New Years Eve 1949, I had a driver's license, but no car. I had a Social Security card but no job. I stood on the porch in Ft. Pierce, Florida, watching a few cars drive by on US 1. At the stroke of mid-night, the thought passed through my mind that we were beginning the second half of the century and that I would always remember where I was at that time. I was right.

The spring of 1939, we lived in the back of a combination gas station and restaurant in Nicholasville, Kentucky. It was the birthplace of the foot-long hotdog. My father invented it, but the idea spread quickly before he even thought of getting a copywrite. It was also the birthplace of my kid sister. She was born on Easter morning, so we nicknamed her "Bunny."

1959 was the year that Alaska and Hawaii became states and I started teaching. I had trained to teach English, so my first class of the day was English. The rest of the day I taught 7th grade science. I remember thinking, on that first day, that if they tried to put 43 kids in that little room there wouldn't be room to walk. They did. There wasn't. ($3350 a year was all that I was worth.)

1964 was the year of the Good Friday earthquake in southern Alaska. I knew that when the kids came back to school, they would expect me to know all about earthquakes. I spent my Easter break reading every news article I could get and studying encyclopedias. Our TV didn't work very well, but I could hear Walter Cronkite's voice. I think that's the first time I ever heard the word "tsunami."

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. I was 8 years old. I asked my mother where Pearl Harbor was and she pulled out a map and showed me. (She loved maps.) I looked at those little scraps of land in that big ocean and wondered if I would ever go there. I did it about 45 years later.

In 1970, we piled 4 kids into our 1965 VW bus and, pulling a small Nimrod camper, we headed west. Our goal was the N.E.A. convention in San Francisco. The engine blew up at Rabbit Ears Pass Colorado and we finished the trip in a 1968 Chevy.
We saw Disneyland, the Golden Gate, Carson City, Yellowstone, Great Salt Lake, Dinosaur National Monument, Mt. Rushmore, the Missouri and the Mississippi. We also visited my sister in Ontario, Calif. and attended a five day teacher's convention. It took five weeks. We spent between $600 and $700, not counting a second hand car that we bought in Steamboat Springs.