MAJOR EFFECTS OF BANKRUPTCY

Times were good, my father feeling accomplished owning three radio and television stores. The first on in Dormont, on West Liberty Ave. The second was in Mt. Lebanon, and the third was in what they called "Little" Washington, back then...He hired people to manage the stores and my Aunt Diddie worked with my father doing the office work in the main store in Dormont...The building still remains there, when I pass by floods of wonderful memories of my childhood fill my mind. Dormont Appliance is there now, but basically it still looks the same...There was an Isley's Ice Cream store, we bought those "skyscraper cones" then. There was a Woolworths 5 and 10 cent store. And of course the movie house that now has been closed for some time....Those are the places we frequented; my friend Evie and I. We owned Saturday, we roamed and spend the day walking up and down, busily visiting people in the stores and shopping with the few coins we had...During this time in my life, my mother bought me my first birthstone ring...being in January, it is a garnet!!. It was 14K gold and had a beautiful garnet stone in it!! I loved it, and wore it everywhere until one day, I bit it flat. What once was a round perfect circle, now was a flat golden stick with a red stone on top...When my mother saw this she flipped out!! She was so mad at me..I have no idea why I had it in my mouth or why I destroyed the only valuable thing I ever owned. I do know, she took it and I never saw my ring again!!...Strangely, I have always had an oral fixation and put everything in my mouth...People have these fixation of different degrees...some kind of brain thing..Who knows, but I know I always had my fingers in my mouth..Since I can remember I bit my fingernails. It has been a part of me for all of my life. With all this we were secure, started to have nice things and life was sweet...and then the house of cards suddenly fell. My father found out his partners were fixing TV's for their friends, stealing and lining their pocket with the funds they got when they repaired TV's... Poor management forced the IRS to come down on him and eventually his businesses failed, closed and went belly up...He declared bankruptcy...and we now had nothing. We were broke...My parents never let us know this, until we were grown. We never knew anything financial good or bad...We were spared any kind of financial situations all through our lives...They NEVER shared with us financial, not did they share the doom that lay before us. We just went along with what they told us and we followed!!! Our lives were about to change drastically. We were in this together...good or bad we had each other and we would find ourselves go down together...