How were you raised?

Born in Salem, Mass in 1963. 3rd oldest out of 7 children, Mom and Dad were both old school in their thinking and parenting, but unfortunatley my Father was a active alcoholic. He worked in a factory building conveyors and I have vivid memories of him coming home and drinking a pint of Fleishman's whiskey every night. He would get very violent when he drank and would send all of us kids to bed, sometimes after a beating. I remember him beating up on my Mom and many late night trips (unannounced) load all of us kids into the Chevy Wagon and head up to Kennebunkport. Maine. He would reach over and press his foot down on top of my Moms foot on the accelerator and she would hang on and drive the car up the highway at 80 -100 mph.This was back in the early
70's and there was not much we could do and we all feared him. Anyway, he was extremely violent in nature when he drank, and even cut our dog's throat in the bathtub one night. He got sick in 1973 and was admittted to the hospital in Dec. 73' and died on Jan 5th 1974 from liver failure. he was 44 yrs old.
After his death it was very hard for my Mom to raise 6 kids by herself. My oldest brother had already moved out on his own and it was six boys and one girl. and we were all still young My older brother was 12 and I was 11 yrs old. So we went on with our lives and moved to Salem, Mass from Lynn, Mass. We were forced to move into low income housing as my Mom didn't have a lot of money. I started attending the Salem School System and soon found out that I was an outcast because there were one half of the school population from well to do homes and the other half lived on the "poor" side of town. The taunts soon started of Food Stamps Jr. and I was picked on quite a lot and soon hated going to school.I was very shy and quiet and the taunts were merciless. I was in the 5th grade and hated every minute of school, but I also had to be a "father" figure to my little brothers. My Mom had to get a part time jobto help pay bills. It was a new experience without my father and was a quick way of growing up, I soon found this to be the truth.
In 1975 on Jan 19th, my younger brother Bruce (who was 5 yrs old at the time) was really sick so my Mom took him to the doctor and prescribed medicine for him and sent him home. I remember so clearly, It was a Friday night and he was too sick to eat so he took his meds and went to bed. the following morning, me and my Brother were awakened by my little Brother who shared the bedroom with him that Bruce would not wake up. I remember going into the bedroom and seeing my Brother's eyes half open and he had his right hand partially raised but he would not wake up. We went and woke up Mom who went into the bedroom and immeadiatly took him to the kitchen table and tried to breathe life into him. I will always remember that when she took her hand off his face from holding his mouth open you could see the hand print of her hands on his face. The ambulance arrived and he was brought to Salem Hospital and was DOA. That morning every one else in our house started getting sick and ended up in the Hospital. After the autopsy it was revealed that he had Spinal meningitis and that was what caused his death. This hit me really hard, even more so then my father's death. But I was growing up fast. I was too sick to attend my brothers funeral and the thing I found out later from my only friend who is still very close to me after all these years, that the principal of the Elementary School would not let my best friend attend the funeral, but took all of the kids from my class that were taunting me and my family and put them all on a bus and they went to my little brothers funeral. Well, after about 2 1/2 weeks, when I and my brothers and Sister returned to school, a funny thing happened..... these same children who were making fun of me and my family were no longer making fun of my family, well that was a very big turning point in my early years and even though we moved away from that city the next year, we all kind of looked at life a lot differently. My Mom continued to raise us and we all turned out to be good Christian adults. Well
I could go on from here but it was really very hard and also very painful childhood personally for me. I have tried to instill the virtues of God into my children's lives and remind them to not take anything for granted because God is the one who ultimatley can and will decide.