How were you raised?

I was raised in the same town I live in now, don't ever plan to move. My mom was a liberal, opinionated, passionate (sometimes profane), activist type who had dozens of friends and loved the Three Stooges. She worked for years as a Personal Care Associate but switched to truckdriving when I was about 12. She died in a car accident when I was 21 and I miss her everyday.

My father is much more reserved, serious (phone conversations between the two of us are mostly long pauses and monosyllabic grunts), but in his way more opinionated than anybody I know. He funnels most of his passion into music, he's got 10,000 records easy and maybe 2500 CDs. He's a carpenter (not a "contractor") and while he's the best I know, times have passed him by- a fancy truck and a cellphone are more important than pride in workmanship these days. He's never even put an ad in the paper. The one piece of career advice he ever gave me is, "Whatever you do, don't be a carpenter." But I went on jobs with him from the time I was 10, and never learned another trade, so I guess it didn't take.

I grew up in a drafty 200 year old farmhouse w/ 10 acres. There were always cows, goats, pigs and chickens around- but that kind of self-sufficiency was almost impossible then, so the barn has been unused for 15 years and the pastures are full of poplar and birch now. At least my father can still feed the kitchen woodstove without paying 200+ a cord.

Also spent at least a day a week with my maternal grandparents until I was a teenager. They were almost stereotypical Mainers, and were a big part of forming my personality (such as it is). They were Republicans until becoming disillusioned with "Reaganomics". My grandfather was a belly gunner in the war, a truckdriver for a while, worked in a woolen mill for years, and taught my father all he knew about carpentry. Although politically they were practically opposites, my father and his father in law had nothing but respect for each other. Grampa called my Pa "Rip" (as in Van Winkle) because of his long beard, and called me "Chip" for my pudgy cheeks. Until I was a teenager, I thought my grandfather had written the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain". He kept his Ford pickup trucks immaculate and kept each of them for ten years at least. He gave me a pocketwatch, a handkerchief, and a jackknife when I was 12.

My grandmother worked at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard during the war (legend has it she was the only one with guts enough to paint the crowsnests), worked at the woolen mill with my grandfather after that, and as a lunchlady for the last years of her life. She drove (of all things) a bottle-green VW bug. She made it a point to feed me nothing but marshmallow fluff, potato chips, and Moxie- completely destroying any "good" my mom's ideas about whole grain this and sugarfree that may have done me. They both died of lung cancer within a year of each other when I was about 25.


Whew- that's more than enough typing for now.