THE WAY WE WERE

After reading Lee Wochner’s “Goat Brothers,” I had to write my first letter to a newspaper. Boy, did you miss the point of this book.

I grew up in California at approximately the same time as Mr. Colton. He has captured the mentality of both the men and women (boys and girls) of that time so perfectly it made me cringe.

Whereas Wochner felt he was glorifying that mentality, you were mistaken. He was accurately chronicling it. The book never said the behavior described was the right way to think. Mr. Colton simply and expertly described the thought and behavior that shaped us. He just didn’t choose to give it a value judgment as you would have liked.

Yes, the men were jerks. Yes, the women were, in essence, voluntary victims. It is simply the truth. . . . I “lived to serve” as Wochner mentioned the women did in this book. I did it as my mother did before me. That behavior is what we learned. I don’t do it any more unless I choose to. Mr. Colton appreciates his present relationship because he learned it works better than being a person who abuses himself and his partner.

This book is about learning where we came from and who we are now. It was often a painful journey and our generation made mistakes. Wochner’s mean-spirited review only points out that you don’t have the slightest understanding of what life was like for us. I suggest Wochner learn more about the subject before writing another review.

JOYCE DAVIS

LOS ANGELES