"My dad was of a generation and of a culture where a man's word was his bond."

My dad was of a generation and of a culture where a man's word was his bond. He expected people to do what they said they were going to do - even a handshake wasn't necessary, if I said I was going to do it, I was going to do it.

I remember one of the proudest moments of my life as an adolescent girl was I'd gone alone on the train from brown road, Texas to Omaha Nebraska, because my dearest friend, his name was Betty Davis, spelled the same way he could had moved back to Omaha after the war was over. Her father, who had been stationed at Camp buoy just outside our little community where we lived, was a high school coach at one of the larger high schools in Omaha, and so upon discharge, of course, quite naturally, he took his family and went back to Omaha. Well, I was crushed, for heaven's sakes, because now we had called I had nicknamed her Yankee. Now this is hysterical to anybody with any real vision of the United States. But, and I had of course, been all over the United States, very unusual for a young girl, especially that period of time, but because my dad had been freight conductor for what he called John Santa Fe. He worked for the Gulf Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad, and was from time to time, forced into. Having to handle, be in charge of a passenger train. He didn't like that at all. He liked cows much better. He said he'd rather ship cows than deal with with passengers anytime, but never because from our Texas point of view, Omaha is a real far distance north. You know it was so it's hysterical in the light of today to call Omaha Yankee country, but I joined a visit Yankee, and I spent something like three weeks up there. No Nobody thought about Wanda traveling alone by train. And there was only one big, one big change at St Louis. And of course, St Louis, you can't imagine how large the train facilities at St Louis were. They were huge, but hey, it's a train. You know, been on a train since I was this time, not a problem. So I traveled there alone, and I was due to come back, my steady guy, I had dated David, and no one else since we were sophomores, and this was, you know, two years later, and he was, it's The middle of our junior to senior year, summer, and he's anxious for his girl to get back. she's been gone for three weeks, and he calls the house. My dad, who surprisingly was home at that time, he's gone more than there, but answered the phone and David said, Mr. Munn, I was just calling to ask if...if there...if you had any news about Wanda on when she was going to be back. And my dad said, David isn't this Tuesday? And he said, Yes, it is. And my dad said, didn't she say she would be back this Thursday? And he said, Yes, sir, she did. And my dad said, David, if Wanda said she would be back on Thursday, she will be back on Thursday. He said, Yes, sir, well, I'll see you on Thursday. When he told me about this, when I got home, I cannot tell you how inordinately proud I was of my father being so sure of me that he didn't care he hadn't heard from me. I said I would be home on Thursday. I'll be home on Thursday. That was the world in which I grew up.

So learning to be what we now think of as a sophisticate was a little bit difficult for me, because what it meant was learning to accept lying and lack of complete honesty from other people. And it's to recognize that it was not only to be accepted, but that it was more common than what I expected was a hard lesson for me. It really was.

it's hard for me to learn to be civil in cases like that, and I think it probably accounts for sarcasm being one of the services I can offer easily.