Jean Thompson Barrick depicts growing up during the Depression in a Sears and Roebuck house in a small Southern railroad town. It was a time when few married women worked outside the home, long-distance phone calls were made only for emergencies or bad news, and no-sex-before-marriage was the norm. Encouraged by self-educated parents and forward-thinking teachers and mentors, she determined at an early age to make Tracks out of Spencer. "Little Sister" in a family of five during World War II, she was the first in her family ...
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Jean Thompson Barrick depicts growing up during the Depression in a Sears and Roebuck house in a small Southern railroad town. It was a time when few married women worked outside the home, long-distance phone calls were made only for emergencies or bad news, and no-sex-before-marriage was the norm. Encouraged by self-educated parents and forward-thinking teachers and mentors, she determined at an early age to make Tracks out of Spencer. "Little Sister" in a family of five during World War II, she was the first in her family to go away to college. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, she worked as a "Government Girl" in Washington, DC, and San Francisco then with NATO in England, where she experienced London's Killer Fog of 1952 and the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth. She then returned to the United States and married a career army officer and moved eighteen times in twenty-three years. As a bride of five weeks she was left behind when her husband headed for the Korean War front. Three months later she found herself in an unusual post-war Japan. Then, in Germany, she learned to appreciate "Those Strange German Ways." Her memoir is filled with honesty, humor, and pathos as she describes her track from Spencer. Moving again and again, she discovered beauty in different people, places, and cultures. Throughout her journey the author carries the wisdom of her loving family and the memory of the town that shaped her. The book is written in three parts. "The People and the Place" portrays the author's family, protected school days, and what it was like to leave town and family and to go off on her own. In the second part, "Seeing My Best Days - New Places," she savorsher independence while working in Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA, and then is swept into the excitement of an international community in London. "An Army Wife Remembers" covers the joys of military life as well as the trauma of dealing with her husband's recurrent illness and of being left behind when he goes off to Korea, Iran, and Vietnam. The last chapter takes us back to Spencer and the "Little Brown House" where her life began.
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