Actor Michelle Myers Berg has followed the advice given often to first-time writers: She’s written about something she knows.

And for years she was given plenty of advice -- usually by the fellow actors she regaled with stories about growing up in a bustling working-class St. Paul household, where she was one of eight kids -- the fifth child, born at 5:55 a.m. in the fifth month of the year. More about those 5’s in a moment.

“You should do a one-woman show,” her theater friends said. So she did.

The result is “Blue Collar Diaries,” which opens this weekend at History Theatre in St. Paul. Berg is on stage for the entire two acts, though she creates some 20 different people in the course of the performance.

“There’s very little narration,” she said. “Mostly it’s used to introduce a character and then they go from there.”

A well-established local actor, Berg’s script grew out of a one-act she put together and performed for the 2008 Fringe Festival. History Theatre Artistic Director Ron Peluso later read the script and was intrigued by its themes -- namely, family and neighborhood life at a time when children were being reared by a generation burnished in the Great Depression, World War II and the Korean War.

Berg says she tried to find the extraordinary in the ordinary in her expanded play. There are stories about fights over a window seat in the car and the family’s struggle to send eight kids to a Catholic school -- though Berg, a rebel, talked her folks into letting her go to public school. There are tales about the eccentrics in the neighborhood and some unspoken nervousness about race relations.

But mostly, Berg says she wants to show how her parents’ generation viewed the world after shared adversity -- in this case, her father’s life-changing reaction to serving in the Korean War.

“There was a whole generation -- my generation -- that was raised by parents like my dad, who had undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, who had been tempered in how to evaluate people,” Berg said. “They knew that no one really cared when the chips were down about what occupation you did. It wasn’t about what you do, but who you are.”

For the record, Berg’s family lived in the Merriam Park neighborhood of St. Paul, though their house near Selby and Snelling bordered the old Rondo neighborhood and was in the shadow of Mac-Groveland. In terms of St. Paul’s neighborhood geography, she grew up as an internationalist.

And about those 5’s - Berg says she’s been obsessed by them and about uncovering the mysteries of growing up in a big family. When she was on the cusp of adulthood, Berg said she once noticed that the license plate on her dad’s car had three letters and three fives.

“I said to him, ‘Isn’t that funny -- three more fives in my life,’ ” Berg recalled.

“Yeah,” her dad replied. “Just like the triple nickel in Korea - my old outfit.”

The outfit was the 555th Field Artillery Battalion. But Berg’s dad wasn’t really an artillery man -- and to find out what he really did, you’ll have to see the show.

"Blue Collar Diaries." History Theatre, St. Paul. Preview tonight at 7:30 p.m., opening Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinee at 2. Through April 19. For more details, go here.