foster care

His pretty mother had to leave him in foster care because there was no childcare provided by Alcoa, Aluminum Company of America, which was part of the defense industry, then, in '42 or '43, right in the middle of the War. She was in the most unfortunate position of being both a divorcee and a single mother, the sole support of the little boy lying on the floor who would not breathe.

She got to visit him on Sundays, take him out on the trolley car, all dressed up in the little suits she bought him, little gentlemen's suits where the wide shirt lapels laid neatly over the suit jacket, or sometimes in his little woolen Navy Uniform, a miniature of his father's who had joined up and was a crewman on the Bunker Hill. On the trolley, men back from war or soon off to war flirted with her and the cute little boy who was all dressed up.

But evening always came, and she had to take him back to the family of hillbillies she's had to leave him with for the next week. She was desperate to leave LA, to not have to leave him with people who only wanted her ration stamps, for bananas and oranges, which she gave them for her son but which he never remembered eating.

"What did  you have to eat this week?" she always asked. His answer was always the same. "Beans," he'd answer. But she never dared to question what had happened to all the fruit she provided. They had her son in their clutches all week. Who knew what people like that were capable of, they and their own dirty little ragamuffins. He was the ultimate hostage and she had to mind her manners, treat them with the respect they little deserved. She was desperate to leave LA.