EVERYONE HAS A STORY

Have you listened to a friend or relative tell a story of an event in his(her) past and you said, "you should definitely get that written down and published?" The majority of the time the response is," Me? I can't write and i wouldn't know where to start."  And  my answer,  anyone can write their memoirs with a little guidance.

First, we must define the difference between a memoir and an autobiography:

A memoir could be written at any age--ten year olds have lots of stories to tell.
  Example--a slice of one's life--the first time time I played baseball.

An autobiography is almost always a chronological--from birth to the present-account of a person's life.
  Example--I was born January 1, 1955, in Roanoke, Virginia, the fifth son of...............and so on.

There are some books published which are combinations of memoirs and autobiographies. They make for more interesting reading.

WRITING A MEMOIR:
1. Look at your life as a pie.  To begin you will take only a sliver.  You have to put your life on a diet!  There are too many things to write about.
2. Choose one topic.
3. Find a quiet , comfortable place to think and write.
4. Write without attention to form, spelling and punctuation.  Let your thoughts flow freely.
5. Go back through your writing, editing and correcting.
6. Do this several times until you are satisfied.
7. Now you have written a memoir!.

FIFTY CENTS WILL GET YOU HOME BY DARLENE EICHLER

The mountain village of Belspring was about seven miles from a town of any size. Since that was too far to walk, we sometimes had to be creative in our means of transportation, unless you happened to be a boy and you were allowed to 'thumb' a ride into town.  It was unusual for a family to have more than one car and the majority of the time the breadwinner of the family used that one.
There was a time when a bus ran between Belspring and Radford on Saturdays.  The fare was fifty cents.  Most of the teen-agers could afford the fare one way but not both.  As luck would have it most of the parents went to town on Saturday mornings to shop for  groceries and to take care of banking business.  This meant that the children could ride over with there someones parents and come home on the bus late in the evening. There was usually enough money for a movie and some snacks.  And fifty cents for the fare home.
Of course the time spent in  town and at the movies was great fun but we looked forward to that slow ride home in the lumbering old bus.  It was  time to talk about the activities of the day.  Critique of the movie brought some heated discussion at times.  There was always at least one comedian on the bus and we laughed until the bus driver would tell us to 'keep it down.'  And there were the 'love birds.'  The back of the bus was known as the place for flirting and stolen kisses.
Now just in case you think there was a lot of hanky panky going on you would be wrong. There were chaperons that saw to it that we behaved as good children should.  That didn't mean someone couldn't put his arm around you or once in a great while, steal a kiss. I look back now and wonder if those few adults who went along with us really enjoyed being with us.  I never head them complain.
Parents today could not give their children the  freedom we enjoyed.  i never heard of anyone being molested or approached to buy drugs or encouraged to drink alcohol on the bus.  We grew up in a time when our doors could stay open on hot summer nights--only the screen door was latched.  We could spend Saturday in town going from store to store--meeting and talking to friend on the street, and sitting through the movies at least two time.  We knew at the end of the day we could get on that bus, pay our fifty cents and look forward to honing our social skills on the trip home.  Or maybe just take a nap.