This week we are camped within a mile of my maternal Grandparents’ home in rural Stevens County Washington. Stevens County is tucked in the far north eastern corner of Washington State. It is rugged, mountainous and very rural. We are camped in a primitive campground on the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge. We have a fire ring and a vault toilet at our disposal.

My Grandparents and their eight children lived in a log home near here. They had running water from a spring up the hill from the house, but the house had no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no phone and a wood fueled kitchen range. It appears that my mother and her siblings walked about three miles down the nearby road to Bear Creek School. The road today is a gravel super highway about a lane and a half wide. My first memories of coming to Grandma’s was along a two rut road, axle deep in dust or mud depending on the season. The dogs would shout their greetings from half a mile away when we arrived in our green 1937 Plymouth four door sedan. Remember the backwards opening “suicide” back doors. I remember windshield wipers that paused when you pulled a hill. If it was a long hill you had to close the throttle briefly every so often to get enough vacuum to make them swipe once so you could see the road.

In the evening in front of the fireplace the “old folks” would be talking about this new baby, that job someone started or lost, the price of wheat or oats and how much money they lost because they planted the wrong thing this year, and what Truman was up to this time. I remember the roaring fire in the big old fireplace and the kitchen was always warm and cozy near the wood range. I remember Granddad chopping wood in the woodshed. He was badly stooped and shook uncontrollably with Parkinson’s. When he finally got the ax to full cock, he would drive the blade into the wood with unerring precision. Whenever I tried to help it would take dozens of swings and the end of the block looked like matchsticks.

I remember Grandma leading me up the stairs to the feather bed carrying a “coal oil lamp.” She would tuck me in and give me a kiss and then she and the lamp would leave. That was dark! I remember hearing the scream of a mountain lion up the hill from the house. I felt very small; I would shiver and slide down a little deeper into the bed.

By day we would fish the beaver dams on the “Old Bear Creek Place.” Aunts, Uncles and Cousins by the dozens would come out for a visit, and if the weather was good we would all go to the creek nearby, perhaps even where this camp ground is today, and have a grand picnic. Food everywhere and always watermelon and hand cranked home made ice-cream.

Today we drive a 34 foot motor home with built in electric generator, propane furnace, purified water and a gas range with oven. Incredibly, within a hundred feet of the camp there is a cell phone hot spot where I can get internet connection. I am sitting here on a hillside with my computer on a stump creating this blog and sending it to you.

It is a different world indeed.

With love from the old home place

Gary and Judy

Gary