A CLEAR VIOLATION OF PROPORTIONS

         Clearly, the principles of proportion had been violated.  My father used to say, “There’s the voice of America,” whenever we drove past. 

         I grew up in a small subdivision called Highview Acres in the Village of Monroe, located in southwestern Ohio -- the Buckeye State.  Most of the people in our neighborhood probably don’t know or even remember the name of our subdivision.  It was innocuous and the people who lived there and raised their families there were the working class. 

         Now, there was another subdivision in Monroe called Brittany Heights -- where the rich people of Monroe lived, not doctors and lawyers and such, just people who were or thought they were a cut above the rest of us.  Their houses were larger than ours -- a bit more unique and costly. 

         Like I said, I grew up in Highview Acres -- nominally unmeaningful and unknown.  We never said, I live in Highview Acres.  Nobody would have known what we were talking about.  But whenever someone said, I live in Brittany Heights, we all knew where that was.  Most of the kids I went to school with grew up in my neighborhood.  In Monroe, everybody knew everybody.  As we were growing up, we never got into much trouble because there were always eyes watching us, later giving a full report to our parents.  We couldn’t get away with anything. 

         My parents had five girls, and we moved to Sands Avenue, in Highview Acres, Monroe, Ohio, in 1963, when I was five.  We walked to elementary school and later walked to high school too.  We played hard and eventually grew up. 

         I took an apartment in Middletown when I was twenty and got married shortly thereafter. 

         Once the older three of us moved away from home, my parents had more money and decided to have a home built in Brittany Heights, moving a step up in the world. 

         When I was six months pregnant, I separated from my abusive husband and moved back home with Mom and Dad.  I stayed there until my daughter was about six months old when we found a little apartment on Britton Lane, about a mile and a half from my parents’ home.  My daughter and I joined the local swim club -- where everyone in Monroe went to swim.  My parents were members there for as long as I can remember, and we went swimming nearly every day in the summer when I was growing up.  (When you live up north, the pools are only open in the summer.) 

         Since I had two younger sisters still living at home with my parents, my daughter and I used to drive over and pick them up to go swimming.  Sometimes my parents would join us, and we would all ride together in their car. 

         After I got my apartment, my Dad and I used to ride to work together every day, dropping my daughter off at the babysitters and later at nursery school on the way.

         Whenever we drove by this one house on the corner in Brittany Heights, my Dad’s eyes would twinkle and he would get a smirk of a smile on his face and remark, “There’s the voice of America.”  You see, in that “high-society” neighborhood, there was a fellow with tall, metal radio towers in his yard. 

         There is (or at least used to be) an actual place in Ohio where there were tall metal framed radio towers covering about five acres of land, with flashing lights along Interstate 75.  That was the real “Voice of America,” or at least that’s what my Dad always called it.  So, whenever we drove by that house in Brittany Heights, my Dad would say, “There’s the voice of America,” and we couldn’t help but laugh.