#7 Life Questions

7. What kind of hardships or tragedies did your family experience while you were growing up?

Nothing too much on the family side, I guess.  Dad had the same job all the years he worked.  When Mom got the job at the bindery she worked there until she retired.  My one grandfather died when I was five and the other when I was a teenager, but they had lived long lives.  The grandmothers lived on for many years.  We lived in the same house in Fridley, Minnesota since I was five.  Mom was difficult to live with sometimes, but even that was consistent.  All three of us kids did our own thing and graduated from Fridley High School.

But on the wider view...living through the late 50s to early 70s was a turbulent time, to say the least.  Starting in grade school with the Cold War--doing the drills where you curled up in a ball under your desk to save you if there was an atomic bomb--the world didn't seem like the safest place, but we ran around the neighborhood on our own all the time and our doors were unlocked.  They shot the charming president with the little kids--shock, sorrow, and there was nothing else on TV for three days.  We had tornadoes go through the Twin Cities in 1965--watched the roof get sucked off the Jr. High gymnasium.  The year I graduated Bobby and Martin were both shot, there was rioting across the US, and police beat protestors outside the 68 democratic national convention.  My formative years--women were burning bras, young boys were burning draft cards, we watched the Vietnam War close up every night over dinner, there were riots and protest marches going on everywhere for years.  Wasn't it in 1970 they shot unarmed students at Kent State?  There was plenty of chaos in my part of the world growing up.   

But we did put a man on the moon, there was awesome protest music, and hippies who talked about loving each other and the earth.  I am still a hippy--a flower child--in my heart of hearts.  :)

The End