Patrick Coghlan:  

After 41 years of marriage I am now a widower and live in Gridley, a small farming community in northern California. My two children live their lives away from me, but come home often enough. My grandchildren are, well, on backorder, so I'm told. I do not farm, I just prefer the slower pace of a small rural town that is just 15 minutes away from almost anything I would need. Ruislip, in England was the town of my birth. I grew up surrounded by family in Northdown Close. My mother was housekeeper for the Barn Club under Mr. Saunders and my father worked for the Stepney Bourough Council. Dad never really recovered from WWII and died at the age of 46. I was 9 years old. After his death I got my first job as a commis waiter, dishwasher and whatever at the Barn Club. Ten shillings ($1.40) for an 8 hour day, one pound ($2.80) for 12 hours. But then there were tips! As a good little Catholic I was sent to Gunnersbury Catholic Grammar school when I turned eleven to be tortured by the resident priests and other inmates under the guise of being educated. But hey, I am a survivor! I finally said "goodbye" to the sadistic John "Harry" Harman and Gunnersbury in 1962 in order to emigrate to the United States. After a wintry six days with rough seas aboard the SS United States my mother and I arrived in New York. We took a quick week to see the sights in Washington DC before flying west to Spokane, and then by car into Montana. I would be raised in Whitefish, Montana, which was then a logging and railroading town deep in the Rocky Mountains, and in the shadow and granduer of Glacier National Park, which I would come to consider as my backyard. I loved it. I worked as a printer's devil for the local newspaper while finishing high school and enjoyed hunting, fishing for salmon and trout, skiing, climbing and hiking the Rockies, followed by weekend keggers. And lordy, after enduring puberty while in a boys only school, did I learn to appreciate the distaff side of life! ["But therof nedeth nat to speke as nowthe"] Hard work paid off. I bought my first car when I turned 15 - a 1955 Chevy - that I used to race at the local 1/4 mile strip, which we students had marked out on a rarely used stretch of highway around the lake. (The cops didn't mind. How cool was that?) All it took was a yell of "quarter mile!" for two dozen cars at the local kids' drive-in burger joint to load up and head to the edge of town. In 1964 I even got to watch our beloved chief of police bring the one and only brand new police car out to see if he had got his money's worth. A tuned, ported '47 Chevy coupe "sleeper" delivered the bad news to him as we watched! I graduated from Whitefish high school in 1966. It had been the best time of my life! To this day I owe a debt of gratitude to the many classmates and upper classmen who finished raising me and, with some assistance from a cadre of caring adults, changed a shy English schoolboy into a survivor and a productive adult. I worked in the lumber industry as a choker setter and 'cat skidder, then in a plywood mill. I also worked as a relief auto mechanic on weekends and played in a dance band on weekend nights. I was a real workaholic before enlisting in the US Army in 1968. I had watched my classma...Expand for more