MEMOIR OF A HOMELESS BOY Everything we owned fit in a suitcase. Sometimes we slept on the side of the road. Sometimes we begged for food. This is the true story about me and my family during the Great Depression and the years following. At the age of five, I hadn't yet realized how Mom and Dad were struggling to keep the family together. My mother died when I was seven. Dad and I were living in a car when I was put into a boy's detention center because I didn't have a home. At nine I was placed in an orphanage. After Dad died I was adopted in Arizona. I was twelve. Then again, at age sixteen I had Nowhere to Call Home.