*Walks in and lies down*
Man, I could have slept another two hours easily Mr. Blog. Ugh. I hate mornings.
But I remembered I am going to visit my Auntie Jean today and was too excited to sleep more.
So my auntie is around eighty two now. My mom was thirteen months younger than her.
My grandma Lois always dressed them in matching dresses and shoes when they were little.
Auntie Jean must have been born in 1930 if my mom was born in 1932.
My mom died four years ago next month. My mom's oldest sister, Auntie Ann, passed away last summer. She was six years older than my mom and had red hair and brown eyes.
So when my parents divorced in 1958, my mom and two sisters and I moved from our house out in Alderwood Manor to Holly Park Housing Project in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle.
My mom was tired going to secretarial school to try to get off welfare so every summer, my Auntie Jean and Uncle Frank would take me for most of July to give mom a break.
I remember my first time going in 1959.
They had a big white fluffy dog named Ricky that you could hug like a pillow on feet.
They also had a beagle named Moochy that had it in for my tiny corduroy bear that I got when I turned one in 1957. Every time I got out of mom's '57 tan and brown Chevy to get dropped off, Moochy would grab Reddy Bear and snatch him from my hands and take off and chew
the beejesus out of him. I'd cried and Auntie would stitch him back up and all would be well.
I still have him around here somewhere and boy does he look like crap!
So my first summer, in 1959, after my bear was repaired I remember wandering down to the meadow with the tall grass. A cute brown-haired girl, my exact size came up and said, "Hi."
She had blue eyes and a soft voice and we hit if off like salt and pepper. We were like glued to each other every summer. 'Course, I didn't know what a cousin was except she was mine.
We walked and walked in that tall grass until we heard grown-ups shouting, "Carolyn! Gretchie!" Well, Carolyn was too long of a name for me because I was an impatient little kid so I called my cousin Care. And I still call my cousin Care. I am six weeks older than her.
So that summer there was a little baby that ate up all of Auntie Jean's time.
Her name was Elizabeth Cushman and she was beautiful like a doll but couldn't do anything with us for many years. When she got big enough to eat cold cereal with us while auntie was sleeping Care and I decided to call her Boo. Our favorite TV show was Yogi Bear and I had a nice soft Yogi doll about two feet high that my dad gave me. Yogi lived in Jellystone Park and his best friend was Boo Boo Bear. Well, Boo Boo Bear was way too long a nickname for obvious reasons so my cousin Elizabeth became Boo. She is still Boo to me.
So Care and Boo and I spent endless summers catching frogs and snakes. We'd put the frogs in buckets and then back in the swamp at the bottom of the rolling hill. They had ten acres and the gravel drive wound down the ridge as the land sloped away on either side. On the left halfway down was the world's biggest maple tree and when I was seven, I showed up and Uncle Frank had installed a tire swing! How we loved that tire swing. We'd be on it all day.
Back then TV was in black and white and there were only three channels so it got old fast.
That summer, in 1963, we were quick enough to catch snakes. We had gunny sacks full!
They had a giant white horse named Ajax that would bite you if you annoyed it and a mean
little pony named Jesse that would always run under trees to scrape you off his back.
Well, they had an old bathtub full of water in the pasture and that was where we'd race our snakes. Even Boo, although Care didn't have patience with her. I was the little sister and knew what it was like to not have anyone every have much patience with you so I doted on her.
We'd race snakes until nap-time. And one day there was a really fat one so we hid it in our gunny-sack and Care smuggled it into nap time. Well when Auntie Jean came to get us up from nap, we showed her that snake and told her that the oddest thing had happened. We told her a little snake came out during nap-time but we couldn't find it anywhere.
Oh how she screamed and screamed and screamed. Never heard anyone scream before or since. We never slept during nap-time during the five years we were supposed to. Care always had comic books and model horses and all the games under the sun ever invented! I wasn't about to sleep through ANY of that and neither was she, although Boo did sometimes when she was little. Care and I just were excited about everything under the sun!
Especially dinner. We were always starving by then and Auntie Jean made the best spaghetti.
My cousins hated all vegetables but not me. I only disliked potatoes and tomatoes until I was eight and then I loved them too. Auntie Jean would always say, "See, Gretchie likes her green beans. Why don't you try them?" Hahahaha. They never did eat their green beans.
When we were ten we had studied Indians in school and we decided to make a tee-pee down by the creek. We took all of Uncle Franks saws and made us a huge tee-pee and then some smaller ones too. Gosh that was fun. Sometimes I'd stay into August and after Uncle Frank got home from lawyering down on Front Street, he'd take us to Lake Sammamish to swim. God I loved that Lake. When I was ten, Auntie Jean and Uncle Frank paid for me to have swimming lessons in that lake with Care and Boo. Danny way only four so he got to go but had to watch.
He was old enough at four for auntie to let us take him frog and snake catching. He was pretty little but cute as a button like Boo. He had her same white hair and blue eyes.
I liked that Care and I were the exact same age and size all the time but with opposite hair and eyes. I just thought the world of her because she could think of a million things to do in one day! I still do.
My favorite activity was when Uncle Frank thinned the willows in the swamp.
We'd climb up up up into the middle of the puffy section and stand on branches and hold onto the hire branches. We'd hear the roar of the chainsaw below and we'd grip those branches until our hands hurt! Then we'd sail through the air in our tree! Care and Boo and I screamed and laughed so loud! When the tree hit the ground it was good for five giant bounces off the earth and we'd just bounce up and down. We were so loud it is no surprise Ajax and Jesse hated us so much.
Our other favorite thing to do was to hike back the old trail until we hit the old coal road and we'd follow it through the forest back to the dilapidated shacks and coal bins. There was a clearing there where someone had lived with apple trees.
Well, I'd better get going Mr. Blog. I have a million more stories about Cougar Mountain but if I lie here and talk about it now, I'll have less time with Auntie.
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