shoe tree and other stuff

I left Thursday evening to drive over to Emmett by way of Eugene, Sisters, Redmond, Prineville, etc. Just west of Dayville was this interesting tree. If you will look closely there are several dozen pairs of tennis shoes flung upon the branches. I actually saw a bird fly into one of the shoes. Amazing. Ones conjecture runs amok.





On Fathers' day my sisters kidnapped me and we ran away to Boise and to visit the Veteran's Cemetery and say "Hi!" to Dad. We are standing in front of his niche, Carla took the picture with her long arm technique.




This is Dad's plaque as it reads at present, it was the consensus that "Shorty" be added to his name when we have it engraved to add Mom's ashes. She already has a smallish piece of Depression glass picked out.

The most poignant moment for me this past week was when Gale was talking about some Rocky moment and commented that she had really been looking forward to growing old with Rocky.





This is a picture of the Cow Camp. Time has not been kind to the actual building but I and most of my siblings have fun memories of the Cow Camp. In the summer my uncle and family moved to the Cow Camp so he could manage a large cattle ranch. It was a treat to go for ride with him in the jeep when he set out salt blocks.

There was no electricity. Light was from kerosene lanterns, warmth and food was from a wood burning stove. There was a hand pump and a sink. My aunt ironed clothes using sad irons. These were solid metal irons that heated on the wood stove,very heavy things. I would have settled for wrinkles. One of my favorite dishes was cinnamon pull apart that my aunt made. There were beds upstairs that all the kids slept in there were a bunch of us and there were thunder mugs under each bed.

Us kids loved to go hunt for dynamite wire. Bits and pieces of the blue, yellow and red stuff could be found at a nearby blast site. We would scramble around and gather the stuff up and weave rings and bracelets.

One of my favorite memories from Cow Camp involved a porcupine liver. One summer that we visited somehow a deer came to a slightly out of season's end on the property. Dad and my Uncle put the carcase in the barn. To keep us cousin's big ears and big mouths occupied, my uncle showed us a piece of lodge pole pine studded with porcupine quills. Very impressive. Even better was the large bowl containing the heart and liver. This is the Gods' honest truth, for years after that, my best story at school was "Do you know how big a porcupine's liver is? It's almost as big as the porcupine!". I was almost of legal age when Mom and Dad told me the other side of the story.