I recall high school not as a place of great memories but as a battleground. No money for lunches most of the time and didn’t even go but a few days a week. My father would use me as slave labor to help get the meager money he made. The family was always in transition and never knew coming home that the electricity was on or that we were being thrown out of the house. Sometimes the places we were in weren’t even indeed rented, but Dad just moved us in.

The clothes I wore would have been in style in todays world but they weren’t in my day. Holes in the pants were seen as extreme poverty . I recall my tennis shoe sole detached from the top part of the shoe, so I had to tape it together; this would only last a little while, and the tape would break; I had to shuffle when I walked so as not to lift the shoe to look like a mouth talking, but it was indeed just a worn out shoe.

Seals cafe on the main street each day would have a bowl of stew for .25 and .10 for a coke. I would save change that my father gave me to buy different things to eat lunch at Seals. Maybe twice a week treat but many days just hunger. I remember me telling my sisters that we were just practicing for a new depression.

My sister Mary was picked on almost criminally because she had crosse eyed so badly. I had many fights, but the kids in school were very cruel to her. In the 9th grade, they finally got her operation, which fixed her up—She then became popular. I left High school, hitched hiked to Memphis, and joined the Army, but that is another story.