2008 Day Seventy

This was a wonderful Sunday. We spent the day at home. I slowly cleaned off a portion of my desk, the rest of the laundry and worked on beading projects. All in all it has been a very peaceful nice day.

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Continuing what I started yesterday...

I do not remember how we got to California, if we drove or if we took the train. When we first arrived in Palo Alto, CA we stayed in a motel and then rented an Eichler home from a Stanford professor. My father took a job at Kodak while he waited for a job in the post office to open up. This is what he did in the Army when he was stationed in Okinawa and then in the Fort Wayne post office. My Dad once told me how during the depression how he noticed the postman had a stable job and was able to buy food from the market. Growing up on a farm you ate what you grew and the animals that could no longer produce. The job with the post office finally came through and he worked as a clerk in the East Palo Alto branch during the day and at Kodak at night.

We spent every weekend driving and looking at model homes in all the new housing tracts that were springing up everywhere. I remember one housing tract named Kilarney Farms. They had a red barn and pony rides and all kinds of farm animals. We looked at those homes many times. I hoped we would get one of those homes. But the folks settled on a house where the builder went bankrupt after only building one street of homes and I guess they got a terrific deal on the sale of a corner lot, 3 bdrm dusty pink house. We moved from the rented house to our new home at 550 West Eden in Sunnyvale, CA. My dad set up a sturdy swing set in the backyard and planted a peach tree and a plum tree. He also constructed a concrete patio in the back yard. It was a typical suburban middle class neighborhood. We had a collie named Rex. I loved him so much. I loved brushing his beautiful long fur coat. We must have had a female too because I remember we had a couple of litters of puppies. My responsibility was to mix up the Gerber cereal and teach the puppies to eat once they were ready. I was always sad when people came and bought the pups, one by one and then they were gone. My Dad would tell me stories about how they raised dogs on the farm and then shipped them all over the country.

My grandparents came out by train and visited us. My Grandpa, Carper, brought my brother a can of chocolate covered ants from Africa and a can of lemon drops (my favorite at the time) for me.

My Mom babysat for a time before I started school. When I started kindergarten she went to work at Lindy's Toy Store which was downtown. She worked there for several years but had a falling out with the owner. From there she worked at a children's clothing store called Youngsters which was also in downtown Sunnyvale. She became a buyer for them and I remember the store expanded and opened another store in Fremont. She was with Youngsters for a long time. She left them and I don't not know why, but she went to work for a stationery store just a few doors down from Youngsters. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of the stationery store. She had to work Saturdays. My Dad did all the grocery shopping for the family and I would go with him every Saturday to Chinese owned State Market. It always smelled of cooked meat. I loved staring at the Chinese calendars they had hanging everywhere. We bought our meat at a meat market close to the store where my Mom worked. We had a Carnation milk man who delivered milk in glass bottles along with butter, cottage cheese and ice cream. We also had a bakery truck that would drive through our neighborhood and would sell fresh made donuts, pasteries and bread. In the spring and summer we had fruit and vegetable stands everywhere because we were surrounded by orchards and truck farms.

***to be continued