As I mentioned in a post here awhile back I want to write about the lives I’ve lived within this lifetime. The ultimate vanity project to be sure but I just can’t seem to help myself. So here goes.

I guess the obvious starting point is where it all started. The life I led as a child. As I’ve looked back on those times it seems an overstatement to call childhood the foundation on which the rest of your life is built. Obviously I can only speak for myself in that regard, but I just don’t think anything that happened in those “formative” years has been a hindrance or burden to overcome nor can I see anything in that distant past that led me to become who and what I am today. Sure, it’s all about growing up and learning but I’m not sure I had enough self-awareness to have been shaped or scarred for life by childhood events. Hell, maybe I just got lucky!

Which is not to say that I had a particularly easy time of it back then. I’m still keenly aware of growing up in a working class family in a wealthy upper middle class environment that was Orange County, California in the 1960’s.

I want to make the distinction between working class and poor. We always had food to eat and a roof over our heads. It may have been ground beef and chicken and our house was old and not in one of those fancy new subdivisions, but we got by alright I suppose.

My father managed a fast food restaurant called the “Rite Spot”. Up until McDonald’s opened a franchise right across the street. He then took up work as a route salesman delivering food items to the catering houses that served the booming construction industry. My mom worked as a carhop at a drive-in restaurant and later as an assembler on the night shift at a manufacturing plant. My grandma Pernie was always around to take care of us kids while we were growing up.

We vacationed every year. Usually on the Kern River a few hours away in San Bernadino county. Camping and fishing of course.

Our street, Milton Avenue, was sort of a mishmash of 1940’s era homes surrounded by new housing developments. Well, we were bounded on one side by the newly constructed Interstate (the 405 if I recall correctly). So all my childhood friends were similarly situated, economically speaking. And we always found a way to have fun. Playing sandlot baseball, building hideouts and forts, and riding our bicycles. Me and my buds would often ride the 8 miles or so to the beach and hang out all day. We had a lot of freedom back then, sort of a “be home when the streetlights come on”, until then we were left to our own devices. We pretty much stayed out of trouble, and collected pop bottles for the deposits to give us some spending money. I have fond memories of the community spirit we developed.

When I was 11 or 12, one of the neighbors invited me to his church, a small evangelical house of worship. Well, my grandma was Assembly of God so I had been exposed to all of the craziness (like speaking in tongues) from an early age. Anyway, I wound up getting invited to join the church orchestra and choir. I didn’t play an instrument, but no problem they provided me an old lap style steel guitar. I didn’t read music, but they just numbered the frets on the guitar and put corresponding numbers on the notes of the sheet music. So, I just plucked away and used the slide accordingly. It seemed to work, or at least no one ever complained about my “music”. I’m a notoriously bad singer so they called me a tenor and stuck me in the back row. And later that summer we actually did a tour across the western U.S. states. Random church families would takes us in for the nights we were in town. I was one of the youngest members of the group and I recall not being entirely comfortable with the situation. Everyone was nice to me though, so nothing traumatic to report.

In school I was an average student at best, mostly due to laziness I suppose. I always hated homework. But it was in school that I became acutely aware that I was not like my peers. I didn’t wear the same nice clothes, didn’t live in the nice neighborhood, didn’t hang out with the cool kids. That kind of thing. And yes, kids can be cruel and they were. And so can adults. I’ve actually written a little about this before in a post called “A working class hero is something to be”.

Two incidents stand out. One day the kids were all laughing at my shoes. Which admittedly were ridiculous. A gift from my uncle who was a shoe salesman. Probably a couple of sizes too large. But they were new and so I was compelled to wear them.

Anyway, the teacher came out to see what all the commotion was about. Someone said “look at McCrarey’s shoes!”. The teacher looked and burst out laughing too. I think she felt bad about it though.

The other incident that is seared into my memory involves my 7th grade math teacher, Peter Boothroyd. I’m sure he’s dead by now so I won’t begrudge him. Much. I was being my usual smart ass self in class one day and he called me out on it by saying “Keep it up McCrarey and you’ll wind up selling jello out of a truck like your father”. Ouch. Well, as it turns out I did for a time wind up working in route sales (sandwiches, not jello). But I’m proud to say that I went on to bigger and better things, beyond anything a pea brain like Peter Boothroyd could have imagined possible. Hmm, I guess maybe I am still a little bitter.

But seriously, so I grew up poorer than most of the community that surrounded me. And that maybe resulted in me being an outsider. Perhaps it impacted my self-esteem some. Honestly, I’d say that makes me luckier than many people. I certainly had no great tragedy or trauma to overcome. And if anything if provided me more motivation later in life to make sure my kids had the kind of life I did not.

Bottom line, my childhood life seems to have little or no relevance to what I became or who I am now. I would wager that is true for most people. I think the next chapter of my life had a far greater impact on my future. A future I could just as easily have lost. Stay tuned for the next installment!

As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be