How my parents lived

(A personal note: I had originally imagined that the titles of all my blog posts would feature the word "force." However, there are only so many ways I can work that into a title, so with this posting, I am dropping that routine.)

Before I get started with my life, I guess I need to give the background on my parents because that had a strong bearing on how I was raised.

My father was raised on a ranch and was the only boy in the family. That meant he had to do most of the heavy work with his father. My father was brought up in a household where beatings were the normal mode of discipline.

My mother lived in a few different places until her father died when she was 12 years old. Whippings were also a part of her childhood.

My parents' lives are much more complex than what I have described here. I am certain I will visit these other aspects in future blog entries and how they impacted my life.

One thing both my parents had in common in their upbringing was the culture of adults. In their families, if you were a child, your needs did not come first. The needs of the parents almost always outweighed those of the children. My father told me about Sunday dinners, where people from church would gather together afterward to eat a pot luck. The children were made to play outside and the adults helped themself to the food. Once the adults were done eating their fill, then the children could come in and have their share of whatever was left. In my mother's case, she told about how her father would first use any money he had to buy liquor and cigarettes. Even if the rest of the family was starving, he would still spend his money first on himself.

Now, in this environment, the only way the adults would stop treating you like a child and show you some respect was for you to get married. Thus, my parents got married when my father was 20 and my mother was 19.

I was somewhat subjected to this culture. Not to the extreme of starvation, but my parents had a hard time viewing me as an adult even after I turned 30 because I had not "settled down." This is actually one area in which I consider myself someone who was forced to live as a loser.

It looks like I will have a lot of ground to cover in this blog.