I was born during WWII in Ventura, California. We lived behind a Chinese grocery store when I was small. I would arise at 5:15 AM for a breakfast of Kellogg's Cornflakes with my daddy before he headed off for work. From the age of four I'd dress myself and be at the grocery store by 7:00 AM for a nice Chinese breakfast. Then Junie (the store owners' little daughter) and I would play in the back of the store or in the alley. Around noon I'd be sent home for the third breakfast of the day. Mother did not usually arise until 11:00 or 11:30 most days. In the afternoon I'd visit several of my favorite shops along Main Street.The bakery was always good for a doughnut or cookie. The barbershop had a nice selection of lollipops, and the variety store let me test drive the toy vehicles up and down the aisles. On my way back home I'd stop at the butcher shop for a frankfurter or a little paper cone of cooked cocktail ship. My mother always had dinner on the table by 5:30 sharp. She never understood why I never seemed hungry at dinner time.
At the age of seven and a half we moved to larger house in the midst of the oil fields. My sister and I along with a dozen other kids spent our summer days free from the confines of adult supervision. We slid down grassy hills on cardboard box sleds, piled up tar covered rocks in a nearby creek to make a swimming pool, used jack knives to cut bits of tar from the roadway for chewing gum, created a variety of forts from high a top a chicken house to deep under an abandoned farmhouse.
I had a wonderful childhood.
Mother did not usually arise until 11:00 or 11:30..My mother said that her mother never did a lick of house work after her and her sisters could do it, they were Irish also. Couldn't cook either, my fathers mother showed her how.
