Bribes of Pennies

I’ve been writing a memoir. This is how it starts.

Bribes of Pennies

Prologue

I grew up on a chicken ranch in rural So California town called Chino. Chino was known for two things, its dairy farms and its men’s prison. We had chickens. In the early 1950s my parents became disillusioned with Los Angeles. Even with strawberry fields and citrus groves all over, new buildings caused it to be too congested. One by one fields and orchards disappeared. So my parents bought the ranch and we moved when I was eighteen months old.

My maternal grandparents followed and life began in a simple way of running the ranch. With lots of land between other ranches and farms it was wide open spaces.

Chino became known as the dairy land with many large companies buying from the dairy farmers. Those that were lucky to secure contracts with companies like Knudsen became wealthy. In the mid- 1950s the egg market dropped with the first announcement that eggs were bad for people.

My parents scrambled to find a way to make money. They lost many chickens to heatwaves. Rain storms, thunder and lightning that shocked the chickens and they didn’t lay eggs, there were wind storms that tore apart the chicken houses that were built out of corrugated metal. Through all these hardships my parents pushed on. My brother who was fourteen years older than me worked at other ranches to bring money in. My dad worked at becoming an electrician, going to night school and having another chicken farmer sponsor him to get into the electrical trade.

These times cause a very volatile relationship between my parents. Physical fighting was common.

When my brother turned eighteen he moved to Los Angeles and worked in the garment factories. I was an “only child” that became like a homeless person living in the wild desert. Always being chased by screaming crazy people, having wild dogs nipping at your heels and constant dust storms with sand that felt like rocks pelting me and hitting me in my eyes.

These two people, my parents should never have been together or had children. They had found each other in the Oregon forests where they both worked. They should have stayed there.

But long before any of that, there was my mother’s father. And the words he said to her that changed everything. For her. For me. For all of us who came after.

You owe us your life.

This is the story of what that cost.

Some cages are built with pennies. Getting out costs everything.