Sometimes we would get up and go walk to the bars, the American Legion and the Amvets, to see if they were there. Sometimes they were and we got to sit down in the smoky noise and get warm to the smell of stale beer and fresh cigarette smoke. Other times, they were not there and we walked back to the steps to wait.

Eventually, my stepforther thought it would be a great idea if I got a job. First he bought me a lawn mower and made me pay him back over time as he found yards for me to mow. This was a strange and frightening experience as the mower was complicated to me, very noisy, very dangerous and the lawns were full of stuff I wasn't supposed to hit. The customers had odd ideas about the patterns in which the lawn was supposed to be mowed, also. I was very often aurally battered by the noise, mentally battered by the confusion of how to get the mower started when it stopped, and physically battered by the vibration and the effort of pushing the mower through high grass. None of which registered with my alcoholic stepfarther or my idiot mother.