Where I Grew Up

Open Road in Farming Land

I did not grow up in one single home. My father loved to see the country, so we moved every few years. When I was small, we lived in Ohio, and due to my mother contracting Rheumatic Fever, her doctor said we needed to move to a warmer climate. That meant moving to Georgia, closer to her family. There, my father had difficulty finding work due to the fact he was considered more or less untrust-worthy, as he was born in Ohio, and grew up there and in Kentucky. The folks in the south had a name for people from the north that today would be considered hate speech.  At the risk of offending someone, I will tell you what many people called my dad.  They called him a "Nigger Lover."  In Ohio, my father was a electrical contractor, and made a nice living for the family. When we lived in Ohio, no one thought anything of people of one race having connections and friendships with someone of another race or skin color.  That never has made sense to me anyway, as we are all the same under the skin and in God's eyes.  


In Georgia Daddy had trouble keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table. There, my mother had my youngest sister, who was born with a cleft pallet, and needed several surgeries in order to correct the problem. I had Rheumatic Fever, and chronic nephritis and was not expected to live to see the age of nine years. Mom was also still feeling the effects of her bouts with Rheumatic Fever, as well.


After living in several other places in Georgia and South Carolina, my father decided if we were ever going to make it, we needed to leave the south, as he just could not find enough work there, due to the racial discrimination against him being from the north.


We moved to Texas, where he found some work, and things were certainly better, but still not what he needed in order to properly support his family. In 1955 we took a trip to California to see his sister and her family, while attending a convention in Los Angeles. There my dad met a fellow electrician, who happened to be an electrical contractor in Long Beach, CA. Jim Rose offered my dad work if we moved to California. After the convention, we headed back to El Paso to get our belongings, and moved to Los Alamitos, CA.  Jim Rose was a very nice person, and kept my dad working, which paid the rent and put food on the table and clothes on our backs. By 1957 Mr. Rose even provided my dad a brand new 1957 Ford Fairlane, hard-top convertible to drive. 

1957 Ford Convertible

Eventually Dad decided to join the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) where he could get union wages, and be recognized as a "journeyman electrician." We moved to Westminster, CA where we lived until I was married in 1963. I really loved living in the little farm house because the whole area was open. The house was surrounded by acres and acres of fields where a very nice Japanese man leased the land, and grew things like Blue Lake Stringless Beans, celery, red leaf lettuce, cauliflower, and such.  We had no neighbors right on top of us like we did living in Los Alamitos. We had several milk goats, which I milked twice a day, as well as dogs, cats, chickens and some ducks, too. 

Plowed Field in Heat of Summer

Same field, different season
with wild oats

Some of my happiest memories growing up are from the years we lived in that little house. It had a an old barn out back, as well as a water well, with a pump-house, a five hundred gallon holding tank for water, and plenty of room to run, or walk and no neighbors. Oh yes, I already said that, didn't I? To this day, this is my favorite way of life, though I don't have it that way any longer.  My husband has passed away, and our daughters are married and have grown children of their own.  I have some physical limitations, as well, so living as I would love is out of the question nowadays.  But, if I had my choice, I would be living on a small farm, with a garden large enough to provide me with fresh vegetables, and a few fruit trees, and I would have at least one milk goat, so I could have fresh raw goat's milk, homemade ice cream, and that lovely got cheese we made when we lived in that old farm house on about forty acres, with plenty more open acreage surrounding  the are we lived.

Dead Ringer for Dusty