My house burned down to the ground while I was at school in 1947. The bus driver drove up to the still smoking coals of what had been a two room log cabin in Hardwood, Michigan, looked at it from his driver's seat, than drove back to the bus stop at a cross road, about a half mile in the direction we had just come. He dropped myself and my siblings off on the road, and drove away. Neighbors Bernice Cousineau and Patsy Robinson were also dropped at that stop and I flew down the road to Cousineau's, bravely ignoring their bull, which terrified me, waiting for no one. My siblings opted for Robinson's house. It was a traumatic time and we soon removed a couple days later to Massey's place, a tiny two room shack with a chicken coup my dad turned into a bedroom. From there, he sold our land and got a job in the city of Escanaba and I never saw my childhood friends, Bernice and Patsy again. However, after several years of trying to find me, out of the blue several months ago, I received a call from Patsy Robinson Whitfield. She and Bernice were determined to track me down and finally succeeded. What joy and happiness that call gave me. We will meet again in September of 2009. What they conveyed to me is that the event was traumatic to them as well, for they had a friend and it was as though I had disappeared, as I truly did, and they always wondered what ever happened to me and my family. Interestingly, I had never considered the perspective of my young friends. I imagine there was a bond to this event that kept them considering after 60 plus years. And I, too, thought many times of them. Our friendship can pick up where it left off, those many years and miles ago.
On the ramblin front, Jim and I biked on the canal now that the weather is clement and we spot these peacocks along the road periodically. Beautiful, aren't they?
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