri when I started the first grade to be back where they grew up. First, we lived on my maternal great grandparents (Frank and Emma Glass)farm. My First Grade teacher was and old witch who had also taught my mother and her mother. Then we moved a short distance from there where I attended the Second and Third Grade.
Then we moved back to Michigan where I went to Fourth, Fifth and part of Sixth grade. We lived in a little town named Dowagiac that I loved. I made friends there and that's where my brother Kelly was born in 1959. That's when I learned about the "Birds and Bea's" from my mothers Family Dr who (a female) must have been 110 years old. She scared the shit out of me. She basically told me that good girls don't let bad boys put their hands down my blouse or up my skirt! Not that she would have ever experienced anything as much fun as that sounded.
Then I got my Period a few months later. My mom kept me home from school and read text from some ancient stone tablet about menstruating.
So basically, I knew Zero, Nothing, Nada, Zilch about SEX! Then we moved back to the south. I think it was Arkansas this time. Those fucking HICKS hated me because I was a "Dam Yankee". I hated them because they were fucking HICKS!
I did have have some fun because I was a blossoming young blond, and a "Dam Yankee" which the boys seemed to like and the girls hated!
We moved back to Michigan one more time. Long enough for me to go to two more schools.
Then back to the south.
During all this moving my father was working less and less. There was one period where I don't believe he had a job for almost three years. I don't know how we survived. My brother Steve and I would be pulled out of school four weeks early to work in our uncles cotton field hoeing weeds, then picking Strawberries. Then, from late summer till about three or four weeks after school started we were picking cotton for the same uncle.
I remember nine schools. I don't know how I even made it as far as I did.
My parents let me drop out after my second tour of the eighth grade. Steve and I were both held back for incomplete work. We had been threatened with that after the seventh grade.
I had a love/hate relationship with school. I spent hours looking out the windows and daydreaming about being anywhere else but there. I remember having a few interesting teachers and I always excelled in those classes.
I know now why they build schools without windows. Windows are expensive, and most teachers are BORING. In fact, some barely have a pulse!
After my second tour of the eighth grade, we moved to yet another town. It was just fifteen miles from the last. When I said I wanted quit school, my parents said "OK"! Which was weird because they never said yes to anything I wanted to do.
I believe that a "good" education is the key to self esteem. Without knowledge, we are full of insecurity.
EVERYONE says I can't blame my parents. Why the fuck not? Go ahead, give it your best shot!