A PICNIC IS A PICNIC WHEREVER YOU HAPPEN TO BE – SAND, DIRT, GRASS, ROCKS, PATIOS, DECKS, A LIVING ROOM FLOOR, OR AN OLD HELICOPTER PAD

 


Summer, 1962.  Picnic IN the sand.  You’ve seen this picture before.  We were at Stinson Beach and the wind was blowing pretty hard, but we hunkered down behind the sand dunes and on this particular trip, managed to eat our lunch without crunching on too much sand.  And yes, there was the time we went to Stinson and gave up picnicking there because it was just too windy, coming home to eat our lunch on a blanket spread out on the living room floor in front of a cheery fire Dad built in the fireplace.  But hey, it was still a picnic! J


Stinson Beach.  It’s always windy here because it’s so wide open.  But it’s a great place to explore.

My husband’s mother looks like she’s eating something yummy out of a box in front of her?  I’m guessing she was around 15 at the time which would place the year around 1925.  Her mother, Lillian Ross (Pringle) Brasier, is seated on the right.  

Mid 1940s.  My maternal grandmother, Bertha Louise (Parton) Whitney, on the far right.  Beside her is her sister, my Great Aunt Maria Jorgensen.  The youngsters are Maria’s children, so, as far as I can remember, the way this goes is, they’re my first cousins once removed, Cecily and Roald.  It looks like they’ve stopped to have a bite to eat along the way to wherever they’re going? 

My brother and me having a picnic lunch in our backyard.  I was 5 and my brother, 2, so this would have been 1945.

Another picnic along the way in 1953.  We had been to the ocean and were on our way to Fort Ross when Dad found this nice little picnic area on the side of the road beside a gently flowing creek.  As I recall we built a little fire and roasted hotdogs.  That’s me in the white shirt & cap with two neighborhood boys Ricky & Allen.  My mother is kneeling with my youngest sister.  Next to her is our neighbor and friend Ralph Bergen, and beside him is my middle sister.  My brother is sitting in the smoke.  Dad was taking the picture.  Don’t know where Ralph’s wife – my Mom’s best friend – Janie is?  Maybe she was cooking the hotdogs?

A winter picnic in the snow at Heavenly Valley, Lake Tahoe, 1961.  We were sitting on a thick blanket of some sort that kept us dry from the snow and actually acted as somewhat of a buffer from the cold as well.  L-R:  my youngest sis, my brother, yours truly, my middle sis, and Mom.  We were drinking hot chocolate, but I don’t remember what kind of sandwiches we were eating.

I used this picture not all that long ago, but it fits the category so . . .   Husband & son eating lunch on a rocky hillside while watching a helicopter lift logs in Gasquet, CA, 1972.

1976 in Gasquet – Home from Sunday school and waiting for lunch to be served.  L-R: eldest daughter 3 ½, son, 7 ½, and youngest daughter, 2.

Summer, 1977 in Oakhurst, CA.  Eldest and youngest daughters enjoying a picnic lunch on the patio.

They also liked to picnic in the rocks above the patio.

1980 in Oakhurst – Youngest daughter’s 6th picnic birthday party on the patio.  L-R: the birthday girl, her older sister, and friends.

1984 – youngest daughter’s 10th birthday party on the deck in Groveland, CA.  Summer birthday’s are perfect times for picnics.  The birthday girl is in the back in the striped dress matching her older sister’s on the right.

Six years later in 1988 we’re back to the sand and the two sisters sitting on the beach at Meeks Bay, Lake Tahoe, enjoying ice cream sundaes in waffle cones - a last treat before heading home after a week of camping.

:->

La Nightingail

P.S.  Oops, don’t want to forget eating picnic lunches with a friend on my lunch hour in San Francisco on the old helicopter landing pad behind the Ferry Building.

I think this horizontal pad at the center bottom of the picture might be the old helicopter landing as it looked in 1959-1960.  We’d hurry through the Ferry Building, coming out on a deck across the water & down to the pad sitting on the upper side of it as the helicopters landed on the far end (cut off in the picture).  We sat on big wood timbers bolted to the cement putting us almost right on the water.  It was great.

And this was our view of the bay and the San Francisco side of the Bay Bridge from the pad.  It was a very popular place for working folks to eat their bag lunches on nice days.  Funny, I’ve always wondered why I took a picture of our view, but never thought to take a picture of the pad itself?  Better yet, of my friend sitting there and have her take one of me.  Sure wish I had, but, oh well.

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