Recently, I tool a trip South to visit family and to get my southern accent retooled. A couple of family members had aged. I am laughing every time I say such a thing: I know they are looking at me and saying, "This guy has really aged."
My brother Corb is eighty and in some ways like all of us seeing the "end" whatever that might be. We are all moving in that direction let's face it. My stories of him are smile producing. He has been working since he was eleven or earlier. Work in my terminology is not our farm but working for wages. He started in a grocery store, progressed to owning the store and began a succession of successful businesses.
We were farmers: poor but didn't even know it. My Fad had a serous stroke when I was in the tenth grade and for me, Corb more or less became my surrogate Dad. The farm pretty much went away and I worked for Corb in his big grocery store. It was quite a time. I was going on a date once and Corb spied me, "No way are you wearing jeans, (in the fifties, only the poor wore blue jeans as we called them." He immediately went into our hometown to The Men's Store, (for us a really nice clothier) established an account and overnight I became the best dressed kid in my high school.
