This is part 1 of a 2-part program featuring the life and times of 80 year old Bonnie Giorgi.
Born in the cotton town of Malden Missouri in 1939, Bonnie was bought up into a loving working class family. Yet even though they couldn’t be considered as rich it was still the norm at that time, in that part of the USA, for Bonnie to be bought up with what was called a mammy.
This was an Afro-American woman who didn’t replace her mother, but helped look after her and her siblings as if she were her mother.
Her father built houses for locals and so she and her family would move into the house once it was safe to do so, until that house was completed.
So it was she found herself moving many times, but always living in and around Malden. At then age of ten, she and her father both contracted TB, and they were shipped off to a sanatorium in Arizona, where Bonnie stayed for 8 months until cured. It took her father 2 years before he could leave.
As she got older local dances became a feature of her weekends and she would, like many girls, spend much of Saturdays preparing for the Saturday night dance.
She was a good dancer and took to Square dancing where she and her brother won several prizes.
Eventually the family moved to California and Bonnie talks extensively about the trials and tribulations of having to deal with their strong Missouri accent and the food differences.
Bonnie also shares stories of her High School experiences and of working at a car-hop as a waitress where she met her husband to be, a cook called Ivan. There is also the story of spending a weeks wages in the late 1950’s to see as very young Elvis in a live show.
Click to hear – Bonnie Giorgi – Part 1Previous Listen To Older Voices Programs can be found in our archive, by clicking on one link or the other
– 2012 to 2016 
– 2016 onward 
[Listen To Older Voices receives funding from the Commonwealth Government
through the Commonwealth Home Support Program Program]
