Do you know that right after World War-2 it was practically impossible to buy a car? I was going to school at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. I had begged to be able to drive my Dad's car, but that was one thing he would allow no one to do. He took pride in his car, and would let no other hands steer it down the road, not even me, whom he loved dearly. No way !

I had sung in a quartet on campus for a May day competition, and we won the cup for that year. I was so excited because I was only a Freshman and was singing the lead in this group. After the competition there were many activities going on at the University. My only problem was that I lived about 10 miles from the school and had to catch the bus to get home. I felt totally "down" because I wanted to stay on campus and be part of the celebration. When I did get home, my bad temper showed up and I cried and cried, then stomped my feet to let my Mom and Dad know that next year I would not live at home while going to school. Dad felt pretty bad, I guess because he said we would start looking to find me a car. He wanted me to live at home, not on the campus.

We looked at many cars, but most were pieces of junk, and Dad would not have me be on the road in a junker. I would have grasped at the first car we saw, but he was not easily swayed when he was thinking of my safety. We finally found it ! Now, remember this was 1945 and the car we were looking at was a 1930 Model A Ford. It was beautiful, well cared for, and I fell in love with it. Dad paid a whole $275 for my car, and needless to say, my Mom hit the roof. She thought that was terrible for a car that old.

I drove that car many miles, and always felt proud in it. In case you don't know, after dark the lights on a Model A shine depending on how fast you were driving. So, if you were out on a dark, rainy night, you had to drive fast in order to see the road. My night vision was not the best, but I ignored that and drove fast enough to see.

Dad had the same rules about anyone driving my car, as he had for his own. No one could drive my car. Dad insured it in my name only, and he meant what he said. When Bob came home from the service we starting dating regularly. He could not drive my car, and did not have one of his own, so I had to pick him up and deliver him back home at the end of every evening. I am sure Bob was not too fond of thar idea, but we lived through it.

In 1946 Bob and I got married and moved to Walla Walla, Washington where we both worked for what was then the largest frozen food plant in the U.S. It was a new Birds Eye Snyder food plant. I worked in the office and Bob worked in the warehouse. He got rather tired of always driving in my Model A, which now carried both our names on the insurance, so he could drive it. So we started hunting for a used vehicle to buy. They were all junk cars, and he found one owned by a local butcher and Bob thought we would like it. I nearly choked when I saw it. It was a 1937 Chevrolet sedan, hand painted in a nauseating green color, and there was even straw all over the back seat. It was some gem, but Bob wanted it, and we came up with the $640 to buy it. We both worked at the same location, but I drove my own car, and he drove his. I could fill my tank up for $1 a week, with gas costing 10cents per gallon. Many mornings I would have to go out and push his Chevrolet to get it running.

On Labor Day we decided to drive to Hillsboro, Oregon to visit his folks. There was no super highway in those days, so it was a long drive. Before we got to Arlington, Washington, which was about 100 miles from Walla Walla, we had 3 flat tires. The ones on the car were practically rags. We kept buying old, used ones along the way, and paying top dollar for them, and after a few miles they would go flat, or blow out. After the third blow-out, we were in the dark trying to fix a tire. A kindly gentleman came along and parked behind us with his lights on so that we could see to change the tire. He noted that we had two jacks in the trunk, and said he was headed for Death Valley and would sure like to have one of those jacks. Bob was so thankful to him for stopping that he gave one to the man. I'll bet you guessed it already....there were no rooms in Arlington, and we were only about half way to our destination, so we decided to turn around and go back to Walla Walla. Yep, on our first blow out our jack would not work. Bob's brother, Harry was with us on this trip, and they literally lifted the car to get the tire off and back on. The fellows worked, and I sat in the car and cried.

Before we left Walla Walla we had both cashed our week's checks. When we got home, after 2 more blow outs, we were broke. This was a nightmare of a trip for us, and I always equate it with that moster green chevrolet.

Shortly after that, we sold the little Model A, and I was always sorry that we did that. That was a special little car, that served me well, and I loved it.

MISSING ME ?

It has been so long since I added to this blog that I almost forgot how to do it. April 5 I got up at 4 a.m. to visit the bathroom, and somehow or other, I fell backward very hard. I knew I was hurt, but could not get off the floor. I thought I had broken my hip. Finally, after a horrendous struggle I managed to get up and struggle back to the bed where I had a phone. I was afraid to call 911 because I thought they would not have a front door key, and would break the door to get in. My next alternative was to call my neighbor, Pat and ask him to come over, since my back door key was there. I didn't want to wake him t 4 a.m. so waited until 5 a.m. before I called him. Later I was scolded for that decision and was told that in an emergency I could call any time I needed help.

After a painful ambulance trip, and a visit to the Emergency Room for X-rays I was told that I had broken my pelvis. Everyone said that of all the bones one can break, the pelvis is the most painful, and would take a good 9 weeks to heal. I was in the hospital for several days before being transferred to the Lakeview Nursing Home. All in all I was there for about 9 weeks. While there I got the gout, which was very painful, and had to go through daily therapy to get myself able to move around with a walker.

My birthday was June 11, and I was finally able to go home a couple of days before my 82nd birthday. With the help of Home Health, I managed to stay here by myself . It has been a long haul, and only this last day or so have I been able to walk some without the aid of a walker. I still need to work on getting steady so that I don't fall again.

I got so many beautiful cards and letters, and had many visitors. I am thankful that I have so many good friends and neighbors. Now that I made it back to the computer, I will try to stay in contact.

TRUE FRIENDSHIP

Have you ever had a true friend? I've had lots of friends over the years, but when I think back about one that stands out, it is Evelyn B. I was living in Portland, Oregon when my husband, Bob had to go back into the Navy Aircorps during the Korean war. Our little girl was only about 2-1/2 then, and it was pretty traumatic for each of us.

First of all Bob reported to Seattle, Washington for some training for the job. He did not have time off, so there was no thought of our going there to visit him. Evelyn took over, acting like a grandmother to my little Linda, while I went out to search for work. I finally found a pretty good job and started working at Transport Clearings. In the evening, I would drive from my house to Evelyn's to pick up Linda. Evelyn always had an early dinner at her house, and she would have fed Linda already. That was wonderful for me, but then I would go home and eat a bowl of cereal, or a peanut butter sandwich. Soon I was getting thinner and thinner, and I was never fat to begin with. Sweet Evelyn noticed and feared I was going to get sick. At that time we cooked on an old wood stove, so her oven was always warm, and she would put a dish of food in there for me to have when I reached her house. How wonderful it did taste.

After about 6 weeks, Bob finished his training and was going to be shipped out somewhere. We had no clue yet where he would be sent. He would have a few days off and wanted us to come to Seattle so he could see Linda and me once more before he was trasnported elsewhere. Those of you who were military wives know that the allotment money took quite awhile to start showing up in our mailbox. My job only paid once a month, and I had no money to get to Seattle. When I arrived to pick up Linda and told Evelyn that I had no choice but to tell Bob that I could not come, she quietly slipped money into my hand and said , "you get a train ticket, and get up there to see Linda's daddy. "

We did take the train to Seattle where I had a cousin living, and we could stay with her family for the few days that we would be there. What a good reunion we had, and a sad farewell when it was time to go home.

Another time, some years later, Bob was home and we had purchased our first new (used) home. Because we were applying for a GI loan, it took quite a little while for the approval to come through. Here we were homeless until the loan was approved, and again Evelyn and her husband Wilson saved our lives. They had two teen age girls and they all lived in a two bedroom home. The girls gave up their bedroom so that we could stay with them. They slept in the front room on a hide-a-bed. This was one cozy group, and it went on much longer than any of us visualized it would, but they made us feel welcome and wanted. I am sure both of the girls were tickled to death when we finally got our own beds to sleep in and they could get back to their bedrooom.

True hospitality is almost a thing of the past now. I am glad that I have these memories of real friends who did so much for me.

In the bible, 1st Peter 4:8-9 tells us "Above all hold unfailing to your love for one another. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another.

FASHION STATEMENT

Isn't it funny how clothing fashions go "in and out" with the times? When I was young, ladies never wore slacks. I remember my family was making a trip from Oregon to California, and I begged to have some pants to wear on the trip. I was about 10 years old then. It took a lot of begging, but my Mom finally allowed me to have a pair of pants. What a thrill that was for me. By the time I was 12 years old, many young ladies were wearing slacks, and they just got more and more popular. No one looked at us as doing something shameful because we were wearing trousers.

I can also remember when my little brother wore short pants to school when he was in the first grade. Those were not what we think of as shorts today, but were pretty little one piece, with a bib, and often even made with velvet. He was practicing for a school play one day, and came home from school crying. He told Mom that he was not going to be in the play if he had to wear the short pants. She asked him why, and he said, "one of the boys said he would pinch my butt if I wore those pants." That was the end of the short pants for him. But many boys still wore them.

When I was in high school, the fad was that boys wore corduroy pants, and NEVER washed them. That's right, I said never! They were usually a beige color, and by the time the school year was over the pants could stand by themselves if you put them in the corner, and they looked greasy, but the girls seemed to love them. Girls began wearing skirts that came above the knee, but my Mom insisted my skirts be below the knee. After I got to school I would roll the top of the skirt so that it was short like the other girls. Before I went home, I unrolled it so I didn't get into trouble.

In 1968 I worked in the Alaska Governor's office, and always dresssed stylish. Skirts were very short then, and I kept up with the working girls. If you were thin, they looked OK, but if you had excess weight on your body, they were truly bad. Modesty went out the door with those short skirts. The major thing I can remember at that time was that ladies did not wear slacks to work. That was unheard of and was not acceptable. One winter when the temperatures dipped down below zero one brave lady wore a very nice pant suit to work. She worked in the Department of Administration Commissioneer's office. When the boss came in , he took one look at her, and promptly told her to go home and put on a dress before she came back to work.

That news swept all the offices rapidly, and there were partitions passed in most all the State offices saying that men could wear pants on their legs to be warm, but ladies had to let it all hang out and freeze. Shortly after that, a memo was issued saying that in the cold weather, pant suits would be accepted, but we were never to wear jeans or regular slacks with a blouse or sweater. It had to be a pant suit.

Remember when you went to the doctor's office and the lovely nurses were always wearing their starched white uniforms and caps, and a doctor looked like a doctor in his starchy white coat?

Today you can't tell a nurse from a patient. You can't even find anyone in the hospitals that look like a nurse. There are not identifying pins, or caps, and many of them look like they slept in their work clothes. Men teachers always wore a suit and tie, and the ladies wore a practical dress or suit with heels and hose. Today? They don't even shave before they go to work, and their clothes do not present a dignified position.

No wonder our kids of today are wearing those horrible "low rise" pants that hang so low that you see their underwear, and sometimes lack of underwear. The crotch is so low that it must rub their knees raw. They have no one to look up to that they admire or aspire to be like.

I recall the day when ladies would never go to church without a hat, heels and their best Sunday dress. Men were always in their best clothes too. I guess our respect for the Lord has even disappeared with the ages.

I assume that I am showing my age with this story, but I do miss the decorum that used to exist when we were proud of our appearance, and in school we were taught how to dress to apply for a job, or when going to a wedding or a funeral where we wanted to show respect. I am sure those days are gone forever, and I wonder how much farther will things go.

HALLOWEEN PRANKS

Did you ever go out on Halloween and enjoy playing some pranks? I did. When I was young and living in a logging camp area, about 8 of us kids would get together and go trick or treating. Most people had treats for us, so we didn't do anything naughty, but for those who would not give us something good, we would think up something to do as a trick.

I remember one house that we went to was different. The lady and her daughter came out on the porch with their bibles, and they read scriptures to us. Well, being ornery kids, we didn't consider that a treat. When they went back into the house, we went to their outhouse and spread limburger cheese on the seat of their outhouse toilet, and then we lifted the hood of the car and spread it all over the engine. I can imagine how horrible that smelled when the engine heated up and that smell came into the house.

Soaping windows and tipping toilets was our favorite mean tricks to do. One time the girls in the group decided to do something without the boys help. We were going to tip our own toilet over by ourselves. We found this one outhouse located in back of a small store and thought this was our perfect opportunity. We planned that we would count to three and then all of us would shove in the same direction. We got our selves in position and started counting....one.....two....

and before we could say "three" a voice from inside said, " you shove this toilet and I'll fire this shotgun I have right here. I've been waiting for you ! " Girls were running in every direction after the voice from inside scared us. There was a row of huge evergreen trees across the front of the building, and what I forgot was that only two trees had no barbed wire between them. I picked the wrong two to run between, and the fence hit my face and knocked me flat on the ground.

The boys were waiting for the girls, and saw me fall down. They came runing to pick me up, and see if I was hurt. I had blood running down my face, so they didn't have to ask. That barbed wire hit me right under the lower eyelid and beside the nose. I knew I needed to go home to get this taken care of, but also knew that if I went home my trick or treating for the evening would be over, so I stayed with the group. The boys had matches and were lighting them and holding them near my face so that the blood would possibly dry and quit squirting out. It was later when I realized how very fortunate I was to have not gotten that wire in my eye. It could have been a disaster for me.

In those days people did not go to the doctor unless they were seriously ill. I didn't tell my Mom what I was doing when I hit the fence, I just said I didn't see the fence and ran into it. The treatment for nearly everything back then was iodine. So Dad brought out the trusty bottle with the ugly red stuff in it, and swabbed my face. "There", he said. "it will be OK now"

I still bear that scar, and it is about an inch long. It has faded a lot, but when I look in the mirror and see it, I remember that doing Halloween pranks nearly did me in.

UFO SIGHTING

One evening I went out to 17-1/2 mile road in Juneau to visit with my good friends Liz and Louise. They had a pretty little house at that location, looking out across the road and at the Fritz Cove waters. On that dark evening we sat looking out their very large picture window toward the water. It was very dark, but all of a sudden we saw a light hovering over the water. We got the binoculars to see what in the world it was, but could only see this eerie green colored, cigar shaped green glow. We watched this light hovering there with little movement for about 20 minutes. Finally we decided to call the airport tower to see if there were any helicopters flying in the area. The voice on the other end of the phone happened to be a person that we all knew very well, and he said there were no planes or helicopters flying in that area. He recommended we call the Coast Guard. So, our next move was to get the Coast Guard on the line and tell them what we were watching. They told us they would contact the Juneau police and have someone check this out with us. As we hung up, awaiting the police to drive that distance to meet with us, we kept watching the light. All of a sudden it took off like a rocket while we watched it soar out over the water until it disappeared from our sight.

Needless to say, when the police arrived we had nothing to show them. We felt pretty silly because who believes in UFO's ? The police took our report, and did not make us feel like we were seeing things, or telling a lie, which helped in some respect. The fact that we were out in the country, and there were no buildings out there, made the light even more mysterious.

The next night my husband, Bob decided he would go out with me, and we'd set up a tripod with a camera and watch with binoculars. We wanted to capture something to prove what we were seeing. Of course, we were disappointed and no UFO appeared for us. I certainly took a lot of razzing about this sighting, and did for years after that.

The same week that we saw the strange light there were workers in a fish processing plant on a nearby island. They reported to the newspaper that they were in the building when the lights all went off, and all machinery lost power and quit working. They saw this mysterious glow overhead, and when it soared away from them all power was restored.

Over the years we have talked about this sighting, and few people believe me. They make fun of me because I believed it was a UFO. I saw it, and I know it was real. The last time I mentioned it to Liz and Lousie, who also witnessed it, they laughed and sounded like they would never admit they thought it was a UFO. I had another friend who was a scientist and he questioned me many times about the situation. He was a believer, and did not make me feel like I was dreaming.

Do UFO's exist? I don't know, but I know what I saw, and I believe some day we may have to admit there is something out there that today cannot be explained.

Nanny

GREETING CARDS

Are you like me ? Did you find it difficult to get those Christmas greeting cards in the mail? In the past I have always prided myself by having them in the mail right after Thanksgiving. This year I was scrambling to make it by Christmas. Cards have gotten more and more expensive, and the postage keeps going up until it seems like a good idea to just skip the whole thing.

Today I was gathering up all of the cards that I received, and I sat down to re-read all of them once more. I was touched by the nice notes, letters, and pictures that I received from various friends. I had a little talk with myself, and wonder if you have thought about these things too.

Old friends are some of the most treasured things we have on this earth. I still receive cards, letters, and phone calls from some people who were in my high school class of 1944. Frank W. is one of those people who calls me often. He has called me since my husband died, just to check if I am OK and to let me know he is thinking of me, although he lives on the Oregon Coast. Recently his wife passed away, and yet he managed to get Christmas cards posted. Betty Jean lives in Eugene, Oregon and we have stayed close over the years. We also stay in touch via telephone, and she is one of those people who never misses sending a card on special days. Her husband, Tom was very special too.

One time while we were living in Juneau, Alaska my husband, Bob decided we needed a new car. He got on the phone and called Tom who was a buick salesman. Bob told him exactly what we wanted in a car, and when the conversation was over, Tom asked, "when are you going to come to Oregon to pick up the car?" Bob said, "we aren't, you are going to bring it to us." Tom was open-mouthed at that one. Bob said that if they would drive the car to Alaska, they could visit us and then we would fly them back to Portland. So, the deal was made. That summer Tom, Betty Jean, and their daughter Deborah drove the Alcan Highway to Prince Rupert, Canada and then ferried the car on to Juneau. That was the year that there were huge floods in Canada, and they had to drive many miles from Prince George to Prince Rupert on a gravel road. That road was covered over with water, and they were driving by sighting some posts along the edge of the road, and it was a very frightening drive. There was a very deep gorge along side the road a good share of the way. No one could turn around, because there was no place to do that. They made it fine, and while on the ferry Tom polished and cleaned the car up until it looked like a bran new car when he drove off the ferry in Juneau. Who, but a good friend would do that?

Betty Ann was my maid of honor when I married Bob in 1946. We were best friends in high school, and over the years have stayed in touch. She and her husband, Kenny came to Juneau to visit us once, and they also came here to New Mexico to visit me when I first moved here. Kenny has since passed away, but I still have those good memories.

Dorothy has been a close friend since 1942 when I moved into her neighborhood and we walked to school together every day. Dorothy used to tend to be late getting places, and when we'd walk I was always hurrying her along. She finally got so that she would meet me on the corner and we were always on time to school. We had to walk about 2 miles to school in rain or shine weather conditions. They didn't send busses for us back then.

Over the years I have made many new friends who still stay in touch too. As I read over the cards I realized the importance of getting those cards in the mail so that I will never lose track of any of those very special people in my life.

Maybe this little memo will cause you to rethink the importance of the beautiful cards that bring us greetings from friends that can never be replaced.

I wish for you a Happy new year.