Susie FL-5-W FPE

FIFTY YEARS OF TV

HISTORY

Somehow I just can not believe it, but I'm a TV. I think my story is a little unusual, it might be interesting to some, and I hope by telling it, some mother will profit from it.

I was born way back in the hills of Kentucky over sixty years ago, on a hot day in August. My sex was a bitter disappointment to my mother and my grandmother. They wanted a girl; my father didn't care.

My father worked for a railroad. He left home before daylight and worked twelve long hours, returning after I had been fed and put to bed. I can't remember him ever holding me in his arms or even playing with me. My father and mother separated when I was just a few years old, and of course I was left with her.

We went to live with my grandmother on a farm. My grandfather had passed away, so there was no man around. There we were, miles from a town, with no one to look after us after dark, only a huge mastiff dog. He really did his job. No one who knew him would come within a hun- dred yards of the house. Big Bill, as we called him, lived to be fourteen years old and I never will forget him.

My mother was a beautiful woman, with long brown hair. She wore it in a braided bun, either at the back or on top of her head. She loved to sew and could make some beautiful clothes.

Since both my mother and grandmother were so heartbroken because I was not born a girl, and we lived so far out in the country that no one would know, they decided I would be a girl anyway. They let my hair grow long, which I wore in curls or in a pony tail. My hair must have

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