The 1970's

Life goes on.  Had 2 more kids.  After a few years as a tech at the phone company, I moved "up" into the accounting department which, for me, meant computers and management, and I worked at computer programming and related activities for about the next fifteen years. 

We bought a house on Staten Island.  Had a series of very shitty cars.  There were also plenty of times I searched the couch for loose change so I could get enough together for the bus to go to work. 

When I got rid of a car, it was only fit for the junkyard.  And they had to come and tow it, because it certainly wouldn't run.  (Hey! If it ran....I wouldn't be getting rid of it!)  And sometimes I got cars that seemed to have come FROM the junkyard!  

A familiar sight in my driveway was -

1:      the current car that ran  

and.....

2a:    the "planter" (ie. the old car that I thought would somehow come back to life from the dead -they never did-  and so I kept it, farther up the driveway, until I finally stopped deluding myself and called the junkyard.

....or, more often, 

2b:     the car that WAS the current car that ran, stopped running!!    Then the current "planter" had to go to the junkyard, so that the car that no longer ran could move into the planter "slot" and take on the distinction of being "current planter" in it's turn.  This made room, of course, for the next car that currently ran....for a while.)