Growing Up

I am 63 and white - born 1957 and of Portuguese decent, my parents were born in America.
My Mom was born in 1924 and Dad was born in 1918
My grandparents came from Portugal- both sides born between 1892 and 1895.

I was raised middle class I guess , I know that both my parents worked and we had food in fridge and snacks , we had our own house - 3 bedrooms , small, I had two sisters and they shared a room. We had enough money for the basics and we looked forward to Christmas because that was the only time a year we received toys and new outfits. We would get new pants and shirts on our birthday and Easter too but that was it, pretty much no buying the rest of the year.
My mom would would third shift in the mills so she could take care of us during the day.

You get the picture- we didn’t have much and my parents worked hard but growing up I never complained because I just thought that was life for everyone- except the Kennedy’s ... whenever someone would talk about vacations or buying stuff my mother would say “ we are not the Kennedy’s” - growing up in R.I. and New England the Kennedy’s were thought of as royalty.

We had one TV in the living room -  , no one had two TV’s that we knew at least, it was color and it had a thin backing to it with tiny holes so to help keep it cool back there and  if you looked through the holes you could see all the tubes lit up, it even had a bit of a smell to it. TV back then had basically three channels and a lot of shows were still in black and white and no such thing as taping a show, you watched it at the time it aired ( we had a TV guide book every week) or not at all.
We all watched the same shows , as a small child I remember watching Lassie with my sister and me and my sister would run to the TV at the end of the show because Lassie would sit and put up one paw for you to shake it . We watched Andy Griffith , Gilligan’s Island , the Rifleman, Superman, Daniel Boone my mother the car, my favorite Martian , Mr. Ed and on Sunday night we all gathered to watch Bonanza.

Growing up back in the 50’s and 60’s we played outside all the time, till the 8:00 whistle blew- the fire station a few miles from us would sound a very loud horn every night at 8:00 and when you heard that you high tailed home or your mother would hang out the front door and yell your name.
You played in the streets and in the woods and would knock on your neighbors door who had kids you played with and say “ can Johnny come out and play?”
We played catch for hours, sat on the front steps and picnic tables and in the summer pick a ripe tomato out of one of the backyard gardens and wash it off with the garden hose and eat just like an apple- delicious!
We built tree forts and forts on the ground, we played cowboys and Indians and I had a coons skins hat ( a hat with fur from a raccoon that had a raccoon’s tail in the back) like  Daniel Boone so once and a while I pretended to be him with a pretend rife. We did a lot of pretending back then , with guns or Tonka trucks ( big heavy toy metal trucks ) or just played hide and seek in the neighborhood or biked around.

My family never talked politics or asked how your day went at the dinner table, we barely talked to each that I remember and never heard I love you or hugged, yet we felt like a family and knew our mother I loved us, my dad was a different story, he worked hard but would stop on his way home every day at the Holy Ghost , a Portuguese club/ bar, he would have few shots and come home and start yelling- he was an alcoholic. I kinda felt bad because as I got a little older I could see him early in the morning before he went to work and sober and he was a different guy and I could see even as a kid that he was two different people he struggled with the guy that drank.

Part 2 - growing up in 50’s and 60’s on another post ... stay tuned ...
Same bat time ...same bat channel ( that was from the Batman show on TV back then)