 I grew up during what is now called the Great Depression years. My dad had a Kosher butcher shop and just barely managed to make a living. Dad was in an automobile accident and spent months and months in hospitals while Mom tried to take care of me and my two younger sisters and yet I never really felt poor.I can remember as far back as the age of two. Not very much of a memory, but one that is mine. I remember riding on a bus to Freehold with my Aunt Sally to visit my grandparents, and on the way we passed what I thought was a very fine building. I asked my aunt, who was all of sixteen at the time, what it was. She told me it was what she called a glass house, where farmers grew plants because they could control the weather and they would have good strong plants to grow in the ground. I asked her if she could take me to visit one because the idea intrigued me and she promised that she would. But we never did. And years later when I was married and had children of my own, I reminded her of that. She said she had really forgotten about it until I reminded her, and apologized for not having taken me. But I told her not to worry, by that time I was old enough to take myself. I remember, in fact, spending a great deal of my childhood between the ages of 2 and 10 at Freehold, where my mother's family lived. I had an uncle... two uncles, one, Uncle Morris, I considered too old for me to bother with. The other was David, who was more like a big brother to me, since he was only five when I was born. I was, looking back now, really a very pampered child, which is probably why I liked to spend so much time in Freehold. I had friends that I played with there, and the whole town, I think, seemed to be my friend. When my grandfather died, I was ten years old and that was the end of spending all that time in Freehold, as my grandmother and my Uncle Dave and Uncle Morris came to live with us.
5/10/97 Copyright © 1997 by rgc
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