to me, let alone how she replaced it when it was totaled in an accident a year later. She always said something about “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” but I really had no idea at the time what she meant. I only know that we never wanted for what we truly needed, and neither Bob nor I really wanted that much.

Just coming into his teens, Bob was probably more aware of our poverty than I was. He stood so much taller than I did that I could remember clinging to his left calf like it was a pole in a spinning merry-go-round as he dragged me from room to room, lurching; or getting air sick whenever he lifted me on his shoulders. He could be very gentle and loving with me at times; other times, especially as we both got older, he could snap at any moment and slap me nearly unconscious in a single blow — it was never more than once; he never wailed on me, aware of his strength as he was. I suppose you could say he was my only real father figure; but a teenager can't really fill those shoes, and I think he knew it. My mother certainly knew, but her choices were limited, and sitters were too expensive.

The school system took over for Bob, and I was left in the care of teachers for most of the day, and I was with Bob in the afternoons — for a time. Gradually, one or two hours at a time, I was left to fend for myself, alone or with my playmates in the other duplex.

Like most kids in my generation, I had my picture books or our new television — a gigantic General Electric console that took five minutes to warm up — to pass the time. Bob spent more and more time at school and turned our shared bedroom into a workshop full of soldering equipment, copper wiring, tools, nuts, bolts, and vacuum tubes. He was engrossed in electronics at the time, even rebuilding an old 30s era radio with its elaborate wood casing as tall as a dresser drawer. It was on that radio that I remember first hearing rock n' roll. I hated that music at the time, and it was acquired taste much later on.

This was an amazing decade, just ten years after the end of the Second World War and ten years before Vietnam. Living near the Air Force base, we saw the world change before our eyes. At first, our two-lane country road vanished into the Western horizon, flanked