Remember the good times

 The past couple of weeks have been a time for reflection for us as two of our friends have passed on.  Gary Palmer and Bryon Lewis.  Both were educators in the Bonner County School system.

Gary and his wife, Carole, both taught in Clark Fork Elementary and High School and also in Sandpoint schools.  Byron taught at Sandpoint High School as well as his wife, Myra.  He became principal of both Hope and Clark Fork schools.  

I vividly remember the first time I met Gary in 1975.  It was one of those beautiful mid-summer days and we were living in the Loman cabin then.  An old green pickup with a camper on the back drove up the driveway.  I didn't recognize the rig and when it stopped, a man and three young boys hopped out of the truck.  

He introduced himself and said that he was a high school classmate of Glen Rolofson's.  I knew who he was then because I had already heard the stories about Glen and his friend, Gary who lived one winter in the Loman cabin several years back.  That was the moment that a great friendship began. 

His wife, Carole, had a beautiful singing voice and many times on weekends we would get together to play games and/or sing some tunes.  Two of her favorites were, Can't Help Lovin' That Man and Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.  She was an elementary school teacher and began in Clark Fork and then transferred to Farmin Elementary.  Sadly, she passed away several years before Gary. 

We all had many things in common since I was from Nebraska as were Glen and Gary.  Naturally, that meant we were all Nebraska football fans.  

I would take care of their 4th son, Brandon, from the time he was 3 months old until he was about 4 years old.  During that time David thought of Brandon as his little brother and became pretty miffed when Brandon's older brothers, Chris, Brett and Jason, would show up from school and take over.  

It was a rough time economically in this area and after about ten years, Gary and family left for a really big adventure to teaching positions with the armed services in Germany.  We saw them only a couple of times after that, but now their oldest son, Chris, lives in Sandpoint.  We really enjoy visiting with him every once in awhile. 

The first time I talked to Byron Lewis was on the phone in 1978?  He and his family had moved here from Colorado and he was beginning a teaching job at Sandpoint High School.  We were still living on the Loman place.  

Our phone was a party line?  Anyone remember those?  I think there were twelve families on the same line.  It made for interesting conversations sometimes.  Sorry, I digress. 

Byron had called to speak with Jon as he was looking for someone to carpool with to the high school.  Jon would carpool with Byron for a couple of years and then later on he would carpool several years with Myra. Once again a new friendship began.  

This is the perfect photo of Byron.  He loved to be out on his ranch, fixing things.

I'm not positive that I am remembering this correctly, but I believe that Byron was the principal who hired both Carole and Gary for their first teaching jobs here. 

Our lives became intertwined.  Byron would call me again a couple of times to ask if I would consider being a teacher's aide at Hope Elementary.  The first time he asked me that, I thought he was nuts.  After thinking about it for a year, the next time he asked, I said yes.  I am so happy I did.  It turns out I loved being a teacher's aide.  

As the years rolled on Jamie would spend a summer working at the Diamond T Ranch.  Jon logged poles at the ranch one summer and tells a very interesting story about being chased by one of Myra's horses.  

He was walking on a narrow trail through a heavily wooded area, packing his chainsaw, when two horses appeared running toward him.  One was a gelding and the other was a stallion(that had gotten loose).  The stallion was biting on the gelding as they were running together down the narrow trail, at full speed toward Jon.  

He had just enough time to toss his chainsaw and dive into the brush in the woods to keep from being trampled.  (He should have asked for hazard pay.) The stallion was named Two Eyed Aho because at the time they bought the foal, they were moving to Idaho. 

It is sad to hear of our good friends leaving us, but as Jon said to me, we need to remember and celebrate the good times we had with them.  There are too many to write about here. 

To their families Jon and I would like to say, "We remember them and loved them".  

 

Sixty degrees and sunshine.  It was so wonderful to be outdoors yesterday even though there was so much to do to clean up the yard and the garden.  Jon and I spent all afternoon working on all of our projects in the yard.  Sometimes it was a joint project such as when we put the deer fencing up around the vegetable garden and fruit trees.  At other times, we each had our own projects. 

The deer are already chewing off all of the lilies that were peeking up from the ground so it was time to get some fencing around them.  I worked on that while Jon raked up a lot of bark around the stacks of firewood and hauled it to a burn pile.

Willie was beside himself as both of us were outside with him.  He spent all of his time running back and forth between the two of us, from one end of the yard to the other, with frequent forays into the woods and back.  

His addition to the cleanup is that he likes to pack around long tree limbs and big chunks of fallen branches.  The size doesn't matter so long as he can get his mouth around it.  That also means that while I am raking up all the dead lily stems and putting them in a bucket, he is taking them out of the bucket and running around the yard with them.  It's either that or he comes back from his forays into the woods with another eight-foot tree branch.  There certainly are plenty of those to find out there. 

 I really don't mind it because so far he is not digging big holes in my yard or in my flower beds.  Maggie loved to dig holes when she was a puppy, especially in flower beds.  That meant she was usually covered in dirt, all the time. 

Maggie in her "What dirt?" photo. 

 The end result of yesterday's work is that the front lawn is raked and my succulent planters are back in their places in the yard.  They spent the winter in a cozy spot underneath the deck and now it's time for them to get some warm sunshine.

Today the project is to remove the fence wire protection that's around my smaller fruit trees and get them pruned.  There's still quite a bit of fence repair to do and we're slowly getting to it. 

On the days we haven't been working in the yard, we have hiked down to what we call "the landing", which is the next bench down from our place.  It's one of the places that we hunt mushrooms.  In the spring we are looking for morels, snow mushrooms and corals.  The goal is always to be the one who finds the first morel.  

It could happen anytime as we have already spotted the Idaho Gold Thread blooming.  It's the first flower to blossom in the forest. 

The hike back up from the landing is not an easy one as it's pretty steep and of course, there are several large trees down across the trail.  This year there are 3 of them to climb over and one that requires a "on your hands and knees" approach to climb underneath.  At my age I am not crazy about crawling on the ground because it's not easy getting back up, but I'm happy I can still do it.   I just don't want any videos or photos of the process.

I have started some flower and vegetable seeds, but I feel a strong urge to head to the Flower Farm to buy some pansies.  I'm so ready to plant something and have flowers blooming around my  yard.  At the moment I only have two crocus blooming and it's just not enough.

Last night we heard the tree frog choir singing in the swamp.  It's definitely a sign of spring.  I did a little reading about them yesterday and what we have is the Pacific Chorus Frog.  They are nocturnal and they also "home".  In other words, they return to the same pond or wet area.  The choir wasn't quite loud enough last night to record, but there's a chance it will be loud enough in the next few days to get a recording of the singing to post here. 

No, I don't have the pansies yet.  The flower photos are from 2013, but never fear, there will be pansies soon.

 My friend Kristine has a new post on her blog Is There Anymore Pie? and it's all about the things we did to survive the oil embargo and high inflation during the late 70's and early 80's.  Many of the cost-saving ideas are still useful today. 

 It was indeed a difficult time to be young and trying to raise a family here, but we were lucky.  We were renting the Loman log cabin on 160 acres, with two large pastures.  The cabin and outbuildings, which included a large barn, chicken house, shed, and garage, were old but still useable.  

The shed and the garage.  Jon and Jamie making firewood. 

The real plus was a very large vegetable garden area with fruit trees.  Everything had been neglected since no one had been living there except for short lengths of time during the summer. 

I had never grown a garden and didn't know a thing about being a farmer, such as raising chickens, rabbits, ducks, geese or cattle, but Jon did, so we slowly started to get the farm back into production to put food on our table. 

We began the process by buying 30 leghorn pullets for $1 each.  My mom happened to be visiting at the time so she and I drove to a farm in the Northside area to pick them up.  They were big and it wasn't long before we had fresh eggs.  We also added Banty hens, a rooster and New Hampshires before the chicken house was full. 

After reading my post Jon reminded me that 30 leghorns laid 30 eggs every day.  It turned out that we had a few too many laying hens.  We sold eggs for 50 cents/doz.  

The chicken-house, in the background of this photo.  1976

The entire garden area in the back of the house was fenced.  There were at least five apple trees, grapes, raspberries, currant bushes and rhubarb.  None were very productive, but we added a lot of good old manure to everything to change all of that.  My favorite apple tree was the Yellow Transparent.  It made the best applesauce and the apples were so large one year that I won a blue ribbon at the county fair.  Five perfectly formed large yellow apples.  

We lived there for several years before we discovered what the other apple varieties were.  I had decided one summer to paint the kitchen cabinets and when I pulled out one of the silverware drawers I happened to turn it upside down.  Voila!  Printed on the bottom of the drawer in pencil was the variety of each apple tree.  

Kristine asks, "How can you save money now?" 

One of her suggestions is to get a freezer so that you can buy food in bulk whenever it is on sale. 

We didn't have even an extra dime in those days to buy appliances, but Jon's parents had an old 1952 Norge freezer which had orginally belonged to his grandmother, and they were buying a new one.  We were the lucky recipients of the old Norge.  It was huge upright freezer and we filled it to the brim every year with frozen veggies and meat.  

The Norge kept running until 2001 and we ended up buying two uprights to replace it.  Somehow we manage to fill both of them up every year.  

 

The second year we lived in the cabin, we put enough money together to buy (half of the cost) a cow and a calf.  Jon and his uncle, Kermit Kiebert Sr., drove to Bonners Ferry to buy them at the auction.   This meant that we had beef on the table, along with chicken and sometimes wild game.  We would raise at least two every year.  One to sell and that helped to pay for the one we ate. 

We ate t-bone and ribeye steaks and the quality of the beef was excellent.  The price for similar cuts of meat these days is outrageous.  

Our neighbor, Glen Ford, had a milk cow and we bought a gallon of milk(with cream on the top) for a $1.00. I made butter out of the cream. I will admit it's difficult to find anyone with a milk cow these days. 

The main thing that we did to save money?  Jon car-pooled to work with two other people.  The first couple of years it was Glen Ford and Glen Rolofson, who both taught at Sandpoint High School and Linda Finklenberg, who taught art at Stidwell Jr. High.  In later years it was either Byron or Myra Lewis.   Yes, everyone car-pooled - for many years as gas prices did not drop overnight. 

We had one vehicle, a 1971 4x4 Chevy pickup.   When it was Jon's week to drive, I didn't have transportation.  It wasn't that difficult to work around as he was paid by the school district once a month.  The week of payday was when I made a monthly trip to the big blue warehouse in Ponderay to buy enough groceries to last a month. 

 Remember the blue warehouse?  It was our Costco in 1976. 

(In 2016 we finally replaced this pickup.  It was still running so we gave it to one of our young neighbors who is a mechanic.  He wants to fix it up.)

There were no extravagances.  No soda, chips, ice cream or store-bought cookies and as Kristine says in her post, no brand-name cereal.  It was the basics.  powdered milk, flour, and sugars, dried beans - everything needed to bake and cook from scratch.   

Jon's cousin Kay gave me a recipe that would make six loaves of bread, enough for a week.  Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches were a staple for lunch made with homemade jelly or jam.  Thankfully, I no longer need to bake six loaves of bread every week, but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are still a cost-saver. 

Necessary small kitchen appliances were a small pressure cooker for tough cuts of meat and of course, I had a large Presto Canner.  What did I can?  Corn, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, potatoes, fish, venison, chicken, applesauce, pears, cherries, peaches, fruit cocktail, beets and pickled beets, dilly beans and many pickle varieties.  

To us it was the good life.  We helped each other out all we could.  Yes, like Kristine, we used breadsacks for leaky boots and when fall came around the kids got new tennis shoes and jeans for the school year. 

Hand-me-down clothes were the norm.  Whenever a new winter coat was bought, it was always a bit too large so that it might fit the wearer for two years.  

We had no idea that in the future, life would seem impossible without owning a dishwasher, computers, printers, cell phones, microwaves, multiple vehicles and RV's, countless small kitchen appliances, cable TV, or Satellite TV and Internet, and maybe a condo or vacation home.  

This time around Jon and I will limit our trips to Sandpoint as it just makes sense to do that. The world is still trying to recover from the pandemic and now we need to make some sacrifices to support Ukraine and our own country. 

We are both looking forward to the NCAA March Madness and cheering for Gonzaga.  It is a welcome distraction.  

We have our March Madness pool up and running.  Last year the winner was JP!  Good luck to all participants!  

Will you choose the Zags to go all the way?

 Willie Report: 

Think Dog Speak.  Dog Brain. Dog World. Dog Thoughts?

We received a delivery from Costco that arrived in a large box.  In the past our usual procedure was to set the box on the front porch until it's convenient to load it in our car for the trip to the dumpsters.  That's what we did with the latest empty box.

The order was packed with very long pieces of brown paper to keep everything secure in the box. When we set it on the porch we didn't think too much about it, but after hearing some loud thumps against the door we decided to find out what was going on.

Willie had spied the brown paper poking out of the box and had decided that it was a gift for him to play with.  He had managed to tear up one of the long pieces into about a thousand pieces on the snow around the yard.

Jon went out and picked up some of it (too many tiny pieces to pick it all up), put it back in the box, closed the lid tightly this time and turned it upside down on the porch.  

Unfortunately, he was not thinking in dog language, specifically, Border Collie language. 

Willie speak:  "A challenge!  Oh boy, a new puzzle!"

To Willie that box turned upside-down was just another puzzle or game.  He knew that there was paper in that box and his task was to figure out how to get that paper out of the box.

There wasn't any thumping noise on the porch this time.  This was stealth work.  An hour later I happened to check on Willie and there he was with the paper on the porch.  He had proudly chewed a hole in the box large enough to grasp the paper and pull it out.  What fun that must have been.  

His tail was wagging.  "See mom, I solved your puzzle.  Aren't you proud of me?"  (also note the orange buoy, his favorite toy)