This one has heavy crop, watched it for several minutes from out car and he seemed to want to stay a long distance.
Nearly impossible to get a photo in focus.

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Siting in a tree that was damaged in the recent storms with high wind.

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Turtles on a log in Pawnee Lake, Oklahoma.

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HOW my MOM met my DAD. I just learned this story last weekend.
My mom worked at a store called Rodina’s in Stonestown Shopping Center in San Francisco. She was attending college at San Francisco State. Her girlfriends were going to a college party in Westlake and invited her to tag along. While at the party, my mom needed to use the restroom…. But there were loud noises coming from the bathroom. My mom asked, "WHAT in the world is going on in there!?" The response: "Oh, that's just David" (as in GARY David). The door was opened and there's a guy laying in the empty bathtub, playing guitar, and singing. He's in a 3-piece corduroy black suit, with white shirt, and black pointed Spanish boots, and there's a glass of red wine on the side of the bathtub. Dad was politely asked to leave so the ladies could powder their noses. My mom was 19 and so was he. The year must have been 1961. After my mom exited the bathroom, she stayed in the hallway to speak with my dad. They remained together for most of the night. Then one of her friends had to go home... and all of the girls were going to leave together on the bus. Few young people owned cars back then. One of the guys at the party offered to take my mom's friend home in his convertible. The car was then packed with people, my mom and dad squished together, and off the car went, through the foggy city, the radio turned up, people singing (when they did not have cigarettes in their mouths), and the girls were dropped off - one by one. When it was my mom's turn, my dad asked for her phone number. And that was it. I don't know why this makes me cry, but it does. Their marriage, by the way, did not stand the test of time... but at least I am around as evidence of their young love. This photo is the photo my dad kept in his wallet when he and my mom started dating. The sidekicks in the photo are my Uncle David and Uncle Tommy.

Tags:   mom tommy dave

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This is a photo of my mom in her wedding dress (with her father, Archie). She looks amazing, doesn’t she? Well, that dress was from the City of Paris in San Francisco… and the story behind how my mom came to own it makes me tear up every time.
First – let me say that my mom and her family came to the U.S. in the 1950s on a one-way “make it or break it” ticket from Scotland. They settled in San Francisco and my grandparents worked their asses off to get the family out of debt and buy a home.Theirs is the American Dream story but that’s another post.
Anyway, my mom worked her way through college. She was working at Sears and attending San Francisco State when she met my pops. Neither one owned a car. My dad used to take the bus to pick up my mom from Sears after her shift, escort her home, then return home himself by bus.
Needless to say, Mom did not have a lot of money for her wedding dress. In what little free time she had, she squeezed in visits to Macy’s and the Emporium. She just could not find a dress that she liked and time was running out.
One day, my mom (by herself) decided to go to the City of Paris. Folks who remember the City of Paris in San Francisco know that it was really something special. It was a store for the ”haves.”
The sales ladies were all dressed in elegant black suits. The store, itself, was drop dead gorgeous. A lady approached my mom and asked her what she was there for. When my mom replied “wedding dress,” that was it. These ladies were on a mission to find my mom the perfect dress.
Now, my mom is really tiny. She is all of 5’ 1”… maybe she was 100 pounds then. One of the ladies said: “Oh, you are so petite. I think that I have the dress for you. It’s one of our ‘show dresses’ and it is one-of-a-kind. Let me go get it for you to try on.”
And the dress fit perfectly. No alterations needed. I don’t know how my mom was able to afford it. I suspect that the sales ladies hooked her up with a special deal. I will always be grateful for the way those women treated my mom.
Years later, I would try on the dress for my own wedding. But I am 5+ inches taller than my mom and several sizes larger. I could not zip up the dress and I would have had to add fabric to the bottom of it. I just couldn’t touch it. It really is perfect.

Tags:   mom grandpa wedding dress City of Paris 1960s San Francisco mid-century

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