Well, as this rift grew, I began to lose respect for my stepfather, because I thought he wasn’t all knowing and all powerful, and so I gave my arguments, and I began to not like him. And after the depression hit, and he was getting broke, he began to drink. He was never offensive in his drinking, and that he abused anyone, he was , his language would get thick, his tongue would get in the way, and I could tell he’d been drinking. When he drank at the country club dances, so my friends could see that he was tight. He wasn’t the only one that was tight, I must say that there was a terrible amount of drinking, where I grew up, among the young and old. And I grew to hate it. When you only have two movies in town and not much recreation, drinking just became something that people did. It was right after prohibition, and it was ugly.
I never saw my mother take too much drink, ever. I never could criticize her in that way, but I used to go to her and say, “how can you stand living with him when he lives like that?“ She said, “You have to understand he’s undergoing a lot of pressure. “I said, “well, I don’t understand it, obviously, mother. “And one night I came home from a date, and opened the door when I came in, and he was sitting there passed out at the telephone in his pajamas, and my date was with me, and I’ll never forget, I was horrified, I woke him up and said, “”as I called him, “what are you doing down here? “And he sort of grunted and got up and went upstairs, but I just said good night to the date, there was no reason for him to come in.
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