I was born in Northwest Pennsylvania, not more than a quarter mile from the shore of Lake Erie. I grew up as America recovered from WWII. Jobs had returned with the men to take them up. Nearby factories stopped making bombs, Jeeps, and gun barrels. The women who had held those jobs went home to dream of owning electrically powered appliances, raising happy children, and enjoying a future of peace. I can clearly remember the sound of distant hammers. Their syncopated pounding filled the air from sunup to dinner time. After dinner, we scavenged the muddy ground where builders had spent their day. We gathered the raw material for tree forts, bridges to traverse the nearby creeks, and the means to create anything else our imaginations could conjure from a precious piece of scrap wood. Eventually, those homes also provided us with new neighbors and life-long friends. I still see some today. In high school I met a girl. I saw her at a basketball game. She was a twirler and I played clarinet in the Pep Band. When I made some comments about how good she looked in her outfit, her boyfriend, the first chair clarinet, was eager to introduce her to me. Seven years later we married in a church not more than a quarter mile from the shore of Lake Erie. We still hold hands. There’s more. Struggles, illness, learning, growing, risk, money, work, God, friends, loss, and joy. But my stories are really about that first part. Jack and Pam O’Brien live in The Villages, Florida. They have three children and three grandchildren.
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