approach of the new decade, the jet planes flying so low on their approach that they shook our walls. Her eyes were puffy and she was short-tempered so much of the time. She began looking around and found a 2 bedroom apartment for us in North Sacramento. Bob would be graduating high school in June and was already applying for a scholarship at the King Point Merchant Marine Academy back east.

Bob had been working and applying himself so steadily that he was in nearly every way an adult. He had a job bagging groceries while he was still in school, and I remember once seeing him dump a pile of money on our living room coffee table, partly out of anger when my mother asked him to help with the living expenses, and partly out of pride in being the new adult he was becoming. The anger would pass, but the pride stayed with him a very long time.

We were all proud of him, and of course I was a bit jealous. To me, he was always the good son, responsible and mature. I was always the problem child

and always would be. It was through his financial help, and through her salary raises, promotions and the savings my mother had built up over the years, that my mother was able to contemplate moving to a new area further away from the air force and out of its flight path.

Some of the very last memories I have of that old fading farm in Rio Linda don't even take place there. I remember Bob taking me along on one of his dates with a girl named Mary Ann. I remember how good she smelled, and how she absolutely "adored" me. Either I was still cute back then, or she was playing my brother. I was too young to know either way.

But it seems the very final memory took place in a small football stadium at Bob's high school in June 1960. He was about to graduate, and we would be moving to North Sacramento the following week. Even as young as I was, I knew we were crossing into a new frontier and our lives would be changed forever.

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