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It seems appropriate to let these intermix as they will - and easier on me - so I hope no one minds.
Mom and Dad loved each other so. When they met, she was dating his roommate. She'd been engaged to someone else before and broken that off, but at that time, she was dating his roommate. His roommate lost out - and I, and my Dad, gained a lot. Dad would call her, when he was feeling affectionate / loving / sentimental, "Fox". He was still calling her Fox, gently, possibly sadly (I'm not sure) in the week or two before her death. I believe I saw her smile a bit once, to one of those Foxes. (I write this first not as a most important memory, but as a tiny detail it would be easy to forget - a tiny little piece that says, as much as the hugs, the kisses, Mom's willingness to live in a house that was almost like camping out some years - as much as any of those, says so much about their love.)
When I was little, Dad was an environmentalist, arguably a liberal (but only in some ways). The Sierra Club and other such magazines were frequently about the house. And I learned from that and grew up similar. In the last decade (at least), Dad was much more conservative and no longer as heavy an environmentalist. He still believed in taking care of the environment but now thought there was too much extremism in some groups about what that meant. Global warming, for example, he said was happening but would be happening even without man, as the little ice age ends. He had some books on this; I'd meant to read them at some point. (Even if he's right, I don't think we need to pollute our air this much or contribute to it so much. But that's just me.) Recycling uses more energy and resources than it saves in some cases - he'd researched which ones and was still recycling the things that made sense, either because more was gained than lost, or because (as in the case of computer parts) it would damage the environment badly to just toss them. (I don't know if he ever researched the gains/losses there, because of the 'poisons in the ground' issue.)
I was born in California, where we lived until I was one and a half. My parents had a little fish pond in their back yard, so they had me taught to swim as a baby, for fear I'd fall in. One day, I did fall in, sure enough - and began paddling around happily in the water. Unfortunately for my mother, I was paddling around in the water in the middle of the pond, where she could not reach me without stepping in on the algae-slick surface. I don't remember if she fell in the pond or coaxed me to shore - I've been told the story, but I've forgotten that part - but they did eventually get me out of the fish pond, just fine and probably annoyingly happy with my swim.
Mom told a story too about when I was very young and Grandma (Mom's mother - step-mother, technically, but mother - Evelyn) came to visit. And she was walking back and forth holding me and I was fussing periodically. Mom told Evelyn I wanted to watch the light, because I was fussing every time she turned so I could not see the chandelier, and appeared to be staring right at it. Evelyn told Mom that I was too young to focus or care about that. Mom has always believed that she was, in fact, right. Obviously, there was never any way to know which of them was right.
Mom and Dad lived in Minnesota for a time - got very accustomed to cold and dealing with cold. And although they were cat people, they were also dog people. At that time they had at least a couple dogs, and darnit, I've lost the names again of some. At any rate there was one who got left alone shut in a room and chewed up half the linoleum floor by way of revenge....
When they moved out to California, Dad had to go ahead to his job and Mom drove out behind in the car with the dogs, Meyer and (I think his name was Twitch? Or was it Rick they had then? - I think it was Twitch). And one night, late, at a truck stop, she pulled over and got out to walk the dogs. She walked Meyer, a Doberman / Great Dane cross, first. Put him back in the car and walked Twitch (I believe he was a Belgian Tervuren). When she got back to the car, Meyer had sat on the lock and locked her out of the car. Fortunately, she was at a truck stop, and one of the truckers was willing to slip a coat hanger through the window and unlock the car door...that was the old Maverick. I probably have photos of that car somewhere in the photos I will work on scanning from my childhood. The trucker was apparently a little wary of the very large dog in the car, but finally agreed to help. (The very large dog in the car was very, very friendly, and the most likely damage was to get knocked over by a too-enthusiastic greeting - and at least when I was around, he knew better than that, too.)
Speaking of Meyer, when we lived in Carlton and when we first moved out to Newberg, my parents had a big king-sized bed (their bedroom was in the room that Mom's hospital bed was in, at the end of her life - though they had long since moved their bedroom to a different room in the house at that point). They had a king-sized bed for two people because Meyer had the habit (totally tolerated and permitted) of hopping up on that bed with them. Between them, no less, like a big black furry chaperone (or just a child who didn't know better). Sometimes, in the night, he would end up head on a pillow, back to one parent, legs to the other. And he would straighten his legs. If neither woke up, invariably Mom would stay on the bed...and Dad would fall off onto the floor. I'm fairly sure Dad weighed more than she did at any of these times - but Mom was a light sleeper and I suspect she woke just enough to brace but not remember it. As a kid, I thought this was quite funny.
Once, in Carlton, Dad was fixing the truck. Or trying to. He went inside for a break, and Mom asked where I was, and Dad said he'd thought I was with her, and she said no, I was with him. She was right; they came outside to check, and found me pacing around the truck, kicking the tires and saying "Damn, damn, damn." (Tells you how well Dad's attempts to fix the truck had gone.)
I used to go into the office with Dad, but I'm not thinking of any strong memories there just now - just cubicles and computers. I don't think I yet understood what he did well enough to retain anything useful from the Beaverton plant.
When I was in high school, Mom got a Jeep - a CJ7, truly intended for off-road as well as road use. She loved that Jeep, but eventually gave it up because, since it had a soft top, it was way too breezy. It did handle the rough dirt-and-gravel roads we lived on very well. I tried driving it a time or two, and never was able to - the clutch was so stiff that I could push it in, but when it came out, it was coming out all at once, stalling the vehicle. Not quite every time, but about 90%, which is not enough to let you drive anywhere. I'm in awe of my mother that she could drive that thing.
I was home-schooled in fourth grade. I'm not sure that was ideal - I was lazy without structure and Mom wasn't fully prepared to have to push me into everything - but it worked okay. I learned some very interesting stuff. I've forgotten much of it now, I fear - not the stuff I learned, but that it was that year. But I know there was a book on poetry and poetry exercises that I enjoyed greatly; I know there were various mathematical exercises. I was talking with Dad about that just the other week - my parents had (without naming it) showed me algebra by that age, maybe earlier. Just the really basic 2x = 4, what is x sort of thing. (A little more complex than that, but not two variables, I don't think.) When Dad and I were talking, he said the old chalkboard they used was still out in the shop - he had run across it the other day - and still had some of that on it. I may go try to find it and see, just for the memories.
When we first moved to Newberg, our neighbors down the street were the Hoffmans - they had a daughter about my age (I think maybe a bit younger but I am not sure). Carrie. I have memories of playing with her, playing with Dad's old typewriter or with paints, but nothing detailed. She was a pretty girl, and we've lost contact. When they moved away, Leroy and Lorelei moved in. (I forget Leroy's last name; Lorelei's was Schaeffer.) They had two children, Jennifer and Scott (Meneely - not sure if they were adopted or children of a first marriage). Jennifer was my age, Scott a bit younger. We played together, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes not.
This is all going somewhere, honest. As a child I had allergies and asthma (at least I don't have the asthma now). So one day I went to play at their house and my mother had first talked to their mother and made sure she knew about my health and that I needed to be kept in, away from the fields and so on. Well, we got too rowdy - and were sent out to the barn to play. I spent a while jumping around in the hay and other stuff, and when I came home, I was apparently not in great shape (but I don't know how bad) and my Mom heard where I'd been sent to play and was furious. I don't remember what came of that.
The land between the two properties was divided up fairly foolishly, so that it was hard to get into their barn (not the front door but the other side, with a vehicle) with our property fenced off. Leroy tried to contend that part of the land we had fenced off was his. As I recall, it wasn't. I don't remember if it went to court or just was fighting back and forth. The sad thing is, if he'd just told my Dad he had a problem and asked what could be done, I suspect Dad would have accomodated him. The family who owns that property now - and I don't know their names, to my shame - have been renting the use of the pasture from Dad for some time. (Oh boy, another thing to sort out - but later.) Dad had nothing but happy comments for that arrangement, that I can recall.
When I was little, we had a TSR80 (?) color computer, what Dad and I generally referred to as a CoCo. You loaded the programs from a tape player (the kind of tape you might otherwise record your voice on and play it back in the stereo - cassette tape - I did once play one in the living room, I think by mistake, but I don't remember now). Dad got games for me to play on it, a little doodling thing (Doodlebug?) that had some programming-ish components, kind of, but simple, and also a ... I don't remember what, a sort of, I'm not sure, fantasy thing I think. Oh heavens, I don't remember it at all. What I remember is that Dad tried to teach me Basic and I sort of got it but didn't use it much or wholly get it, but my friend Nathan did and he would reprogram that game to make it easier, or harder, or weirder, or.... (He never changed the actual game, just did a copy of it, I think.)
Dad was a photographer. More so than I think many people realize, though probably not as obsessive as I am. Dial-up access being all he had out on the Ridge, it served as a barrier to uploading many pictures. (But he did upload some: see http://www.flickr.com/photos/pheon/ for those.) If I find more of his photos, I will likely upload them, though in my Flickr account.
Mom and Dad taught me to shoot (guns, not photos) when I was a child. I know basic gun safety and have fired pistols and rifles (though only a child-size rifle, I think; I believe I stopped shooting before I was big enough to handle a full-size one). We would go to the gun range in Sherwood, usually Dad and I but sometimes Mom, where we had a membership, and shoot at paper targets. Never shot at anything else, though; I never wanted to. Hitting the target - proving you could do it - was fun. But I would not have wanted to go hunting.
Mom kept a garden, when we first moved to Newberg. She kept it several years, maybe even into my teens, until the water situation at the house (with the old 3-gallon-a-minute well) became such that it was no longer feasible (or until she didn't want to any more, depending). I remember the rectangle between the shop and the road filled with neat rows of plants, most of which I had no interest in myself.
Mom made homemade fruit leather, using a recipe in a book (which I have found). It's hard work, hot work, and a lot of fruit for just a bit of leather - but oh how I loved that fruit leather. The store-bought kind does not compare (it's edible, even good, it just doesn't compare). Mom canned and preserved and stored them in our basement. Cooked full meals, froze things.... Took care of cats and kittens, and taught me to do the same.
When I was little - sometime in Carlton, I think when I was 2 - and Thanksgiving rolled around one year, Mom said, "Time to put the turkey in the oven." Mom and Dad had sometimes called me a turkey (I was, in the slang sense), but I hadn't understood my turkey-self versus the bird 'turkey' - at least, not completely though I clearly partly said it. I said "Not this turkey!" and backed away in alarm. Mom said it was genuine; that's what my memories say too, but I was so little that they could be confused by what I believe. But Mom said I really was scared. She managed to assure me that no, we only cooked turkey-birds, not turkey-Lauras. I assume she also got a good laugh out of it, but that I don't remember. I know that in later years, she did get a laugh when that story came up.
In Carlton we lived across the street from Erma and Gordon Orr, who were sort of like a surrogate third set of grandparents to me. I don't remember them very well any longer but I do remember them vaguely. Gordon was bald. He helped my parents - they helped my parents - with advice on how to raise the sheep, plant vegetables, etc. And they raised beef cattle, so we got some of their meat and they got some of ours. Erma had soft white curly hair and she would let me bang on the organ in their house, which I loved and which I knew nothing about playing. She made cookies and she had toys around the house for when her grandchildren or I or any other small child who visited, visited. They had rain barrels under the downspouts of their house - I am not sure what they used the water for, but I liked to stare into it in fascination. It was just the right height for me to look in and see the reflections. I've always loved water, I think.
One day Mom told me not to go over there because she knew Erma would be very busy baking cookies. I went over there, and when I came back, Mom scolded me and said she'd told me not to go over there. I asked how she knew. She said she knew and that I had misbehaved. I don't remember this one, not the phrasing, but we went round and round until finally I went very quiet and thinking hard, and then I said, "I know! You looked out the window and saw me coming back!" She had, she's said as much when telling the story. Apparently I just wouldn't take my scolding until after I knew how I'd been caught. (I don't remember if I took it after, and I don't know that she's ever said. Hmm.)
When we moved to Newberg, we had Meyer (the aforementioned Doberman), Truman (an orange marmalade cat), and I believe we already had Mickey (a Belgian Tervuron - though I didn't know he was until recently; I had thought he was a mutt, and Dad corrected me). We may have gotten Mickey after. I'm not sure. There was a dog run outside the house, on the side away from the driveway, where Mickey was most of the time. Meyer mostly lived indoors. I don't remember when Meyer passed away, or what of - I just remember him in the house at Newberg, and then I don't remember him, but I can't pin down times. Mickey died while we were on a trip, I think when I was 8 or 10. He'd been boarded, but no fault of the place with him - he had a heart problem we hadn't known about, and it just gave out on him, I think while he was asleep. Before that happened, I'd tried to walk him down the road at some point (not sure why...he had a run), and discovered that the dog was stronger than I was and just pulled me along. Whups.
After that was Sam, I believe. Sam was not pedigreed but we think he was a pure or near-pure Brittany Spaniel. Beautiful dog, friendly, energetic. Mostly lived in the run (with, mind, a very well-insulated dog house) but also came into the house.
There were so many, many cats over the years. I can't name all of them (some of them, the ferals, never had names), but I'm sure I'll mention some as I write more memories. Right now I want to mention Sweety, the first cat that was "mine". A semi-feral mother cat was on our property - she was tame enough to lure onto the back porch but not into the house. I remember having a cat flap in the back door at that time, but I suspect that memory is false, because I remember the door in later years and it had no hole, not even filled in. Not sure HOW she got in and out. Anyway, she had a litter of kittens and Mom said I could pick one as mine. Which I did, and named him Sweety. Or Sweetie. It's been spelled both ways over the years. A tom-cat, yes. Mom told me he probably wouldn't live up to that name, and tried to discourage it, but I stuck to my guns and insisted he was.
And he did grow up to be a sweet-heart, a fact even she acknowledged. He was neutered, and he was very trusting and caring and he would even baby-sit kittens and let them suckle on him (not that it did them much good, obviously).
I had a really fancy room for a kid when I was young: a wall-mounted air conditioner (Dad had to get a hole put in the wall to put it in), a water bed, an air filter.... Of course, this is because of the awful allergies and asthma. (The air conditioner, which was quite weak by today's standards but excellent then, was necessary because I sometimes had to stay in that room with the door shut to be okay, and it would turn into an oven at times otherwise. Of course, I didn't have any way to heat it in the winter, but there is always piling the blankets on.)
I think this is all the memories I will write for now; Scott and I need to head out soon. But I'll put more up later.
Mom and Dad loved each other so. When they met, she was dating his roommate. She'd been engaged to someone else before and broken that off, but at that time, she was dating his roommate. His roommate lost out - and I, and my Dad, gained a lot. Dad would call her, when he was feeling affectionate / loving / sentimental, "Fox". He was still calling her Fox, gently, possibly sadly (I'm not sure) in the week or two before her death. I believe I saw her smile a bit once, to one of those Foxes. (I write this first not as a most important memory, but as a tiny detail it would be easy to forget - a tiny little piece that says, as much as the hugs, the kisses, Mom's willingness to live in a house that was almost like camping out some years - as much as any of those, says so much about their love.)
When I was little, Dad was an environmentalist, arguably a liberal (but only in some ways). The Sierra Club and other such magazines were frequently about the house. And I learned from that and grew up similar. In the last decade (at least), Dad was much more conservative and no longer as heavy an environmentalist. He still believed in taking care of the environment but now thought there was too much extremism in some groups about what that meant. Global warming, for example, he said was happening but would be happening even without man, as the little ice age ends. He had some books on this; I'd meant to read them at some point. (Even if he's right, I don't think we need to pollute our air this much or contribute to it so much. But that's just me.) Recycling uses more energy and resources than it saves in some cases - he'd researched which ones and was still recycling the things that made sense, either because more was gained than lost, or because (as in the case of computer parts) it would damage the environment badly to just toss them. (I don't know if he ever researched the gains/losses there, because of the 'poisons in the ground' issue.)
I was born in California, where we lived until I was one and a half. My parents had a little fish pond in their back yard, so they had me taught to swim as a baby, for fear I'd fall in. One day, I did fall in, sure enough - and began paddling around happily in the water. Unfortunately for my mother, I was paddling around in the water in the middle of the pond, where she could not reach me without stepping in on the algae-slick surface. I don't remember if she fell in the pond or coaxed me to shore - I've been told the story, but I've forgotten that part - but they did eventually get me out of the fish pond, just fine and probably annoyingly happy with my swim.
Mom told a story too about when I was very young and Grandma (Mom's mother - step-mother, technically, but mother - Evelyn) came to visit. And she was walking back and forth holding me and I was fussing periodically. Mom told Evelyn I wanted to watch the light, because I was fussing every time she turned so I could not see the chandelier, and appeared to be staring right at it. Evelyn told Mom that I was too young to focus or care about that. Mom has always believed that she was, in fact, right. Obviously, there was never any way to know which of them was right.
Mom and Dad lived in Minnesota for a time - got very accustomed to cold and dealing with cold. And although they were cat people, they were also dog people. At that time they had at least a couple dogs, and darnit, I've lost the names again of some. At any rate there was one who got left alone shut in a room and chewed up half the linoleum floor by way of revenge....
When they moved out to California, Dad had to go ahead to his job and Mom drove out behind in the car with the dogs, Meyer and (I think his name was Twitch? Or was it Rick they had then? - I think it was Twitch). And one night, late, at a truck stop, she pulled over and got out to walk the dogs. She walked Meyer, a Doberman / Great Dane cross, first. Put him back in the car and walked Twitch (I believe he was a Belgian Tervuren). When she got back to the car, Meyer had sat on the lock and locked her out of the car. Fortunately, she was at a truck stop, and one of the truckers was willing to slip a coat hanger through the window and unlock the car door...that was the old Maverick. I probably have photos of that car somewhere in the photos I will work on scanning from my childhood. The trucker was apparently a little wary of the very large dog in the car, but finally agreed to help. (The very large dog in the car was very, very friendly, and the most likely damage was to get knocked over by a too-enthusiastic greeting - and at least when I was around, he knew better than that, too.)
Speaking of Meyer, when we lived in Carlton and when we first moved out to Newberg, my parents had a big king-sized bed (their bedroom was in the room that Mom's hospital bed was in, at the end of her life - though they had long since moved their bedroom to a different room in the house at that point). They had a king-sized bed for two people because Meyer had the habit (totally tolerated and permitted) of hopping up on that bed with them. Between them, no less, like a big black furry chaperone (or just a child who didn't know better). Sometimes, in the night, he would end up head on a pillow, back to one parent, legs to the other. And he would straighten his legs. If neither woke up, invariably Mom would stay on the bed...and Dad would fall off onto the floor. I'm fairly sure Dad weighed more than she did at any of these times - but Mom was a light sleeper and I suspect she woke just enough to brace but not remember it. As a kid, I thought this was quite funny.
Once, in Carlton, Dad was fixing the truck. Or trying to. He went inside for a break, and Mom asked where I was, and Dad said he'd thought I was with her, and she said no, I was with him. She was right; they came outside to check, and found me pacing around the truck, kicking the tires and saying "Damn, damn, damn." (Tells you how well Dad's attempts to fix the truck had gone.)
I used to go into the office with Dad, but I'm not thinking of any strong memories there just now - just cubicles and computers. I don't think I yet understood what he did well enough to retain anything useful from the Beaverton plant.
When I was in high school, Mom got a Jeep - a CJ7, truly intended for off-road as well as road use. She loved that Jeep, but eventually gave it up because, since it had a soft top, it was way too breezy. It did handle the rough dirt-and-gravel roads we lived on very well. I tried driving it a time or two, and never was able to - the clutch was so stiff that I could push it in, but when it came out, it was coming out all at once, stalling the vehicle. Not quite every time, but about 90%, which is not enough to let you drive anywhere. I'm in awe of my mother that she could drive that thing.
I was home-schooled in fourth grade. I'm not sure that was ideal - I was lazy without structure and Mom wasn't fully prepared to have to push me into everything - but it worked okay. I learned some very interesting stuff. I've forgotten much of it now, I fear - not the stuff I learned, but that it was that year. But I know there was a book on poetry and poetry exercises that I enjoyed greatly; I know there were various mathematical exercises. I was talking with Dad about that just the other week - my parents had (without naming it) showed me algebra by that age, maybe earlier. Just the really basic 2x = 4, what is x sort of thing. (A little more complex than that, but not two variables, I don't think.) When Dad and I were talking, he said the old chalkboard they used was still out in the shop - he had run across it the other day - and still had some of that on it. I may go try to find it and see, just for the memories.
When we first moved to Newberg, our neighbors down the street were the Hoffmans - they had a daughter about my age (I think maybe a bit younger but I am not sure). Carrie. I have memories of playing with her, playing with Dad's old typewriter or with paints, but nothing detailed. She was a pretty girl, and we've lost contact. When they moved away, Leroy and Lorelei moved in. (I forget Leroy's last name; Lorelei's was Schaeffer.) They had two children, Jennifer and Scott (Meneely - not sure if they were adopted or children of a first marriage). Jennifer was my age, Scott a bit younger. We played together, sometimes harmoniously and sometimes not.
This is all going somewhere, honest. As a child I had allergies and asthma (at least I don't have the asthma now). So one day I went to play at their house and my mother had first talked to their mother and made sure she knew about my health and that I needed to be kept in, away from the fields and so on. Well, we got too rowdy - and were sent out to the barn to play. I spent a while jumping around in the hay and other stuff, and when I came home, I was apparently not in great shape (but I don't know how bad) and my Mom heard where I'd been sent to play and was furious. I don't remember what came of that.
The land between the two properties was divided up fairly foolishly, so that it was hard to get into their barn (not the front door but the other side, with a vehicle) with our property fenced off. Leroy tried to contend that part of the land we had fenced off was his. As I recall, it wasn't. I don't remember if it went to court or just was fighting back and forth. The sad thing is, if he'd just told my Dad he had a problem and asked what could be done, I suspect Dad would have accomodated him. The family who owns that property now - and I don't know their names, to my shame - have been renting the use of the pasture from Dad for some time. (Oh boy, another thing to sort out - but later.) Dad had nothing but happy comments for that arrangement, that I can recall.
When I was little, we had a TSR80 (?) color computer, what Dad and I generally referred to as a CoCo. You loaded the programs from a tape player (the kind of tape you might otherwise record your voice on and play it back in the stereo - cassette tape - I did once play one in the living room, I think by mistake, but I don't remember now). Dad got games for me to play on it, a little doodling thing (Doodlebug?) that had some programming-ish components, kind of, but simple, and also a ... I don't remember what, a sort of, I'm not sure, fantasy thing I think. Oh heavens, I don't remember it at all. What I remember is that Dad tried to teach me Basic and I sort of got it but didn't use it much or wholly get it, but my friend Nathan did and he would reprogram that game to make it easier, or harder, or weirder, or.... (He never changed the actual game, just did a copy of it, I think.)
Dad was a photographer. More so than I think many people realize, though probably not as obsessive as I am. Dial-up access being all he had out on the Ridge, it served as a barrier to uploading many pictures. (But he did upload some: see http://www.flickr.com/photos/pheon/ for those.) If I find more of his photos, I will likely upload them, though in my Flickr account.
Mom and Dad taught me to shoot (guns, not photos) when I was a child. I know basic gun safety and have fired pistols and rifles (though only a child-size rifle, I think; I believe I stopped shooting before I was big enough to handle a full-size one). We would go to the gun range in Sherwood, usually Dad and I but sometimes Mom, where we had a membership, and shoot at paper targets. Never shot at anything else, though; I never wanted to. Hitting the target - proving you could do it - was fun. But I would not have wanted to go hunting.
Mom kept a garden, when we first moved to Newberg. She kept it several years, maybe even into my teens, until the water situation at the house (with the old 3-gallon-a-minute well) became such that it was no longer feasible (or until she didn't want to any more, depending). I remember the rectangle between the shop and the road filled with neat rows of plants, most of which I had no interest in myself.
Mom made homemade fruit leather, using a recipe in a book (which I have found). It's hard work, hot work, and a lot of fruit for just a bit of leather - but oh how I loved that fruit leather. The store-bought kind does not compare (it's edible, even good, it just doesn't compare). Mom canned and preserved and stored them in our basement. Cooked full meals, froze things.... Took care of cats and kittens, and taught me to do the same.
When I was little - sometime in Carlton, I think when I was 2 - and Thanksgiving rolled around one year, Mom said, "Time to put the turkey in the oven." Mom and Dad had sometimes called me a turkey (I was, in the slang sense), but I hadn't understood my turkey-self versus the bird 'turkey' - at least, not completely though I clearly partly said it. I said "Not this turkey!" and backed away in alarm. Mom said it was genuine; that's what my memories say too, but I was so little that they could be confused by what I believe. But Mom said I really was scared. She managed to assure me that no, we only cooked turkey-birds, not turkey-Lauras. I assume she also got a good laugh out of it, but that I don't remember. I know that in later years, she did get a laugh when that story came up.
In Carlton we lived across the street from Erma and Gordon Orr, who were sort of like a surrogate third set of grandparents to me. I don't remember them very well any longer but I do remember them vaguely. Gordon was bald. He helped my parents - they helped my parents - with advice on how to raise the sheep, plant vegetables, etc. And they raised beef cattle, so we got some of their meat and they got some of ours. Erma had soft white curly hair and she would let me bang on the organ in their house, which I loved and which I knew nothing about playing. She made cookies and she had toys around the house for when her grandchildren or I or any other small child who visited, visited. They had rain barrels under the downspouts of their house - I am not sure what they used the water for, but I liked to stare into it in fascination. It was just the right height for me to look in and see the reflections. I've always loved water, I think.
One day Mom told me not to go over there because she knew Erma would be very busy baking cookies. I went over there, and when I came back, Mom scolded me and said she'd told me not to go over there. I asked how she knew. She said she knew and that I had misbehaved. I don't remember this one, not the phrasing, but we went round and round until finally I went very quiet and thinking hard, and then I said, "I know! You looked out the window and saw me coming back!" She had, she's said as much when telling the story. Apparently I just wouldn't take my scolding until after I knew how I'd been caught. (I don't remember if I took it after, and I don't know that she's ever said. Hmm.)
When we moved to Newberg, we had Meyer (the aforementioned Doberman), Truman (an orange marmalade cat), and I believe we already had Mickey (a Belgian Tervuron - though I didn't know he was until recently; I had thought he was a mutt, and Dad corrected me). We may have gotten Mickey after. I'm not sure. There was a dog run outside the house, on the side away from the driveway, where Mickey was most of the time. Meyer mostly lived indoors. I don't remember when Meyer passed away, or what of - I just remember him in the house at Newberg, and then I don't remember him, but I can't pin down times. Mickey died while we were on a trip, I think when I was 8 or 10. He'd been boarded, but no fault of the place with him - he had a heart problem we hadn't known about, and it just gave out on him, I think while he was asleep. Before that happened, I'd tried to walk him down the road at some point (not sure why...he had a run), and discovered that the dog was stronger than I was and just pulled me along. Whups.
After that was Sam, I believe. Sam was not pedigreed but we think he was a pure or near-pure Brittany Spaniel. Beautiful dog, friendly, energetic. Mostly lived in the run (with, mind, a very well-insulated dog house) but also came into the house.
There were so many, many cats over the years. I can't name all of them (some of them, the ferals, never had names), but I'm sure I'll mention some as I write more memories. Right now I want to mention Sweety, the first cat that was "mine". A semi-feral mother cat was on our property - she was tame enough to lure onto the back porch but not into the house. I remember having a cat flap in the back door at that time, but I suspect that memory is false, because I remember the door in later years and it had no hole, not even filled in. Not sure HOW she got in and out. Anyway, she had a litter of kittens and Mom said I could pick one as mine. Which I did, and named him Sweety. Or Sweetie. It's been spelled both ways over the years. A tom-cat, yes. Mom told me he probably wouldn't live up to that name, and tried to discourage it, but I stuck to my guns and insisted he was.
And he did grow up to be a sweet-heart, a fact even she acknowledged. He was neutered, and he was very trusting and caring and he would even baby-sit kittens and let them suckle on him (not that it did them much good, obviously).
I had a really fancy room for a kid when I was young: a wall-mounted air conditioner (Dad had to get a hole put in the wall to put it in), a water bed, an air filter.... Of course, this is because of the awful allergies and asthma. (The air conditioner, which was quite weak by today's standards but excellent then, was necessary because I sometimes had to stay in that room with the door shut to be okay, and it would turn into an oven at times otherwise. Of course, I didn't have any way to heat it in the winter, but there is always piling the blankets on.)
I think this is all the memories I will write for now; Scott and I need to head out soon. But I'll put more up later.
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God. How could it have ever been so long? It doesn’t seem so long ago that thirteen years was a damned long time. Nowadays, thirteen years is just last week.
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Thank you - sweet memories to have. I don't know about the daylilies. A good many plants have suffered (outside plants neglected; inside plants did better but the cats overturned some - well before Mom and Dad passed away). I have to confess I don't know what a daylily looks like. Which reminds me, I need to look up the plants I do know are there and the one I've seen and don't know (argh!) and make sure I'm caring for them properly....
Laura