The EARLY DAYS

    I have to apologize for these pictures.  They are from an old 8 millimeter movie film that was shown on the wall and videotaped by an early VHS camera and later copied from tape onto a DVD and then had snapshots cut out with "Print Screen" and pasted into a JPG program.

    I had chosen the path for the driveway and cut down the trees.  This picture is the grader making the driveway.  After it was graded we had gravel spread on it a few inches deep.  Guess what?  Gravel just sinks into the dirt for a long time before you see that some of it is staying on top.  After we were living, er, ... camping in the house we had a lot of rain and Nancy said that she would run away from home if she thought she wouldn't get stuck on the driveway.

I was outstanding in my field.

    This picture is Charles Mitchell and I.  Charles and Ruth were our next door neighbors that supplied us with water from their faucet for a few months until we got the well in and power run to the house.


   This was our home for a couple of months.  We had an Apache tent camper with an added room and a separate dining fly.  The area under cover was 16' x 16' in the camper and add-a-room.  I had built a kitchen unit that had a small sink and some counter top space.

   We had a garden planted before we had a driveway or a house.  This is Nancy one day when we had come up to work in the garden.

   When we were tilling the garden area we had a problem with our tiller and we were going to lose the day of planting.  I was cutting down the trees for the driveway to be graded and the grading guy was due the next day so I didn't have time to spare.  Charles and Ruth were there and he said that he thought he could help.

   Well, later I came back out of the woods and Charles was seated on his lawn mower.  He had an old plow that was meant to be pulled behind a mule hung on the back of it.  The engine was revved up and the small driving wheels were throwing dirt out behind all over Nancy who was pushing on the handles of the plow with no success.  I was standing there laughing at the sight when she said "I think I could push it if I didn't have to push Charles too."