About

My “Window Opened” before the Great Depression.  Needing only love and sustenance I grew while men leaped from windows to their deaths as the financial structure and the economy convulsed and crashed.

I grew up in the shadows of poverty and was happy. There was never enough to eat at times, but I never knew stark hunger.  My clothing was patched and worn, but clean.  The family endured when the water pipes froze in the winter and survived the sweltering heat of summer without fans or air conditioners.  I bathed weekly in a tin tub when the coal stove in the kitchen emitted sufficient heat.

Coal was burned in the kitchen stove, kerosene in the dining room and coal in the pot belly stove in the living room.  The family slept in the two attic rooms without the benefit of heat in the frigid winters and kept warm under blankets and old coats.

Today, in the spring of 2011, while I am still riding the torrential waves of the living, I set my pen to paper to share my thoughts with family and strangers before “My Window Closes.”

William A Ware II