Bovine Remailer <haystack@cow.net> wrote:
On Thu, 28 Nov 1996 jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca wrote:
Another anecdotal example is in the opening chapters of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" by Richard Feynman, the late Caltech professor and general bon vivant. He describes how his mother introduced a doctor, a general and a professor with the same respectful tones indicating to him that a career in academia was as highly valued as any other high position in society.
Your lower middle class slip is showing.
Damn right! Everything I have I earned myself. I'm not some pampered child of rich parents. My God, when I think of what my father went through when he was growing up and what he endured to feed our family, I'm amazed that he didn't drop dead in his tracks. The fact that my granfather was a well respected municipal politician didn't insulate them from the effects of the depression. When my father was young he had to walk almost four miles to and from school, and it was uphill both ways. Then when he got home he had to chop wood with a hammer. Of course he could have used an axe, but it was usually dark by this time - they couldn't afford lights - and he found that a miss with the hammer was less likely to cause severe leg trauma. After getting his hand crushed in a printing press as a young man and later, after being layed off after 26 years of hard toil and loyal effort, he wasn't bitter when he was forced to retired on a pension of $650 per year. He was proud to have worked hard all his life and succeeded in his own small but not completely insignificant way. Look where I'm pointing, not at what I'm pointing with. James