Diane’s earliest memory is of her father teaching her how
to tie her shoes. She had to have been
three at the time because her father died of kidney disease when she was four
years old. The two of them were sitting
on the steps of his parents’ house while he patiently showed her by untying his
own shoes and then doing them up again.
It took several tries for her to get it right, but from that day on she
could do it herself.
The house was a “four
square” with an additional lot next door, covered with Douglas fir trees and
used as a wood lot; a necessary part of life when heating and cooking were done
with wood fires. From the large front
porch the entry led to the living room on the left and the dining room on the
right. Behind the dining room was the kitchen
and behind the living room was the bathroom and the master bedroom. Upstairs there were two bedrooms under the
eaves. In the wood lot was a “tent house”
– with walls about four feet high then a tent covering for the roof. Diane’s parents lived there and that was
where she lived her first few years. The lingering effects of the Depression created
lots of tent houses and tarpaper covered shacks in an area that offered few opportunities
for employment – it was 1938.
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