Groovin'...19º

A hot dry summer unfolded for us, following a real spring...At times I thought I had died and gone to heaven, never before living in a place where spring was an actual season...I found out in the coming years that "spring" seldom happens in Joseph and that year was an anomaly...No matter, we pushed on with our new life...The kids finished the school year, Herb was busy learning his new job, making acquaintances and I had met a few of the forest service wives...The lake would be a big draw for us, we tried out the fishing and even braved the freezing water on ski's...The north beach was less than two miles from our house, easy access for "swimming" on hot afternoons.

Speaking of hot, Bobbi Jo and Rusty soon found out that the upstairs bedrooms were too hot for sleeping, so spent most of the summer nights on an old mattress, on the front porch...I began to think about winter and how cold those upstairs bedrooms were going to be...In a note to Hayes, with the monthly rent check, I asked if "the house" had any insulation?..They wrote back saying that surely it did...As summer nights cooled off in late September, we turned on the floor furnace, that had been installed in the living room floor, the previous year...It sounded like a jumbo jet was reving up to take off in the middle of our living room and the heat it put out was minimal...Adjacent  to the floor furnace was a small Franklin fireplace for additional heating (not the best combination)...I checked around in the attic with a flashlight and could find nothing that looked like insulation and also paid closer attention to the upstairs windows and found where all the flies were getting in...Big spaces were on every side of the ill fitting windows....I was beginning to see signs of a long, cold winter and also signs of a huge bill for fuel oil...I started putting out feelers for a part time job.

Aside from worry about the winter, we found that in summer we could visit Herbs Dad or he us by driving the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road,(partially unpaved) a much shorter distance than going via LaGrande and the freeway...We spent weekends at his place in Council or we met at an unimproved campground at one of the reservoirs on the snake river, where we boated, fished and water skied in warmer water...He spent an occasional weekend in Joseph, where the kids delighted in showing him our new property over the hill, a veritable playground for Rusty and his friends...This playground was a plus for Bobbie Jo as it gave her freedom from always having to watch over her little brother...Did I worry about him and the river below our house, or the frog pond where he spent hours trying to catch crawdads and frogs, that he proudly brought home...I did, but never as much as I had when we lived 50 feet away from highway 40...Hugs To All...OWAV:)