One day in the summer of 1942 when dad was in an exceptionally foul mood and had exhibited exceptionally bad temperament he went to sleep on a cot out among the thicket trees (prohibition had ended several years before - use your imagination).
Mother gathered the kids and took us to a farm where she had friends. I don’t remember how we got there, how long we stayed (weeks) or the court battle during divorce proceedings in Louisville. I do remember when the divorce was completed two of my brothers and I were sent away per court order and the baby Donnie, stayed with mother.
My brother Larry went to live with an aunt on a farm in Tennessee while Gene and I were placed on a bus and sent to live with grandma Dickens in Tennessee. Gene was six and I was ten.
Thus my second decade began as an adopted child in the possession of my grandmother who had adopted Gene and me.
By that time the Great Depression was ending, people had jobs, wages were good, living conditions had greatly improved, the Tennessee Valley had electricity and the world was at war; dad continued his carpenter work and mother took her first real job in Louisville.
