Memories of the late 1940s and early 1950s

I remember that I couldn't ever cry around my father even at 2 or before or after if I wanted him to be around me. Though my father was extremely intelligent he was much like the World War II generation in that he was very macho and all the women in the family worked hard to serve him sort of like he was a God or a King (at least in our family). So, there was this worshipful stance women in the family had around my father. So, as the only child of my father I was treated more like Prince Freddie more than anything else because my father's name was also Fred. So, I was Fred jr. But they called me Freddie. But, by age 12 I made most people stop called me Freddie and instead call me Fred. My grandmother's both lived on the 2 1/2 acres of land my grandfather owned then. My mother's mother lived with my father and I and took care of me like a nanny and in fact we called her and I too "NANA" which was interesting too. The Grandmother that owned the land like my Grandfather did I called "Grandma". But, my mother's father had left the family when she was 18 and she had had to support her mother until she married my father. Both of my parents had high school diplomas and my father was valedictorian of his high school Class. But, his father wouldn't let him or his two brothers go to college and instead made them become electricians in his Electrical Contracting business.

My father was very upset about this because he wanted to go to college and become an electrical engineer but this wasn't possible during the Great Depression. But, my grandfather sent both of us daughters to college to marry a college man. This worked for one of them but the other married a World War II navy man who was stationed in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska during the war and was trained by my grandfather as an electrician and worked for him along with my father and his two brothers. So, my father and mother and I and my mother's mother lived in one Duplex and my aunt and her husband lived in another duplex on my grandfather's land until I was 4 years old when my father moved us to San Diego from Seattle. He said it was because he liked the warmer weather in Seattle but as I grew up I learned there were other reasons we moved to San Diego too besides the much warmer and nicer weather there.

I rode the train to San Diego from Seattle with my mother and her mother then in 1952. My mother dressed me up in a brown (go to sunday school) suit with a tie and I had my own briefcase like a businessman and inside my briefcase was a raggedy anne and Andy set of dolls that I had for security and a lot of comic books and coloring books then when I was 4.

People in Seattle are very Polite like Canadians and English people from England. But, Californians sort of anything at all went there and I had a hard time adjusting to this "Controlled Chaos" that is California.

I think anything goes in California is a way to look at it. This goes back all the way to the Gold Rush of 1848 I think and how San Francisco became the hub of all this. People couldn't go any further west than California without going to Hawaii or Asia or something like that. So, the most adventurous and experimental people of all wound up living in California, Oregon and Washington of Americans because of this.

For example, I have been married 3 times with one child from each marriage that I am still very close to now. But, when I visited some of my 3rd wife's relatives in North Carolina they really couldn't deal with someone who had lived a life like mine in California. In California I'm completely normal but in North Carolina I wasn't at least for my wife's family. So, they really didn't know what to do with me. But, I have no shame at all of what happened to me because I never set out to be married 3 times in the first place. This is just what happened to me in my life and I'm a completely survivor all the time. That's what I and all Californians to: we survive anything and keep moving forward.

If you want to mentally and emotionally and physically survive you have to keep moving forward no matter what happens in your life or else you are just dead and that's all.

But, I believe no matter what you stand by your children like I have all the way even if you have to go through a divorce you stand by your kids completely and never give up on them. That's why I am loved and respected by all my children still at now age 72.

By God's Grace