by Maryanne Burke Battistini

Growing up in a small Midwestern town in Indiana during the aftermath of the 1929 Wallstreet market crash, pre-World War II, and facing teenage in a fatherless home during the war years, the author has described her childhood in an era of the past. As a young girl, Ms. Battistini describes how family tragedies affected family life and the contrasts of living through sadness in a child's world. Facing a world of two parent, stay-at-home-mother families, as the youngest child after the death of her beloved father, she takes us through the frightened world of an original 'latchkey kid.' Social mores at the time was one that pushed mental and emotional problems of children into a 'social dumpster'.......meaning they were not recognized, nor dealt with. The old Victorian adage of 'children should be seen and not heard,' had permeated into the early twentieth century . She literally walks us through the childhood contacts that left their marks on her social development. The reader cannot help but make comparisons to children of single parent homes of today, and the social aids that are available to them. She subtly refers to the stigma of a husbandless family, and gender inequality. She describes family life before her father's death, and the importance of family gatherings. Growing into teenage sociability during World War II, Ms. Battistini touches upon the effects of the war years on her family as well as the community. She demonstrates how as a youth she pursued her education through the parochial school system finishing in the public schools of Sarah Scott Junior High and Wiley High Schools. The impact of high school friends is defined and has been lifelong. As a forty-four year old graduate student taking an aptitude test, the author found her forte could have been in mechanical engineering. As a young college student, she and her peers found the career options mainly to be in teaching, nursing, secretarial work, and/or marriage. Ms. Battistini spent forty-seven years in the field of education at all grade levels. At the time of her retirement, she was a high school guidance counselor.