My mother, myself and Dennis in the backyard of our Chico CA house in 1977. That house was very small house (750 sq feet) but it was newish. In a modest area of town but easy bike ride to the campus. Our mortgage payments were $199/mth! We were right next to a mill facility, corrugated warehouses housing a large population of feral cats. A big black walnut tree, gorgeous and so Valley. Next door, some contractors had a shop and office. Helpful when trying to put the piano into the truck. Across the street were some very derelict apartments housing some crazy people. We mean, the kind of crazy where vans of guys in white coats come by to take them away. One dishevele3d older lady would knock on our door and Dennis would listen patiently to her admonitions about all the undissolved matter in the universe as she handed him little bits of paper. Another middle aged man would stand in the street in a captain's hat and give long spouts of unintelligible oratory until the white coats etc. And, of course, the drug dealer/rapist. Cordial enough but responsible for a large number of traffic at all hours. One day, one of my friends, called and said "Your neighbor is wanted for rape, look in the paper!" Sure enough. His dog used to be able to climb over our 5 foot fence and play with our dog. Another neighbor, old lady named Goldy, very elderly but she could take darn good care of herself and, a few times, she and I rented a rototiller and turned over the soil between our yards and the warehouse.
You know about zucchini and valley towns like Chico. You had to be careful how many seeds you planted because they came up with a vengeance and produced a ton of zucchini whether you wanted them or not. I used to joke that the big semi trucks used to run over my zucchini plants when they came to the warehouse and it didn't bother them a bit. Etiquette decreed that if you went over to somebody's house for a social event, you brought zucchinis; they had to accept your zucchini and you, in return, had to accept their zucchini that they handed to you.
You know, I started this blog with another picture in mind (our engagement picture) which I also wrote about on April 15, 2008 and talk about how things that you think when you are first married are quite different than your experiences after you've raised 4 kids. But I couldn't find that picture, it's around somewhere.
So let's turn out minds to Chico in 1977 (32 years ago, aack). Wonderful place to live, really liked it. Dennis finished college at Chico State and I worked for an independent evaluation consultant. ("Spend New Years Eve with Nan and Ira" aack! no! injoke for another post). We were just married, 24 years old, way too old for those other undergraduates. In fact, our friends were junior faculty members. One faculty member went to Europe for the summer and gave me his university account to use a little bit while he was gone. I pushed so much information through the account, when he came back at the end of the summer, he found that he was now the heaviest user in the whole California State University system and everybody thought he was an expert. Whoops. We had the only daisy wheel printer in town and when students came and wanted to use it, I demanded their university accounts and passwords in return. Wow, I was BAD!
We are all, of course, much thinner in this picture. My mom is younger than I am now.... Our dog Winnie at our feet. About the most useless dog ever.
Just occurred to me that my father must be taking the picture.
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