Street Etiquette

I found a list of street etiquette printed in a news paper from the 18the century.
They where so prim & proper back in those days.

No yelling "Yo Bro" across the street.

"Ladies walking on the street are not expected to recognize gentlemen or friends on the other side of the road; to do so would necessitate habits of observation inconsistent with lady like respose."

I wonder what they would have thought about people walking down the street talking on their cell phones.

"Gentlemen will not swing their arms, nor sway their bodies in an ungainly manner when walking; ladies are never guilty of any such ungraceful action, and need no counsel in that respect."

No strutting or staggering allowed.
I thought these where quite funny. What allot has changed in the last 100 plus years.

Dirty Laundry

I've been washing our cloths at the dreaded laundromat since we moved into the camp trailer.
Twice I've gone to a dingy little place in Powell, that is right acrossed from the library, so after throwing in our dirty towels, cloths and getting the washers started I've got just enough time to run over to the library and check my email on their super fast computers. The only problem with that is, both times one of the washers quit cycling, so getting back half an hour later, I've had to wait an extra 30 minutes for the washer to run again. At least there seems to be very few people who use this laundromat.

I decided to try Cody yesterday and being summer and the tourist town it is, both laundry's where very busy, but the washers did keep going, although they cost about twice as much.
It cost 25 cents for just five minutes of drying. I kept chucking more quarters in the machines and finally gave up and brought home partially wet cloths.

At home I strung up a line acrossed the coral and hung the damp cloths on it. Sunshine and a breeze is much more efficient then tumbling around inside a dryer.

A Scary Camp Story

When I was a little girl we lived in a little pink house in Elgin Oregon. It had a huge yard with tree's, a small grass field and a big garden spot.

Our family had been planning a camping trip to Kalispell Montana when school got out. As children, we where quite excited at the prospect of catching a wild horse and bringing it home as a pet.
We practiced our roping technique's with larriett's made out of yarn on our bed post's and where quite certain we would catch a wild young pony and make it our own.

So with four excited kid's, a collie dog and a calico cat, we headed out to Big Sky country. We made our way through a corner of Washington, acrossed the panhandle of Idaho and into Montana to Kalispell, which sits between Glacier National Park and Flathead lake.

In Kalispell we stopped for a few days to visit my aunt Marveleen and uncle Dale. They even had a pony for us kids to ride.
We rode the pony double and bare back.
On one of those rides, I was behind my big sister Susan, choppily trotting allong, when I lost my balance on the slippery pony's back. With my arms wrapped tightly around Susans waist I fell off dragging her with me. Later that night while taking a much needed bath I noticed a perfect print of a pony track on my leg.

After a few days of visiting, we pulled out and found a quite little campground in the forest, in which we set up a tent. I was sure a bear would show up and have us for a late night snack.

I had a little blue Schwinn bike. My sister Paula and I spent allot of time riding our bikes around the campground, but I saw something frightening that kept us in close to the campsite.
There was a man in a dark army van that I would glimps now and then. He had long curly hair and looked like the bad man, who shot John Wayne, in the movie "The Cowboys". He might have just been an innocent camper, but when I would see that ominouse van, my heart would beat with fear and we would high tail it back to the safty of the campsite.

Drive in Theater

We went to the "American drive in" last night and watched "Land of the Lost"
There is just something magical about going to the drive in, and there are so few of them left in existence anymore.

There used to be three drive In's around this area and for awhile they where all shut down, until an enterprising local lady bought the Powell theater and renovated it. It only cost's $10 for a car load and she serves hot dogs, hamburgers & nachos from the vintage refreshment stand.

Willie and I had our first date at the Cody drive in. It was the early 80's and we saw "Flash Dance"

If you get a chance, go to a drive in. There is nothing like sitting under the stars watching a movie in the big screen, munching on popcorn and hot dogs.

You Might be a Redneck

"If going to the bathroom in the middle of the night requires boots and a flashlight, you might be a redneck."
Jeff Foxworthy hit this one right on the spot.
We rented an outhouse, since there isn't a septic to hook up to at our campsite (the barn) we do have water and electricity though and I even hooked up an antena and got the T.V. to work. It's a bit fuzzy, but we can get the local channels. Right up town, wouldn't you say.
There where several years when I was a teenager that we didn't have indoor plumbing. Mom & Dad bought 40 acres, on Cricket flat, outside of the beuatifull town of Elgin Oregon.
Dad is a great carpenter and built us a pretty log house, but it wasn't plumbed for awhile, so we had an outhouse.
Us kids wrote hillbilly grafiti all over the walls of the outhouse and yes, we kept boots and a flashlight by the front door for those spooky trips to the outhouse in the middle of the night.

More Camping Stories

Some of the camp trailers we looked at this spring where very small.
I'll never live down this story.
While driving in Powell I noticed a cute little trailer with a for sale sign on it parked in a lot, SO I stopped and took a look inside.
It was very cute, so I called up Willie and told him about it. He asked how big the trailer was and I said nineteen inches instead of nineteen feet. There was a pause and then he stated "I can barely get my big toe in that one."
The trailer we did purchase is 30 foot with a bedroom on one end and bunk beds on the other. It is set up pretty well.
Most of them we looked at Dawn would have had to slept where the table sits, folded down into a bed.
That would make a grumpy girl. "Get up, we need to use the table."
I remember as a kid camping by Hermiston Oregon. Our aunt Kathleen would tease us kids. "Get up, we need to use your sheet for a table cloth."

Dawn & I have been cleaning the house we just moved out of. We did the upstairs an have the basement left to do.
I said the basement isn't going to take so long, no kitchen, only one bathroom and no laundry room.
Dawn replied, "But the bathroom mrror is always streaky."
When I was working at the Two Dot rach we discovered that rubbing alchahol cleaned streaks off of glass, so I said, "We will clean it with alchahol." Dawn laughed and said, "so you will be drunk and won't see the streaks."
I've always been a bit clausterphobic and the first night in the camp trailer I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night and slammed into the cabinet. Hopefully I will remember not to do that again.
We had a camp trailer when I was a kid with a sleeping bunk built up above the bed on one end. Two kids could sleep there and I wanted to give it a try. I slept on the inside for awhile and woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I'm sure I scared everybody elnse haulf to death.
I always slept on the bottom with easy access to the door after that.

Stay tuned for more camping stories.

Comfy, Cozy

Our daughter Dawn makes these artsy pillows that everyone loves.

Penny has claimed this one as her own.

To make the pillows she uses scrap denim and cool fabric.

I cut off an old pair of pants to make shorts and she asked if she could have the scraps. With them she made a very hip pillow.

Dawn has bought her own sewing machine now.

I can't wait to see what new creations come out of it.

Eat, Sleep, Read

Eat, Sleep, and Read, That's what I want to do. I'm very tired today and would love to eat, sleep and read all day.

Can't do that, have to keep packing and getting ready to move into the camp trailer.

One of the first things I have moved into the trailer are the books I plan to read.

Maybe it's the weather. It has felt more like winter then June lately. We have had lots of cool, damp weather and even a snow storm that squashed down our hay fields. Hopefully they pop back up so we can cut them.

O.K. time to get going. Perhaps a jolt of caffeine will do the trick.

Summer Lunch with Mom

One of my favorite childhood memories was lunch at home with Mom on Summer days.

We would have tuna fish sandwich's, with dill pickles and mayo. Mom liked hers with strawberry jam. She always drank a Pepsi with her sandwich and if I was lucky I got a sip of the sweet bubbly drink. Us kids drank Koolaid, because pop isn't good for young growing bodies.

Back in those days we got most of our work done in the mornings, so after lunch we had the afternoon stretched out in front of us to pursue our pleasures, reading, drawing, writing, exploring and playing with siblings.

"Those where the Good old Days"

Turn The Page Tuesday- A Mending at the Edge

This is the one and only book I've read this month, but it was a good one. "A Mending at the Edge" Jane Kirkpatrick's final novel in her change and cherish series.

Jane lives in Oregon and writes books based on real women of history in Oregon. She is one of my favorite authors.

"Of all the things I left in Willapa, hope is what I missed the most." so begins this story of one woman's restoration from personal grief to the meaning of community. Based on the life of German-American Emma Wagner Giesy, the only woman sent to the Oregon Territory in the 1850's to help found a communal society, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick shows how landscape, relationships, spirituality and artistry poignantly reflect a woman's desire to weave a unique and meaningful legacy from the threads of an ordinary life. While set in the historical past, it's a story for our own time answering the question; Can threads of an isolated life weave a legacy of purpose in community?"

I bet if you read a Jane Kirkpatrick book you will become hooked on her writing's and have to read every novel just as I have.