Did it start out that way...

When Henry and Roberta met it was "love at first sight", or so they said.  They met at a roller skating rink on a Saturday night in 1947. The following week they decided to marry.  Roberta's dad would not sign for her to marry so they had to wait a few weeks until her 18th birthday.  Ten months later along came me.  I'm Linda, the oldest child of Henry and Roberta.

Henry got a job with the telephone company.  That was a dream job back in those days and Henry loved his work.  When we vacationed we stopped at nearly every telephone company.  He was a WWII vet and we heard stories of "The War" over and over.  Nothing very horrid although, I know he saw the atrocities only war can show.  Henry was an alcoholic, a veteran, a telephone man and an insanely jealous bully.

Roberta was a housewife and invisible when I was very young.  She also worked for the telephone company as switch board operator.  I cannot remember her, only snapshots of a woman that I called Mom.  Mother was very beautiful, she looked like Elizabeth Taylor.  She was scared of my dad's mother.  The story goes that my paternal grandmother chased my mother around the house with a butcher knife.  We hardly ever visited them because of the insanity there.

When they married I just know they didn't even discuss having children, leave alone discuss abusing them.  However, all forms abuse ran rampant in our house.  Before my stay in Henry's house horrors was over, there were four of us children.  Don was born 17 months after me, Mark was born 7 years after me, and Ann 12 years after me.  Mark had 2 heart problems never before seen in a baby and he was suppose to die any second.  He didn't but it was a terrible thing to have to live with.