I Remember...

• Going to Children’s Shoe Land for shoes
• Your favorite store was Sears in Renton, followed closely by McLendon’s
• Elk hunting with a Cow tag and not getting anything
• Deer hunting with a Doe tag and not getting anything
• Pheasants, geese and ducks
• Making shot gun shells
• My first bicycle and showing you Mom had taught me to ride – I stopped by running into the Oldsmobile because I hadn’t learned to use the brakes
• Teasing Vern and Ronnie Hall, Mike Moss, Randy Butterfield, Geoff, Paul and Janice Broomhead
• Learning to put new pads on drum brakes
• Changing the oil
• Mowing the lawn
• Building the cabin
• Cleaning Wally Weger’s chicken coop just to get the fertilizer
• Making our own lawn fertilizer by buying the ingredients at Burdic Feed in Kent
• The 50 miler
• Numerous Scout Camps – Brinkley, Omache, Shepard, Parsons
• Wetting the bed
• Pulling the box spring handle off, and promptly stepping on the tacks
• Cutting Christmas trees
• Driving the boat – towing a trailer
• Building the fiberglass cover for our deck in SeaTac – and expanding the deck
• Chain link fencing
• Pouring concrete – cabin foundation; slab for my current dog kennel (not used); curbs around the grass and under the fences; widening my driveway – all under your guidance
• Growing potatoes, tomatoes, rhubarb, zucchini, and pumpkins
• Creating the rock garden landscape so I didn’t have to mow as much
• Making a bedroom for Greg downstairs – moving the door to the garage to the workshop
• Insulating, wiring, dry walling, framing, roofing, siding, painting
• Working on my car in Pullman after school got out one summer – you had to get the parts in Seattle
• Our rabbits
• Turtles
• Geronimo getting his ear clipped by the barbed-wire fence chasing a pheasant
• Not coming back for breakfast after trailing elk, eventually falling asleep in the snow – how worried you, Earl, and Darrell were when I didn’t make it back when it got dark either
• Our family train ride to Missoula
• Camping and fishing up the North Fork
• When you learned to downhill ski again with your two boys
• The family reunion for your 50th wedding anniversary
• Our trip to the East coast with Grandma Vesta
• Disneyland, Tijuana
• Getting the dry-heaves at Norma & John’s in Hanford
  
  (To be continued…)

- Craig