Constantly+On+The+Move

For the first several years of my life, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, my mother and father, moved my siblings and I around a lot, most of these places were in the Mojave Desert, located in Arizona, Nevada and California, always in dusty mining towns. Rex was convinced he would strike rich when he found gold, and he'd build us a Glass Castle where we could all live. He did research and came up with many inventions in order to do so, the most important to him was the Prospector, a complicated contraption that would help us find gold. It's job was to scoop up dirt and rocks and sift them through its long wooden strips. Rose Mary was an artist, and the desert motivated her with its beauty. My first memories can be found here, along with my older sister Lori's, and younger brother Brian's. When Lori was four she was stung by a poisonous scorpion while our parents were exploring the desert. Because my father didn't believe in hospitals, he took her to a Navajo witch doctor who cut open her wound and put dark brown paste on it while dancing around chanting, shortly thereafter Lori was as good as new. This desert was also my first home, in a town I never knew the name of. I was badly burned at age three when my dress caught fire while cooking hot dogs. I spent six weeks in the hospital until my father checked me out "Rex Walls style"...we were always doing the "skedaddle". My father claimed to be on the run from henchmen, gestapo, bloodsuckers, FBI, the mob, and sometimes he would talk of mysterious executives from Standard Oil. Rase Mary told us it was just bill collectors. We slept out under the stars on itchy army blankets a lot during these moves, which my parents refered to as adventures. We had a car called the Green Caboose, and one day during one of our adventures the door flew open in the back seat sending me flying. I watched the Caboose drive off until I couldn't see it any longer and wondered if my parents would ever come back for me considering Dad had thrown our cat, Quixote, out the window during a previous adventure after he hissed and scratched at me claiming, "Anyone who doesn't like to travel isn't invited on our adventure," I was scraped up pretty bad with a bloody nose and pebbles in my face and crawled to the edge of the tracks to wait for them for what seemed like hours. When they finally did return Dad claimed they didn't realize what had happened because Brian was in the backseat blubbering like an idiot, and they couldn't understand a word he said. I loved my parents, and in my eyes they could do no wrong. I loved our adventures too, although we never had much money. I thought we were lucky because us kids were free to roam and explore the desert all day while other children had to go to school. Our parents didn't see the need in sending us to some no-good rich kid place when they could teach us everything we needed to know on thier own. And they did, Dad taught about binary numbers, science, and also to shoot his pistol which I could handle almost professionally by the time I was four, as well as how to shoot our mothers bow and arrow, while Mom taught us about literature and art, Grandma Smith made her get her teaching degree in case her career as an artist never took off. Growing up in the Mojave Desert was one big adventure.
 * //The Mojave Desert//**

//**Fish Creek Canyon, Arizona**// Rose Mary's mom, Grandma Smith, lived on a ranch, in a big white house with green shutters surrounded by eucyalyptus trees, that she used to run with Grandpa, before he passed, in Fish Creek Canyon, west of Bullhead City by the Grand Canyon. We went to visit her when Dad was having trouble finding work, and had no other place to go but our visits were always cut short when Grandma Smith argued with Mom about Dad being a shiftless drunk, and Dad would shoot make saying something about old crones with more money than they knew what to do with. Grandma Smith used to be a West Texas Flapper, loved dancing to honky tonk music and cussing, and was known for her ability to tame even the most wildest broncos. Lori, Brian, and I loved to visit Grandma Smith. She would take me up to her bedroom and sit me down by her vanity which was filled with small bottles of different colored liquids, perfumes and powders, which I loved to open and sniff. She'd brush my hair and ask me if that goddamn lazy-ass mother of mine ever combed out my rat's nest, in return I would tell her Mom believed children should be responsible for thier own grooming. Once she put a bowl on my head and cut all the hair beneath it claiming it made me look like a flapper. Every morning she'd wake us saying "Rise n' Shine, everybody!" and made us comb out our hair and wash our hands before sitting down for breakfast. We would always have freshly made food, most of the time Cream of Wheat with real butter, and after that it our job to clear and rinse the dishes. Afterward we went out to shop for new clothes and to the movies. I loved visiting Grandma Smith but they were always on our way quickly due to her inability to get along with Dad.

//**Las Vegas, Nevada**// We spent about a month in Las Vegas in a run down motel with two beds, all us kids slept in one while the parents slept in the other. Dad was good at gambling and brought home a lot of money, he said he had a sure-fire way of beating the system. While Dad won us money playing poker or blackjack, Brian and I roamed the Casinos checking the trays for leftover quarters playing hide seek by the slot machines, watching the beautiful showgirls with thier sequins and feathers. I liked to mimick these women but Brian said I looked like an ostrich. When Dad came home with his pockets full of money, we would always go out to eat at a fancy restaurant where Dad would by us fancy things like cowboy hats, fringed vests, and a flaming ice-cream cake. He side it was time to start living like the High Rollers we had become. Before too long, we had to leave the city because Dad said the dealer had figured out his scam and noe the Mafia, who ran the casinos, was after him. We were going on another adventure.

We left Las Vegas empty handed and Dad still needed more investment money for his research on the Prospector. We made our way to the Tenderloin District in San Francisco to experience the real life of the city. We stayed in a motel that dad called the "flophouse" and mom called an "SRO"- special residents only. Sailors and women who wore a lot of makeup stayed in the motel too. During the day Mom and Dad went off to look for investment money while us kids stayed in the motel. One night when we were all asleep I woke up to find the curtians ablaze. Lori and Brian were still sleeping but I couldn't move, Dad burst in to rescue us and moved us to a bar where we had to stay while Dad went back to help tend to the fire. Because we could no longer stay in the motel, we slept in the Green Caboose on the beach for a few days because when we put down the backseat all of us were able to fit. We wen on for days like this until one night a police man tapped on our window and told us it was illegal to stay the night there. He made us a map to a place where we could stay, but Dad was still angry and decided he was fed up with civilization. That was when we moved back out to the desert to continue our search for gold.
 * //San Francisco, California//**

We rented a White, two bedroom house in Midland that was built by a mining company. There were no trees except for Joshua Trees, which mom loved to paint, although I thought they were hideous. You could always hear coyotes howling, and at night they kept me up, but eventually I got used to it. Not much grew in Midland since it only got about four inches of rain a year. Just the Joshua Trees, Cacti, and little creosote bushes. There were ugly animals like Gila monsters, moths, scorpions, lipless, scaly creatures. Shortly after we'd moved there, Juju, our dog was bitten by a rattlesnake and died. But there were always stray cats around to play with. Eventually Dad got a job at the gypsum mine, and would come home at night covered in white powder. Sometimes he'd chase us and pretend to be a ghost. A short time later, Mom became pregnant, and Dad decided that we'd stay in Midland until the baby was ready to come out and then we could move to Blythe, a much bigger town. Meanwhile Mom worked on her art and gave us lessons nearly everyday. She also typed short stories, poems, and childrens books which she always illustrated. Lori, age seven, always proofread the stories for Mom since she was a poor speller. When Christmas rolled around Dad had lost his job at the mine after getting in an argument with the foreman, so we didn't have money for any presents that year. Usually we got small things like a slingshot or a doll, but this time there was no extra money for toys, even though we always celebrated Christmas about a week after the actual date because that's when you could find marked down gifts, and perfectly good Christmas trees on the side of the road. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each of us kids out into the desert one by one, it was very cold at night this time of year. He liked to talk about the stars and how we were lucky because we could see each one perfectly from right where we were, and city people were missing out because the air was so polluted you could barely see any stars. He told me I could have any star I wanted, and that this was the best present I could get, because when other kids fancy toys broke or they lost interest, I would always have my star. Because Lori and Brian had already picked Betelgeuse and Rigel, I couldn't have those, so I looked to the west above the mountains where low in the sky there was one that shone more brightly than all the others. That was the one I picked, Dad said it wasn't a star, it was the planet Venus, but since it was Christmas I could have a planet if I wanted. After Mom claimed that she was ten months pregnant, we decided that it was time to pack up and move, so we said goodbye to Midland and went on our way.
 * //Midland, Texas//**
 * //A Joshua Tree, and the desert night sky//**

Blythe was right near the border of Arizona, 150 miles west of Phoenix, 250 miles east of Los Angeles, right in the middle of nowhere. We lived there in the LBJ apartments which we thought stood for our names but were really the initails of the president who mom said was a crook and a warmonger. There were a few truck drivers, and the occasional cowboy who lived in our apartments, but mostly it was just mexican immigrants. Mom thought this was nice because the walls were paper thin and we could learn spanish without even studying. Here was where I began school in the first grade, but the other kids didn't like me because I was constantly raising my hand to each of the teachers questions, and was tall, pale, and skinny. One day a group of four mexican girls from class followed me home and beat me up while calling me names like teacher's pet, brown noser, and matchstick. Next to the apartments there was a chain-link fence with a hole in it that led to an iceberg lettuce farm. Brian had discovered it and I followed him to the big huge rows of lettuce, where we ate until our stomachs ached. Two months after we moved to Blythe, Mom had our sister who she named Lily Ruth Maureen, but she was to go by Maureen because it was a diminutive of Mary. Of course, Dad checked Mom out of the hospital Rex Walls-style. A few months after that a squad car tried to pull dad over because the Green Caboose didn't have working brake lights, but dad was able to do some quick speedy turn and lose them. If they'd have caught them Dad said we'd all be arrested because our car didn't have a registration or insurance. After that it was definately time for us to go, so we headed to nothern Nevada.
 * //Blythe, California//**

Dad was certain that we were going to strike rich in Battle Mountain because thier was lots of gold. Battle Mountain was not the type of place people wanted to live, a newspaper at east once referred to it as the ugliest, most forlorn, most godforsaken town in the whole country. The people who lived there didn't mind, there was a Shell Station in town where the S was burned out and Battle Mountain's inhabitants would walk by laugh and say, "Yup that's where we live, Hell!" Dad rented a U-Haul truck where we could store what little possesions we had for the move, but all us kids, including Maureen who was just a couple of months at the time, had to ride in the back with the furniture because there was only room for two up front. Halfway there, the doors to the U-Haul flew open and all of us were in danger of falling out but because all of our things were separating us from the front of the car, we had no way of getting Dad to stop. After awhile we saw a car's headlights getting closer and closer until they were right up behind us, shining into our faces. The car flashed it's brights and finally got Dad to pull over. He yelled at us as if it was our fault, even though there was nothing we could do. "You're sure as hell lucky that wasn't a cop," he said "or he'd be hauling your asses off to jail." The town of Battle Mountian was a hundred years old and used to be a mining post, but many of those people hoping to find gold had moved on by now. Off in the distance were the Tuscarora Mountians, which ran down into the flat desert. There was a long strip which was the main street with a grocery store, drugstore, Ford Dealership, two casinos, the Owl Club, and the Nevada Hotel. Or home there was a wooden building, one of the oldest in town, on the edge of town that long ago was a railroad depot. It was green, two stories tall, and right in front were the railroad tracks. Mom and Dad slept upstairs which was the old station managers office, and my brother, sisters, and I slept down in the old waiting room where some of the original benches still sat. We found old spools on the side of the tracks that could be used for tables and chairs, some big some small. Dad was able to find a cheap upright Piano when the saloon in the next town went out of business. Dad got a job as an electrician in a barite mine. This was around the time when Dad taught us how to play poker, because he began spending a lot of time at the Owl Club. The mine where he worked had a commissary that deducted out bill and rent from Dad's paycheck every month, with this he was able to put everything on his tab. Our parents enrolled us in the Mary S. Black Elemementary School, where I started second grade. I had already known everything that our teacher taught us from Dad, but I wanted the kids to like me so I never raised my hand. Our neighborhoodwas known as the Tracks, and lots of other kis lived there that we could play with. Dad sometimes played with us too, and the nieghborhood kids loved him. I liked to explore the desert and look for rocks because there were so many different kinds, I started my collection here. There was garnets, granite, obsidian, and a lot of turquoise that Dad would use to make Mom necklaces. Once we thought we'd found gold, Brian and I, and came home with and enitre bucket full of sparkeling nuggets only to learn that it was iron pyrite - fool's gold. My favorite rocks were geodes, because they came from volcanos and when you broke them open they were hollow with walls made of white quartz crystals or purple amethysts. When us kids wanted money we searched along the railroad for beer cans or bottles which were two cents each. It was one cents a pound for sheet metal and three cents for copper. We usually spent the money on candies. Up the road from our house was a place called the Green Lantern, Brian and I could never figure out what kind of business it was, but the ladies wore lots of makeup and hardly any clothes and could always be found lounging on the front porch. After living in Battle Mountain for sixth months dad lost his job and his credit at the commissary, we had to eat less and most of the time went hungry. Dad began to dissapear a lot after that using the excuse that he was looking for work. The incident that forced us to leave Battle Mountain was caused by a nasty kid named Billy Deel, who was three years older than me. Billy lived with his father who was an alcoholic mine worker. Not long after he'd moved there he began telling the other kids we played with that I was his girlfriend, even though I didn't want to be. But Mom told me I should be nice to him because he was less fortunate than I, so I was nice to him but told him I would not be his girlfriend. Billy continued to harrass me saying that if I wouldn't be his girlfriend, I'd be sorry. He gave me a turquoise ring that was his mothers, who no one knew what happened to, and because it was so pretty I accepted it but told him I wouldn't wear it. One day during hide and seek Billy climbed into my hiding spot with me even though I told him not to because there was no room and tried to kiss me, he pushed me down and got on top of me. Luckily the other kids found him and he got up. After that I went to return the ring to him, he didn't say much except that he had raped me but I didn't know what that meant. That night while Mom and Dad were at the Owl Club trying to earn more money gambling, Billy showed up at our house and smashed our front window with the butt of his BB gun, and began to shoot at Lori, Brian, Maureen, and I. We flipped the spools over to shield ourselves and Lori ran upstairs to retrieve Dad's pistol while the shooting continued. She shot at him but missed because she wasn't as good a shot as me, Billy ran away for a few minutes but returned. This time I had the gun and I aimed at his feet to chase him off for good. A squad car took Mom and Dad home that night and the policeman asked us several questions, saying that nieghbors had called when they heard shots. I told him that we were simply defending ourselves. The officer informed us that we would need to go to the courthouse tomorrow where the magistrate would decide what to do with us. It was time for yet another Skedaddle.
 * //Battle Mountain, Nevada//**

Mom informed us on the way to Phoenix that our run in with Billy Deel was a blessing in disguise because Grandma Smith had died left her a house in the Business District of Pheonix on North Third Street, but Dad refused to move. Now we had to. Mom was convinced her career as an artist would take of in Phoenix, and she spent a lot of her inheritence on art supplies for her gallery which took up the front two rooms of our new house. Our house was like a mansion, nothing we'd ever lived in before. It had fourteen rooms that held beautiful furniture; a spanish dining table, a hand carved upright piano, glass fronted cabinets with bone china, antique silver serving sets, all kinds of good stuff. The backyard had orange trees, the front a palm tree, and the house was surrounded by hollyhocks and orleander bushes. In the back was a shed big enough to fit two cars. Mostly mexicans and indians lived on our street, they all had about a million kids. Down the street lived gypsies who were always stealing our stuff, Brian had caught one of the old gypsy ladies bouncing on his pogo stick up and down the street. When Mom went to yell at them we woke up the next morning to find a chicked with its throat slit on our porch. Mom decided to use her own form of voodoo and waved a ham bone at them while screaming and yelling, the pogo stick was on our front lawn the next day. Many of the kids on North Third Street went to Catholic school at St. Mary's church down the road, but Mom thought nuns were killjoys so we went to Emerson, the public school. Our school was in a fancy neighborhood, and looked like a Spanich hacienda, the streets were canopied by eucalyptus trees. The playground had lush green grass, and all kinds of fun things for kids to play on, it even had banana trees and us kids could eat as many as we wanted. Because we were so smart, Lori, Brian, and I each got put into classes for gifted children. The nurse at Emerson concluded one day during a check up that Lori needed glasses and that the school would pay for them, she wore them ever since. Mom named her studio R.M. Walls Art Studio and hung a big sign in the front of the house. Dad joined the local electricians' union. One day Dad surprised us with bicycles, and we pedaled all over town after that, to Phoenix University to play tennis with wooden rackets Grandma Smith had left behind, up and down the sidewalks, and all over. Because Mom hated to clean we had armies of cockroaches that came out at night that we would stomp on with our shoes, anywhere we stepped we were sure to kill at least a dozen. Overtime, we discovered we had a termite problem and one day Lori's foot went crashing through the floor, our house began to look like a piece of swiss cheese and one day after finishing one of his beers Dad decided to patch them up, everytime a new hole was made he'd just get a new scrap piece of wook and patch it up. Almost everyday Mom took us to the library at the Civic Center. When it got unbearably hot outside Mom told us to jump in the fountian, people told her that that was illegal but Mom paid no mind to them. She never cared what people thought. Dad lost his job at the electricians' union, and told us it was no big deal, but then he lost his second and his third. Mom's inheritance from Grandma Smith had dissapeared. He found a way to scam the bank by opening up new accounts, so we had a little bit of money from that. Eventually Mom decided we should move to Welch, West Virginia, were Dad's parents lived so that they could help out with money and taking care of us. Dad refused to go but Mom was determined and had a little bit of money saved up from her inherited land in Texas that a company paid her several hundred dollars a month for drilling rights. Mom was able to use the money to buy a two hundred dollar Oldsmobile, and although Dad still did not want to go we eventually convinced him.
 * //Business District, Phoenix, Arizona//**

We stayed at Dad's parents house for the first few months of living in Welch. Erma, who was an enormous woman with pasty skin, hated being called grandma but her husband didn't mind. Dad's brother Stanley slept in the foyer on a cot while we were there, and gave up his room in the basement. The room consisted of a big bed in the corner that the four of us kids slept, a cast iron stove, and a pull out couch where Mom and Dad would sleep. The house was worn down and old, it had three bedrooms upstairs but no one had been up there in two years because the floor was rotting. We were enrolled in Welch Elementary School, but these teachers didn't think we were gifted at all because we couldn't understand thier hillbilly accents and they couldn't understand ours. All of our classes were for "special" children, and Mom told us we would just have to prove to them how smart we were. Mom and Dad wanted to go back to Phoenix for the rest of our things and decided it would be best for us to stay in Welch with Erma. After they left, Erma treated us more terribly than ever. One day she told Brian his pants needed hemming but convinced him to let her sew them while her was still wearing them in her bedroom. When they were gone awhile I went to go check on Brian and found her fondling him while he cried. I called for Lori who came rushing in, Lori and Erma got in a fist fight and after that Erma banished us to the basement. We weren't aloud any coal to heat the stove, or any food. Sometimes Stanely would sneak us some but he could never stay for long, afriad that Erma would think he was taking sides with us. When Mom and Dad returned, Erma told them she could never forgive us for our terrible behavior and made our family leave for good. Dad was furious with us, even though we triedour best to explian, he said we were making up stories. What's worse was that our house in Phoenix had been loted and they were unable to retrieve any of our things. We rented a house shortly after that on Little Hobart Street, a house our mom called "rustic" because it didn't have electricity and we could never afford to pay the electricity. Prosperous families had sheds where they kept coal to heat thier stoves, but we just kept ours on the front porch. Dad dug a hole in the backyard that was to be the foundation for our Glass Castle, but because he still hadn't struck rich and we couldn't afford to pay the fee for the garbage man it became a hole where we threw our trash. I was so embarrasses by our home and was constantly sharing suggestions with Mom or Dad on how we could make it better, but Mom always said she'd rather keep the trash than put up tacky ornaments. Finally one day dad brought home a bucket of yellow paint and I was elated because having a yellow house would make us look somewhat normal. However no one would help me paint complaining that it was no use and one bucket wouldn't do the job, plus Mom thought yellow houses were tacky. Determined to make them see the bright side I began painting the house myself and got all of the places in the front that I could reach from the porch. With less than a quarter of paint left I attempted to build myself a ladder so I could reach the rest, but my makeshift ladders kept breaking. I gave up and left our can of paint outside, but it froze and when I attempted to paint again I realized it was ruined. We were left with a half painted yellow house. There were other families in our neighborhood that had it much worse than we did. There were the twelve Grady boys whose father had ran off long ago with some other woman and thier mother was bedridded. They were always running wild but you could never tell them apart because had shaved heads to keep away lice and wore blue jeans and t-shirts. The Halls had six children who were all grown up but still lived in thier parents because they were mentally retarded. The toughest were the Pastors, thier mother, Ginnie Sue, was the town whore and none of the nine children belonged to her husband Clarence. At night you would see a car pull up to the house, flash its lights, and Ginnie Sue would come running out and climb in the front seat. Kathy the oldest daughter took a liking to me and invited me over to tell Ginnie Sue about living in California. In Welch we did a lot of fighting, not only to fend off enemies but because that's how you fit in there. Other kids made fun of our garbage pit, our father, and the fact that we didn't have electricity. It became harder in sixth grade when we never had lunch to eat, the kids made fun of Brian and I, so we began to hide in the bathrooms. I locked myself in a stall and put my feet up on the toilet so no one would know I was there, when the other girls left I would come out and dig through the trash for throwm out food. I would find plenty of good things and began to keep them in my purse to take home to Brian. After awhile, though, I started to smell like bologna and was afriad the other kids would smell me and know I was picking through the trash, so I stopped. We stayed in Welch for a long time, and went through a lot there. We were there when Erma died, drank herself to death, and eventually Mom left Dad because of my urging. Once filmakers from New York City came to Welch, and Lori found her way there, writing to us regularly. My junior year I began looking for colleges in New York, and I planned to move there as soon as school was out. At first Mom didn't like the idea, nor did Dad, but I was dead set on going. Dad came to see me off at the bus station, and I watched him grow smaller and smaller until he was gone.
 * //Welch, West Virginia//**

When I arrived in New York City, Lori took me to a women's hostel in Greenwich Village where she was staying. Then in about mid-summer she found an apartment in South Bronx that we could afford. It was bigger and fancier than our house on Little Hobart Street. It had shiny oak parquet floors, a foyer with two steps leading down into the living room, my room, and there was a bedroom of to the side which was Lori's. Our kitchen had a working refrigerator and gas stove. The bathroom had a black and white tile floor with a huge deep tub and working toilet, the hot water never ran out. The neighborhood was rough, but I was used to that, we'd always lived in rough neighborhoods. Puerto Rican kids hunf around on our block at all hours, playing music loudly and dancing, clustering the entrance to the subway station. A few times I was jumped and robbed, but I looked on the bright side, at least I was still alive. I always fought back though, not wanting to be known as an easy target. I attended a school where the students applied for internships all over the city, one of mime was for The Phoenix, a weekly newspaper that was sold at storefront on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. I wrote Brian everyday, and, just like me, he moved out to New York City after his junior year. As soon as he got there he found a job at an ice cream parlor in Brooklyn, which he liked better than Manhattan or the Bronx, and began waiting for me to get of work at The Phoenix so that would could take the subway to South Bronx together, like always we stuck together. I was accepted to Columbia University which I heard was the best in the city, although I could no longer pay rent, it worked out because a psychologist let me have a room in her Upper West Side apartment as long as I looked after her two sons. My weekend job was at an art gallery, and eventually I became the news editor of the Bernard Bulletin but quit when I was hired as an editorial assistant for one of the biggest magazines in the city. We heard from our parents once and a while, they were back together but Dad was still always drunk when he wasn't in jail, and Mom had completley withdrawled from the world around her. We began dreaded calls from Dad, and after awhile Lori decided it was time for Maureen to move to New York as well, although she was only twelve at the time. Dad hated the idea and accused Lori of stealing his children, but even so, Maureen was in the city by early winter. I had been in New York for three years when Mom and Dad moved there, finding refuge in a boardinghouse near Lori's apartment. Of course they were unable to pay rent after a few months went by and were kicked out on the street without thier possesions. They moved into another flophouse in a worse neighborhood, and stayed there until Dad set thier room on fire by falling asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Brian wanted our parents to learn to be independant so we wouldn't always have to look after them but Lori let them com stay with her while Mom assured her it would only be fo a few weeks. As weeks turned into months, and months turned into four and then five, Lori knew she could not let them stay any longer with Dad acting the way he did, so they moved into a van and were homeless once again. Mom and Dad called us once and a while from pay phones, they had been homeless for quite sometime but assured us not to worry. They spent a lot of time in libraries. The weather grew more cold, and we tried to convince them to move elsewhere, or to sell Mom's land in Texas which was worth a fortune, but they refused. As time went by, each time I saw them they looked even worse than before. Dad developed tuberculosis and claimed to be stone-sober, he spent six weeks in the hospital fighting illness, but sure enough he picked up the bottle once again. Mom and Dad had been living on the streets for nearly three years, with Dad making money gambling and playing poker, they tried to give us money saying we needed it more than they did. He refused to let me go without it, so I paid what was left of my tuition. They found an abandoned building to live in because many other homeless were doing it and it was free. In the end, Dad suffered a heart attack and spent the last days of his life in a hospital bed. Brian married and moved into a Victorian on Long Island with his wife where they had a little girl. Maureen moved to California, not wanting any of us to see her off. I'd married a man named Eric, but after Dad died I remarried to a man named John. Mom came to visit us five years after Dad's death having never met John before, and we drank a toast to Rex.
 * //Greenwich Village, New York, New York//**

As my groups Literary Luminary, it was my job to pick out certian passages and quotes from the text to share and discuss with the class. Anything that confused me, I thought was interesting, or just wanted opinions from the other girls, I would write them down for discussion. It was really nice to have the other girls there to help. With our wikipage, I chose to record the places that the Walls' lived, because there were so many and each of them was a huge part of the story, and the most interesting in my opinion. I can't say that I learned anything new from the book, I knew, as we all do, what terrible hardships people living in poverty grow through. However, it gave great insight into a world that most of us will never know. I used to get really upset when I was a little girl going Christmas shopping with my mom for my cousins, or my other brothers and sisters, and I would see something I wanted and beg for it but most of the time my mom would say "No we are shopping for so-and-so..." and I would complain that I never got anything I wanted, but these kids didn't even get presents under thier tree. If my dad gave me a star for Christmas when I was younger I could only imagine the temper tantrum I would have. There are so many things these kids went through that made them stronger and we will never have that. I always thought I was grateful for everything that I had, but now I realize how much I take granted. My bed, my heated house, my working toilet, my cupboards filled with food, my clothing that I always thought was cheap but now I realize there are families who can only afford to spend about a dollar on clothes a year. The Glass Castle was so hard for me to read at times because of the carelessness of Jeanette's parents, they failed thier kids in so many ways, and were given so many opportunities to improve. They could have made a great home for themselves with the inheritance from Grandma Smith, but they were way too selfish, Jeanette and her siblings took care of them rather than they way it should be. There were many times when I had to put the book down because it was just so aggravating, and I was constantly reading passages out of the book to my roommates that made thier jaws drop, they are now reading it themselves. The girls and my group felt frustrated times too, because the whole time you're reading, you think in your head what they //should// do and they never fail to do the opposite. If I had to pick something out of the book that taught me a lesson, I would have to say it was Rex Walls' alcoholism that affected me the most. As college kids, there is a lot of peer pressure to drink a lot, but alcohol is a vile drink that can ruin your life. I never want to hurt my loved ones and make them suffer because of my actions, poor decisions, or addictions.
 * //MY CONTRIBUTIONS//**