Blogs from Auburn, California, United States, North America

CAMP FLINT As a child growing up in Auburn, California our family lived on a hillside below Skyridge. The adjacent hillside was Camp Flint Hill. Camp Flint started out during the Great Depression over on what has since become the fairground. It was originally home to a few impoverished workers employed around town in jobs for the Works Progress Administration as part of the National Recovery Act. When WWII fetched loose a few soldiers from the 32nd Division were posted at Camp Flint and charged with the responsibility of protecting the Southern Pacific mainline from mischief by the Japs. As the war dragged itself merrily along those soldiers were given more pressing duties elsewhere and replaced by an outfit of Military Police who guarded the railroad bridges, tunnels, snow sheds and kept the lines of communication ... read more

KIDS BEING KIDS My granddaughter, Rachel, has asked me to prepare a story for presentation at grandparents’ day at her school. The story needs to address the differences between going to school now and going to school back in the day. It is a story that I will take delight in telling. Everyone knows that there have evolved massive cultural and societal differences over the past 50 odd years that have greatly impacted not only education, but children too. Back then girls never wore pants to school. They wore dresses or they wore skirts and blouses. Back then kids never called adults by their first name. It ... read more

How I Fell From Grace With The Methodists J. D. Higgins turned up amongst us one day on the playground. It was almost like he materialized from thin air. He was kind of a girlish looking fellow, and he couldn’t play sports with a tinker’s damn, but he always wore clean clothes. his clothing was a bit shabby, but it was clean. J. D. would have looked a bit like a scarecrow, but a scarecrow looked smarter and was a better right fielder. His demeanor was quiet and sad. He was sad because his dad had been killed in the Korean War. Before long J. D. had also turned up at church and in Sunday school, at our cub scout den and at little league. He was like a plague of locusts. You couldn’t ... read more

MAN KILLER My grampa, Glen Oliver, was sitting around up in Aberdeen, WA one day in the spring of 1916. He and his brother, Paul – who we have always affectionately called “Pudge”, were well into a jug of tangle foot whiskey when the topic of world politics came under discussion. The country had just begun mobilization efforts to join our allies in the Great War then being waged in France. In 1916 it was not yet known as the First World War. As the evening wore on both of them had decided to join up the next day. Off they went, right after breakfast, still reeking of riotous good times. The recruiting sergeant took an honest liking to Pudge, but grampa got sent to the discard heap because he had a ... read more

ROSEMARY I, for one, have always been fond of Bud Irwin, but I adored Rosemary from the very first day I met her. Aside from my own sainted mother, she was the loveliest, kindest, most gracious woman that ever I knew. Had I been more exposed to her influence surely she would have given me better manners than I learned from my dad. I was a terribly spoiled brat who should probably have been on Ritalin, but that is a story better told for when I am 80 years old myself. My first sort of prolonged exposure to Bud and Rose came when they were stationed at Mather AFB, near Sacramento. They were living in a home that they had leased with an option to buy out in Carmichael or Citrus Heights or some ... read more