Book excerpt: Starting from her birth in 1927, Mina describes her early life as the fourth of seven children, being raised by an abused mother and an alcoholic father and having to learn to cook for her entire family at the age of five. In All I Ever Wanted Was a Good Man and a Happy Home, she tells stories about - struggling to finish high school, singing in a night club, dancing for ten cents a dance, hitchhiking to California as a teenager, cooking on a tug boat on the Mississippi River, working on the Alaskan Pipeline, being married fifteen times, and raising her two children. She tells her story in colorful country words. The book has nuggets of hard earned truths. Her downhome description may shock and amaze you, but this was agricultural living less than one hundred years ago. This book includes journal entries, with all the specific details of daily living. Through the ups and downs she shows an indomitable spirit to overcome the setbacks and achieve her goals. She was a feisty woman who thrived on life and survived.