I have a very, very vague memory of going to Verdier's Resort in, I believe, Sonoma County. My only really clear memory from that vacation was eating oatmeal with real cream for breakfast. It's still a favorite taste, though I haven't had it in forever.
I think this photo was taken at Verdier's. I'm 2-1/2, according to my mother's note on the photo. I think it very strange that even at 2-1/2, I was so imressed by the real cream in the oatmeal that 60 years later I still remember it! I was obviously setting up to become addicted to food at an early age!
The above photo was taken at Sunnyside Cottages at Boyes Hot Springs. I can tell I'm 7 years old because my hair has been cut...it was Shirley Temple curly until I was 7 when I finally begged my mother to let me have it cut. Then it turned straight until I was in my 30s.
My father made this wading pool, which we could bring with us to play in in front of our cabin. It consisted of a wooden frame (painted red, I remember!) and a canvas liner that roped to the frame. I remember we got a lot of use out of that pool. We also went to the nearby hot springs, where I learned how to swim in the big pool and also remember going in the hot pool, which smelled strongly of sulfer. Two strong memories from days at the big pool are listening to Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" over the loudspeaker and eating ribbons of taffy in chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavor. Again, another strong food memory!
We went to Sunnyside Cottages for several years in a row. Our neighbors, the Calegaris, also came with us. We had small cabins with ice boxes in the kitchen (they delivered a huge block of ice to the kitchen once a week). My mother always remembers the day she got Karen and me all dressed up to go to church and then left us outside while she got ready. When she came out, Karen was sitting in the dirt, pouring sand over her head.
Sunnyside Cottages was also the place where my mother went berry-picking with friends and ended up standing in a hornet's nest and getting stung many, many times (but, she is proud to report, didn't spill any of the berries she had in her bucket!) I also rode a horse for the first time at Sunnyside. I almost never got to ride horses because rental was so expensive.
This was our cabin at the Konocti Harbor Inn on Clear Lake.
This is my grandfather, my parents, and my sister. We went here at the height of my Judy Garland craze and when I read that they showed movies at night in the open area courtyard, I joked about it being a Judy Garland movie....and lo and behold, the movie of the week we were there was The Pirate, not one of her best movies. My father never forgave me for the fact that he had to watch The Pirate on vacation!
From a certain age (and I don't know what that was...perhaps 10 or so), I routinely spent 2 weeks every summer with Peach in Citrus Heights while her sister Mandy was spending 2 weeks in San Francisco with Karen. Then we'd switch--Mandy and Karen would go to Citrus Heights for 2 weeks and Peach would come with me to San Francisco. Peach still remembers the summer that I met her now-husband's best friend Duane.
According to Peach, Duane was apparently smitten with me but he was a motorcycle rider and my father had a fit when he learned I had ridden on Duane's motorcycle and forbade me to ever ride on it again (being the obedient child that I was, I never did ride on it again). Peach tells me that Duane never married and she is convinced that he's still carrying a torch for me. (I could extinguish that torch real quickly by sending him a current photo!)
No comments:
Post a Comment