I was born in a time where there was noSUVs, cellphones, noPCs or for that matter noMACs either, and how fast your fast food was depended on how fast they could skate.
My father was a Marine and just back from Korea when he meet my mother at Paris Island, Marine Corps Base, outside of Beaufort South Carolina. They got married and 9 months later I came. This was the beginning of my timeline.
The Beginning
Being small and not quite capable to handle my affairs my memory of this time is null and void.
Memories
What I remember first is being in Dallas or rather in a trailer park to the Dallas area. I went to kindergarden thur 1st grade here. I do know that I did get my school books from the same building that JFK was shot from. Both of my sisters were born in the Dallas area. My father got orders to a West Pacific tour and we moved to Amarillo to be near one of my mother's brothers. Here I went to 1st thur Nov. of the my second grade. After his return we moved to Fallbrook, Calif.
Arrived in California in November of 1962 half way though my 2nd grade. I remember John F. Kennedy being shot and having school closed and being sent home in Nov. 1963. My father went to Vietnam the first time in 1966 after 4 years at Camp Pendleton, Ca. I would have been 11 at the time, 5th & 6th grades. The second time was in '69 & '70 and I was a freshman in high school. For those of you who know what I mean my draft number was # 10 in my sophomore year. Good thing I wasn't 18 yet. At the end of my junior year my Dad got orders to Washington D.C.
We moved to Manassas, Virginia, which is about 40 miles south of D.C.. I went to Stonewall Jackson High School for my senior year of high school. Manassas wasn't to bad, but it wasn't California. It was the site of the first battle of the Civil War. The site is now a national park. It was neat to wander over the battle field and read the history of the battles fought there. It was during the 2nd battle of Manassas that Stonewall Jackson was killed. All in all Virginia was okay, but when I graduated in June of 1973 I left home and moved back to Southern California. My youngest sister still lives in Virginia. My other sister married and moved to Lilburn, Georgia which is outside of Atlanta.
I landed back in Southern Calif. in July of 1973, on my own without a job or a place to live. A friend of the family, who's son was going away to college offer me a place to stay. I soon was working at Camp Pendleton as a gas station attendant, in other words I was pumping gas. This may surprise some of you but back then people got paid to pump gas, to wash windows, and to check under the hood. Plus gas was only .32 cents a gallon. Can you believe it? I worked there for 26 1/2 years moving up to different jobs ending up as a delivery driver for their warehouse. Over the pass almost 30 years a lot has happenPlus all the other things that happen day to day.
- marriage
- child being born
- divorce
- finding a soul mate to spend my life with
- becoming a grandfather not just once but 5 times