This isn't really only about Zane, but the photo is so great I thought we should share! Printed in the Arizona Daily Star on December 22, 2011
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It guess this Twenties project is my saddest idea yet -- I have only Genevieve's Story to publish because there are no more! I have forgiven the gift for everyone who didn't come up with anything, but truth is ... I am a little disappointed. But lessons learned. Next year I will ask for diamonds and emeralds!
Happy New Year to all! May it be full of blessings! Here is Genevieve's Almost Twenty Story:
I am only one-third done with my sophomore year at University, but I have a feeling I will be declaring my major soon enough. After much thought, I've abandoned Fashion as a career path, and have returned to English with a Law and Justice minor. I figure I'll just have more fun as a paralegal (by day). I have been planning a trip to London for Summer 2012. The paperwork is due by March 2012, but I've been waiting for my renewed passport to arrive before I start anything. I am really excited, not just for the six weeks within my chosen program, but also for the few weeks after it ends. I'm planning on staying in London for a week after classes end, and then taking a train or something to visit my mom's stepsister and her family. Just a note added by Gen's Grandmother -- (that's me)! Gen mentions being a paralegal (by day) which I believe refers to her plans to be a writer and author which she will pursue in her off hours until that incredible book is published! When I was twenty ...the President of the US was Dwight Eisenhower and gas cost 25 cents a gallon. Elvis Presley was swoony and we always watched the Ed Sullivan Show. Also Candid Camera was great!
The house that Bob and I bought in 1959-60 cost about $10,000. I'll have to look up what my salary was and Bob's too, but accordingly to Wikipedia, the average yearly wage was $4,600. That sounds about right. In 1960 John F. Kennedy was elected President and Lyndon Johnson Vice President. The war in Vietnam started that year too. More Wikipedia info: Average monthly rent was $98.00 and a can of beef ravioli cost 30 cents. Gas was still at 25 cents. On to 1963, when Mark was three and Scott was one and I was 25. I remember clearly when I heard that John Kennedy was shot -- I was watching the one soap opera I permitted myself around lunch time and it was interrupted by the news. It was so incredibly shocking and the next few days were very hard to bear. No one could believe that this very popular President (in our more liberal crowd) could be just shot dead. It was sad, but even more we were so outraged that this could happen in our country. It was just the beginning of that terrible era, of course, with Bobby Kennedy assassinated and then Martin Luther King. It seemed like there was no civilization any more. On a lighter note, the Beatles were comin' on! I saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show, but it wasn't until we got to Seattle and in the University scene that we really understood what this new music was about -- and loved it. SO that's my view of what was going on my world when I was in my twenties. What about yours? Cheers to you all! Mary Lou Twenty in 1958 - thirty in 1968
and so much in between! It was a busy decade, as it will probably be for you too, my twenties gks! I was married at 20; Mark Robert was born when I was 22; John Scott when I was 24. Bob was accepted as an machinist apprentice at Hughes Aircraft at about the same time as we got married -- a prestigious appointment of about 20 young Tucson men. When Mark was born I continued working as a legal secretary but part time, at home. The law firm supplied a desk,, typewriter, transcribing machine and the stationary, legal paper, carbon paper (!) and any other supplies I needed to transcribe tapes at home. Jack Donahue would drop the tapes off and I would type the documents; he would pick them up and drop off more tapes! I worked when I could, about 15-20 hours a week. At age 26, things changed radically as Bob quit the apprenticeship program because we would have had to move to California to continue and we decided instead that he would go to UA to get an engineering degree. I started working full time again at the law firm and Mark and Scott went to Pender's School for day care. Bob switched to pre-dental, was accepted to the University of Washington dental school after three years of college, and so when I turned 29 we were living in Seattle, Washington. Mark was in first grade and Scott was in day care in downtown Seattle. So I warn you almost twenties and early twenties folks -- it can be a chaotic and ever changing time, these twenties! It probably won't be marriage and babies that early for many of you, but excitement comes in many varieties! Enjoy every twist and turn! I was twenty years old in 1958.
I lived in Tucson -- had moved here from Chicago with my parents two years before, in February, 1956, immediately after I graduated from high school in January. On June 21, 1958, at twenty years and six months, Bob Forier and I were married. I had lived at home with my mom and dad until then -- I worked at the Southern Arizona Bank in downtown Tucson in a brand new building on Stone Avenue between Alameda and Pennington. I think it is now the National Bank of Arizona. There are great murals in the main room. Bob and I lived in a small trailer at Norris and Broadway after we were married. It was the same place Bob had lived before we were married, I believe. We worked hard on decorating -- I think I made the curtains (did I really sew? It was probably Bob that did that.) But I remember that we wanted to change the color of the couch to black and we took it to my house (mom and dad's house) and put it on the brick patio and spray painted it black. We thought we had put enough cloth or plastic under it so the spray wouldn't go on the bricks, but we were wrong. That black never came out of those bricks and my parents were very unhappy with us. In fact, they put a light coat of cement over the bricks so it covered up the black. That's because our wedding and reception were held on the patio of that wonderful house on Tucson Stravenue in Pueblo Gardens. It was a great wedding -- friends and family and neighbors all having a good time. There was lots of champagne popping! I believe I was still twenty, or maybe twenty-one, when I was hired by Jack Donahue to be his secretary. He was about 35 then and I thought he was pretty ancient. (Today he is 90 and he admits to being pretty ancient.) But it was the start of his mentoring and he and his family were central to my career and in some part, to Bob's going to dental school. They were the encouragers, that's for sure. And this concludes my first installment of my twenties story. What is yours? About those twenties!I have asked you, my precious family, for a Christmas Gift this year of 2011, that talks about your twenties. Whether you are in them, approaching them, or remembering them -- I would like to hear how it is, how you think it will be, or how it was ... for YOU as you are or when you were or will be twenty.
Is that clear ? But I do not leave you without guidelines. I am going to tell you about my time as twenty -- about the world, about our country, about me and the folks in my life. This is going to be great fun! Surely! Here we go. POST #2 will follow shortly. |
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