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Beach Boy: 1950

Continuing my vacation theme, we return to the same beach ten years earlier. I'm wearing the St. Christopher medal that was then a permanent accouterment, but what really kept me from drowning then and forever afterwards was making sure that my extremities were firmly in contact with the bottom at all times. This was when the Russian River region was the vacation destination for denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area and was jammed with sun and fun frolickers during the summer months. About ten years later, freeways made Lake Tahoe more easily accessible and Guerneville and environs went into a serious and sad decline that lasted until the 1980s. View full size.

Continuing my vacation theme, we return to the same beach ten years earlier. I'm wearing the St. Christopher medal that was then a permanent accouterment, but what really kept me from drowning then and forever afterwards was making sure that my extremities were firmly in contact with the bottom at all times. This was when the Russian River region was the vacation destination for denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area and was jammed with sun and fun frolickers during the summer months. About ten years later, freeways made Lake Tahoe more easily accessible and Guerneville and environs went into a serious and sad decline that lasted until the 1980s. View full size.

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Sorry about your box of toys.

Growing up in the same county, going to the same high school, and vacationing at the River each summer seems pretty parallel to me. You are a bit older, but back then, times didn't change as fast as today.

The river was our aquarium, and would watch the polliwogs' changes in their natural habitat. One of the benefits of spending the whole summer there. There were two kinds. The larger, olive colored ones that turned into bullfrogs, and the much smaller black ones that turned into the smallest frogs I'd ever seen. Remember the sound those bullfrogs would make early in the morning?

And yes, the smell of the oiled roads and the willows are also fond ones.

Did you ever get to ride the ponies there in Guernewood? The one like a merry go round, only with real ponies.

Russian River memories

Thanks, rgraham, for sharing your Russian River memories; we must have led parallel lives. We also often spent the whole summer at our cabin, Father just his two weeks vacation and then weekends. You were lucky in having your polliwogs survive to froghood; ours never seemed to survive past the leg-sprouting stage. Logging trucks: hiking up along the twisty, one-lane Old Cazadero Road in the hills with my father, brother and dog Missie, I'd hear their engines echoing through the valley and tremble in anticipation of meeting one barreling around a blind curve. Aromas that take me back: freshly-oiled dirt summer roads; hay and horse droppings (picturesque, no?) as we walked past the rent-a-mount place in Guernewood Park; the scent of the willows along the beach; and, as someone else mentioned, Sea and Ski suntan oil - I wonder if they still make a formulation that smells like that? Unique experiences: the ice man delivering big cubes for our icebox before we got a refrigerator; attending Sunday Mass under the redwoods in Guernewood Park - imagine, going to church outside!; stopping at the dump off Pocket Canyon Road with a station wagon-full of accumulated summertime trash and watching my father and brother hurling cartons of it into the pit, then, when we finally got home, discovering that a whole box of my toys was missing.

ACA

A sack of kittens.

This shot brings back memories...

My grandparents owned a cabin on the Russian from the late twenties till the early seventies. We would spend every summer there. Sometimes for a couple of weeks, or the entire summer.

I too used to do the same thing TT is doing in the shallows. Before you could swim, you could kind of crawl and kick against the current, so it felt like you were swimming.

A few other memories this shot brought back are...

  • The smell of the redwoods on a hot summer day.
  • The sound of the logging trucks as they sped down River Road.
  • Those great big umbrellas, and drying your clothes on a line.
  • Catching polliwogs and watching them grow into frogs.
  • Canoeing up and down the river.
  • Christmas lights strung around the cabin became party lights.
  • Mudball fights.
  • Fishing for bluegill and smallmouth bass.
  • Talent shows and bingo.
  • Going into Occidental for family style Italian dinners.
  • Riding out to Bodega Bay for fresh salmon
  • Believe me, I could go on and on.

    Thanks for posting this, and jogging the good times back into the old noggin.

    Tterrace is cute as a gnat's @$$

    Gosh, but you are, and so darn emotionally well adjusted too. I love your life, TTerrace. I hope you do children everywhere a favor and make a coffee table book of your photogog memories and your prose so they can show their parents "THIS is how you raise a kid".

    A.C.A.

    "a bug's ear."

    Cute as the devil

    I was also an expert at being deliberately not cute when I saw a camera being aimed at me.

    Anachronistic

    Man immediately above your head, to left, holding his arm up to the side of his head. My first thought was that he was talking on his cell phone -- and then I thought "of course not!!"

    Relative Cuteness

    Does anyone else think that tterrace is "Cute as a button"?

    Regarding "Cute as a bug in a rug," I always heard the saying as "Snug as a bug in a rug." The latter saying makes sense to me, since a bug in a rug could be seen as snug, but I don't see anything "cute" about it! Of course, I don't necessarily see anything "cute" about a button, either! Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon.

    [Come to think of it, "snug" was what Gramma said, too. Also: "Good night, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite!" Not that we actually had bedbugs, or rugbugs. - Dave]

    A.C.A...

    A flea with a sledgehammer.

    TT is A.C.A.

    A bucket of puppies.

    As cute as ...

    Channeling my grandmother here. She'd say, "tterrace, you are as cute as a bug in a rug!"

    [My grandmother said the same thing! Not about tterrace, of course. (Not because she didn't think he was cute, but because she didn't know him.) What else is tterrace as cute as? - Dave]

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