A LOOK AT LIFE….in the year, 2022

I, Glenn H. Ray, will be 88 in a few weeks. My high school, St. Paul, Minnesota’s CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, will be meeting on this coming September’s seventh day for its seventh tenth year gathering after graduation in 1952.

Nearly all of us were born in 1934, during the crest of the Great Depression. We didn’t know much about the Depression. The Second World War had put it to rest.

America, as we knew it, was God-fearing and a Great America until the late 1960s. No swearing in school….NONE, or ELSE the student would disappear for a while. Children had Mothers….real mothers who ran their homes without swearing, without disappearing, without booze, with cooperation among real mothers who would teach and watch and/or play with the kids on the block.

It was not unusual for some Fathers to be working six days a week….It was Sunday that was sacred…..Nearly all of sales companies would be closed the full day so folks could, would attend their Churches. Synagogues usually were open for their worship on Saturday’s.

And then there was World War between December, 1941 and September, 1945, which began to change everything since.

Families were considered sacred in those days…..Mothers and fathers had children to take care of! THAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF HAVING CHILDREN….TO HAVE FAMILIES…..MOTHER, FATHER, AND CHILDREN….and to have families GODFEARING…..TO SEEK GOODNESS, HONESTY, CIVILITY, TOLERANCE….’LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THY SELF’…as I was taught…or else!

Families were cherished throughout our neighborhoods in very modest Christian St. Paul, Minnesota where I was born in 1934 and raised until I went to college on my own.

My dad’s father, that is, my Grandfather, Frank Ray, was born before the Civil War began! His family lived in Cherryfield, Maine rather close to the Atlantic and must have been quite wealthy. Primogeniture was practiced….that is the oldest boy of the family was to receive the family’s wealth upon the Father’s death.

My Grandfather Ray was the third boy of six or seven children, and so, had to find is way mostly by himself. His Father did buy some acreage for him, around 1,000 acres near Hope, North Dakota where he could settle and live.

Grandpa Ray left Cherryfield when he was seventeen. Somewhere in my house I have a postcard from Chillicothe, Ohio with his picture sitting on his horse on the front and note on the back reading: “MOTHER, I’M FINE….FRANK”.

Teachers of my day from elementary through high school were knowledgeable and God-fearing adults in charge of their classes well organized and under control with rare exception. I never knew any fellow student who swore…..ever, even through college from 1952 -56…..even in the Army in 1957 and 58!

Church and God were still honored until the mid 1960s when the sexual lefty human animal began to own the colleges and universities and dictate in public. ghr.