Life Continues....

How is it that when you don't work outside the home and there are no longer children to care for, you have more things to do and time really, really flies by???  Yes, this is what I have been experiencing!

Today I am going to try to get back to posting again -- hopefully there will not be any major interruptions!!!

Memories of the 4 1/2 years spent in a small desert community (First Grade through Fourth Grade school years) are a little vague, yet highlighted with certain experiences still remembered.

The Mojave Desert, in particular Lucerne Valley, will forever be present in my DNA make-up!  To this day, I can literally smell the desert and feel the dry heat bake my skin as I played and grew during these 4 1/2 years.

The kaleidoscope of memories circles through my memory...

...sleeping outside in the open air at my best friend's house...a new experience both being away from home and sleeping outside without any shelter...in the spring, going to school barefoot...my first crush on Bobby Dilperdang...winning 3rd place in an art contest...the excitement of my first circus...banished to the house with chickenpox...getting a malt at the local Malt Shop...Sugar Daddy candy suckers that would last all day...Bazooka Bubble gum...black licorice...all my favorite special treats given sparingly...everybody knew who you were in our small little town...our own "Mayberry"!!

Piano recital in 4th grade in Hesperia...I had to play 2 numbers and one was about an owl.  I do remember being a little nervous but not like I would be today!!!!  Anybody remember these piano books???

When I began 4th grade here in Lucerne Valley, we were in a new school which had just been completed except for the fencing.  One day while the teacher was teaching English, I was watching my father out in the yard digging post holes for the fence.  The teacher called on me, knowing I was not paying attention!  His words, "Lynda, I bet I could get that man you are watching to come into the classroom and answer this grammar question!"  I knew I should have been listening to the teacher but...I had to stifle a laugh because I knew that was my Daddy and there was no way he could answer the grammar question!  He did not like English and it was not his best subject!!!  Math was my Daddy's field of expertise!!!

I remember Daddy trying to teach me how to do long division.  He had made big blackboards for my brother and I that were in our bedrooms.  I could not get the concept with long division, even with it all written on the board.  Which meant, Daddy would go back to the end of time and start teaching me that 1 + 1 = 2!!!!  These lessons were long and painful for me!!!!  Daddy's patience was long too and I finally got it in my head and moved on to other difficult things.

Fourth Grade came to an end and we began to pack to move to Fallon, Nevada to another ranch.  Fifth Grade would begin in a whole new environment with new friends, new teachers, new bus route, new home and a new baby brother who had been born  5 months before we moved.

I only remember one day of school, riding horses one afternoon with the ranch owner's daughter, one ride on the school bus ( I was so scared I would get on the wrong bus!) and then we packed up and moved again!!!! Such is the life with the Elmore Gypsies!!!!  (Below:  Yours truly in 4th grade)