Just got up and the coffee is cooking. And it's clear as a bell. Yippee!
Monday and Tuesday were also nice and I FINALLY got to get some serious yardwork accomplished. A couple of weeks ago I think I mentioned that I built a new raised flower bed in my folk's yard. Tore out a bunch of tangled roots from a Mountain Ash that mom had removed last Fall, hauled some rock from a quarry up by Eaglecrest, and got some good soil from Fred Meyers. The rest of the yard looked pretty ratty...lots of moss. So on Monday I borrowed Dougie's truck and brought in a yard of topsoil, raked it, rolled it, planted grass, and watered. Now if we get a week of sun (which is the forecast) the little grass seeds should come shoosting out and make me happy.
On Tuesday I started cleaning-up my aunt's yard. It looks pretty ratty, too, didn't get much attention last year when I couldn't do much after surgery. So...it's gonna get a lot more attention this year. I cleaned out the raised beds and mowed the lawn. There's lots of moss so yesterday afternoon after it quit raining I hit-it with "Moss-Out."
Today I believe I will go get some soil and some bedding plants and head back up to Aunt Emilie's. And tomorrow is one of the big events of the season - the annual thatching bee. I will service both my aunt's and Dougie and Alison's yards. And since tomorrow is Saturday, reckon I'll go to the barn dance and get likkered-up on moonshine. Life is good.
In other news, Dougie, Alison, and Thelma got back from Hawaii yesterday. Didn't have much time to hear all the details; but it sounds like they had a great time and played lots of golf. They did mention the "vog" as an annoyance - which is the air pollution from the volcano. Guess it's been really bad this year.
I've got to take dad to a doctor's appointment at 10:30 AM this morning...so I'm gonna go have a workout now. And I hope to take a nice bike ride to the Glacier after all my chores are done.
With nice weather this weekend perhaps I will have some interesting photos for my next blog.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Friday, May 23, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
The Lindstrom Chronicles Part 2 of 2
I find the last paragraph particularly interesting...
Evelyn: My maiden name was Evelyn Klump. I was called Opal when I was little as my sisters had trouble saying Evelyn and the rest of the relatives generally called me Opal, too. I hated the name and when I moved to Juneau I was called Evelyn.
Elmer & Evelyn (Klump)
LINDSTROM
Interviewed by Dee Williams & Marie Darlin
LINDSTROM
Interviewed by Dee Williams & Marie Darlin
Evelyn: My maiden name was Evelyn Klump. I was called Opal when I was little as my sisters had trouble saying Evelyn and the rest of the relatives generally called me Opal, too. I hated the name and when I moved to Juneau I was called Evelyn.
I came to Alaska in September 1941 on the Steamship Aleutian with my older sister, Jo, whose husband was working in the mine. I had never been on a boat before, let alone a ship. I had never seen water except a little lake. My sister had a nine month old baby and she was really young and I wasn’t quite fifteen. She didn’t want to come by herself and I had never been anywhere. I liked Juneau when I first saw it. It was nice to see rain after the heat of Arizona. It wasn’t raining hard, just the fine misty rain. I have never been bothered by the rain.
I will be 80 in November 2006. Other than my sister, Emilie, there is no one else alive now that I know that remembers me when I was a little girl growing up in the Depression. We didn’t have much. We made do with what we had and we were never bored, asking our Mama what to do. There was always something. We didn’t have running water and electricity. It was pretty hot in Arizona–miserable now that I think back. I remember there were times we didn’t have enough to eat, that when I went to bed I wished I’d had a little bit more to eat. It was tough but we survived.
My grandmother got a pension of $40.00 a month from one of her husbands who had died in the military and she shared about half of that with us because my dad didn’t have any work. He always worked when there was work, but there weren’t any jobs available at that time.
Elmer and I met at Charlie Miller’s bar, known as the Capital Café on Front Street. It had a good dance floor. I wasn’t old enough to be there but I was anyway and I had a good time. Why it was called the Capital Café I don’t know, because it wasn’t a café, it was a bar. It was located between Seward and Main Street on Front Street where the Sealaska parking lot is now.
Elmer: It was on the corner of that lot. Years before Joe Stocker had a place where you could go in and play cards and he had popcorn, pop, hot dogs and so on. He didn’t sell drinks. Next to that was Gastineau Grocery owned by Sam Paul, then Charlie Miller’s Capital Café and then there was a garage; later that was owned by Bob Cowling.
Evelyn: Elmer and I were married in 1945. I was scared to death. We were married in the old Lutheran Church on Main Street by Pastor Hillerman. Elmer was home on leave from the Navy. We spent our honeymoon at Elmer’s mother’s cabin at Lena Beach. We lived in various places in Juneau. When we were first married we lived on Fourth Street right past the Episcopal Church where two identical houses are set back. We lived in one of those for about 10 years. That’s where our first child, Linda, was born.
Elmer: My sister Inga moved to Seattle around 1940 where she lived for the rest of her life. After my brother Bud graduated from high school he went down south to business school and then went to work for the Corps of Engineers on Annette Island just before the war. Then he joined the Coast Guard as a yeoman and served on the Cutter Aurora in the Aleutians, and then was transferred to a Coast Guard office in California.
Evelyn’s sister, Emilie, had moved to Juneau from Arizona in 1942 and was working for Pan American when she met Bud. Emilie went down to California and married Bud. They came back to Juneau in November 1945 and we all lived together, the two couples and Linda, at the Fourth Street house. We paid Louie Dyrdahl $40 a month rent. It wasn’t a bad house.
In 1948 Bud Bodding, who was with Ellis Airlines in Ketchikan, asked Bud to come down there and work for Ellis. They lived in Ketchikan until 1955. Their first daughter, Sandra, was born here in 1948, and their daughter, Jan, was born in Ketchikan in 1950.
Evelyn: Bud and Elmer fished together. Linda started going out on the boat with us when she was about three and a half. She loved fishing. She never minded how rough it got. I would be sitting down below, holding on to the seat, scared to death. One time we were coming around Point Retreat and it was really rough. She looked at me and said, “Mama, when are we going to eat?” Well, that was the last thing I wanted to do right then. I never got seasick, I was just nervous. I couldn’t have eaten anything or fixed anything. Elmer was always happy to catch a fish. It didn’t matter if it was a 60 pound King or a trout from the Salmon Creek Dam.
We moved to 622 Eleventh Street when Elmer Alan was born. We bought that house from Carl Wiedman. It was right between Edna and Cliff Swap’s and Verna and Roy Carrigan’s. We lived there for about 15 years. That place was bought by Pete Warner.
Elmer: I worked for Art McKinnon at Reliable Transfer in the winter for quite a while. I fished in the summers until 1955 and then Al Bloomquist and I bought Reliable Transfer from Art. We had four trucks, then we bought out Femmer Transfer and got a couple more trucks. In 1957 Al got out of it and my brother, Bud, bought into it. I had it for 15 years.
I retired in 1969 and sold my stock to Tony McCormick. Roger Calloway has Reliable Transfer now. That transfer company has been in business since 1914. Bud retired in 1980. After I retired from Reliable, I went to work at Marie Drake as a janitor for about four and a half years.
I won the Salmon Derby in 1967. I had a side deal going. I went around to all the guys I knew that fished the derby–about a hundred guys–and charged them $10 each. Whoever caught the biggest fish during the derby got all the money. Well, I won the first year!
Evelyn: It was funny that morning when he was going out in the derby. I asked him if he would give me money to take a trip to Arizona if he won. He said, “Oh, yeah!” And then our son Elmer said, “Dad, if you win would you give me $100.00 ?” He said, “Sure.” We made him pay off, too!
Our son Elmer is just now finishing 30 years with the State. He’s looking forward to retirement and buying a place down south where he can garden. He thinks we’re going to go with him. Only time will tell on that. He was looking at Washington, but now possibly Oregon. His stepdaughters are around Portland.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Where the Sun Don't Shine...
I received a very rude email from Ms. Jane Ellis yesterday afternoon. She informed me that it was a beautiful day in Portland - in the 80's - and she was feeling a need to head to the store to get something to BBQ. No doubt there was dining al fresco a plenty in the City of Roses last evening. I just checked and it looks like continued beautiful weather - possible record heat - for the Great Northwest today.
In Southeast Alaska - not so much. In fact, it's cold as hell and wet, wet, wet. The trees are about half leafed-out. The ground is frozen about four inches down in my folks back yard. And although the tour boat season is now in full-swing - I expect that snippy spousal exchanges along the lines of "I told you we should have gone to Mexico" are very common on South Franklin.
My mood has been in tune with the weather. I got my bike back from the shop after its Spring tune-up last Saturday; but I remain without saddle sores. I think it's safe to assume that Bike to Work Day (today, I think) will be less than a roaring success here in the rainforrest.
Given the lack of outdoor recreational activities I have contented myself with the usual foul-weather routine - constant workouts at the gym, elder care, working on photo projects, and a little cooking. And I've been reading more than in the past few years. The best that can be said for all of this is it's still way better than work!
The good news is I'm paying off my last vacation quickly and can begin planning another one... If the weather does not improve markedly I think I'll take a couple of weeks in late July. I've never been in the Rocky Mountains...maybe a driving trip out of Denver for ten days or so...I've started to do some online research.
Sorry about the desultory posting...but stay tuned for Monday's second installment of The Lindstrom Chronicles. Get out and enjoy the sunshine you lucky Great Northwest people!
In Southeast Alaska - not so much. In fact, it's cold as hell and wet, wet, wet. The trees are about half leafed-out. The ground is frozen about four inches down in my folks back yard. And although the tour boat season is now in full-swing - I expect that snippy spousal exchanges along the lines of "I told you we should have gone to Mexico" are very common on South Franklin.
My mood has been in tune with the weather. I got my bike back from the shop after its Spring tune-up last Saturday; but I remain without saddle sores. I think it's safe to assume that Bike to Work Day (today, I think) will be less than a roaring success here in the rainforrest.
Given the lack of outdoor recreational activities I have contented myself with the usual foul-weather routine - constant workouts at the gym, elder care, working on photo projects, and a little cooking. And I've been reading more than in the past few years. The best that can be said for all of this is it's still way better than work!
The good news is I'm paying off my last vacation quickly and can begin planning another one... If the weather does not improve markedly I think I'll take a couple of weeks in late July. I've never been in the Rocky Mountains...maybe a driving trip out of Denver for ten days or so...I've started to do some online research.
Sorry about the desultory posting...but stay tuned for Monday's second installment of The Lindstrom Chronicles. Get out and enjoy the sunshine you lucky Great Northwest people!
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Lindstrom Chronicles Part 1 of 2
In the Fall of 2006 my mom and dad were interviewed for the upcoming volume of "Gastineau Channel Memories" produced by the local historical society. Each volume is a series of short family histories. I believe the latest edition will be Volume III and should be published sometime in 2008.
When I was in Portland in March visiting Amanda and Leah, we were talking a bit about my folks. The gals knew dad was old...but I believe they were taken aback when I mentioned a couple of Fun Facts:
Dad was born twelve years after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk.
Dad was born two years before the United States went to war - that would be World War I.
Woodrow Wilson was President when my dad was born.
You get the drift...we're talking OLD.
The following is certainly not a complete oral history - something I damn well better get busy on sooner rather than later - but it does have its amusing aspects.
Elmer & Evelyn (Klump)
LINDSTROM
Interviewed by Dee Williams & Marie Darlin
Elmer: I was born on February 5, 1915, at St. Ann’s Hospital. My dad and my mother, Eli and Mary Lindstrom, had arrived in Juneau from Finland in 1912. Although born in Finland, they were Swedish speakers. The winter of 1915 we lived up on Starr Hill, on Kennedy Street, in one of the miner’s cabins. The winter was so bad that Ma didn’t take her clothes off for six weeks, just in case they had to get out fast. They were just shacks in those days and the wind could blow them over. My sister, Ingaborg, was born on August 1, 1916 and my brother, Bud, whose real name was Carl Victor, was born on February 26, 1918.
When I started school the high school was on the top floor and the elementary grades were on the first two floors. I graduated from Juneau High School in 1932. When I first graduated I was looking for work. The only place you could find a job was at the mine. I went down there every day for six months in a row and there would be 100 to150 others looking and they’d come out shaking their heads. “There’s no work, there’s no work today.” Well, I’d wait until it calmed down and I’d go in and ask if there was any work today. The personnel manager was Joe McLean’s dad, Hector McLean. He wouldn’t even bother to look up, he’d just say that there wasn’t any work that day. It took six months but I finally got a job down there. One day I went in asking if they had any work and he looked up and said, “Yup.” I started working on the dock and then I worked on the power line crew for a while.
Evelyn: Fred Newman, who would later become Elmer’s step dad, was a foreman. He wouldn’t let him work in the mine; he said it wasn’t a healthy place.
Elmer: When I first went to work at the mine we got 56 cents an hour and $4.85 for a day. You could buy a hamburger for 10 cents and a milkshake for 15 cents. Carl Jensen worked in the mine at the same time I did and Alex Sturrock, too. We were all friends and every night we’d go to the Triangle Club. This was after they did away with prohibition. Every night we’d go down there and have a beer and talk. Beer was 10 cents. Then we’d go over to Percy’s and have a hamburger and a milkshake before we went home. Emmett Botelho and Ben Burford started the Triangle Club. Then they split up and Emmett took the Triangle and Ben started a place over on the other corner, where MacDonald’s is now, Burford’s Corner. In those days the A-J Mine employed twelve hundred people. It ran twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.
Evelyn: Someone new to the area once wrote an article for the paper and said that when the mines were running it was so noisy that you couldn’t hear yourself think. Well, I couldn’t let that go by as it really bugged me. I called her and asked how long she had been here and she said about two years. I told her that her comment about the noise was not so. The only time there was any kind of noise was when they had to blast rock; then the whistle would blow and there would be a boom.
Elmer: In those days people could go out and leave their doors unlocked. There was one policeman during the day and one at night. My mother had a cabin out the road where we spent weekends, and it was left unlocked. The cabin was about the third cabin past Minnie Field’s home. We had to pack everything down the trail to the cabin. I used to hate it because every time we’d go out there we had to spend half the time packing stuff down to the cabin; lumber, blocks of cement, everything! My mother had put in a big garden and every time we went out we had to weed it or mow the lawn. When we first built the cabin it was always work. Later, Mother wanted to give the cabin to me but I was fishing and gone all summer so I wouldn’t have been able to keep it up. She sold it in the 1950s. We are sorry now that we didn’t keep it in the family. George McDonald bought it. His brother Louie owned a grocery store in town. A lady called me a year or so ago and said they had just paid $200,000 for it. She wanted me to come out and tell her about the property.
Editor’s note: A September 9, 1929, newspaper article reported the following: Elmer and Buddy Lindstrom had a narrow escape yesterday afternoon when their rowboat capsized off Lena Cove as they were trying to land a salmon. Theirs was the only boat along that stretch of beach and neighbors watched helplessly as the boys clung to the capsized boat which drifted toward midchannel. Then Simon Hellenthal, local attorney, came around the point from the north with his outboard boat and picked them up. They were thoroughly chilled but had managed to hold onto the trolling line which had a 15 pound salmon at the end of it. [Excerpted from Gastineau Bygones by Robert DeArmond.]
When I was in Portland in March visiting Amanda and Leah, we were talking a bit about my folks. The gals knew dad was old...but I believe they were taken aback when I mentioned a couple of Fun Facts:
Dad was born twelve years after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk.
Dad was born two years before the United States went to war - that would be World War I.
Woodrow Wilson was President when my dad was born.
You get the drift...we're talking OLD.
The following is certainly not a complete oral history - something I damn well better get busy on sooner rather than later - but it does have its amusing aspects.
Elmer & Evelyn (Klump)
LINDSTROM
Interviewed by Dee Williams & Marie Darlin
Elmer: I was born on February 5, 1915, at St. Ann’s Hospital. My dad and my mother, Eli and Mary Lindstrom, had arrived in Juneau from Finland in 1912. Although born in Finland, they were Swedish speakers. The winter of 1915 we lived up on Starr Hill, on Kennedy Street, in one of the miner’s cabins. The winter was so bad that Ma didn’t take her clothes off for six weeks, just in case they had to get out fast. They were just shacks in those days and the wind could blow them over. My sister, Ingaborg, was born on August 1, 1916 and my brother, Bud, whose real name was Carl Victor, was born on February 26, 1918.
When I started school the high school was on the top floor and the elementary grades were on the first two floors. I graduated from Juneau High School in 1932. When I first graduated I was looking for work. The only place you could find a job was at the mine. I went down there every day for six months in a row and there would be 100 to150 others looking and they’d come out shaking their heads. “There’s no work, there’s no work today.” Well, I’d wait until it calmed down and I’d go in and ask if there was any work today. The personnel manager was Joe McLean’s dad, Hector McLean. He wouldn’t even bother to look up, he’d just say that there wasn’t any work that day. It took six months but I finally got a job down there. One day I went in asking if they had any work and he looked up and said, “Yup.” I started working on the dock and then I worked on the power line crew for a while.
Evelyn: Fred Newman, who would later become Elmer’s step dad, was a foreman. He wouldn’t let him work in the mine; he said it wasn’t a healthy place.
Elmer: When I first went to work at the mine we got 56 cents an hour and $4.85 for a day. You could buy a hamburger for 10 cents and a milkshake for 15 cents. Carl Jensen worked in the mine at the same time I did and Alex Sturrock, too. We were all friends and every night we’d go to the Triangle Club. This was after they did away with prohibition. Every night we’d go down there and have a beer and talk. Beer was 10 cents. Then we’d go over to Percy’s and have a hamburger and a milkshake before we went home. Emmett Botelho and Ben Burford started the Triangle Club. Then they split up and Emmett took the Triangle and Ben started a place over on the other corner, where MacDonald’s is now, Burford’s Corner. In those days the A-J Mine employed twelve hundred people. It ran twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.
Evelyn: Someone new to the area once wrote an article for the paper and said that when the mines were running it was so noisy that you couldn’t hear yourself think. Well, I couldn’t let that go by as it really bugged me. I called her and asked how long she had been here and she said about two years. I told her that her comment about the noise was not so. The only time there was any kind of noise was when they had to blast rock; then the whistle would blow and there would be a boom.
Elmer: In those days people could go out and leave their doors unlocked. There was one policeman during the day and one at night. My mother had a cabin out the road where we spent weekends, and it was left unlocked. The cabin was about the third cabin past Minnie Field’s home. We had to pack everything down the trail to the cabin. I used to hate it because every time we’d go out there we had to spend half the time packing stuff down to the cabin; lumber, blocks of cement, everything! My mother had put in a big garden and every time we went out we had to weed it or mow the lawn. When we first built the cabin it was always work. Later, Mother wanted to give the cabin to me but I was fishing and gone all summer so I wouldn’t have been able to keep it up. She sold it in the 1950s. We are sorry now that we didn’t keep it in the family. George McDonald bought it. His brother Louie owned a grocery store in town. A lady called me a year or so ago and said they had just paid $200,000 for it. She wanted me to come out and tell her about the property.
Editor’s note: A September 9, 1929, newspaper article reported the following: Elmer and Buddy Lindstrom had a narrow escape yesterday afternoon when their rowboat capsized off Lena Cove as they were trying to land a salmon. Theirs was the only boat along that stretch of beach and neighbors watched helplessly as the boys clung to the capsized boat which drifted toward midchannel. Then Simon Hellenthal, local attorney, came around the point from the north with his outboard boat and picked them up. They were thoroughly chilled but had managed to hold onto the trolling line which had a 15 pound salmon at the end of it. [Excerpted from Gastineau Bygones by Robert DeArmond.]
Saturday, May 10, 2008
A Class Act
Last Thursday, my former boss, Karleen Jackson, resigned as Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. In my opinion, it is the State of Alaska's loss. But I'm not Governor, and it is also my firmly held belief that any Governor should have the Cabinet members he or she desires. And, of course, should be held accountable for those choices.
Karleen Jackson is one of the most ethical and otherwise estimable persons with whom I worked in my 30 years of service to the State. And she did not disappoint in this regard with her resignation - the following is from the definitive AP story published in the Anchorage Daily News on May 9, 2008:
JUNEAU -- The head of the state's Department of Health and Social Services announced her resignation Thursday after a meeting this week with the governor in which they differed over the future of the department.
Commissioner Karleen Jackson gave the department's 3,500 employees one day's notice of her Friday departure.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Jackson said she came to the decision after a meeting on Monday with Gov. Sarah Palin and other staff members to talk about their "vision for the department."
"We had a little bit of a difference of opinion on how the department should move forward, so I offered my resignation after that conversation and after thinking about it for a while," Jackson said.
Jackson declined to discuss the differences.
"It's a moot point. I'm not going to be the person leading the department on from here," Jackson said.
No "pining for the private sector." No baloney about "wanting to spend more time with the family."
She disagreed with the Governor about where the department should be going and she quit.
And I think it extremely unlikely that the former Commissioner will immediately resurface as a vengeful legislative employee or lobbyist.
This sort of principled resignation is common in parliamentary systems...but quite rare in our system. Too bad for us.
Karleen Jackson is one of the most ethical and otherwise estimable persons with whom I worked in my 30 years of service to the State. And she did not disappoint in this regard with her resignation - the following is from the definitive AP story published in the Anchorage Daily News on May 9, 2008:
JUNEAU -- The head of the state's Department of Health and Social Services announced her resignation Thursday after a meeting this week with the governor in which they differed over the future of the department.
Commissioner Karleen Jackson gave the department's 3,500 employees one day's notice of her Friday departure.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Jackson said she came to the decision after a meeting on Monday with Gov. Sarah Palin and other staff members to talk about their "vision for the department."
"We had a little bit of a difference of opinion on how the department should move forward, so I offered my resignation after that conversation and after thinking about it for a while," Jackson said.
Jackson declined to discuss the differences.
"It's a moot point. I'm not going to be the person leading the department on from here," Jackson said.
No "pining for the private sector." No baloney about "wanting to spend more time with the family."
She disagreed with the Governor about where the department should be going and she quit.
And I think it extremely unlikely that the former Commissioner will immediately resurface as a vengeful legislative employee or lobbyist.
This sort of principled resignation is common in parliamentary systems...but quite rare in our system. Too bad for us.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
I Had a Good Day!
I feel like a million bucks. Had a good day today.
I spent about six hours working in my folks yard. I dug-up a bunch of tangled roots that radiated from the stump where a Mountain Ash stood last year, made two trips up to an abandoned city rock quarry up by Eaglecrest to get rock, put the rock in a circle around the stump, and went to Fred Meyer's and bought a bunch of top soil. Voila! Mom now has a very nice new raised flower bed in her front yard.
It's hard to believe I find such work satisfying...but I do...so there you have it.
Coming on Monday - The Lindstrom Chronicles - the transcript of my folks interview about 18 months ago with the Juneau Historical Society. I'll probably do it in three parts or so...I'm searching for pictures...
I am going to archive all the pics on the blog from my West Coast Swing - they're all available on my Kodak site now and are just taking-up room on the blog.
If there are any pics on my Kodak site that strike your fancy...just let me know...and I'll send you a jpg file or send you a CD if, for some bizarre reason, you want a bunch of them.
Have a good weekend everyone!
I spent about six hours working in my folks yard. I dug-up a bunch of tangled roots that radiated from the stump where a Mountain Ash stood last year, made two trips up to an abandoned city rock quarry up by Eaglecrest to get rock, put the rock in a circle around the stump, and went to Fred Meyer's and bought a bunch of top soil. Voila! Mom now has a very nice new raised flower bed in her front yard.
It's hard to believe I find such work satisfying...but I do...so there you have it.
Coming on Monday - The Lindstrom Chronicles - the transcript of my folks interview about 18 months ago with the Juneau Historical Society. I'll probably do it in three parts or so...I'm searching for pictures...
I am going to archive all the pics on the blog from my West Coast Swing - they're all available on my Kodak site now and are just taking-up room on the blog.
If there are any pics on my Kodak site that strike your fancy...just let me know...and I'll send you a jpg file or send you a CD if, for some bizarre reason, you want a bunch of them.
Have a good weekend everyone!
Monday, May 5, 2008
Mutt-Mutt's Up on the Roof - and he WON'T Come Down!
Sorry for the delay folks. Just spent most of a day trying to get my Norton security software fixed. This involved several calls to tech support - in Mumbai, I believe. It was a nightmare. The techie took-over my computer for a couple of hours (until about 1 a.m. this morning) and fiddled with this and that. Finally, I think he uninstalled and then reinstalled my software - but didn't give me an activation key. And then my internet wouldn't work - so I just got off the phone with the GCI tech support guy. And then back to Mumbai for activation. Computer fuckery.
Take a deep breath, Elmer.
OK...now where were we?
Ah yes, Terry and Mutt-Mutt.
Marian Harrigan sent me home with a bunch of old pictures and negatives that she got when her brother (Terry's Uncle Bob) passed-away a couple of years ago. The pics included some of Terry's grandparents, Marian as a child, and Marian's siblings. And, best of all, some great black and white negatives that Uncle Bob took when Terry and Chris were toddlers.
I have now scanned all of the pics and negatives and have made a CD for Terry.
When Marian and I were looking at the stuff in Ballard, she chuckled when she saw a couple of pics of young Terry with her childhood stuffed dog, Mutt-Mutt. Apparently Terry and Mutt-Mutt were inseparable - and being inseparable to a toddler comes at great cost if you are a stuffed dog.
At some point Mutt-Mutt became so disgusting - bordering on a public health hazard - that Marian had to put him down; resorting, no doubt, to some variation on the tried-and-true parental dodge that Mutt-Mutt was "up on the roof, and wouldn't come down."
Fortunately, Terry was a good-natured child and accepted a replacement stuffed animal without apparent long-term psychological damage. I note for the record, however, that childhood traumas often resurface years later so it is incumbent upon all of us to continue to monitor her behaviour for any signs of latent Mutt-Mutt separation anxiety.
So, without further ado, I give you Terry and Mutt-Mutt along with a couple of Uncle Bob's other gems. Terry and Chris were real cuties!
Take a deep breath, Elmer.
OK...now where were we?
Ah yes, Terry and Mutt-Mutt.
Marian Harrigan sent me home with a bunch of old pictures and negatives that she got when her brother (Terry's Uncle Bob) passed-away a couple of years ago. The pics included some of Terry's grandparents, Marian as a child, and Marian's siblings. And, best of all, some great black and white negatives that Uncle Bob took when Terry and Chris were toddlers.
I have now scanned all of the pics and negatives and have made a CD for Terry.
When Marian and I were looking at the stuff in Ballard, she chuckled when she saw a couple of pics of young Terry with her childhood stuffed dog, Mutt-Mutt. Apparently Terry and Mutt-Mutt were inseparable - and being inseparable to a toddler comes at great cost if you are a stuffed dog.
At some point Mutt-Mutt became so disgusting - bordering on a public health hazard - that Marian had to put him down; resorting, no doubt, to some variation on the tried-and-true parental dodge that Mutt-Mutt was "up on the roof, and wouldn't come down."
Fortunately, Terry was a good-natured child and accepted a replacement stuffed animal without apparent long-term psychological damage. I note for the record, however, that childhood traumas often resurface years later so it is incumbent upon all of us to continue to monitor her behaviour for any signs of latent Mutt-Mutt separation anxiety.
So, without further ado, I give you Terry and Mutt-Mutt along with a couple of Uncle Bob's other gems. Terry and Chris were real cuties!
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