Newton was a nice little town, population two or three thousand, about half black, two Jewish families who ran the two nice clothing stores, a few Catholics, one old Mexican, and the rest were white Anglo-Saxon protestants, with a preponderance of Baptists, fewer Methodists, and still fewer Presbyterians. Newton was at the intersection of two highways and two railroads, smack in the middle of the cotton belt. It had a cotton gin, a cottonseed oil mill, a warehouse for baled cotton, a Coca-Cola bottling plant, a wholesale grocery warehouse/distributor, a hospital, a school, a small Baptist college, and the normal complement of stores, gas stations, lumber yards, lawyers, doctors, etc. It has changed some by now, but it didn't change much during the fifteen or so years I was growing up there. In fact, nothing changed much during those years. From l931 until l946 a Coke cost five cents, a five cent candy bar didn't get any smaller, adults looked out for children, bands played sweet songs, the cowboy in the white hat always got the girl, and the oil mill whistle blew at twelve noon. Things could be depended on. I'm sure that had a lot to do with the way my generation looks at things. Coming along at the time we did, our generation had very few real decisions to make -- the pattern was pretty well laid out for us. Complete your schooling and military service commitments, get married, try to get a job paying "good money," buy a house and car on credit, and start raising a family and adding to the china and silver you received as wedding gifts. The formula seemed to work out pretty well -- most of us ended up better educated and better off than our parents. This memoir was written for the enjoyment of my family and friends - or anyone else who might enjoy a peek into life in small town America during the mid and late twentieth century.