This paper explains that Russell Baker's memoir "
Growing Up" begins with his mother's deteriorating health in old age and
then flashes back to the times when he was
growing up with a widowed,
strong-willed mother and a little sister, all struggling to survive during the Great Depression. The author points out that Baker details the strong familial love he grew up with as everyone in the country scrambled to make ends meet and how his family first lived in a rural area in Virginia, then Bellville, New Jersey and later in Baltimore, Maryland. The paper reveals that not until his mother remarried was he able to return to the happiness that large rooms and green vistas seemed to grant him.