While reading A Girl Named Zippy, Zippy says, "My own mother prated about almost nothing but my dad. Week after week, year after year, for twenty-seven years she prayed that God would touch his heart and cause him to become a hardworking, nondrinking, churchgoing kind of man." Reading this, I thought of how marriage has changed since the 70s when this was written. Zippy's parents never fought and never mentioned divorce even though neither of them were exactly the type of person that the other wanted. Maybe because it was a small town and there weren't many options when it was time to marry, but Zippy's parents endured while current couples divorce, even if children are involved. The whole book is like that; it says small things about the time period without saying it right out.