BEING A MIDDLE CLASS COMMON FOLK AMERICAN - Cinderella in Camelot

Common folk is what makes American´s great! I enjoy my life being FOLKSY. We are all required to take on roles in life as child, spouse, parent, grand-parent, provider, etc.

I have visited with the Elite Class, had large homes,sport cars, and been moderately well known on TV news and offices in 5 states. I was in a movie and 2 daughters were in a movie. Common folk in America can do anything.

I have had positions of authority and been a CEO of a corporation, as well as, been a small business owner and an Entrepreneur.

I have been to large dinners in large cities with the President of the United States present. I have experienced life working in the military in uniform and as a general service employee for some large well known public figures. I have been in a movie and on television. I have been a model. I have been rich and poor, skinny and fat, young and old.

I have been poor and accepted food stamps once in Killeen, Texas making a life transition during a divorce. I am not ashamed of my hard times. I learned how the poor in America had to live and knew I was not cut out for being poor. I was never taught what food stamps were until my association with the military. While living with my daughter having left a wonderful life in Hawaii and being taken for all my corporate stock in a divorce and learning about greed in stock ownership, I would not give anything for my life on top and on bottom. These life experiences make me who I am today. I traveled to other countries but here is the story.

There is so much that I have done in one lifetime that most people never get around too. How I accomplished doing so many jobs in so many places is that no one ever told me I could not accomplish what I set out to do. I was never told I could not do something.

I lived in America and had been taught some skills as a child. I had a good middle class upbringing in America. I enjoyed school. I enjoyed reading at the libraries that were always close to my home. I made mistakes and learned from my mistakes. There are some things on earth that we are simply meant to do. Other things we never have cross our mind or our life´s path.

What is so great about being in America and being a woman is that during the period that I was born, December 26, 1951, the Korean War had just ended. The people who became my biological parents were fresh out of high school and lived in a middle-sized town in Louisiana. Both of them had a decent life in middle class although I heard stories about the family homes and wealth of the south that both sides of my families once had access too.

Apparently, at one time in America, the family names had certain family traditions to uphold. I feel now that I may have been in the last generation to feel this family pride. It became irrelevant in the 1960´s. After President Roosevelt and President Eisenhower, there was a new family called the Kennedy´s in the White House. This wonderful family created an air of American Middle Class aristocracy and they set a tone for people like my generation.

I loved junior high and was in the band and on the basketball team. I loved the academic portion of my life but I loved music and sports more. They consumed my time with my friends. I had three younger sisters and three younger brothers so I did my share of babysitting but not for them. We always had a housekeeper but back then, they were called house cleaners. I learned to baby sit for money at the age of fourteen later in Texas while in High School. I never had my own money until after the ninth grade in high school. I never needed money.

I became an Entrepreneur by working during the summer and finally at the age of fifteen I went and applied for a job at Dairy Queen. I did not have a social security card so had to apply for one. The Manager let me use my mother´s number until I got my own which was only a couple of weeks. I learned to make Dilly Bars and Belt Busters and was happy dating for the first time. I went steady for a year and became pregnant.

No one told me about birth control and I think it was non-existent. I was in the eleventh grade in high school and was a band majorette that twirled machetes and fire batons. I enjoyed the thrill and excitement of the football games and was asked to the Senior Prom as a junior. The times were good and the first senior I dated was the Band president and the most popular person having won five scholarships to colleges. He chose U. of H. so he could be close to me since we were now going to be a family. I got my GED because then when a girl got pregnant, they had to quit school. That was in 1967. I left Dairy Queen, some rich doctors named Dr. John Hill, and Dr. Grady Hallman who played music with my young 18-year-old husband got me a job managing the Jandor Garden Apartments in downtown Houston. That paid our rent and my husband went to college and made money playing his trumpet at night with Ed Gerlach´s Orchestra. It was a good life but my husband was drafted for the Viet Nam War. He did not want to go because most of our Senior Class had come home in body bags. Therefore, he decided to work with his Dad at Grumman who had a contract at NASA, in Clear Lake.

I then managed some townhouses for a rich attorney named Newton B. Schwartz in 1970. Then I managed his new large apartment day care center since I now had two daughters and another on the way. It was now 1973 and we moved into our first home that we purchased for $1.00 from U.S. Homes. It was only about 3 miles from where we grew up in Houston. We could get to our parents homes within 5 minutes. My husband got a free trip to Acapulco while working for U.S. Homes. We went out of country for the first time in 1973. We had a good life but we were expecting our final and fourth daughter. Back then, they did not know the sex so one did not know what one would receive until giving birth. I could not use the birth control pills but having placenta previa and my second near death experience losing all the blood in my body and the hospital running out of blood literally, they tied my tubes so no more giving birth to children.

We moved to Birmingham, Alabama with the four daughters and became Latter Day Saints that offered a good religious background for our daughters. We did not allow them to date until sixteen, which backfired.

We thought being around all the great young men that were missionaries in the church was right. My husband made some choices in life and in career that did not include me. I decided to open my business while going back to college. I became a private investigator and did cases for insurance companies beginning 1978. By 1980, I was a partner in a new Investigative Services company. I had to learn the ways of insurance in arson, fraud, and subrogation. I then moved to New York and worked for attorneys doing Stocks and bonds. By 1984, I was on my way back to Houston to work for Newton B. Schwartz again. By 1985, I was working for the government full time and was very happy with my routine. The girls liked to visit but wanted to go to school in Florida. I joined the military as a navy reservist and wanted to work for the government full time.

I was assigned to Hawaii, the girls would visit, and two of them moved in with me and went to school in Hawaii. They got interested in modeling so I got interested in fashion. By 1990, I was a CEO of a corporation in Fashion, which included International Marketing and Manufacturing. I learned a lot about the world between 1990 and 1994. My daughters were all interested in their own lives and friends and would come and go in my life. I was free to do something new. I got island fever being in Hawaii from 1987 through 1994 and at 7 years most people do get island fever. It was time for a change and a divorce came.

I gave up all my stock and everything I owned and went to live with one of my daughters who had gotten married and had a baby. She needed a full time babysitter and I needed a change. I told her I gave up my company and babysitting my grandson would be a nice break. This is when I learned how hard the military life is on new couples and how little they are paid. My son-in-law was a typical red-blooded American blonde six-foot tall good-looking male who went into the army to get his college paid for. He did his time and got out. I went into business once again for myself and became a truck driver over the road in 1995.

I drove a truck from 1995 through 2002 another 7 years passed by with good money, and I was paid to see the United States. I enjoyed my time over the road and have been in all 48 lower states, Canada, and Mexico. I learned a lot about the U.S. and the government from a different point of view with Dept. of Transportation. My experience as a private investigator contractor, working for the government, and being a CEO all paid off during this job. I used a computer and satellite called a SATCOM. I learned to dispatch and train drivers. I could handle 150 trucks at a time on a computer screen with a phone headset and fingers typing away. I learned to enjoy computers in the government and being on a keyboard as a dispatcher was enjoyable once again.

I did not get off the road until I had medical requirements with surgery to my back and neck due to injury. I had only broken my nose playing baseball and before that had hepatitis A as a child. Other than having four children I had never been sick or needed surgery. I now have titanium in my neck and my back injuries keep me in a sedentary lifestyle but I have my computer at my home office.

I decided to write for the local newspaper to keep me busy in community service from 2002-2005 until they closed the weekly county newspaper. I started a nonprofit corporation and held two folk festivals with no compensation other than meeting the community and many nice folks.

I had plenty of experience writing as an Investigator and then an Investigative Reporter. Most freelance writers have to learn the ins and outs on the computer and what companies will pay for stories. This is my next task. I have been a freelance syndicated writer and publisher almost two years. My lifestyle is common middle class.

I got married for a final time March 2000 and married a fine prior military man who gave up truck driving to be a writer and manager of our small farm. We live a common middle class life and burn wood in our fireplace. There are plenty of fallen trees in our woods.

I have had many experiences that other people have not had. Some are out of body (OBE), two near death experiences (NDE) and ET UFO experiences. I am a simple common middle class American woman that is just beginning a contract female disabled small business with a desire to write and to type on my home computer. I have my dogs to keep me company.

Life for me was called Cinderella in Camelot but actually it was a Common Middle Class American Folk Story. Aint' nuthin' wrong wa bein' folksy!