We all went to the same grammar school. Recently, we had a 50th anniversary for our eighth grade graduating class. We didn’t move around much in those days. It wasn’t uncommon for families to know one another for 50 years or more. We stayed in the same neighborhood. We were much more rooted then people are today.

Even though you had people moving into the area, the neighborhoods stayed very much the same.

I remember elementary school, junior high school, high school. We were typical kids. We didn’t have television. We hung out with one another in the neighborhood. I think this was actually better for us. We got to know one another instead of hiding inside of our homes. Because it was only a block long the street wasn’t heavily trafficked; of course there wasn’t much traffic anyway in those days.

So we played in the street!

My brother and I were both good kids. We didn’t start fights although I did stop a few of them later on in life when I got back from the Marine Corps. But I never got into the mode of starting fights.

Our lives were pretty standard: father, mother, two kids, all fitting into the neighborhood. At school I was kind of an outsider because of my French background. Most of the other kids were Italian; it was a predominantly Italian neighborhood. The Gianinnis who lived down the street were, and still are, family friends. We’ve kept in touch over the years.

We had boy scouts and cub scouts and things like that. I went to YMCA camp. To get to go to camp every summer I used to sell bars of soap to get enough money. I sold enough to let my brother and I both go to camp.

I remember the old swimming pool indoors in the basement of a building at Santa Clara Street. I remember those chlorine fumes. You could go downtown, have a swim, and then go to the movies. It was a pretty good life in those days. The neighborhoods were nice; you could go to a show without any questions.

In high school I used to make $1.25 an hour working as an errand boy for Kearney Pattern works in San Jose. That old foundry is still there, across from the railroad station.

I could take the dollar 25 that I earned, take a date to the movie and buy popcorn and pay for it all on one hour’s worth of work. The relationship between entertainment and income would get you something. You could buy something. You had a better life.

Today if you are making $5.00 an hour you can’t pay for your own movie ticket let alone one for the date.

We have a lot more things, but are we really farther along? The working poor have a harder life today than we had. Even though life seemed too hard we were able to do more with what we had. We had fewer things to do.