The Red House in Idaho

This is the house I lived in when we moved from Northern California to Southern Idaho. I was four years old when we arrived, and nearly ten when we left again (this time for Northern Minnesota). We had been on vacation and my parents were driving around this part of Idaho when they drove by this house that had a "For Sale" sign out front. They pulled over on the gravel road to have a look and the owner waved them in from the front yard. Even though my parents had not been considering a move at the time, they took a tour and decided to buy. Thus, I left a crowded San Bruno neighborhood near a railroad track to live in a house on seven acres of open land on a gravel road six miles outside of town. It didn't even have a house number. The mailman knew who we were.



This is the back yard, where we were beginning to build a greenhouse.

I loved living here. I had a best friend about a mile down the road (you definitely could not see into your neighbors' windows!), my elementary school teachers enthusiastically fostered and encouraged my abilities in reading and writing, and occasionally I would plan a day trip to the town library. Mom would help me pack a lunch and I would set out on my bike in the morning for the six mile trip in. There were only a few establishments along Main Street, and I liked to visit the library first. Then I would take my carefully saved quarters over to the General Store for some stick candy or to the little grocery store for a fruit pie. After I tucked my treat into my backpack to eat when I got home, I would ride the six miles back, stopping at my favorite horse pasture along the way to get a drink from the stream.

During the summers, when school was out, we ran wild in the foothills across the street. Past settlers and travelers had left a wealth of rubbish in certain places, but as it was dumped before the times of plastic containers and cardboard boxes, it was great stuff. Glass bottles, interesting wooden boxes, even the wires of an old mattress. We also collected spent shotgun shells of all colors, left by hunters past, and they sat in piles around our little fort. We slid down sand dunes that hid here and there amongst the hills. When I washed my hair on Saturdays, the shampoo suds were brown. I kept washing until they were white, and then I knew my hair was clean.

Good times. Happy times.