Lynn V. Johnston

I started my life with parents who were well off and lacked for nothing. My father owned a print shop and my mother sold advertisements for the business. They had it all: new car, new home, good friends, respect.

Then came the market crash of 1928 and we lost it all. My father became an alcoholic and my mother a saint.

We moved to St. Paul and lived in a two car garage my grandfather built for us. My father left and we went on relief.

I know what it is to be poor. School lunch wrapped in newspaper, coal for the stove gathered from the railroad tracks, meals that were all vegetables, no meat, and morning oatmeal fried for supper, apple butter cooked over an outside fire pit the only thing on our sandwiches, shirts with cuffs that were four inches above my wrists, sweeping out empty boxcars for wheat to feed our dozen chickens, the constant ridicule of my classmates, no invitations to their birthday parties. I knew that an inferiority complex was.

I worked for truck farmers, hoeing for one dollar a day, picked berries in season three cents a quart, gathered old boards to build boats that I used for fishing and sold the catch, fifty cents for a ten pound northern, shot squirrels, rabbits, quail, pheasants, even blackbirds and doves to add some meat to those vegetables. Winters were spent trapping for pelts, half frozen numb fingers, chill blains on my heels.

But time passes. The old man died, Mother was a supervisor of nurses in a hospital. I married a good woman, had a decent job, and lived a pleasant life.

I look back at the adults who were the kids that ridiculed me and see how they turned out and what they are doing now and I realize how much I know in comparison to them. Goodbye inferiority.

As I write this I am seventy-nine years of age and feel my life has just begun. New ideas fill my mind and each day is filled with creativity.

L.V. Johnston

Lynn V. Johnston

Beloved Husband, Father & Grandpa

Age 87

Of St. Paul

Born June 8, 1923, passed on May 26, 2011. VISITATION will be TUESDAY, May 31 from 5:00 - 8:00 PM at Wulff Woodbury Funeral Home, 2195 Woodlane Dr. MASS of Christian Burial will be WEDNESDAY, June 1 at 10:30 AM with visitation from 9:30 - 10:30 AM at St. Pascal Baylon Catholic Church, 3rd St. and White Bear Ave., St. Paul. Interment Ft. Snelling Natl. Cemetery.

www.wulffwoodburyfuneralhome.com

(651) 738-9615