I remember visiting my grandma in Kentucky as a little boy. She lived alongside a dirt road off the beaten path. She did have electricity but no modern plumbing. She got her water by using a bucket drawn from a well and an outhouse for a toliet. I helped milk the cow and gather the eggs her chickens had laid. They had a motorless push mower as well. I was so young that my dad let me sit on his lap and steer the car down that dirt road. While I enjoyed those visits it made me so thankful for my life in Ohio. Dad offered to help her move to town but she wouldn't hear of it.

We too had nothing but an antenna with which to watch TV. While living in the greater Dayton area my dad did have a rotor on the TV tower so we could watch Cincinnati and Columbus stations. I remember the day JFK was assassinated quite vividly because it was the first time I ever saw my mom cry. Then what was only a few short ears later it was RFK and MLK along with Malcom X. I remember the Vietnam war. It had gone on for so long and I was entering my mid teens. I felt certain that I was destined to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. But the war ended well before I turned 18. I remember the anger I felt about the way our troops were treated when they returned home. That was the first time I remember being that angry in my life.

I lived very close to the Miami River and my community was mostly farm land. So fishing and hunting was a very large part of my life growing up. Camping on the river bank was a big part of my summers when I wasn't baling hay for the farmers or involved in school sports. Baling hay was a great way to save up for the county fair and my dad helping teach me a great work ethic and the value of saving money. And once mom was done canning and freezing everything from the garden I was allowed to sell the leftover vegetables at a road side stand for all the work I had contributed to the garden.

My dad and I had found this huge blackberry patch where we would pick blackberries for jam. We picked strawberries at a local fruit farm for strawberry preserves. I can still remember the smell of my mom's homemade wheat bread in the air of our home.

I remember back to that time and just how much I disliked living in a rural area because at the time it felt like there was nothing to do. Now, when looking back I was always doing something and I wouldn't have changed growing up there for anything.

Both of my parents are long gone now. But I'll never forget to be thankful to them for the life they provided me with. We weren't wealthy and we weren't poor. We were in fact middle America.