I was born to middle working class parents on the out skirts of Detroit’s city limits. My parents where from semi-large religious families who had located there for the jobs the auto industry had offered. Both of my grandfathers came from the north, one The Oopper and the other Canada, but same same. My paternal grandmother was Polish; at least that was what I was told. I’ve never been told where my maternal grandmother hails from, but all indications are the South (anything south of the Michigan border is considered Southern for Michiganders).
We lived in a nice brick 3-bedroom house that my mother had grown up in and was now renting from her parents. Part of the arrangement was that her parents and sister were allowed to park their pop-tent trailers in the two-car garage. This always confused me, since they both had garages of their own that didn’t have vehicles in them. Shortly after moving here just shy of my 2nd birthday from California where my father was stationed and I was born, my parents divorced. I say often now that that is my earliest memory.
