It was 1968. It would be another eight years before tract homes — the symbol of suburbia that transformed California in the years following World War II — were built in Lincoln.

And when they were, they would be Section 235 homes built along the Auburn Ravine as it made its way through Placer County before joining up with the Sacramento River.

The Federal Housing Administration program with its $200 downpayment was designed to help lower income families secure housing.

Lincoln, until then, was a hodgepodge of housing types built over the course of more than a century.

It led to what might today be called a socio-economic melting pot on virtually every block in the town at the time had stayed steady at right around 3,800 people since the 1920s.

Such stability was owed to two things.

Lincoln’s backbone was the fact it was a factory town. Gladding, McBean & Co. — a clay sewer, roof tile and terra cotta facade plant — was founded in 1875. It is still in business today.

The fact World War II led to the establishment of two major Air Force bases within 30 to 40 minute drives from Lincoln — McClellan and Beale — allowed for employment opportunities as farm jobs surrounding the town slowly slipped away.

We moved onto our block in 1963, two years prior to my father’s death. He moved our family back to Lincoln after he and his brothers sold the Wyatt Hardware store in Roseville.

A year later, he would sell out the share of the Lincoln store — the original hardware location established by his father some 50 years prior — to his brother Pershing.

Both stores offered everything from sporting goods, nails, lumber, hardware, appliances, paint and even dish-ware crammed into less than 3,000 square feet backed up by a warehouse across the alley from each respective store.

He then went to work as superintendent for the Lincoln Cemetery District.

The block we lived on was definitely blue collar with a sprinkling of what would be considered white collar careers — a teacher and a Baptist minister.

Our immediate neighbors included immigrants from the Azores and a family that came to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl to work in the fields before finding employment with the railroad.

On the alley was a farmworker and his wife originally from Guadalajara who moved to California in a bid to build a better life for their family.

Directly behind us on the alley with a house facing “C” Street as opposed to ours that faced “D” Street was a couple with four boys, two older and two younger than myself, plus a sister that was the youngest sibling.

Their father worked at Gladding, McBean as did our next door neighbor Manuel Silva before he retired.

Both men literally walked to work every day — and back and forth on the lunch hour — as the main gates of the factory were a mere two blocks away.

The four boys shared two bunk beds in one bedroom.

We hung around, played together and such in our backyards and in the alley and several outbuildings they had.

Inside our houses were off limits to play for different reasons.

Their mom was a stay at home mother who didn’t want restless boys burning off their energy indoors.

My mom worked to support her four kids after my dad’s death and didn’t want me to bring my friends into the house unsupervised.

My older brothers were in high school at the time and were allowed to bring friends over as long as mom knew about it.

My brothers, as brothers can be, “ragged” on my friends. They irked me by what I thought was their lying by claiming they caught at least two of them eating from bags of dried dog food we kept in a metal garbage can on our patio.

I asked my mom one day to get them to stop teasing me about it and making up lies about my friends.

She asked if I had seen them do so, and I said yes, but said they were just messing around.

Mom said to ignore my brothers but the next time I saw one of my friends eating dog food to ask them if they wanted a peanut butter sandwich. And if they did, I was to go inside and make them one and then take it outside for them to eat as I was too young to have friends in the house when she was at work.

I was 10 at the time so it still didn’t register with me until a few years later.

Mom realized the brothers were hungry while I thought they were just goofing around.

I never thought less of them, but I did kick myself for not seeing that they were hungry.

It also made me understand how fortunate I was especially when it came to my mother and the need not to assume things or be clouded by my perspective.

I just saw my brothers acting like jerks with friends I thought were clowning around.

I didn’t see young kids younger than me who were so hungry they ate dry dog food every chance they could.