Given a heritage of Americana that stemmed from Mayflower beginnings, my family linage reached an evolutionary turning point before my birth. Grand farms and professions of the past had given way to soldiers of World War II. The returning warriors were transitioning into automotive factory workers. Granted the pride of workmanship of my father and love of my mother, our family excelled beyond our station set in the poverty of Leonard.
My growth as a child may have been most prominent in the twenty by twenty basement house built at the hands of my father and uncles. Can you imagine four suspended panels dividing off two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen? Water came from a hand pump on the kitchen sink. Baths were taken in the rinse water on Saturday after the laundry was done in galvanized tubs. The outhouse behind the shed was a difficult trip in the winter. We always had a dog that stayed outside and I have never loved another since the one that froze solid after a cold winter’s night.
Beyond our eighth grade school in Leonard, it was nine miles to Oxford for high school. My ’53 Ford took some of us as far as Pontiac and Ted’s Drive In to cruise Woodward Avenue on Friday and Saturday nights. Gee, that ’53 Ford cost $50.00 with a blown engine. My dad bought it for me, even though I had to work for my every penny since I was eleven, he wanted to do that for me. During my summer at fifteen, with proper fatherly instructions, I rebuilt the engine and had it running for sixteenth birthday in November.
I left Leonard for the US Navy on the day before my eighteenth birthday. At the time, I did not look back. Since then, I always look back to what brought me to where I am and what I will be because of where I came from.
I hope to display in this blog the components of life beyond Leonard to the sixty-some countries where I have lived and worked throughout the world.
My growth as a child may have been most prominent in the twenty by twenty basement house built at the hands of my father and uncles. Can you imagine four suspended panels dividing off two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen? Water came from a hand pump on the kitchen sink. Baths were taken in the rinse water on Saturday after the laundry was done in galvanized tubs. The outhouse behind the shed was a difficult trip in the winter. We always had a dog that stayed outside and I have never loved another since the one that froze solid after a cold winter’s night.
Beyond our eighth grade school in Leonard, it was nine miles to Oxford for high school. My ’53 Ford took some of us as far as Pontiac and Ted’s Drive In to cruise Woodward Avenue on Friday and Saturday nights. Gee, that ’53 Ford cost $50.00 with a blown engine. My dad bought it for me, even though I had to work for my every penny since I was eleven, he wanted to do that for me. During my summer at fifteen, with proper fatherly instructions, I rebuilt the engine and had it running for sixteenth birthday in November.
I left Leonard for the US Navy on the day before my eighteenth birthday. At the time, I did not look back. Since then, I always look back to what brought me to where I am and what I will be because of where I came from.
I hope to display in this blog the components of life beyond Leonard to the sixty-some countries where I have lived and worked throughout the world.
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