I grew up in Coulee Dam, Washington. I lived there until I was about six. When I was six, we moved to HungryHorse,Montana. This was very near Glacier National Park. We went up there a lot and hiked. We hiked a lot on the weekends. In the summertime my mother, older brother, and I went hiking one day during the  week also.

We saw all of the wildlife. I wished I could stay home because all of my friends stayed home. No one else  was crazy enough to go hiking somewhere at this time, we were the only ones. But it is amazing now when I look back on it., when I think of all the scenery and and animals that I saw. My father was an outdoorsman. He climbed mountains. He climbed Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Mount Hood, Mount Adams.

When my parents were first married, they rowed down the Columbia River. That was before the dams were built, when the river was wild. They tipped over. My mother was not a good swimmer, but my father had brought along an inner tube for a life preserver for her.  They lost a lot of their gear--my mother’s leather jacket, a rifle, a lot of their food.  But they got to shore ok and continued down the river the next day.   

We didn’t camp, so we would go hiking up and down in the same day. My mother would sing at the top of her lungs when she saw signs of moose and bears   to let them know that we were near so that they could retreat. 

We saw grizzly bears and moose and I heard the elk bugling, which is a beautiful sound. We also hiked in Flathead National Forest, which is adjacent to Glacier National Park. Vern and I went there a year and half ago. I took him there to show him where I grew up. He was pretty amazed.

My father decided to get my brother and me skis for Christmas. We showed no interest in skis. But the Bureau of Reclamation cleared a hill and we would go over there on Saturday. I had a terrible time because I would fall down. My brother would go off and do cross-country. My father would go up the hill and try to ski down and he would fall down because he was trying to do the technique as he had read it, but he was doing it too slowly.   We didn’t have the proper clothes, my father wore two pair of his khaki work pants, so he would get sopping wet.  None of my friends did this. I did learn somewhat how to ski.   My father was just before his time.

My father had a little cabin cruiser with an inboard motor  that he would put in the lake. He also had a rowboat. My mother was really a hiker; she would leave my father in the dust. When we hiked, I wasn’t allowed to be carried. If I got really tired, my father would take out his belt and he would hang on to one end and I would hang on to the other and that was supposed to be helpful. It wasn’t because I had to go as fast as he did.  We finished many a hike in the dark.

I Grew Up in a House Filled with Music

My mother was a wonderful pianist. Anywhere there wasn’t a musical organization,, she would start one. She started  choirs, both church and community.  We were always actively involved in the church.  If there was no choir, she would be the directoras well as the pianist.  If they needed someone to sing, she would sing. She also played the viola and the accordion.  Our house was always filled with music.

My mother was always practicing or rehearsing. She had the ability to take people who weren’t very good at singing and teach them expression. She played for all of the weddings, funeral, Sunday school, everything. She tried to teach me piano, but she gave up. I can play piano some. My father once said of my mother's playing,  "When most people play for a funeral, you think, oh, too bad, so sad.  When Mother (my mother) plays for a funeral, you can just see their soul going up to heaven."

My brother played piano much better than I did. He would really pound the keys. The piano was right next to my bedroom wall. We had choir practice at my house on Thursday. night.  After practice, everyone would stay and sing and sing, with my mother providing cake and coffee so I would go to bed hearing all of this wonderful music. It was great. When I was old enough, I was in the choir. I don’t have a good voice, but I figured out how to sing alto by having it infused through me!.

My father was enjoying it. I took flute and played flute all through high school and most of college. My father would listen to all of this music and then say “I am going to bed” because he had to go to work the next morning.

He was very active in the church. He was always a deacon or an elder. He must have started, organized, and run the Sunday school in Hungry Horse. There was a little church two miles away in Martin City and that was where we went to church. I was always in the youth group.

In Hungry Horse, I skipped the third grade and my brother skipped the fifth grade. That was what they did in those days. That summer my mother was supposed to work with me with math. They called it arithmetic back then. Math was something much higher. She waited until I was ready, and I was never ready. I never wanted to do it.