Growing Up

Family is like this; it stays with you no matter what.

There is much truth in the movie. The dialog, the attitudes, the laws, the houses and decors of the two sides of this story are all spot-on.

I was a terrible student. I rarely did homework but somehow slid by with Cs and just barely advanced from grade to grade.

On Saturdays, Dad would sometimes go to the hospital to see a couple of his patients.

East encompassed kindergarten through senior high school. The elementary, East Elementary School, had the right half of the building while the high schools, junior and senior collectively referred to as East High School, had the left.

The near-wealthy lived in Chickasaw Gardens just a few blocks from Picardy.

Some things change, some don’t. Heavy snowfalls on Picardy Place where I grew up meant no school, sometimes for several days, because Memphis Tennessee was in the mid-south–it had no snow removal equipment.

You can’t really tell one person’s story because, if you know them and they know others, there’s not one story, there are many, and they’re all intertwined.