This story is one of the many funny things that happened between me and my brother Jim during our younger years in Susanville, California. 

My brother Jim is one year older than me and when we were young I thought he was the smartest, toughest and best-looking boy in the world.  The only person that was on his level (to me) was my Dad. When I wanted advice on anything or someone to show me how to do something and my Dad wasn’t around, I went to Jim.  He had always wanted a brother, so I would tuck my long hair under a baseball cap and wear jeans and a shirt, and pretend to be his brother. 

We played together a lot when we were in grade school.   When he was around 8 years old, he started playing little league baseball.  They didn’t have such a thing for girls in those days, so that was the beginning of things he could do that I couldn’t do with him and I didn’t like it. So, when he asked me to practice with him, I said I wouldn’t because I couldn’t be on the team. Several days later he told me he had some wonderful news.  He said he had found out there was a baseball team for girls named the “Girl’s Buster Brown Team.”  I was so excited and wanted to try out so I could be on a team too.  He told me the qualifications were that I would need to be able to catch 10 balls in a row while standing in the sun.  He said he would throw the ball for me and I could throw it back to him.  Needless to say, I couldn’t catch ten in a row.  I was lucky to catch one in a row, but I was willing to keep trying just so I could be on that team.

This went on for several weeks.  I just kept trying.  Then one day it was over 100 degrees outside and he wanted me to try again.  Again, I had to stand in the sun to catch the balls.  When I missed a catch, I had to run after it of course, and since I missed almost all of them, I was running most of the time.  Suddenly I felt very sick and had to lie down in the grass under a tree.  Mom saw me out there and came out to see what was wrong.  I guess she could see I was having a heat stroke and she carried me indoors.  After she had cooled me down and given me some lemonade, she asked me why I was running around catching for Jim when it was so hot.  I told her the story about the “Buster Brown Team” and she started laughing and called Jim to come in the room.  She asked him how he had found out about the team.  He said some boys at school had told him all about it.  She kept questioning him about it…what boys and where was the team and all kinds of questions.  After some time he finally admitted that there was no “Buster Brown Team”, but he needed me to practice with him and that was the only way he could get me to do it.  She asked him how he came up with that name and he told her he took the name off of the shoes he got for his birthday.  They were Buster Brown shoes.  She yelled at him and said her usual “Wait until I tell your Dad.” 

Jim ended up getting punished out behind the wood shed and I had my baseball hopes dashed forever.  For some reason it didn’t shake my faith in Jim though.  That was just one of the many times I fell for his schemes when we were little.  I was a gullible little girl, but he was my Big Brother.      

Tomorrow my son will be 45.  As is my tradition, I need to tell him “45 years ago today at 20 minutes after 12 noon, I welcomed a beautiful baby boy.”  As my children have their birthdays I think back on other birthdays when they were children. 

One of my memories of Tony’s birthday is when we lived in Roseburg, Oregon.  I think he was around 10 years old.  Our gift to him was a tape recorder that year.  Tony, being a very imaginative child decided to be a reporter and interview people.  He interviewed all the family members and then took it a step futher and interviewed a cow, a chicken and the toilet.

We lived next door to an Albertson’s food store in Roseburg and we knew the Manager.  I got a call one day from this manager and he asked me to come and get Tony because he was disrupting business.  I went over to get him and found out that he had been interviewing people as they checked out with their groceries. 

As he was interviewing one patron, he glanced at the checkbook of the person writing the check.  He proclaimed “You can’t write that check because you don’t have enough money in your account.”  Naturally, the person was outraged and the manager was called.  Tony was banned from the store for life.

Tony has gotten older, but I think he is still that gregarious kid somewhere inside.  Life was never dull when my children were around.

Now Tony has two daughters and a son of his own and I imagine he has many of these same kind of memories stored up for his children….and many more to come.

 Happy Birthday Tony.  Have an absolutely wonderful day.  I love you.

My son Thom and I went to the California State Fair on August 23, 2007.   The Fair was wonderful, as usual, but the awe came not from the Fair, but from my son.  As we progressed thru the exhibits and vendor booths and restaurants, I watched in amazement as my son spread smiles throughout the area.

Dressed in his baggy shorts, tank top and over the top boots, his blonde pony tail neatly banded behind him he turned frowns into smiles and boredom into laughter.  With his witty comments and ability to talk to anyone, he made everyone around us feel better than they did before we got there.  Everywhere we went he spread laughter and joy.

He convinced me to go on the Ferris Wheel, even though I have a terrible fear of heights.  As I closed my eyes and held on for dear life, he made me laugh through the fear.  He took my picture as I was holding my breath at the top of this fearsome ride.   After we disembarked from the ride, he showed me a hilarious picture of myself closing my eyes and holding on for dear life.   He now has one more “Lucy” story to recount, and I am better able to conquer an unreasonable fear.

I returned home that evening with such a feeling of pride and well-being.  I am truly blessed to have this person in my family.  Thank you, Thom for a wonderful day.

In October, 1961 my sister Frankie and I decided to take a couple of weeks and go visit our Mother and her husband Dick (Gramps) in Klamath Falls, Oregon.  We both lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and we loved visiting the quiet little town in Oregon.  It was very relaxing.

Thom, my oldest son was four months old and I was pregnant with my second baby, Tony.  Frankie had a son Rich that was seven months old and was pregnant with her fourth child, Joni.

Our Mother had prepared the front bedroom for us.  It had twin beds and she had put a crib and a bassinette in the room so we could keep our babies in the room with us.  The twin beds each had a window at the head of the bed overlooking the front yard.  We could lie in bed at night and look out at the stars while we talked.  It was wonderful.

One night we put Frankie’s three children and my Thom to sleep in their places and joined Mom and Gramps to watch tv.  There was a horror movie playing and it was very scary.  I can’t remember it’s name, but it was one of those “on the edge of your seat” scary type movies.  We were still feeling the effects of the movie when we went to bed.  Mom and Gramps had turned off the lights and the TV and everything had quieted down.  We were laying in our beds talking and looking out the window.  The moon was out and visibility was pretty good.

All of a sudden I saw the figure of a man walking around in the yard and I froze.  I whispered to Frankie “There is someone out there.”  She said “It’s your imagination because of the movie we watched.”  But when we looked again there WAS a man out there and he had turned and was heading for the front door.

We both jumped up from bed and started to try to run down the narrow hallway that led to our Mother’s room.  We were both pretty big because we were pregnant and we couldn’t fit down the hallway at the same time.  Not wanting to be left behind, we were pulling on each other trying to be the first one down the hall and we were screaming.  We looked back and saw the door knob turning and I absolutely thought I would faint I was so scared.  We thought surely Gramps had locked the door, but the door opened and the man came in….it was GRAMPS.

We asked him what he was doing out there.  He said a better question was “What the hell were we doing.”  He said he had gone out the back door and was checking the sprinklers and some other things in the yard.

Meantime, Mom came hurrying out of the bedroom to find out what all the fuss was about.  When she heard our story we could not keep her from laughing.  She said not only were we big babies, but we both left our babies in the bedroom when we tried to escape from the intruder.

It took us many years to live down that we had completely failed in the bravery and motherhood rolls.  I will never forget the look on Gramps’ face when he came through the door and saw two fat ladies fighting each other to get down the hall and screaming.

 Just another night in the life of my family…

I spent last week-end with my deceased husband’s x-wife.  It sounds strange, but we are very good friends.  I call her my X-Wife-in-Law.  She calls me the Widow of her Daughter’s Father.  We have her grandchildren in common (Jillian and Jonathan) which I consider my grandchildren too.  I spent many hours with them when they were younger before their mother died.

I met her right after John and I were married and I liked her right off.  She is a very attractive woman and very strong willed and sure of herself.  She is married again and has thankfully had people to help her get through the horror of losing her only child (Jullianna) at only 36 years of age.  She raised the grandchildren after Jullianna’s death.  They are both out of high school now and moving on towards their futures.

We spent the week-end doing girly things.  She showed me new hair care products that would thicken my hair and I showed her pictures of the grandkids when they were little.  We went shopping and talked for hours in our jammies.  I even attended church with her.  It’s been many years since I went to church.

 It was a very quiet and enjoyable week-end.  She lives in Atwater, a small community just north of Merced, California.  The weather is very hot now, but we stayed mostly in air conditioned areas so it didn’t bother us.  One advantage that retired people have is that they have all the time in the world to do the fun things.  No getting up early to go to work, so staying up late isn’t a problem.

 I enjoyed it and hope she can come for a visit to my tiny little apartment some time soon.

Starting at about age eight I began taking jobs babysitting to help pay for school clothes and activities like movies and skating.  The town we lived in was small (3000 population) and was a very safe community, so it was common for girls to start babysitting at a young age.

A new family moved to our town and since they went to the same church as my family, I ended up getting the job as their babysitter.  They had two small children and on Saturday nights, they went out to dinner and dancing.  They usually were gone from around 7:00 pm to 1:30 or 2:00 am.

One summer night when I was babysitting at their home, and after I had given the kids their dinner and put them down for the night, I turned on the radio to listen to the mystery programs they use to have  (No TV in those days).  They had great programs like “The Green Hornet”, “Inner Sanctum”, and “The Thin Man” to name a few.  Radio was really great because since there wasn’t a picture, the scenes were in the imagination.  They could be as fantastic as your imagination would allow.

I listened to three or four of these programs and then turned the dial to music.  I guess my imagination had worked great because I became a little scared thinking about what might be out there in the dark.  I went around the house and made sure all the windows and doors were locked and settled down to read a book. I found that I couldn’t concentrate and kept peering out the front window to make sure no boogiemen were out there.

While checking out the front window, I noticed that high up in the sky were some blinking white and red lights that seemed to be hovering in one spot.  I could not figure out what it could be.  I tried to read again and ignore the lights, but I kept checking to see if they had moved.  When I realized they had not moved away, it dawned on me that the lights must be a spaceship hovering above waiting for an opportune moment to sweep us up and carry us to another planet.  The more I looked and imagined, the more certain I was that we were in imminent danger.  I began to panic and realized that I had better get some help.

I called my Dad and frantically told him to come immediately because there was a spaceship preparing to land and take us away.  Well, you can imagine what he must have thought.  He didn’t laugh or get angry with me, but asked me to check again and make sure.  I put the phone down and looked out again, and sure enough, the lights were still there.  I was on the verge of tears, so he told me he would be right over and for me to calm down and wait for him.

True to his word, he arrived in about 10 minutes.  I was so relieved to see him.  I threw open the door and pointed up towards the sky and showed him the blinking red and white lights.  He went to the car and got a flashlight and started looking around. 

As it turns out, there was a radio station about 1/2 block from the house where I was babysitting.  In those days they had very tall towers to receive and send radio waves and the red and white blinking lights were warning lights for airplanes.  My Dad explained that to me and showed me with the flashlight the base of the tower.

I never could figure out how my Dad kept from laughing and making fun of me and my “Spaceship.”  He must have had to bite his lip pretty hard.  He never did laugh at me and never did tell anyone else (That I know of).  He told me that he was glad that I was so observant and that it could very well have been a spaceship.  He told me I was a good babysitter and he was proud of me.

For several years after that every time I thought about that night, I could feel my face turn red with embarrassment.  But also, my heart filled with love for a parent that knew how traumatic it could be if he had made fun of me.

Now, when I think about that night I have to laugh out loud.  I think that is probably the funniest thing I ever did as a child, but also one of my most heart-warming memories.

When I was seven and my brother was eight our family purchased a large old house on the edge of the small town in the California Mountains where we grew up.  After we finished helping load all of our belongings into the house and putting the things away in our new rooms, we were free to go exploring.

Since it was so close to the edge of town, it wasn’t far for us to go into wild-flower filled meadows and beautiful groves of trees.  In those days there wasn’t much building outside of town, so there were no residences or other buildings in the area we were exploring.  It was like being in a complete new world all our own.

During our explorations, we discovered a lake right there a half-mile or so in back of our house.  Of course the first thing we wanted to do was to get a boat or a raft so we could go sailing.  After searching around for materials, the only thing we could find that resembled a boat was an old wooden horse trough.  Horse troughs were used to feed and water horses.  To us this was a wonderful boat, so we carried it to the water’s edge and pushed it in.  It leaked a little, but seemed to float well, so we found some long tree limbs to use for power and an old tin can for baling out any water that leaked in.  Jim became the captain of the boat and I was the crew.  The captain’s duty was to power the boat and the crew’s duty was to bale out the water.  We spent hours pretending to be pirates and battle ships and cruise ships.  When we went to shore, we stripped down to our underwear and went swimming and then lounged in the sun to dry off and discuss our great adventure and plan the next one.  We stowed our boat safely on shore and made our way home.  We didn’t tell anyone about this wonderful boat or the lake.  It was our secret.  For the next month or so we spent many hours in our boat and had many wonderful adventures in it.  We would pack peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and crackers and cookies and apples and Jim’s thermos with water and spend whole days on our lake.

There was a mountain about 2 miles from our lake that had a road winding up its side.  This was a very steep road named Antelope Grade.  It was the highway that connected our little town to the next town over the mountain and anyone driving up that road could look down into the valley and see for miles.  One day as we were having our usual adventures, we heard this faint voice calling our names.  At first we thought God was talking to us, but then we saw a tiny little car up on that road and our tiny little Mom gesturing to us to get home.  Our Mom could not drive, but she had a friend that could and they had been driving around all day looking for us.  We could tell she was angry by the gestures she was making.  We quickly poled our boat to shore and stored it in its usual place and headed for home with dread in our hearts.  We discussed running away for a moment or two, but quickly decided we couldn’t do that because we had no food or shelter.  We decided the best thing to do was just go home and face the music.

When we got home our Mother hadn’t gotten there yet, so we sat and waited knowing that our lives would never be the same when she had finished with us.  Her punishments could be quite harsh when she was angry.  We imagined being imprisoned in our rooms with bars on the windows and only allowed out to go to school and use the bathroom, taking our meals alone in our rooms.  We couldn’t figure out why she was angry.  After all, we were both excellent swimmers. All the kids in our town were good swimmers because there were lots of streams and rivers to fall into and knowing how to swim was a safety measure.  Also, In our opinion, we had done nothing wrong.

When she finally got home, to our relief, she was more upset than angry.  She explained to us that our “Lake” was the City’s Reservoir and there were “No Trespassing” signs around it.  We hadn’t noticed these signs, or if we did, we gave them no notice.  Also, it evidently was a very dangerous place for recreation, especially in a horse trough.  She made the usual threat “Just wait until I tell your Father”.  (She never did tell him though)

With heavy hearts we promised not to go in our boat again, and we were released from bondage and allowed to explore again.  That was the end of our wonderful Captain and Crew days. We weren’t locked in barred rooms and had our meals with the family to our relief.  We never found out what happened to our majestic boat and missed our adventures on our lake, but we had many other adventures in the years to come.