I believe my mom was 24 when I was born. My dad a few years older. My dad was the next to youngest of 13 children and my mom was the oldest of five.
My dad's father and his mother's brother immigrated from Italy to the US to work on the railroad in Eastern Oregon. My dad's mother and the four oldest children immigrated a year or so later. His father had been a shoemaker in Italy, and at some point after immigrating had a shoemaker shop in town. At some point, his father also acquired land in both Oregon and Idaho and raised cattle. My dad sold his share of the ranch to his brothers when he moved to Eugene to go to college. Apparently, he wanted to be a coach. Didn't happen though.
My dad was born in the farmhouse in Idaho, but they also had a small two story house in town. The family home was abandoned after my dad's parents died, which would have been while my dad was still in high school. On one of our trips to Eastern Oregon to visit family, we got to go inside the old house. My uncle had actually used the house to stable horses, so it was in pretty bad shape. I remember my dad being upset about his brother stabling horses in the family home, as well as the condition he'd let it fall into. Not that he could really say much though. My uncle was one of the four born in Italy and my dad was a good 20 years younger.
What I remember most from visiting my aunts and uncles in Eastern Oregon was how every time they'd get together, they spent most of the time arguing about everything that had happened when they were growing up. They all remembered most everything differently, and they were adamant that what they remembered is what happened. On the drive back home, my dad would complain about how wrong all of them were. Especially, when it came to their mother. But when we asked why he never said anything during those arguments, he said there was no point. They were all too stubborn to listen to anyone else.
I've absolutely no idea what happened with the farmhouse in Idaho. Some of the ranch land was flooded when a dam was built on the Snake River and is now under the Brownlee Reservoir and part of the Farewell Bend State Recreation Area.
Anyway, what I really intended to say was that both my parents were really conservative and while neither were really all that old when I was born, I also had to wear skirts that were below my knees in the 60s. I'd beg my mom to make my skirts a few inches shorter, but no. I'd hike the skirts up a bit or roll the waistband. Not like I wanted my skirts to be halfway up my thighs. I just wanted to fit in enough that it wasn't so obvious I didn't fit in.
My dad didn't have much nice to say about those dang (not the word he used) hippies. Me ... I wanted to be one. But one didn't disobey my dad. And, my mom would have blamed herself as a failure as a mother if I'd become a hippie. Then too, I didn't graduate high school until 1971.
And, even though Eugene, Oregon, and the University of Oregon was just across the river from where I grew up, it was like the University of Oregon and all the protests and demonstrations were in another country.
