The Beginnings (cont.)

There was a really big blowup one night and mom took Susan and our baby brother, Paul Jr, and me to get the things to make malts. When we came back Dad wouldn't let us go inside the house. Finally, he let us kids go inside but he and mom stayed outside. Later, mom made us malts.
It must've been not too long after that my parents separated. Mom moved us back to St. Louis near our grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Bushong. Dad went to Vietnam and we lived in Arnold, Mo.
There our landlords were Mr. and Mrs. Winheim, who were to become lifelong friends. They owned a truck farm on Telegraph Road and would give us fresh vegetables. During the holidays Mrs. Winheim would make cookies, cakes and coffee cakes; my favorite was her carrot cake.
Not long after Dad came back home we woke up one morning to our car being gone. It must've been repossessed. He brought us girls dolls from Vietnam, I still have mine.
Across the street from where we lived was a little girl that I played with occasionally. One day we were in the basement playing and she decided to go upstairs. When she got to the top of the stairs she turned and said, "I can get you into a lot of trouble." Then she threw herself down the stairs and told her mom that I pushed her. We never played together again, but my mom paid for her doctor bills--the fall damaged her ear--made it bleed.
There was another little girl that I befriended and one day we decided to make bouquets of flowers. We gathered about a dozen jars and filled them with water and proceeded to pick the flowers off the next door neighbors snowball bush.
When mom discovered what we were doing she told us we had to put the flowers back and apologize to the neighbor. We never did figure out how to "put the flowers back."

In the Beginning

I was born in St. Louis, Mo., to E. Jean and Paul E. Green. My dad was in the military so very shortly after I was born we moved to Nuremburg, Germany, where my sister, Susan Marie, was born.

Some of my earliest memories are of being so excited that my mom let me put a diaper on and run around with the other little kids...I believe I was potty trained and I thought this was a great deal of fun.

Other memories aren't quite so fun. I must've been about four, maybe five, years old and my mom was handcuffed to her bedframe. She was crying and wanted me to go get help, but I was too scared.

Another time, my dad woke me up in the middle of the night. He was crying about a fight he and my mom had where she had hit him in the mouth with a glass ashtray. I remember she was standing in the doorway. I was very confused and didn't know what to do or say.