Have Truck Will Travel

Once I had Pat (our new neighbor) to run around with, we went and did a lot of things. We only had one car and Dave needed it to go back and forth to work. If I needed the car to go shopping or appointments I would get up early and take him to work and then have to go pick him back up. Well, Pat and Dick had two vehicles. Dick drove his motorcycle to work and Pat had a pickup with a camper on the back. We loaded our kids in there and went lots of places. Even in the summertime, we had a lot of low clouds or high fog what ever you want to call it. In other words we didn't have as much sunny weather as people farther from the ocean did. We would pack up the kids and a picnic lunch and go across the Golden Gate Bridge to a beach near Sausalito. Our housing area was pretty close to the bridge and by the way it is not gold it is a brick red. The prettiest and most impressive bridge over there is the Bay Bridge. It is a double decker bridge, the upper part goes one way and the lower part the other way. It is the bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland. The kids would play in the sand and run in the surf. Pat and I would just soak up some sun and enjoy the peace and quiet. It was just beautiful and we would spend the day there.

Training Course in Ft. Benning Georgia

Dave came down on orders for a special training school in Ft. Benning Georgia and would be gone several months. While he was gone I was going to take the kids and fly into Springfield Missouri and stay with my mom and dad until his school was over. Dave would then pick us up on the way back home to California,after his school was finished. Mom and dad were so excited about this, they hadn't been able to see our kids that much since we were in Germany for three years and then in California for three years. They did come see us right after Laura was born in Ft. Ord California.
Then Dave had a change of mind, and he called and said he wanted me and the kids to come to Benning and be with him for the few more months he had left. I told him no, that I would just be sitting in some hotel room all day with the kids while he was at school and then for his few drinks at the NCO club. I also told him that my parents would be so disappointed if we didn't go to their house.

I finally gave in though because he rented a small apartment in Columbus and they had a swimming pool for us to use while Dave would be working. Mom and Dad were disappointed of course but they came to Georgia to our little apartment with us for a nice visit. They went to the pool with us every day and watched the kids swim.

One afternoon Laura and Danny were out on the front porch when there was a very loud crack of lightening. It scared mom, dad and me inside the apartment and terrified the kids especially Laura. She screamed when it cracked and my folks and I both jumped up and ran to her. She was okay, just very very scared. The next day at the pool it started getting cloudy and she started getting so scared that we had to cut our swim short and take her home. To Laura, a cloudy sky meant a large scarey noise. She was two and a half and it was hard to make her understand that it wasn't going to lightening while we were swimming. She was afraid of a cloudy sky for quite some time after that.

A Little About Laura

Laura was a very friendly and outgoing little girl. She made friends very easily and warmed up to just about everyone. She always had a bunch of friends. She was a very happy little baby, hardlly ever cried. My dad had even commented upon leaving from a week's visit that he had not heard her cry at all in the whole week he was there. Her needs were taken care of and she was very contented. As she got older she would approach anyone and everyone, there was no such thing as a stranger to her. She did seem to prefer men when we were in a setting that she was exposed to both men and women. I didn't like the "approaching strangers" part of her personality and really had to keep an eye on her when we were out in public or she would be sitting on someone's lap. She learned that this wasn't a good thing to do as she got older of course.

Her favorite things to play with were her doll George and the baby buggy. We lived in a six plex and had carports across from us and we were also at a dead end. This was ideal for little kids to play because anyone driving up there was going real slow. I would prop our front door open so she could come in if she wanted to. She would push George up and down the sidewalk in the buggy. She also had a good selection of trikes and tyke bikes and assorted ride on toys and wagons ect.

When she was inside she would sit for a very long time playing with her "little people". I had bought her a couple of the Fisher Price L'il People playsets. Each set came with a few little people and a few pieces of furniture or other accessories. She loved them so much that I got her the Fisher Price Dollhouse for her next birthday. There was a lock on our bedroom door that would let the door open a few inches but not all the way. I was in the bedroom wrapping her dollhouse when she opened the door that few inches. I thought I had jumped up and blocked her view of the gift, however the next day on her birthday she asked me if she could open her dollhouse. lol

We didn't have Barney like the kids of today have. We had Sesame Street and the Electric Company and Laura just loved them. When they were on she was just mesmerized. She would sing along with all the songs and particularly liked Big Bird. She also liked a show called the Banana Splits. (I think that was the name of it.) Danny liked this one too.

I would often go next door and get Monica to come play with her. They played so nice together and I preferred having them in our house. Laura was a year and a half younger than Monica and I just needed my baby girl close by.

Now this one might surprise someone, from a very young age she already loved babies. She just couldn't keep her hands off of them. This did eventually become a little problem. As she got older she would try carrying the little kids around. She wasn't big enough to do this safely. One mother in particular would get very upset when she saw Laura picking up her little one and would come knocking on our door to let me know about it. This is actually the only thing that I can remember that she ever did that I had to punish her for (between the ages of two and six).
She simply could not resist loving and holding these little kids. She told me when she grew up she was going to have lots of kids.

A Little About Danny

Danny was a fairly quiet little boy. He played sports as he got older (he started with baseball at age seven I think) and when he was in a game he would play hard and put everything he could into it. When he was in normal play outside, he went to it with all the gusto he could muster. However, in a crowd, he was more comfortable to be quiet in the background. He was very slow to warm up to anyone, and made friends cautiously. Throughout his whole childhood, he never had more than two or three good friends at any one time.Keep in mind that we moved a lot and he had to readjust to new schools and new kids every few years. This is difficult for anyone to do, and it was harder for him because he took a long time to pick his friends He was very uncomfortable in a group.

I am just writing about when he was under eight or so for now. This is difficult to do because so very many things happen in a childhood, but I am for now trying to pick out some of the highlights about his young personality. My mind is really racing trying to do this.

His favorite things to play between ages two and eight were with his tonka trucks, hot wheels, little army men. He loved to be outside on the run, he played a lot in the woods beside our home at the base in San Francisco. They had forts and clubhouses and who know what all stems in a child's imagination. He had two very good friends and they were kind of like the three musketeers. Their names were Anthony and Lee. Funny that I would remember this. For his birthday party he just wanted to invite those two boys, he did not want a group of kids to come.

He and the "guys" thought they were Evil Knevil. They built ramps and jumped their bikes. I didn't really like this because I was afraid he was going to get hurt (remember all the stitches he has had already) and because it was bending the rims on his front wheel. It is one of those things he shouldn't have been doing and he knew it, but that I just chose to ignore. Picked my battles I guess. It just wasn't all that important.

When I started this I was going to write a little bit about Danny's personality and then about Laura's. However this is getting a lot longer than I intended so will write some about Laura in another blog.

Seventies Fashions

The seventies were a lot of fun in the fashion world. It was full of bell bottoms, mini skirts, short shorts and go-go boots. I, of course, was always in style and enjoyed this decade for a lot of reasons. I had all of the before mentioned items and especially loved my white vinyl knee high go-go boots. I was really quite amused when I found my little two year old Laura a pair of white boots also. She was so cute in them and got a lot of comments.

I did a lot of sewing in the early seventies (well actually I did a lot of sewing longer than that). I enjoyed sewing and was quite good at it. I made most of Laura's clothes when she was little, mostly little dresses and short sets. I made her and I dresses out of the same material once and we really looked sharp although my son still teases me about this. I made him one shirt to match a play set of Laura's but found that button holes were too hard with the old machine I had so I didn't make him anymore shirts. I think Danny was glad about this. lol I did make Laura and I skirts and tops to match some years later to wear when we went to Germany again. It was a seventies thing---what else can I say.

The guys wore a lot of plaid polyester jackets and solid colored leisure suits and the boys had hush puppies for dress shoes. They also sometimes wore white belts and shoes. Danny and Dave both had the white belts but no white shoes. Dave wore his white belt with his light blue leisure suit. Danny's dressy outfit was solid colored pants and a houndstooth sport jacket. The jacket was big enough on him he was able to wear it a couple of years. He only dressed up so seldom that I felt it would be a waste of money to buy him more dressy clothes.

It was fun to be fashionable in the seventies.

Long Walks And The Smith Family

Our new home on the San Francisco base was right on the edge of the housing area. We could cut through on a path between the tennis courts and the woods and be in the outskirts of the city. In fact Danny's school was very near that area. We quite often took long walks through that area just looking everything over and enjoying the sights. We also did a lot of talking on these walks. We just strolled along slowly, we weren't in any hurry because we were going nowhere in particular. Walking slowly also gave Laura's short little legs a chance to keep up, afterall she had to take a lot more steps than we did. We would usually stop at a little diner and have a soda or an ice cream cone. After the refreshments and the rest, we were all ready to head toward home.

About six to eight months after we moved in we got new neighbors. The Smith family moved in next door to us. The couple was Pat and Dick and they had two little girls named Shannon and Monica. Shannon was Danny's age and Monica was about a year and a half older than Laura. Danny would have liked it a whole lot better if Shannon had been a boy because we ended up being very close friends with Pat and Dick. The four kids were together many times because us four adults would be playing pinochle at the house. Pat and the girls also became part of our walks and other outings we would take. Monica and Laura played real nice together and there was rarely a problem out of any of them.

Childhood illness's

To tell this story I have to date back to '66. When Danny was only a few months old we had to put him into the hospital with bronchitis, the hospital was in Frankfort Germany. So to visit him, I would take a military bus that had a route up and back to the hospital every day. He was in there for just a few days but it seemed like an eternity to me.

Then one day I was sitting in the infirmary (military doctor's office) with my baby boy on my lap. Danny was probably about six or seven months old at the most. I was in the infirmary for me, I had an appointment to talk to the doctor or something. I know it couldn't have been for a check-up or I wouldn't have brought Danny with me. As I was waiting I was watching Danny break out in little red dots. I noticed it at first on his little neck so I thought it was just an irritation from something. But the longer I sat there the more that rash spread. By the time I went in to the doctor's office it was pretty much all over his body. It was the measles--thankfully not the more serious kind.

When I was seven or eight months pregnant with Laura, Danny caught the mumps. The doctor was a little more worried that I might catch them since I could not remember if I have had them. I did not catch them and Danny got a lot of tlc (tender loving care) and ice cream to help him recover.

Then when he was in the first grade, his school mates shared the chicken pox with him and he shared them with his baby sister. It is nice to share and quite frankly it was good to get them over with for both of them. Laura caught a "better" case of them than her brother did, really quite pitiful because her body was so little and the breakout seemed even worse .

Whenever my kids got sick (colds and flu) Danny would get strep throat and Laura would get serious ear infections. When I say serious, I mean that if we didn't catch it in time and get her on an antibiotic, her eardrums would perforate. This is an excruciating pain that no one except hardened criminals, especially child predators, should have to experience. (opinion of the author) . It was here while we were living in San Francisco that Laura got tubes put in her ears. This made a world of difference in her health even though she did continue to have problems throughout her childhood. Danny got his tonsils removed while we were in San Francisco also and it did cut down on the throat infections.

I think this brings us up to date on most of the accidents and health problems up until and including 1972.