And I bet their story is as unremarkable, ordinary, and commonplace as millions of others.

They married when my father returned from WWII. I was born right after that, my brother four years later.

Mom had a high school education, but only worked a very few years .... and then only part time (more on that later).

Dad had only two years of high school before a childhood disease had him infirmed for a year. He recovered fully, but decided to work rather than go back to school. He was drafted shortly after that.

They had to hunt hard for a house when they were married. The found a drafty, unheated, flat in a fourplex to rent. I was born there. They moved to another drafty flat just a block from my paternal grandparents. My brother was born there.

My Dad bought an adjacent lot from his father (it had been the family garden) and had a house built on it. They took out a 20 year mortgage for the princely sum of $4600. Dad was working a union job at the Singer Sewing machine company plant in town. Two strikes later (I learned to swear while walking those picket lines with my Dad) he moved to a new job at Sikorsky Aircraft, building helicopters.

We had three family cars in all my years growing up.

A 1940 Plymouth, bought used after the war, a 1956 Olds 88, and a 1965 Ford Galaxy 500. After my brother and I graduated college, they got a new Ford Grenada.

The only time my mother worked - and always only part time - was when they needed to build up the cash to buy the new cars outright.

They got their first credit card when my younger brother was in college.

Mom survived Dad by twelve years. She died four years ago. She left my brother and me a very handsome estate to split. I say handsome. To many people it would be walking around money. To us, it was remarkable. They were both children from large immigrant families. They inherited essentially nothing. What my brother and I inherited was the direct result of their life work and their frugality ....... and the opportunity for the middle class that was set up by the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A Democrat.

A Middle Class.

No crushing debt at the governmental or the personal level.

Growth.

Peace

Prosperity.

All now, like my parents, a cherished memory, but out of reach. Lost. Gone.