The Glass Castle

Lord Kadizzle is usually overtaken by attention deficit disorder, so it takes a pretty good writer to get him through a complete book. However, when the book is good, it goes quickly. THE GLASS CASTLE is centered around Welch, West Virginia. At one time Lord Kadizzle worked in that coal mining area teaching miners the basics of coal mine safety. The story is about a dysfunctional family that lived a very hard scrabble life in a hopeless shack. Food for the kids often came from garbage cans. The story is true, and the author went on to be a very successful writer. Her brother slept under an inflatable raft because the rain came right through the roof where he slept. In West Virgina Lord Kadizzle saw first hand a lot of people who grew up the hard scrabble way. This morning when his lordship got out of bed he thought back to the family of the Robinsons. They could have been the people in this book. Twila, Henry, and Author, were three kids I went to school with. They were busted flat, and poor old Twila had some mental problems. Beside the poor kids I went to school with we had the home dingers from the children's orphanage. In my own life we had some taste of the hard scrabble life, but only for seasoning. Most amazing are the kids who fight their way out of the mess and flourish. In our current little town of Hazen there was a family of twelve kids. Their father was a nut case Baptist preacher, who occasionally beat them. Lord Kadizzle felt sorry for the bunch an tried to do what he could to help. The kids were home schooled which was a curse. Home schooling enabled the parents to just inflict more suffering on the kids. Home schooling is a sign of mental illness in most circumstances. The local bunch of kids fended for themselves and gradually most of them became successful adults. It was a lot like the story in THE GLASS CASTLE the first kid escaped and pulled the rest out. Lord Kadizzle grew up in a disfunctional family, and it had its pros and cons. It was a sink or swim life. You either went nuts, or got smarter. Many would say I chose the nuts route.