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Friday, July 18, 2014

A Conservative Hippie

After writing and actually having the nerve to publish blog 1, this is blog 2 describing more of who I am.
I was born in 1953 in the delta town of Pine Bluff Arkansas. A medium sized town of about 50,000 that had good neighborhoods, good employment, and just an hours drive to the state capital of Little Rock. I lived in the same house until I was 19 years old, went to the same schools as my older sister and parents for that matter and graduated with fairly good grades in 1971. The oddest thing about my high school education was the high school mascot was a Zebra. We were a very stuck up bunch as most school mascots were the basic wildcats, bears, or a slang word for Native Americans. Not us we were the red and white team called the Zebras.

Growing up in Pine Bluff was good, not outstanding but satisfactory. My dad worked at one of the two railroads and my mom stayed at home. They divorced when I was in college and the pain of that divorce lasted for many years. But I think like many pre -war marriages it just ran out of gas. Married in haste and later regretted it. However, they never regretted having my sister and me.

It looks odd now looking back over growing up in another slower era. Our food was raised in the backyard for the most part, anything else was bought at the corner grocery store and never from a big chain grocery. My mom cooked all our meals. Going out to eat was not an option until many years later. We didn't watch too much TV because TV in the fifties had only 3 channels. When we got PBS my dad would not watch it as it did not have ads or Garry Moore. So I grew up on Lucy, What's My Line and Red Skelton all in black and white. My dad was a little cheap (maybe conservative), so no color TVs for us although my granddad repaired TVs and offered several times to get us a good deal on a color one. That was not happening with my dad, as all TVs were free from my grandfather and even fixed for free. We spent our hard earned money on the basics and the rest was saved. I wished I was better at following that advice from my dad.

My college years were  the best part of my educational life growing up. I went to a small state school, and decided to be a teacher. ( I really wanted to be a geologist but failed the Math. Oh well, I still like rocks, I just teach my kiddos about them.) I loved my small school and again we had an original, one of the kind mascot, the Boll Weevil. Yes, a nasty little bug that Monsanto has eliminated from the cotton fields thanks to their nasty pesticides that has given us a large increase in cancer. But neverless, another one of the kind mascot.

After surviving college,( and having a really good time), I set off on my own to teach the masses and I just about have accomplished that. I have managed to teach preschool, kindergarten, first, second, fifth, sixth, seventh, and special ed. It has been fun, and I enjoyed all ages. One thing about teaching is it is never boring and no two days are the same. Getting bored is easy for me and that is probably why I am blogging so I will have something to do.
I always do things late in life. I am fashionably late to events, late to church, late to dinner. So it just fitting that I was late getting married and having kids. I did not get married until I was 30 and had kids in my late 30's. Having kids late in life keeps you young and on your toes. When most of my facebook friends from high school are posting pictures about their grandkids, I am posting pictures of my two graduating from college. I actually have one married off ( my baby ,my son) so I may get to post some pictures of grands in the near future and tell about how AMAZING they are.

I was not raised in a true conservative household, but more of the work hard, pay your dues, don't ask for anything that you did not earn background. I think I became more of a conservative when I had kids and wanted them to have  a work hard, pay your dues, don't ask for anything that you did not earn philosophy. But my HIPPIE life of the 60's and 70's comes through every once in awhile by going back to the raising your own food, taking care of the environment, don't throw stuff away that you can use again ideology. I just always disagreed with the free love and drugs thing of the hippies of the 60's other that they were pretty cool. So I guess I am considered a conservative hippie, and that is ok with me!

This is enough about me for today. I am off to juice!! Organic of course.

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