Family ties

While California has lost a lot of its appeal, I’ll still leave with a lot of good memories. Growing up in the East Bay is one of them. Livermore was a pleasant rural valley town that was quite content as a wine growing region with an annual rodeo to liven things up. When the government decided to locate large weapons research and development labs there, it became much more suburban, something hard to avoid with the population quadrupling almost overnight.

But it was still a safe and for the most part sedate environment to grow up in. Like most of my father’s friends, mine worked in weapons research. Well, at least that was the assumption. Considering how classified everything was he worked on, I always assumed if I did ask what he really did he’d say, “I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” Since that would have put a damper on our father –son relationship, I decided to change the subject.

With seven of us in the family and a not very large house, quiet time was hard to find. Though somehow, Dad was always able to have his before dinner nap in his living room recliner, despite the TV playing and my siblings and myself doing whatever we really weren’t supposed to be doing. The recliner was his private domain, if you were sitting on it and he pointed at you then jerked his thumb over your shoulder, you vacated. Since Dad was an engineer, I figured it best not to find out if the recliner really did have an ejection mechanism.

The house also had a built in burglar alarm, and I don’t mean the dog. Mom is a light sleeper, and I had to get past my parents room to get to my own. No matter how stealthy I was sneaking in after being out past curfew, I would almost always get a sharp, “Do you know what time it is?” Replying, “Yes, it is precisely 3 AM, thanks for asking,” didn’t go over very well.