My mom is from poor, rural folk, so they had chickens and goats which were used for food, but my grandfather actually worked on the railway, so they moved to town when he retired or the railway shutdown, whichever came first.
My dad's family were townies, but my grandfather decided to be a gentleman farmer after he had made some money during prohibition. But my Grandad wasn't a great farmer and he went back to working in a bank after he spent all his money importing Jersey cows and buying a generator so they could be the only house in town with electricity. There's still some farmland back in Newfoundland that my family owns.
WP editorial: In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC
When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.
For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.
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The boyish Stephanopoulos, who has done wonders with the network's Sunday morning hour, "This Week" (as, indeed, has Gibson with the nightly "World News"), looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy. He came up with such tired tripe as a charge that Obama once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist. That was "40 years ago, when I was 8 years old," Obama said with exasperation.
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"It's not the first time I made a misstatement that was mangled up, and it won't be the last," said Obama, with refreshing candor. But candor is dangerous in a national campaign, what with network newsniks waiting for mistakes or foul-ups like dogs panting for treats after performing a trick. The networks' trick is covering an election with as little emphasis on issues as possible, then blaming everyone else for failing to focus on "the issues."
she lived in the kind of suburbia where every house has a five-digit number.
I love that shit. I used to live at #11 on a street. Was it a small town? No! It was just a really short street. Densely packed in with a million other short streets, none of which matched up into a nice, even grid. Welcome to old cities!
Snce I grew up with a four-digit house number, I always thought of those who had a FIVE digit house number as rich. Kinda funny how childhood perceptions operate.
Lordy - our grandparents probably knew each other!
Did your mom go to Lockport High School? My dad graduated from there in 1958.
I didn't grow up on a farm, but I did grow up in a farming town. This meant cornfields in the backyard, almost everyone owning a John Deere tractor, and occasionally having to help round up the neighbor's cows when they broke through the fence.
I never took a detassling job, thank god.
I kinda feel like a freak. I grew up in Kansas and have always been a city boy. My parents were city folk. My grandparents were city folk. Pretty much no farm heritage at all.
I grew up in the suburbs of Seattle, but my mother started her life on a homestead, didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing until she moved out at 18, and worked either cutting Christmas trees or herding cattle depending on the season growing up.
My dad had indoor plumbing sometimes, depending on if they were living in Vancouver or Vancouver Island at the time. Not sure about the farm heritage there. Think it's mostly logging.
I remember when a girl in junior high, on learning the neighborhood I lived in, announced that I must be rich. Whereas in a family with five kids, every penny accounted for, I never had that feeling. We were middle-class, but even after we bought a cottage in New Hampshire, I never felt rich: my parents always managed their money as if next week there wouldn't be any.
They've changed, since they retired, and now we the kids are all wondering about their finances, because they're prone to extravagances they never would undertake when we were young.
Did your mom go to Lockport High School? My dad graduated from there in 1958.
Might have, but she's younger than your dad. Still - small world.
