I call some of the stories my Grandmother told us “bedtime stories” only tongue-in-cheek. The stories were fascinating to us youngsters but I don’t think any of them were guaranteed to put us to sleep.

Like the story of the young girl who road her horse to school because there was no bus service and it was really too far to walk.

Her path to school cut through one area of forest. I can’t recall for how many miles she was in the woods, but it was quite a distance. One evening she failed to return home and her parents became worried and set out to find her. They never did find the girl but they did find her horse; frightened and with claw marks on one side and rear haunch. They suspect a cougar attacked her and her horse and dragged her off somewhere. Exactly what happened they never did discover nor did they ever locate the girl or any of her clothes.

The story that always intrigued me involved a lost boy and his dog. This took place in the 1940′s. The boy lived with his parents in a logging camp in Western Montana. Toward evening, his mother sent him out to let his siblings know it was time for dinner and that they should come in.

When they never showed up, the mother went out looking for them. She found the other children, but not the son she had sent out nor his dog. Search parties were formed and they searched all over the area for several dasy but could find no trace of the boy.

Finally, a man came into the camp one evening at dark and told them he was a smoke jumper that had been dropped into the area to aid in the search. He said that he had heard a dog whine and when he tried to approach, the dog growled at him so he did not go closer. He wasn’t positive but it looked as though the dog was guarding a boy that lie on the ground at the base of a cliff.

He said that he could not lead them there that night as he was exhausted and had to get some rest. He described the cliff and the area. It was familiar to the people in the camp who set out to find the boy.

They were able to find the boy who had apparently fallen from the cliff the first night and had been dead since. His dog would not leave him and was quite starved and thirsty.

This obviously was not a happy ending but at least the parents had closer. That is something that many parents and relatives of lost children do not enjoy.

There are two intriguing, to me, aspects to this story. First is that talking to some smoke jumpers the next day, the parents were told that none had been dispatched yet. They were unable to identify who the mysterious man was who led them to their child.

Second, several years ago I met the widow of the top ranger who established the smoke jumpers in Montana. She lived with them all during their training and while on duty in Montana. According to her, there were no smoke jumpers in Montana until the mid 1950′s.

Life is strange sometimes.

The election of Ronald Reagan to President of the United States was a very high moment in my life. I admired his honesty and the fact that he absolutely refused to give in to pressure groups, whether domestic or foreign.

As Governor of California he hired prisoners to harvest crops that farm laborers were refusing to. This should have told America what type of President he would be but many refused to believe that he would honestly try to carry out his campaign promises. Boy, did they get a shock!

In my mind Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century and I do not hold that belief simply because he was a republican. I feel the second greatest and the most unsung was Harry S. Truman.

Following is a letter I wrote to President Reagan in 1981. To view the letter full size, click on the letter and then click again on the image when it opens.

This is the reply I received several weeks later:

I sure wish we had a Reagan or Truman in the White House today!

Yesterday the nation celebrated Memorial Day. The day when we pay our respects to and remember the sacrifices of all of those men and women who have given their lives to keep America a free country.

Unfortunately, many of our citizens who were born after World War II have no appreciation of those sacrifices and choose to focus on the stumbles and mistakes of the United States instead of the successes. They seem to think that we live in one of the worst countries in the world. I’ve been in other countries and believe me, none compares with the United States.

A new memorial flag was flown yesterday here in Forest Grove. It is large, 30′ X 60′ atop a 120′ flag pole. It is beautiful but many people complained that it was vulgar and excessive. How can any show of patriotism be excessive?

Even as a younster I can remember getting choked up seeing the flags waving along the street where volunteers had placed them on the parade routes.

Souza’s Stars And Stripes Forever can still cloud my vision. Who can remain sitting when the National Anthem is played or sung?

We fly our small 3′ X 5′ American flag on the front of our home on holidays and also have two other flags that we don’t fly. They were flown over the nation’s capitol building and mean too much to me to put out in the weather.  Crazy, I know. A flag is meant for display, not for hiding in the closet!

This sort fo reminds me of my grandmother Zeiler. Mom and here sisters often sent her new linens at Christmas and other occasions. I noticed these in one of her dresser drawers one summer and asked why she never used them and she said they were too nice to use. I guess I can start to understand that a little now.

I served in the Navy in the 1950′s on the USS Holmes County (LST-836) which was home-based in San Diego. We made several trips to Japan, China and the Phillipines with many stops in between. Visiting foreign countries was a great experience but everyone was glad to get home again to the good old US of A. We returned one time from Japan to the Oakland shipyards for an overhaul and when we passed under the Golden Gate there wasn’t a dry eye on anyone on the weather decks.

Ask anyone who served in the military and I doubt if anyone would say the new Forest Grove flag is too big.

I know that patriotism is not totally dead and that there are many people who appreciate the sacrifices made by current as well as past service personnel. Several weeks ago I was in a store and a woman in her 40′s came up behind me and said “Thank you for serving”.

I had to stop and ask her what she had said because I wasn’t sure what she meant. She said she wanted to thank me for serving in the Navy. It was then that the light dawned. I was wearing my American Legion ball cap with a strap cover in back that said “U.S. Navy”.

Her show of honest “thanks” was wonderful to hear and made me realize that this is still the greatest country on earth even if some of our citizens feel we get carried away with the size of our flags.

Over the past few weeks I have had many memories that were long forgotten suddenly flash into my mind. I wonder why that is. Probably a sign of aging?

We read stories where there is always some old person who starts living in the past in his mind. We think this is just fiction and it makes a good story but we would never be like that.

Then one day we are that old person.

I do not say this out of any sense of self-pity or depression about aging a little. I just think that maybe as time goes by we start to realize that some of the times in which we used to live were safer and more secure in a way than whatever we face today.

We find security in situations and happenings that have already been and which hold no unknown worries about what may happen and what lurks around the corner.

We also have a tendency to remember the days gone by as we would have liked them to have been, not like they actually happened. There is untold comfort in that.

Anyway, I thought that someone in my future generations might like to know a little about what moulded me into the person I have become and setting down my ramblings in this manner might shed a little light on this. It may be interesting to others, related or not, but maybe not. If you are not interested,  don’t read this.

That is easy, is it not?

For those who may find this interesting or maybe even gain a little feeling of pleasure that they had an easier time, got a better education, made more money, gained more status, acquired more worldly possessions, well, they are welcome to read as much as they like.

In the next rambling, I will try to post a picture of my family and identify everyone so you get to know me a little better.