I was born on March 26, 1938.   America was still crawling out of the great depression.  And two weeks before I was born, on March 12, German troops marched into Austria and annexed it for the Third Reich.   Within a year and six months, they would invade Poland. That's the world I was born into.  Upside down.  America entered the war when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The government built a German POW camp in Pryor--in the middle America--so that if one of the  German POW's escaped, there would be nowhere for them to go and no way to get there.  I was not yet four years old when my father went to work at the Pryor powder plant in 1942 making explosives and ammunition for the war.  All of my first memories have to do with something about the war, or the conditions that it caused in America.

My dad would bring me bracelets that some of the men would fashion out of scrap copper bits and pieces, or steel slag that were tossed out at the ammunition plant.  The men would lay the trash metal on the train tracks for the trains to flatten.  Then they would  braid the scraps and fashion bracelets.  I wish I had kept mine.  It was the one bright spot that I remember.  Nobody had things like that.   Ration books for food, tires, gasoline and everything else a family needed were the norm.  I grew up on rations.  We would trade food coupons for gas coupons if we had to go somewhere.

Schools were crowded.  Teachers weren't paid money.  They were paid in script--promissory notes, which they couldn't always cash.  People who had cash would buy the teacher's script for pennies on the dollar.  Most teacher's cashed their script for almost nothing--to buy food.

Phones hung on walls and had to be wound up to use.  It was years before my family had a phone. You didn't call a number, you picked up and an operator would take your request.  My family's number had three digits.  TV didn't exist.  All news was by radio--in the evening as a rule.  I can still see my grandfather sitting on a stool with his ear up against the mesh on the front of the huge radio trying to listen.  Everyone had to be silent during the news.  News was news.  Real events.  No opinions.  Visual news was at the movies.  On Saturday.  For a dime--if you had a dime.

 I didn't know anyone who had seen or flown in an airplane until I was in high school.  Most roads were dirt.  There were no interstates until I was out of high school and Eisenhower was president.   I am 80 years old and my world has changed.  But God hasn't.  He is the same.  Faithful.