1936: My grandpa died the year
we moved out into the
gun club lodge into the country by lake. Good friends and employers of my two oldest brothers leased the second Betteravia lake for agricultural purposes. They allowed our family to live in this former lodge as caretakers.
The
gun club faced the lake, with a huge screened in porch and two palm trees in
front. The house or lodge was surrounded by trees, one was a beautiful old willow tree at least fifty feet wide. It formed a huge
playground and picnic area underneath. The branches were sloping and smooth, one affording a
natural see saw. To the rear of the lodge was an orchard
of pears and apples, and to the left the rabbit hutches, chicken coops and a
barn.
On one side there was a wide culvert cut by rain water runoff from the mountain range that
lay about a mile from the rear of the lodge. This provided an excellent beach for us to play in the summer. The railroad tracks lined the
base of the mountains and the hoboes frequently hopped off the train at that
point to come down to ask for food as my
mother never refused anyone a
meal.
We were allowed to roam through the hayfields directly to the left of the lodge, and in the evenings we would sit on a bale of hay on top of a small hill, singing and harmonizing until the coyotes came out at dusk to join us. We sang in harmony quite a lot, at school, at different events and at home doing the dishes and sitting in front of the huge fireplace.
During the summer the lake bed was planted with flower seeds ready to be picked by the four youngest of us who were on the job, teasing and calling each other "Nasty Urchins" or "Doctor Allen, the Curer of Pea Piles."
During the winter the lake filled in up to lower edge of the yard and was mainly off limits. Sometimes against orders we would go out in the leaky half submerged rowboat...no life jackets and only one of us could swim.