In the fifties I was different from all the kids in the neighborhood. Not THAT kind of different—let me explain. For one thing we were protestant; something of an anomaly in that Roman Catholic neighborhood; and something my friends just learning their catechism would frequently remind me was my ticket to hell—something yet to be determined I should add at this point.
The thing that really set me apart from my friends was that both my parents worked outside the home. There were a few other protestant kids on the block; but there were no other kids whose parents both worked.
My mother had a career before my birth and when I reached the age of three, she decided she had enough of me—and returned to work. In latter years she told me that when that happened I punished her by not speaking to her for a week. Some would not view that as punishment..but I digress.
There were few, if any, daycare facilities at that time. In fact, I'm not all that certain daycare had been invented yet. So what my parents did was to encourage one or another of the upstairs tenants of our tri-plex to watch me in exchange for a whopping fifteen dollars a month off the sixty-dollar rent. Problem solved.
Sometimes my friends would try to sympathize with me over the fact that my mother HAD to work. Fortunately in retrospect, I never thought to mention that Mom and Dad drove a Buick instead of the Chevy or Plymouth their dads drove. Besides our Buick was purchased used.
My parents were ahead of their time in other ways. My dad did all the kitchen jobs; cooking, dishes and clean-up post meals, washing and waxing the floor, and hunting for our food in the forest. The forest of shelves a Klein's Supermarket. It wasn't all that unusual to see Dad behind the Hoover whistling as he extended his reach beyond the kitchen and into the living room. Mom washed clothes on Saturday, ironed after work on Monday (she even ironed my hankies), and bits of cleaning the rest of the week.
I guess I'm fortunate to have grown up with parents whose marriage was a true partnership with each an equal partner.
Nothing better than a trip down someone else’s memory lane.
It truly does give us a perspective on American life when we vue it through some one else.