Memories in a Car Wash
Yesterday I got my car washed. Mind you, many people in Seattle never get their cars washed. After all, it will rain. If not today, then tomorrow. Or later in the week. Soon. Is a car wash worth the money? But my car had been on a long road trip, and bugs had splattered the […]
Fish Stories, and a Forgotten Photograph
I mentioned last week that I failed to gather many photographs and a few albums before I sent everything off to be digitized. This week’s post is about one of the photographs discovered after the digitization project. I know I’ve seen this snapshot before, but I did not remember it until my husband found it […]
From Old Photos to Aura Frame
I’ve written many times about photographs taken from my childhood or from my children’s childhood. When I was young, black and white snapshots were still the norm. My grandfather got a color camera sometime while I was still a toddler, but my dad didn’t get one of those snazzy new (and expensive) devices until I […]
A Rite of Passage: Learning To Drive
One of the pitfalls of skipping kindergarten was that I couldn’t get my driver’s license until several months to more than a year after all my high-school friends. I didn’t turn fifteen and a half (the age for getting a learner’s permit in Washington State at the time) until October 1971, when I was a […]
The Family That Waterskis Together . . .
I’ve written before about the idyllic summers I spent as a teenager on Coeur d’Alene Lake. And I’ve written about waterskiing. I recently found some old pictures of those days—pictures of my father, mother, brother, and me all waterskiing. As I looked at these pictures, I remembered how each of us skied. We each had […]
My Memories of Albany, Oregon
I wrote last week about using Albany, Oregon, as a setting in my current work-in-progress. Writing that post caused me to remember my own experiences in Albany dating back to my preschool years when our family lived in nearby Corvallis, Oregon. My dad was getting his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State University, located […]
Random Photos: When the Cares of the World Hit Hard
As I scrolled through old photographs recently, I came across pictures of my father taken on the beach at Port Townsend, Washington, in August 2006. This was my first visit to my parents’ new home—what would be their last home—in Port Ludlow, Washington. What strikes me about these pictures is that my father looks like […]
A Driving Tour of California, 1967
I only recall one summer driving trip in my childhood to California. We made a Christmas driving trip in December 1965, right before my maternal grandfather died (though at the time I didn’t know he was so ill). And my brother and I flew to California—either with or without our mother—for summer visits with my […]
A Childhood Epizootic
In these days of the coronavirus, every cough and every ache or pain makes us fearful. At least, that’s how I’m feeling these days. Spring is coming regardless of the pandemic, and I try to take solace in the warmer days, the brilliant sunshine, the greening of trees and lawns. But sometimes my thoughts take darker […]
Memories of a Flat Tire
I’ve written before about the odd things that can trigger memory. I had another such experience last week. I drove to a meeting on a foggy morning after a snowstorm past a grove of red cedar trees. They are called red cedars, but they are actually members of the juniper family. But whatever they are, they […]