[00:00.00]Lesson 7   A high school student speaks (After Randal Williams)
[00:30.90]   I went through four years of high school in Alabama,
[00:36.96]and became active in clubs and sports.
[00:41.51]I made a lot of friends and became a regular boy.
[00:46.97]But one thing was irregular about me:
[00:52.14]I managed those four years without ever having a friend visit my house.
[00:59.09]  I was ashamed of where I lived.
[01:04.05]We had a big family.
[01:08.41] Several of the members of the family were sleeping in one room,
[01:14.37]but that's not so bad if you get along and we always did.
[01:20.82]As you get older,though,things get worse.
[01:26.10]  We lived in a lot of old houses.
[01:31.06]Some of them were in bad shape ten years before we moved in.
[01:37.83]They were hot in summer and freezing in winter.
[01:43.39]I woke up every morning for a year and a half with dust on my face.
[01:50.65]It had fallen out of the ceiling during the night.
[01:55.80]  When we boys got old enough to learn trades in school,
[02:01.57]we wanted to fix up the old house.
[02:06.01]We did try once.
[02:09.67]But when we tried to whitewash the old walls,
[02:14.95]the dust fell off the wall as the brush went across it.
[02:20.70]We ended up with the old walls looking even worse than before.
[02:27.25]  The same goes for keeping a house like that clean.
[02:33.13]If you have a house full of children and rubbish,
[02:38.09]you will never keep it clean.
[02:42.04]Daddy used to shout at Mama about that,but she couldn't do anything.
[02:48.70]I think Daddy knew it himself,
[02:53.14]but he had to let out his anger somewhere.
[02:58.00]And shouting at least isn't as bad as hitting.
[03:03.14]   This was not during the Depression;
[03:07.90]this was in the late 60's and early 70's.
[03:13.18]  I am thankful none of us children ever blamed our parents for this.
[03:19.84]It was not their fault.
[03:23.39]They were always looking for a house
[03:27.65]just a little better than the place we were living in.
[03:32.69]You have to understand that my parents worked a lot harder than most people.
[03:39.77]My mother was always at home,
[03:44.21]but for her that was a full-time job--and no fun,either.
[03:50.77]But my father worked his head off from the time I can remember,
[03:57.11]in factories or shops.It was hard labor.
[04:02.96]But no matter how much money Daddy earned,
[04:08.32]we never made much progress up the social ladder.
[04:13.68]That was how it was it those days in the United States.
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