Readers Remember

We lived in a little one-horse town in western Pennsylvania in the early ‘30s. Our household consisted of Grandma (who’d had a stroke), Uncle Dave (who collected people’s weekly quarter insurance payments), Aunt Frances, who clerked in the drugstore for $20 a week, Mother, who also clerked half-time, and us two kids--maybe 6 and 9 years old.

Times were tough for everyone, but there was always enough to eat--and to share.

The B&O; Railroad ran through town and often carried a few non-paying passengers in the boxcars. They occasionally got off at our stop to ask if they could do some handyman job in exchange for a meal. Mother always managed to find something to fill up a plate, and take it out to the back porch, where the man would eat and be on his way to catch the next freight going west.

BETTS HARLEY

Costa Mesa

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One evening in 1963, when I was 11, my dad came into the living room and told my sister and me to sit in front of our old black-and-white console TV. He had something he wanted us to watch. I was 11.

I thought, oh no, not another Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concert!

Instead, Ed Sullivan appeared on the set, the camera panned to what appeared to be thousands of screaming teenagers, and a few seconds later we, and the rest of America, met the Beatles. We were hooked.

SHANNON BURNS

Los Angeles

In 200 words or less, send us your memories, comments or eyewitness accounts of the 20th century. Write to Century, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or e-mail century@latimes.com. Letters may be edited for space.