Poor Jenny, Bright As A Penny

To my husband, Pat, who gave me much of the story.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Jenny grew up in a time past, when our lives were different—you used a typewriter and had never heard of home computers, few people had credit cards, and there was no personal phone in your pocket. If your boyfriend wanted to call you without his family listening, he walked to the pay phone at the corner, over behind the gas station. To know Jenny Middle is to go back to that time, some forty years gone. Maybe some of the rules families lived by were different, the welfare rules about who could get government money, the way Jenny’s mother could rent a cheap apartment with not much cash—the times were different, but the people were much the same. Some families happy, some kids scared or miserable or both. Jenny grew up on the edge of miserable: you can change your life, or you can take the easy way. Jenny was never one to give in to the mean and easy. —Shirley Rousseau Murphy, 2011