Year One - 1967

Ok, so in this first year we have my seventeen year old mother and her new seventeen year old husband living in a trailer with my sixteen year old aunt. And my grandparents have up and moved to Kansas. Can anyone imagine anything like this happening today? You can not just move your teenage kids into some shoddy single-wide aluminum shelter and take off. But that is what happened in 1967 in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Without school to go to, my mother sought out employment. She took advantage of some social connections my grandparents had with people who worked at a small manufacturing plant in town. But, in 1967 it was not common for a woman with a new born child to be out of the home working. So, the company suggested that they could hire my mother if she did not have a baby at home which would be a distraction from the labor and such. My grandparents agreed to take me in for the better part of this year so my mother could work. My mother's plan to stay in Marshalltown and have a child was probably not working out exactly as planned, I would guess.

So, without the baby around, two seventeen year olds living together and being teenagers....well, their relationship soured. Big shock! Who would have thought that two seventeen year olds would fail at marriage under these conditions? Vegas odds makers would not take that bet.

But fear not, somewhere across a crowded manufacturing building my mother finds favor with another fellow worker. Don Frohwein. Hmmmm.....that last name sounds familiar.