When Cindy and Teri were little, we’d spend vacations at Oceanlake at the coast. My parents had a home there and we’d either stay with them or in a motel on the beach. The girls loved the ocean, and my dad would go out with us and spend time looking for shells, glass balls or whatever there might be . . . usually beer cans and cigarette butts. But it was all fun. Cindy and her dad appear to be having a great time except for the fact that his back is to the ocean . . . a very bad thing. I’m sure someone reprimanded him for that oversight. That picture is so sweet of both of them and it brings back many memories. My dad loved walking on the beach with the girls. There was a crazy thing he would do . . . he’d run down the beach, stop, jump up in the air and then whirl around in a complete circle! None of us could do it, even though we tried. I don’t know how he did it. I tried it once at home when my dad had just hung a beautiful painting of Mt. Hood above our fireplace mantle. I was so excited I tried whirling around on the fireplace hearth which, of course, was made out of stone or bricks, and I fell and cracked my head! I had to lie down on the couch for a long time with everyone peering at me to see if I were still alive. I think this went on for hours, and I made it through all that but never tried the whirling again. I’ve hung many paintings in my numerous residences throughout the years and have never whirled around for any of them!

When I was young, my dad and his brothers owned a house at the coast in Nelscott which was between Oceanlake and Taft. The first thing we’d do when we arrived for a few days was go to the place that sold crabs. My folks and my brother loved crabs, but I hate them! I can’t stand the smell, the look, the taste . . . everything about them. After we got the crabs for dinner, my brother and I would have to pick out the meat for my mother to make a salad or whatever it is you do with crab meat. My dad, fortunately, had skin trouble and couldn’t help out, so I was forced into it. It actually wasn’t fortunate he had skin trouble, because once he almost died when doctors couldn’t find out how to treat it. But it did get him out of the crab thing. So that night for dinner, the rest of the family would eat some kind of crab dish, and I’d have a steak or hamburger. It wasn’t until I was married that I found out the way most people eat crab – they slap it on the table, open a beer, crack the crab open and suck it out of the shell! I don’t know why my family didn’t do it that way when I was young.

The girls and their dad and I spent many happy times on the beach at Oceanlake when my parents lived there. Now all I have are the photos of time we spent there together. When I look at these photos, I become very nostalgic . . . my parents and the girls’ dad are no longer alive, but we were all so young and happy then. Nothing ever stays the same, and what we have left are pictures and memories to last the girls and me a lifetime.