[Evans, Marv]

I was born in 1942 & we lived on a rented farm in Illinois. My first memory was when I was maybe less than two years old. We were at a small local fair at night, & my mother was carrying me. There were sort of dim light bulbs strung up for lighting. Kids were riding some sort of small trolley things on a track like a model train would use. They were chain driven and the kids were using their arms to crank a bicycle like chain mechanism to make them go. I remember my mother telling me to wave at one of the kids who was a cousin. We had a cow named Elsie for milk & butter and a coal burning stove for heat. We didn't have a telephone, but my grand parents had a wooden crank phone on their wall where you'd tell the operator who you wanted to talk to. We moved to the San Joaquin Valley in CA & lived in a 27 ft. trailer (five of us by then). Behind the trailer park was a junk yard and in front was highway 99. I walked to school in the first grade carrying my lunch money tied in a handkerchief. Actually I walked to school until I graduated. Afterwards moved to a small place in a small town where my dad was manager of the only gas station (Standard) on the main drag next to the railroad track and where the highway went through the main drag. We got our first B&W TV and I remember watching Howdy Doodey, Spacer Patrol, Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, and the like. Before TV I listened to Buster Brown, Sky King, The Shadow, etc. on the radio, played, or wrote stories. We went through a 7.2 earthquake there in 1951, of which I have vivid memories of. Later we moved to a big town of almost 100K people where I started in junior high. I was a country hick with a DA and wore a corduroy, patched jacket of different colors my grandmother made by hand. After the first day I was the famous guy with the patched jacket. Stayed there through high school and started working at almost 15 in a gas station on the outskirts. I learned to drive on a 1944 military Jeep and my first car was a '55 Ford two door sedan with a Y-block V8 & 3 speed stick. Starting in my junior year I worked loading diesel trucks with milk at a dairy 4 nights a week in addition to playing football and running on the track team, which I became captain of in my senior year. Things were different then, but they will be different another 50 years from now, and the people then will probably be doing what we are here now.