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What Did I Want To Be When I Grew Up

Jeri J Steele

Late fifties and early sixties were "changing times." ....In lower school, the teachers that inspired me the most were the ones that encouraged that spark of sheer desire to solve difficult problems....It wasn't but a few days into the (Computer Science) class before I realized this was the subject for me. It was so fun, I forgot the time of day. I spent hours and hours hanging around the computer labs working on those first programs.

1639 Views

4 Comments

1639 Views

4 Comments

Dear Diary.......What a weekend!

Annie Payne

What a grouse weekend! I went to stay at Coralie's house for the weekend, after school on Friday. Mrs Bevan calls me her 4th daughter now as I spend more weekend time at her house than at mine! We all went down to West Beach Surf Lifesaving Club for the Surfie...

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3 Comments

537 Views

3 Comments

Dear Diary.... June 13th, 1964 and the Beatles concert.

Annie Payne

Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE The Beatles concert last night was fantabulous !!!! We all wagged school yesterday (12th June) to stand in the crowd outside the Adelaide Town Hall, in our school uniforms, where they were welcomed to Adelaide by the Lord Mayor and Bob Francis who...

1537 Views

5 Comments

1537 Views

5 Comments

It Hit Me In Stride

Tom Cormier

Mum was and still is a fantastic singer. She sang like Billy and Ella during her teens. Dad was all about Country music and sang like Ferlin, George and Hank. With 10 kids in the house they played music all the time, Mum on the piano and Dad on the guitar....

1777 Views

0 Comments

1777 Views

0 Comments

My Mother and Her Sisters

Lillian Cormier

My mother was from a family of nine sisters and one brother. Uncle John was the first born. Can you imagine all those sisters coming one by one, and uncle John hoping he'd have a brother? He had to have loved all of his sisters though as they were all so much...

1724 Views

3 Comments

1724 Views

3 Comments

Grade School Gun-Slinger

Millard Don Carriker

I was seven years old. My family and I were living in the fifth house we had occupied since I came as its sixth and last member. The house, located on the Thomas Long Oil Lease, east of Drumright OK had been built as a temporary, “company” house for oil field...

1037 Views

2 Comments

1037 Views

2 Comments

Love Lifted Me

Millard Don Carriker

Love Lifted Me In the late 1930's , when I was somewhere around seven or eight years old I had a friend named Jimmy Cargill who had an older sister about the same age as my sister Frances. Her name was Neva and, like Frances, she played the piano. But unlike...

1263 Views

2 Comments

1263 Views

2 Comments

The End of an America

Millard Don Carriker

The “Cat” climbed the steep West Virginia mountainside as effortlessly as if it were cruising across the plains of Kansas. Its builders called it a Model D-8 but to the pipeline construction crews it was just a “Cat”. Whatever it was called it was the most powerful crawler tractor made by...

1125 Views

1 Comment

1125 Views

1 Comment

A Cabin For Four

Millard Don Carriker

The spirit of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn was alive and well in my small hometown of Caney, Kansas during the `40's. We boys wandered the woods, shooting at, but seldom hitting, small animals with our .22's. Or, we climbed the “Shale Pit"; skinny-dipped in "Smelter Pond", and tested our courage...

1236 Views

2 Comments

1236 Views

2 Comments

Squirting fresh milk for the cats, as the band played on

Golden V. Adams Jr.

Growing up on a farm was much different in the 1950s and 1960s than it is today. With six siblings younger than I, there wasn't much time for either music or movies. The local movie theater was in Garland, about five miles away. I'm sure I attended some movies, but nothing...

2074 Views

2 Comments

2074 Views

2 Comments

My Seventeenth Summer

Patricia White

The summer of 1959 began with my graduation from Farragut High School, one of 53. I had many memorable events to enjoy, among them presenting a solo piano recital in May, and receiving many good wishes and in that day many graduation gifts. The church members were very generous. The money gifts were...

1111 Views

2 Comments

1111 Views

2 Comments

On My Own….

Golden V. Adams Jr.

I graduated from Bear River High School in May, 1962 and had received two scholarships through my activities in Future Farmers of America (FFA). One was a Union Pacific Scholarship and the other dealt directly with agriculture, as I recall. My intention was to go to Utah State...

1315 Views

2 Comments

1315 Views

2 Comments

Studebaker Lark- My Teenage Identity

Tom Cormier

For whatever reason I have no memory of how I came to own a Studebaker Lark. It was my very first personally-owned vehicle. I'm sure it didn't run well because I would've had very little money to support it in high school. What I do remember is that the front seats...

1220 Views

2 Comments

1220 Views

2 Comments

My teenage years were chlorine filled...

Suzanna Rawlins

I spent my teenage years at the pool - swim practice every afternoon and 2 mornings a week before school and on Saturdays (when we were not at swim meets). My goal was to represent the US at the Olympics - 1984..... 200 meter breastroke and either 200 meter Individual medely...

1381 Views

2 Comments

1381 Views

2 Comments

Growing up in the Depression Years

Joseph Pirolli

M y early childhood was unusual at best. I can remember my two sisters and my mother and living in a large house with Grandparents. My Father deserted us soon after I was born. I was told the story when I had grown to an age of understanding the facts of...

1726 Views

3 Comments

1726 Views

3 Comments

A Depression Kid Goes to School

Millard Don Carriker

I entered First Grade in September of 1937. I skipped Kindergarten. Not because I was precocious. Such an educational luxury wasn’t offered by Drumright’s schools. The Board of Education apparently didn’t favor naming schools in honor of presidents or heroes. They just named them according to where they were located in...

1055 Views

3 Comments

1055 Views

3 Comments

My Earliest Memory of How NOT to Act

Sue Hill

We lived on Rockland Street in Natick, Massachusetts. I was the youngest of the first half of a large brood of Cormiers. Because there were four other children ahead of me, I learned to avoid being disciplined by paying attention to what was meted out to my older siblings. But, one particular day,I was in...

1500 Views

6 Comments

1500 Views

6 Comments

Protecting No Matter the Cost

Sue Hill

What if I told you that tomorrow morning, between four and five o'clock, you must run to your next door neighbor's house and kill everyone inside? Would you do it? Keep in mind that, earlier, you would have taken an oath to protect, and you have no choice but to obey the...

1362 Views

5 Comments

1362 Views

5 Comments

Nursing, My First Career

Annie Payne

Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I commenced my nursing training a few months before I turned 17, when I left home and moved into the Nurses Home at the Repatriation General Hospital at Daw Park, a suburb of Adelaide. There were 12 of us in our Preliminary...