And she was an American Girl

This is a picture of my grandmother and I.   My brother is there encouraging some fun in the waves.  My grandparents, by the time I was born had a big tudor house on the lake facing Devine Park in Spring Lake, NJ and Surfside, Florida.  They would rent the house out in Spring Lake and come up and stay for the month of May and September.   They were my Mom's parents.  My grandmother never drove.  She could sew, cook and could keep a beautiful house.  My grandfather was vice-president of Grand Union after working his way up from being a cart boy.   They did have housekeepers and gardeners.  My dad was an electrical engineer at Ft. Monmouth and retired at the age of 55 working there for 30 years.  He graduated from West Virginia University.  My mom was also a college graduate from the University of Vermont.  They married the September after her graduation and my dad was ten years older then my mom.  They settled in Neptune, NJ.  They first had a son named Randolph Donald (my dad was Donald Randolph) and then my sister Cheryl Ann almost exactly a year later very close to my mother's birthday.  When my mom became pregnant with me she told my dad she would need a bigger house.  While she was pregnant he did all the searching for a home and bought the house without my mom ever seeing it (I couldn't imagine that).  It was a small cape cod house located across from Wreck Pond in Spring Lake.  We could walk six blocks east to the beach, across the street was a pond for fishing, row boating, feeding the ducks and swans, and six blocks north was a foot bridge to cross Spring Lake and arrive in Devine Park with what we called Indian Trails around the lake.  We would then walk on to Main Street with it's stores where you could buy anything you needed.  The variety store (5 & 10) is still there and hasn't changed too much in all these years........thank God!  The church I was baptized in was influenced by St.Peters in Rome and I should really do a whole post on the beauty of Spring Lake with pictures.  It is and was a picture perfect town.  Well, anyway the point of this all is what are the hopes and dreams of parents for their children.   It is that you have a good life, but I really was lead to believe we should have a better life.  That one belief is probably the single most down fall of our generation.  My father was a hero fighting in World War 2......my uncle fought in Korea......my parents both graduated from college.......within two years they had a boy and a girl.......they lived in a picture perfect town, my dad worked for the government  and had insurance for us all and my mom never had to work....I was born an American Girl.....and how do those words go?????

Well, she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn't help thinkin'
That there was a little more to life somewhere else

After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to
And if she had to die tryin'
She had one little promise she was gonna keep

Words sung and written by Tom Petty