Judith Slaughter

I was a war baby, born in Windsor Ontario Canada in 1943. Windsor was one mile across the river from Detroit, Michigan at that time the fourth most prosperous State in the Union. The automotive industry was King, and I remember clearly in the early fifties almost every one had a new car every two or three years. It was a time of prosperity for most and for my family we were “in clover” as my mother would say. We knew there were poor people out there somewhere but we didn’t see them, not often anyway. We had a few drunks in the neighborhood but they had family and didn’t sleep in the streets. It was very cold in winter, rainy in spring, hotter than the dickens in summer and magnificent in Autumn. We grew up wanting for nothing, loving our family and going to church on Sunday’s. We ate meals at home unless it was someone’s birthday and our parent’s loved each other.

We had some adversity but were too young to really understand it. Our Brownie leader ran off with a woman, we knew there was something up with that but nobody would talk about it. The school principal was a pervert, he was a full on creep, I just stayed away from him! He didn’t trust me, thought I talked a lot and would tell my mother. I could give the “look” even then, it said “hands off” and I was very good at it. They know who to go after, but I will say times have changed since those innocent days where we thought we could explain everything.

I watched Dragnet, Flash Gordon and Ed Sullivan on T.V., but we didn’t watch much television, we were outside skating or climbing trees, riding our bikes and playing in the garden hose. I let myself dream of living in California some day, it was such a far off place and it seemed sort of unreal, like a picture book or a fairy tale. When my father announced we were going to move to California I didn’t believe it at first, but we did, and although California has many problems, I thank GOD everyday that he gave me my shot at prosperity and living in this magic place.