Tech Support

I wish I wasn’t so challenged by technical stuff, but at this stage of my life it is really difficult (for me anyway) to pick up on it. I grew up in a world that did not move as fast as it moves now, things did not change every time you turned around, and we did not have all the gadgets that exist nowadays. In fact we had very little of the ordinary everyday things needed just to get by.

I remember that up until I was twelve or thirteen I only had two pairs of shoes, one for everyday and one for Sundays and special occasions, and we wore the everyday pair until there were holes in the soles, and even then, sometimes we had to put cardboard to block the holes because we could not get a new pair right away. Now I own more then 25 pairs of shoes!!! There was no TV, and I don’t even remember having a radio until I was around 17. I remember that when I was around 9 years old my father went to a second hand store and bought some used skates and picked up some wooden crates somewhere and he made scooters for me and my brothers, we were in 7th heaven!

My mother cooked in a wood burning stove, but she was the best cook ever, we used to get milk delivered in glass bottles with a cardboard stopper, and the cream would rise to the top of the bottle, she would skim the cream off the top and make cream puffs for us… I have never had a cream puff as good as hers since then. She had a chicken coop with lots of chickens so we had fresh eggs all the time, and every now and then she would kill a chicken and we would get fried chicken and chicken soup.

I remember that at one time she raised a goat, I don’t remember where or how she got it, but when it was full grown she had a neighbor kill it and barbecue it and our whole neighborhood had barbecued goat meat… we had no refrigeration so it had to be eaten within a very short period of time. The man who barbecued it was named Jacinto but everybody called him “Chinto” He used to raise goats himself and on some weekends he would kill one of his goats and barbecue it and sell the meat to the whole neighborhood… we always looked forward to those weekends.

We lived in Saticoy, a very small town, there was one grocery store, one gas station and one doctor I still remember his name, Dr. Cruden. Our grade school was named “Agua Manantial” It had grades from Kindergarten to 8th grade. It does not exist anymore. My father was the president of the PTA.

My father used to take us to the movies in Oxnard to see the Flash Gordon episodes and sometimes when he was short of money he would tell us “today will be show pelon” pelon meaning no extras, no popcorn, no candy, but we were happy just to be going to the show.

When I was 13 years old we moved to Mexico. I was 17 when I came back from Mexico… but that is another story.

Anyway thanks again for all your help and patience with my tech support needs!