A Place We Called "Home"

Hi Grandkids!  I'm back again with the next episode of my new beginnings in California.  We stayed at the temporary housing unit at 32nd Street until my parents found a home for us. We went to see it once they had closed the deal and it was a light green house with a bougainvillea plant in the corner of the yard.  The yard was pretty bare but we had a home to move into and we anxiously awaited the delivery of our furniture.  We slept on air mattresses for a night and the next day our furniture was delivered.  I had my own room again and my baby sister slept in my Mom and Dad's room because he was leaving again for a trip over-seas on the USS Montrose.  My brother slept in my Grandma's room.  We had 2 bathrooms and a large living room, dining room combination.  We had a patio just off the kitchen and a 2 car garage.  The weather was just beautiful and we were so happy to be on ground that wasn't covered in ice.  At least I was!  I was tired of falling on my keester every time I went outside and I loved the palm trees and white sandy beaches.

I fell in love with San Diego.  I loved our little house and we all got busy working on the front yard.  The back yard was large and fenced in and the patio was partially covered.  We hadn't lived there long before we acquired a puppy.  He was all white and so we named him Casper, after the cartoon character called Casper the ghost.  He was so little that he would run to the edge of the patio and then stop and cry because he was afraid to jump the 2 inches to the ground from the patio.  He was the cutest little puppy.  My Mom loved animals and he was so friendly and cuddly.  I found out in August that I would be going to a brand new High School called Castle Park High.  It was huge after the one building in Kodiak.  I didn't know how much fun I was going to have that year, but it would be a time I would never forget.

After I was signed in to go to school there, I went shopping for school clothes.  It seemed so odd to not have to buy snow boots and a heavy winter coat and all the rest of the things we needed to survive the Kodiak winters.  I bought skirts and blouses because there was a dress code and girls couldn't wear pants except on Fridays for the pep rallies.  On Fridays we could wear denim pants, our Trojan Sweatshirts which were red, and tennis shoes.  Our school colors were red, black and white.  Being a Senior, we had a special Senior Lawn where only the Seniors could sit for lunch.  Later on in the year we would have a container in the lawn where we would put our predictions for ten years from the day we graduated.  I was in the Pep Club and the Benchwarmers.  Benchwarmers would sit on the football field while the game was going on and keep the benches warm for the players.  It was a lot of fun even though we lost every football game that first year!  The school district had combined 3 different schools together to reduce the load on those schools, and the team hadn't played together before.  So it really wasn't fair to expect them to win a lot the first year.  I loved the school and we had so much school spirit.  We had lots of activities and we were all friendly with each other.  It was a great year.  I liked my teachers and my classmates and had lots of friends.  I became friends with a girl that would develop into my best friend and we spent the weekends buying Beatle records and shopping and just hanging out the way you do today.  We had a lot of fun together and we went to all the football games.  Her name was Billie-Jean and she had a little sister named Roseanne.  They would come to my house for the weekend and we'd stay up late and watch scary shows on TV just to scare Billie.  She was a scardy-cat and squeamish about blood, so we'd find all the Vampire movies.

That year in school made up for all the long lonely years in Kodiak.  There was so much to do in San Diego and we were all amazed at the wonderful climate. My Dad was overseas and had no idea and no interest in what we were doing or how much we loved being in California.  Later on in the year, Billie and I volunteered to take a Girl Scout group to Disneyland as chaperones.  We had a great time.  The girls were a lot of fun and we rode every ride we could in one day.  Around 5 o'clock in the evening we rounded them up and got back on the chartered bus to go home.  The rest of that weekend I spent at Billies' house.  Her Mom always bought the kind of foods teenagers liked and she was a fun person to be around.
Then before you could turn around it was time for graduation.  I bought a pretty white dress for vespers at school, and white lace pumps.  I also bought a blue suit and white gloves for graduation itself.  After Billie saw the suit she bought one just like it.  That made my Mom mad, and it kind of irked me too.  But she was my best friend, so I just let it go.  We both went to a beauty college and had our hair done.  Then on Graduation day we all got dressed and I put on the gown over my suit and put on the graduation hat.  After we received our diplomas we were to move the tassle to the other side of the hat.  Years later I still have the hat and tassle I think.  I'm just not sure just where it is.  I also have my diploma in the case I got it in.  My Dad was overseas for graduation.  He didn't call or even mention it when he got home.  But he did come with more bad news.  We were moving again and nothing I said or did would change his mind.  I begged him to let me stay with Billie and her family, but I was just 17 and even though I had passed all the tests for Junior College and had all my classes scheduled, he would not change his mind.  He said we would do things the Navy way.  He would make the decisions and I would do as I was told.  We at least got to say one last goodbye to Billie and we went by her house.  She had a pin for me from Castle Park as a graduation gift, and I cried.  David, my brother, and I were both crying.  He loved California too.  My Dad didn't seem to care and Mom never said a word, but I don't think she really wanted to leave. 

Anyway, we were on the road for about 5 days.  When we got to New Mexico, I had the worst headache ever and couldn't sleep.  I drank coffee, took aspirin, but I still had no relief from it.  The next morning we had breakfast and hit the road again.  We went through New Mexico, a part of Texas, through Kansas, Missouri, then headed north toward Minnesota.  In one city, we stopped to have something to eat and we found a park with tables and benches.  We had bought sandwiches and drinks and my Mom and brother, sister and myself and grandma were all sitting on one side of the table and my dad on the other side.  He wasn't overweight or anything, but when he stood up the whole table tipped over and we all landed on our backs with food all over us!  We cleaned up the mess, found another place to buy food, and headed on our way.  

We stopped to sleep at a motel several times, but a lot of the time the kids would just sleep in the back seat and Mom and Dad would take turns driving.  My grandmother had left California ahead of us and went back east to her son's funeral.  He had been sick with heart disease for a long time and had had several heart attacks.  He lost a lot of weight, and one night he just died in his sleep.  After the services, she went with one of her brothers to Florida to live for a while.  After we finally got to Minnesota and found a house, she came back to live with us during the fall of the year.  She didn't stay for long because she and my Dad didn't get along and rather than fight with him, she took the bus back to California.  I don't know what the big attraction to busses was, but I decided after our trip to Kodiak that I'd never ride a bus again! 

But back to where I was.  When we finally got to Minnesota, I woke up freezing one morning and I knew we were there.  Gone were the palm trees, only to be replaced by pine trees and more mountains.  I was so sick of pine trees.  I found a blanket and wrapped up in it, and fell back asleep.  We pulled into Duluth one very cold evening, and found a motel to sleep at and get our bearings.  We went to a restaurant called The Flame and had dinner.  I remember we bought a Neapolitan Ice Cream pie and took it back to the motel along with hot coffee.  We all had pie and cleaned up and got some much needed rest.  Duluth had a lot of old buildings, but very tall ones and the buildings threw everything into shadows.  Dad left us at the motel and went to his next duty station close to one of the Great Lakes.  I think it was Lake Superior.  He went to the Administration building and got his papers all taken care of and one of the men there offered for us to stay at his parents' house until they found housing. 

We stayed in their basement which was finished and had a kitchen and I slept upstairs in their granddaughters bedroom as she was away visiting friends.  Her name was Margie. Later on we would become friends and I showed her my High School Annual and told her about California.  She was supposed to take a trip to visit some relatives in California, so I told her all about what I knew of California and hoped she would like it as much as I did.  One day after Mom and Dad had been out looking for a place, they came back to the house and we all had dinner.  Then my Dad said, "Let's go home!"  I thought he meant we were going back to California, but to my great disappointment, they had found a house.  It was really beautiful because the housing there was cheaper than in California.  It was a brick house with a huge yard, a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with a finished basement that had a family room and 3 bedrooms that needed carpeting.  There was a huge living room with a fireplace, a really beautiful dining room and kitchen with a walk-in pantry, wooden shutters on the dining room windows, and the kitchen had a window looking out on the front yard and the houses across the street.  It was a much better home than we had here.  But the house didn't matter to me.  I just wanted to go home to San Diego.

I'll bet you are as tired as I was about all the moving and waiting for our furniture to be delivered to yet a new town.  The town we moved to was a beautiful little place called Cloquet.  It was a fairly new town, not exceptionally large, about the size of Spring Valley.  The day we went to our house to wait for our furniture, we went out to breakfast at a little place across the bridge close to our house.  I aways remember places by what we had to eat for some reason, and that morning we had bacon, lettuce and tomato club sandwiches with hot chocolate.  After we ate we went back to the house to wait some more.  I laid on the carpet in the living room and sulked.  I was very good at sulking.  I had had lots of practice over the years of moving.  I just had that temperament also.  I could get depressed really easy and had no idea that that was indicative of an underlying problem that would become a huge part of my life. 

After our furniture was delivered and the movers were gone, we were left to unpack everything and clean up afterwards.  Once more I found all my own things and made my room as comfortable and homey-looking as I could.  I even moved one of the large overstuffed chairs from the living room into my room, put down rugs, found end tables and scarfs for the furniture, and my Dad and the movers had put my bed and dresser in the room for me.  The dresser was one I had in my childhood and it had a large round mirror on top, and was a light oak wood.  I had always had it in my room, and I remembered getting ready for graduation back in California, and sitting at that dresser and put on my makeup.  My Dad had bought it along with a bedroom suite back in my hometown.  The headboard and footboard got left somewhere on one of our moves and the only piece remaining was the dresser.  Memories are precious.  They give you stability and a foundation to stand on.  Memories can also be the road to places you don't want to remember.  You alone make that choice.  But all are a part of who you are and to lose part of them, is to lose a part of yourself.  This is good therapy for me, and at times I skip things I don't mean to skip, but that's because of things I will tell you about as this story unfolds.  I may have to go back and fill in the blanks, but I will do that.  You as the reader just have to be patient because I am remembering this as I go and sometimes my thoughts get ahead of me.  I notice it myself and apologize for jumping back and forth but I will eventually get everything in the right place and make a more vivid picture for you of all I have experienced, to the best of my ability.  You kids mean the world to me and I love my family so much.  I will find all of it yet.  So just hang with me and enjoy each little moment as it unfolds.  I love you and will close for now because I've been doing this for a few hours and  have other things I have to attend to.  So please come back as often as you wish and read about Grammy's life and all the places and people I am destined to meet.  See you much sooner this time.  I love you,  Grandma.