Congratulations on staying the course and finishing college. I also started college at 17 (1963) and barely graduated in (1967). I was lucky to have a night job (band musician) working mostly on the weekends with various bands over those years. I had ample time to study at night and between classes during the week.
Congratulations on being married to the same woman 44 years. I also will be married 44 years to the same woman next June. I am in my early 70s and a little younger than you.
College can be an experience (good and bad). Everyone should give it a try if they think it would be beneficial to them (of course providing they have the time and money to invest). Just going to college without any real goals is a waste of resources that could be better utilized elsewhere. Witness the current snowflake generation bitching about the student loans they will have to pay back and the useless degrees that have no value to them in todays economic marketplace.
Unfortunately, many of this current generation will spend the rest of their lives trying to overcome all the resources they have wasted. They failed to do their homework to see what was happening in the real world. If they had taken the time, they would have seen that a college degree was not the ticket to success as it was to many of the previous generations. Now they are stuck in the basement of their parents home waiting to inherit whatever their parents leave behind.
If they have parents.
The fact that we had parents and so did most everyone else, there was always family so little begging went on.
I was born in 1938 in North Eastern Oklahoma, no sewers or paved roads or trash collection, barely had electricity running at 25 cycles. Grand Dad cooked on wood stove heated with wood as well, no such thing as a fan other than the ones he made from cereal boxes and catalpa sticks. We could get factory made fans when there was a funeral. God I miss those days.