Observations While Growing Up

A city block just outside the city, owned by my parents, had our house 2-3 out buildings, garden, orchard, and pasture; this was my home from about four years.  Coffee was the strongest drug in our house, discounting Ex-Lax, and only my father drank coffee regularly.  No alcohol or tobacco was in our lives.


On the south side of the street were four houses beginning with the bathtub gin/ Choc Beer makers, next door was a customer with a garage and cellar filled with those products, then came the house where people gathered on Saturday night to consume those products, dance, get drunk, and fight.  They had a big barn where the kids went to hide out from the drunks and sleep.  A little gap before the west corner where lived the man with the reputation of making the best moonshine in southwest Oklahoma.  He quietly did his business and never disturbed anyone.  These were our neighbors.  I must mention being awakened many nights to the sound of a Federal Law Enforcement raid and breaking glass.


By the time I was twelve, I had seen women beaten, men beaten for beating a woman, a man knocked in the head with a garden rake, and a man's throat cut and dying.  In Junior High and High School I knew many types of people.  One boy in particular I remember.  His father was a drunk and occasionally drove a taxi. his step mother was an ex-prostitute and her two daughters were still active.


This boy sold papers and polished shoes to stay in school.  Most boys our age were dropping out to join the Army or Civilian Conservation Corps.  A place to live, a uniform, food, and about fifteen dollars a month was pretty attractive.  This boy was tired and ready to quit when his Algebra Teacher called him aside and convinced him to stay in school.  He stayed and when war came he entered the Army, was selected for Pilot Training, His teacher was brought to pin his wings on.  He rose to the rank of Colonel, I am told.  Family gave him nothing but life, circumstance gave him almost nothing but hardship, but it also gave a teacher who influenced both him and me.  That's what it took to allow the man inside of him to develop.


My family gave me more than most boys had and shielded me from the terrible surroundings.  I became an Army Sergeant and blundered around in many skills for about thirty years before finding that same teacher had given good advice to me.  There was no test or advisors to point us into any career.  Our destiny seemed to be, "Get a job, keep it, and work until you are dead."


I look around now and see the same variants at work in the lives of children.  Parents who routinely fight and physically hurt each other.  Parents who have disregarded their marriage vows leaving the child to be torn between two different households.  Some parents still trying to work for good for their children and others pulling in totally different directions.  I wonder how they will turn out.  Will they become steel, or will they be dross.