My 2 Decades

 I am in front, my cousin Mary in the back. This is on the Feeley farm in Eastern Montana, and the horse's name was Prince.   As the 60s began, and I entered kindergarten, the makeup of my family was a bit different from most of my classmates. My oldest sister was entering college.   My next sister was in high school, and my brother was in 7 th grade at Holy Family (the Catholic school a few miles away).   My parents were depression kids and World War II young adults.   They were both born in 1917, so survived the flu pandemic and WWI as toddlers.   They were both from rural eastern Montana, and met as youngsters when they lived on adjoining farms. My mother’s family were immigrants known as “Germans from Russia”.   They were ethnic Germans who had settled in Russia a few generations back, only to be driven out by Catherine the Great’s ethnic cleansing.   They were hard working and clannish.   They spoke German and lived in tight-kn...

  (San Diego Zoo late 1950s.  That is my uncle and cousin from Montana on the left, my sister Kathie next to them, and me in front.) We lived in San Diego, home of a famous zoo, beaches, and two bays (Mission Bay, which was recreational, and San Diego Bay, full of Navy ships).   My parents did not go in for recreational activities, so I rarely went any of those places unless we had relatives visiting out of town.   We did go to the Zoo a time or two with relatives from Montana, and took them to the beach as well.   I didn’t start going to any of the famous San Diego places until later in the 60s when my friends’ older siblings could drive and would take us. Bonita Cove was a small inlet on Mission Bay.   It was quiet and felt a bit like our own discovery.   No hotels or restaurants were nearby.   It was directly across a busy street called Mission Boulevard from the ocean.   Our parents were okay with us spending all day at the bay, as it w...

  A child’s world is fairly narrow.   My family, my neighborhood:   it seemed like it held so much yet there was more going on that I only gradually became aware of.   Politically, 1960 was a turning point for the United States.   John F. Kennedy is the first president I remember, and I was aware of him as a young man with a young family who brought “vigor” to the White House.   My brother would imitate JFK saying “With great vigor!” in what we imagined was a Boston accent.   We also imitated the breathy voice of Jackie Kennedy.   Their oldest child, Caroline, was just two years younger than me and someone I could relate to in the First Family.   As far as national or international news, I was aware of things only as they impacted me.   I remember the Cuban “missile crisis” (October of 1962) mostly because my mother’s aunt and uncle (Uncle Dave and Aunt Maggie) were visiting from their farm in Montana, and they got so nervous they le...