Picture of a street in Port Angeles. Donna, her neighbor, Marge and I went to Port Angeles to do a little shopping. It is a very nice looking old town. Some of the buildings are being repainted.

Donna and Marge in front of one of the shops.

Summer my favorite season is here. I love it when you can just go with no coat and wear sandals instead of shoes.

"That beautiful season, the summer! Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light.

By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Debbie thought I should post another Bonney Lake Story---

I think I mentioned on one of my earlier blogs that we had to dig a well on the property. We had moved into the house in the summer of 1960 with just basically a roof and walls. We did not have water. We had to haul water. Your dad and David started working on the well in the summer. My baby was due in October and they were trying to get water before I had the baby.

We couldn't afford a drilled well. Bishop Neilson from the Buckley Branch came out to witch for water and told your dad where to dig. Several people had dug wells in that area but the wells always went dry late fall and depending on the rain, they would not fill up again until December or sometimes January. We hauled lots of water. We had rain barrels under the eaves to catch water. I always kept a good supply of drinking water. When Clayton and I got married he had rain barrels to catch water. I hated them. I had to watch in the fall for mosquitoes and dump the water. He insisted we needed them. I am sure he experienced the same thing I did in Bonney Lake; always afraid you wouldn't have water.

David was only 9 when he was helping with the well. Daniel was born in October 1960 and David would not be 10 until February 1961. We made David work so hard at such an early age. I guess that is one of the reasons he is such a hard worker and dependable person that he is today. He is the one who fishes in Alaska and that is not easy work. Your dad and David would dig the well and send the buckets of sand up to be dumped. I ended up helping dump the buckets. I helped with dumping those heavy buckets until about a week before Daniel was born. My days of miscarriages was long gone. My visiting teachers came out once while I was dumping buckets and they were sure something would happen to the baby. Daniel was a healthy baby but he was born breech and those sisters were positive it was because I was doing all that heavy work.

Anyway, we finally got the well done and your dad bought this old piston pump which stopped quite frequently. The pump was on this wobbly old platform. When the pump stopped, someone would have to go down on the platform and get it started again and then the pump would have to be primed everytime. The platform was not that large and a person could slip off it and fall into the well if you were not careful.

Your dad had been working different jobs and finally got one in Bremerton and only came home on weekends and sometimes every other weekend. We didn't have the money for gas for him to commute everyday. So, then, when the piston pump would stop I would send David down on that platform to take care of the pump. I would stand by and pray he would not slip off that platform. David never fussed about having to do it. In later years, I have thought about the way we lived out there. Sending a 10 year old kid down the well to take care of a pump, I think today they would take the kids away. It is also a miracle we did not get sick from the water.

I did do my best to keep things clean. It was very hard sometimes. I didn't even have an automatic washer most of the time. I would have to fill the wringer washer, wash the clothes, fill it again with rinse water and hang the clothes out to dry in good weather and dry them on a rack in the winter. Of course, I had to wash diapers everyday.

I can't say that all that work shortened my life. You kids all managed to grow up even with a mother like me. We had a lot of good times there too, like our little picnics and I always read to you and we played games. The Bookmobile came once a week to Werley's store and I would walk all you kids to the Bookmobile. It was probably close to two miles round trip. We always looked forward to going there.