THE SONGS OF A NIGHTINGAIL

  Concord, NH Ford mail truck No brick wall here, but I didn’t want to leave this dump truck out. Interesting old truck from the 1920s. The lettering on the truck in the prompt photo reminded me of a weird thing that happened years ago. I was driving on a 4-lane highway in the slow lane heading up a hill and came up behind a large truck & trailer, so moved over into the fast lane to pass it. As I drove past the truck I thought I saw a man dressed in red & blue crouched in between the cab and the trailer of the truck??? With no one behind me, I slowed down to let the truck catch up to me so I could take a better look at it thinking I must have seen some sort of painting on the side of the trailer?  But no.  The side of the trailer was blank – nothing painted on its gray side, and no one was crouched between the cab and trailer?  Shrugging, I sped up and continued on my way. A while later I was heading up another hill and, seeing smoke at the top of the...

  Most of the places I’ve lived in over the years have had welcoming front porches. This is the brick porch of the house I grew up in, in El Cerrito, CA in 1941. And in 1957. This was the first house I lived in after my husband and I were married.  It was a lovely 3 bdrm house on the Forest Service station in Requa, CA just north of the Klamath River.  It had stairs leading to a sort of duck & cover front porch.  Not really much of a porch and we never used it to enter the house.  We came in the kitchen door as that’s where we parked our car. The front porch of a rented log cabin in Gasquet, CA in December, 1968.  After our first child was born, my husband, with the permission of the owners, constructed a safe railing around it. Four years later we were living in a different cabin – still in Gasquet - with a large covered front deck. From that cabin we moved into an old 2-room school house that had been renovated into a 5 bdrm/2 bath home with a generou...

It took a bit of sleuthing through photo albums and high school year books, but I managed to find a few photos of men lined up for different events. A few well-dressed gentlemen line up in Yosemite Valley for a photograph with Yosemite’s namesake waterfall behind them in the late 1800s.  My great grandfather, J.K. Smedley, who made the trip to the Valley in 1874 is not among these fellows, but he and his touring compadres did line up for a formal photograph and I imagine it looked something like this one. One of these fellows is my husband’s grandfather, Harry Brasier.  He might be on the far right but I'm not sure.  These were the six who canoed their way through five lakes in Canada in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Harry’s hockey team with Harry sitting 3 rd in from the left. Harry with a group of hockey players - Harry in the second row on the right in the sleeveless black shirt. 1957 - El Cerrito High’s varsity football team.  Back row, far left, is a former bo...