I grew alongside the Wabash Railroad tracks.  I never wondered whether we lived on the right or wrong side of the tracks.  It didn't seem important back then.  One of my earliest memories is being just a little kid, and sitting on the front porch and watching the war supplies going by on the railroad.  There were train after train loaded with jeeps and trucks,  tanks and artillery pieces.  That made quite an impression on a little boy.

Our neighbors were as poor as church mice.  I can't remember a time when they weren't on welfare.  They had a bunch of kids, and the father had had polio and couldn't work, so they depended on their mom's salary.  Winter was really tough on them.  Occasionally a coal train would be shuttled over to a siding to make way for another train.  When this happened, all of us kids would run over and help the Underhill kids throw chunks of coal off the train, then go back after the train had pulled out and gather up the coal for them.  It may have been stealing, but it kept them warm in the winter.