Day 1...My Alcoholic Diary…

What it was like:
This will be a nutshell of my life. I am not a great writer, but a few people have asked me to “tell my story”. I am not ashamed of anything I have done nor do I wish to shut the door on my past. Everything I have done has made me who I am today, and I like who I am now.
My mother was born in Oklahoma in 1923. Her family moved to California during the dustbowl days. My mother’s mother was in her 40’s and going through the change of life when she had mom. Grandma was put in a sanitarium for “mental illness” when my mother was very young. Mom was raised by her sister that was 20 years older than her. Aunt Margie and Uncle Bob had no children of their own, so mom was raised an “only child” in San Diego. Mom was raised in an upper middle class neighborhood and attended college in La Jolla. Mom met my father at a USO dance in San Diego. Mom was a classy educated city slicker, and dad was a farm boy from Oregon that dropped out of 8th grade and joined the Navy to see the world. Dad was drunk and asked mom to dance and she snubbed him, so he poured a beer over her head and a year later they were married. They had their first baby, my sister on January 11th, 1946 I came along three years later on February 4th, 1949 then my brother was born September 12, 1955.
Mom said I was a happy baby, and giggled a lot. Mom and dad would have a party and I would wake up in the morning and drain the “orange juice” from the glasses left on the tables. From the start I was an alcoholic. Mom and dad drank a lot as did most people in those days in the military. We traveled a lot in our young years. In 1950 we moved to Guam and then to Hawaii, back to California, back to Hawaii, back to California, to Whidbey Island, back to California, back to Hawaii, back to California, then finally back to Whidbey Island Washington in February 1961!! I don’t really recall how many times and the years we moved, but it was close to what I just said, I’m sure my sister recalls the years. It is not important, but it kind of shows that we were moving about every year and a half. I was 13 when we made our final transfer to Whidbey Island. I went from the 5th grade through my senior year graduating (barely) from Coupeville High School in 1967.

Tomorrow I will try to recall some of my teen years.