The Baboon Congress, Travel

The Trailer Court

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Lead photo:   Ariel view of the Trailer Court 

Today’s guest post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

In 1958, my dad figured out how he could get his Masters Degree and become a guidance counselor (and leave behind teaching high school woodshop and mechanical drawing). There was a program at Colorado State (then) College in Greeley where you could complete a Masters over three summers. Since many of the students had families, dorms were not practical; CSC provided a “trailer court” if you could come up with a trailer.

So here’s where I spent a chunk of my childhood – in a 16-foot vintage Kit Carson Travel Trailer the folks bought used for under $1,000. It had two fold down beds – one from a couch (folks just kept it down and put their home mattress on it) and one converted from the dinette for my sister and me (ages 6 and 10 the first summer) – a kitchenette, closet and other cubbies (no bathroom – that’s what the community wash-house was for). The ice box wasn’t so hot – tiny and drippy and inefficient – so a few weeks into the first summer, Dad scored the vintage refrigerator you see on the pallet in the photo. We didn’t bring much but necessities, but the folks were smart enough to fit in our bikes.

Turned out the original trailer court was full, and the “overflow court” where we landed was a gravel parking lot between CSC’s football and baseball fields. This was Kid Heaven, as the football grandstand was our castle, the baseball dugouts were low enough on one side to be climbed on, and the ticket booths were unlocked – available for a play house, hide-out, and selling stuff. We kids created our own newspaper, played hearts at Doug M.’s converted school bus in the evening, got books from the bi-weekly bookmobile that stopped at the end of the Court. By the third summer I was 12, and had my first jobs: babysitting (heck, my mom was right across the lot), and some ironing in the washhouse.

The second year we knew more, and did as everyone else did – laid a length of linoleum down on our “yard”, placed a long table right outside the door for the summer kitchen (the electric fry pan, toaster, and coffee maker), and basically lived outside. Called it “Okee Hollow.” The only time we were in the trailer was for sleep, except Dad who would study in there if it wasn’t too hot.

Trailer at Grandmas

And a little cloud passed over every afternoon, showered us and settled the dust, and then moved on.

My sis and I spent time on campus practicing in the piano rooms of the music building, while Mom sang in the Summer Chorus. Yes, she left us on our own for a whole hour!) Wednesday nights on campus was Family Fun Night, with an outdoor movie (i.e. The Seven Voyages of Sinbad), concessions, and games. Some weekends we took day trips to Denver to Elitch’s Amusement Park or the Natural History Museum, or Estes Park in the Rockies. We have home movies of Mom typing one of Dad’s papers on a picnic table next to the Big Thompson River, as Sue and I dangled our feet from a boulder in the icy stream.

These three summers were golden – we called them the best summers of our lives.

What has been your best summer?

153 thoughts on “The Trailer Court”

  1. Ah, got to comment after some pushing and pulling, hitting the like asked me if I wanted to comment. Sneaky of you, Miss Barbara. But I do not have one yet. Well, best summer, Elke, Donna, the mid murders?

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Uh-Oh, Dale, the post does not show up on the blog page again–only on the email notice is the post available.

    Barb, my Mom applied for those summer programs in the 60’s but always was turned down for the reason, “They are for men who support families” even though Mom was the sole support of her family.

    Oh Well.

    I remember almost all summers as golden and “best.” This was because of the following:

    *No school
    *Trips to cousins’ farm where I ran wild
    *Church Camp in Cedar Falls, Ia.
    *Traveling with my Aunt and Uncle
    *Swimming every day

    Barb, you talk about your Mom leaving you for an hour? One summer my Mom went to school for 6 weeks at UNI in Cedar Falls, IA. Dad, in his wheelchair was the adult in the house, and I, age 13, did all the cooking, cleaning and bossed my brother and sister (with glee). Mom came home on weekends. When she arrived home for good at the end of the six weeks, their was a HUGE power struggle between us about Who Was In Charge.

    She Won.

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      1. It was a lot of responsibiity–but left me with great managerial skills!
        I am going to write some posts about our chores, as well as what we did to “save money.”

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  3. We had many good summers. the best were with my kids ages about 6 and 8 to 12 and 14. Sandy worked part time in the library Wed to Fri 1-5 and 7 – 9 (library closed from 5 – 7) plus Sat 11-4. I did the suppers and a big Sat breakfast and then Sat supper. I spent June prepping for next school year, then some more in lat August. Starting late June we would head out all four of us in our little pop-up teepee camper as soon as church was done on Sun. We pulled into parks when everyone else was leaving. We would camp 2-3 nights, or we would camp at Gooseberry while Sandy was working. We roamed from Jay Cook State Park to every park on the Shore, many forest service campgrounds, Thunder Bay and farther north, up on the Iron Range or Ely, over to the UP and in northern Wisconsin, over to Itasca. Usually we would do a longer trip, on Sandy’s vacation days, like Winnipeg or around the Lake. Our kids never got tired of it and still are not.
    I suppose the best summer was the one 50 years ago.

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  4. Morning all. I love summer – always have. There isn’t just one, but lots and lots of good summer memories.

    Thanks for this BiR – wonderful!

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  6. So many summers to remember…most were a mix of good and not so good. As a kid I spent most summers at my grandparents’ farms. Both maternal and fraternal lived on farms in the same area. Both had horses. My mother’s brother is only 7 years older than I and was/is a great tease and practical joker. Terrorized and made me laugh.
    One summer spent at a lake cabin was special though I ended up so sun burnt and with the croup.
    Teen summers were spent working for my father.
    Special adult summers: 4 months on Cape Cod, working in Yellowstone Park and Boulder CO, teaching summer school in Port Angeles WA while living in a trailer near the shore.
    This summer, first summer at home in 23 years.

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  7. I’ll echo Clyde and pick 50 years ago. I was seven, the Twins were headed for the World Series, there had been severe flooding in the spring, but our house was perched on a bluff high above the St. Croix and stayed dry. There was little to do that summer except wander along the beach and in the woods, pick wild strawberries in the ditches, play with other people’s dogs, and come home to dinner with the baseball game on the radio as background audio.

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  8. The opening line of Dylan Thomas’ book about the Christmases he experienced as a child notes that one Christmas was just like another, at least when looked on from the distant perspective of a grownup. That’s the way my summers in Ames Iowa feel to me now, all glorious (in memory) and all mostly the same. We’d fish the creek, grab grapes off backyard vines, ride our bikes out to the Izaak Walton park, hike all over the woods along that side of town, throw balls for our golden retriever and sometimes sit silently in the library, where it was cool even in summer. The highlight of my childhood summers was the two weeks we would spend in Minnesota, and they were unspeakably joyful and exotic.

    My adult summers have been more individual: there was the summer we fixed up the house we had just bought, the two summers we clerked in the flyfishing shop in Brule and two summers we lived in homes overlooking the Saint Croix River.

    Best of all might be the summers from 1987 to about 1995 when we tried to spend every weekend at our cabin on Lake Superior. i see those summers now through a sort of golden haze: nights spent in my gazebo near the lake, fishing trips with my family, gathering berries, listening to public radio in the evenings, hiking local trails, enjoying Chautauqua shows and driving home trying to not hit deer, cooking special meals for guests or playing board games while rains hammered the flat roof of the cabin. Like Dylan Thomas I look back at them now with deep fondness but a fuzzy sense of what happened in any given year.

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  9. Good morning. I had some good times during the summers as a boy when we lived on Cooper St. in Jackson, MI. Our house was toward the edge of town. There was a big open area behind the house that contained an old shallow abandoned gravel pit and some remains from a tile factory. There were also some open fields and behind them rail road tracks, swamp land, and the Grand River.

    I constructed tree houses and small huts out in the open area. Also, I spent a lot of time looking for and capturing snakes and turtles as well as a wide range of creatures that lived in the ponds located in swampy area. Also there were a number of trees growing in the old gravel pit that were good climbing trees.

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  10. Typing on the phone, so this will be short.

    Best summer in many years was the one I was between payroll jobs and we decided “the Lagoon” on Minnehaha Creek was our local resort. Every Wednesday we would pack a good lunch, books and towels and spend the day.

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  11. 1969 (unrelated to the song)
    The summer before my senior year. I was then the proud owner of a 63 Impala. The car screamed freedom. Spent a lot of time around Detroit Lakes camping. Learned to golf. Worked with my cousin who was a chick magnet. Watched the moon landing in Kansas city while drinking malt liquor. A learning experience. Never again and I have kept that promise to myself

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  12. i have three to choose from
    when i was a kid my dads family in fargo spent summers in detroit lakes. i hung with cousins and had a magical time
    in hippy days the vw van and the travel to banff and the west both mountains and coast was magic.
    in recent past taking the kids to yellowstone has been wonderful.
    ifeel sorry for the last batch of kids getting aced out of this because of time restraints with school and sports and finances.
    last two years son and i have an ely tradition we are plugging in for third year and grabbing an extra kid or two to come along. could become the favorite of the future.
    we have a secret spot in ely that is always there for us ( i should find some wood to knock on) if anyone else has a secret spot to canoe into we are looking for a second stop. out site is beautiful nd the day troips are good but the fishing and hiking immediately around are so so.
    what have you got for me?

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      2. secret campsites actually is what i am looking for. the spot we have as a fall back is 4 miles down an unmarked dirt road. put the canoe ina nd there are 3 sites around a lake that takes 25 minutes to paddle form one end to the other, no houses on it a couple motor boats do come in and run around without much luck last year there was amoose, the loons are there firewood is everywhere. it’ll do come to think of it. the only thing missing is the fishing but if there were fish the lake would be busy so maybe i should be careful what i wish for. son is a fly fisherman and pretty serious so it aggravates him to fish without a bite for an hour

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    1. i hate big events that get you to the point that you can go on exactly as before. transmission or engine replaced, fix the sewer, re-roof where there are thousands of dollars, lots of time and inconvenience and when your done it was just like it was before.

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  14. Almost all summers as a kid were golden. Long days that stretched into forever it seemed. My bed always faced the east, so I would get up early before anyone else and eat breakfast. Then I would go outside and dance out in the dewy grass. A bit later the family would get up and I would eat breakfast again (and I was skinny until kids ruined everything) and have fresh raspberries on my cereal or pancakes.

    Most days started out with weeding our large garden. Then I would start swinging on the swings, running around the yard or playing with neighborhood kids. Makeshift baseball games, dodgeball or listening to their cool records in garage. We would range around the neighborhood around the stream and woods (unsupervised!) and pretend to camp. In the evening, my way of cooling down was to pull out my rock collection and try to identify the rocks by looking at pictures in a book. Often, we would go swimming in the afternoon at the local private swimming pool for free because my dad maintained the pool in his spare time(?).

    Weekends we would often go to my parents cottage — about a 2 hour drive north from Green Bay. It was small, rustic and surrounded by woods; but we had a garden to tend there as well with humongous weeds because we weren’t there as often. We had a canoe and kayak my Dad made one winter in spare time(?), so we enjoyed paddling around in the small lake.

    My parents were both scout leaders, so we often went camping with our scout troops with occasional trips to the Boundary Waters for real adventure. No one summer stand out in particular, but all were wonderful.

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    2. Brings to mind childhood games played all summer, late into the evening — Tin Can Alley, Statues…and others whose names I can’t recall. Did our parents know where we were? They probably could hear us, it wasn’t a very big neighborhood.

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    2. An small airstream trailer the summer in Port Angeles. Nifty little space, rented from the owners who lived in the house nearby and the woman who tried to educate (unsuccessfully, I’m afraid) me in how to be feminine.

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  16. Sounds like those three summers were magical, BiR. Thanks for another memory evoking post.

    I remember snippets of various summers from throughout my life Put them all together, and you have a collage of a carefree life spent romping on a beach somewhere, or camping and hiking in mountains. Isn’t memory wonderful that way?

    I’d be hard pressed to pick just one favorite summer; most of them had their wonderful moments. My childhood summers blur together in a haze, but the summer of 1952, spent in a small wooden house on stilts, high in the windswept dunes overlooking the Baltic Ocean, stands out. 1962, my year of emancipation from parental tyranny is memorable. I spent that summer touring Switzerland on a Vespa motor scooter with my roommate. 1964 found me traipsing all over Moscow with three little kids in tow; a marvelous year. 1965, the summer in Greenland when the sun never set, and that spirited crew of coworkers made the most of it. 1966 and 1967, camping and hiking in the Rockies. The first year in college, 1968-69, was lots of fun despite major national unrest and strife. The following year all hell broke loose in my personal life, and the ensuing seven years were tough.

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  17. No one summer stands out in particular. When we were elementary school age, we were allowed to sleep on the screened-in front porch as there was no A/C in the house and our upstairs bedrooms were like ovens. The folks installed wooden roller shades on one side of the porch and hung a sheet from a clothesline to give us some privacy. Our dog was not allowed in the house proper but could sleep with us on the porch. We usually stayed out there even during rain or mild thunderstorms. I believe we slept on fold up cots.

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    1. all the joys of sleeping outside without the lumpy ground and essential dampness of the experience.

      I remember looking at a house that had an upper level screened porch. When I build my dreamhouse, it is going to have one of those.

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    2. Cool that the dog was allowed. 🙂

      My mom remembers sleeping out in the yard with her sisters when it got too hot, under the stars. Husband and/or I will sometimes sleep on our screen porch, as we have only a window A/C that hardly ever gets put in anymore – more fun on the porch!

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    3. I loved sleeping on the porch in the rain, the sound of the rainfall and the feeling of the raindrops getting atomized as they hit the screen

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  18. Like you, K-two, I have no memories of fun or special summers at all. For at least a decade, my family would make the 8-hour trek up to Long Lake to a small fishing resort. Dad and Steve loved the endless fishing, but as the only little girl around, I found little to do and was lonely. I remember summers in Ames, Iowa as humid, hot, and filled with the smells and sounds of endless home remodeling.

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      1. How’d you know about that?? Yes – it was the only watering hole in the whole state of Iowa (as far as I knew anyway). I recall having to wait a whole hour after a meal “because it’d cause cramps if you swam before the hour was up! I also recall hating to jump into the water because I’m an inch-by-inch water baby.

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    2. Oh, I had fun summers – swimming lessons at a local lake, riding our bikes all over town, softball on a makeshift field in our backyard, outside games with the neighborhood kids, etc. Just nothing that stands out as unique.

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  19. I find it instructive, and too late for the learning, that a living situation that I, as a parent, would have gone to great lengths to avoid putting my family through turns out to have been some of the best summers in your memory.

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  20. Hot days spent in the Rock County Public Library reading and reading. Week long visits to my farm cousins in Pipestone county or my paternal grandparents on the farm near Magnolia. I was lonelier in the summer, as an only child, but the library was a haven.

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  22. Since I decided to have two undergraduate college majors (psychology and social work) as well as a minor (biology) I had to take lots of summer courses. I really liked the campus in the summer when it was sort of deserted. It was peaceful and i could get a lot of work done.

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    1. I too loved summer school, for the same reason. I liked more dense, shorter classes, four weeks then. At the U I milked cows full time and took one or two classes. I used to joke that it was me and the nuns, several of whom I got to know. One I had in two classes one year and one class the next. I think U summer school selected out the liberal nuns. None were in habit, but you could tell. Loved my corner in Walker, my corner because so few were on campus.

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        1. Summer school at SIU was memorable because classes started at 7:30 AM. One young woman in one of my classes showed up every day in a trench coat – this when the temperature was hovering around 90º F. One day asked her why on earth she was wearing a coat in that heat. She answered by opening the coat; she was still in her PJs.

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    2. Renee, I worked for several years as an adviser at the U of MN. Those of us who were in the great bureaucracy of student aid used to love summers. “This is such a wonderful place,” we’d say, “until all those damned students are here.”

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  23. I remember one summer when I spent most of my free time exploring a nearby creek. It was always cool there because it had cliffs on both sides and I never tired of looking at the running water and the rocks and just wandering up and down the creek. But sometimes I got nervous looking at the caves in the cliff and worried that a bear would be hiding there. If I was CB’s son, I would have climbed up to the cave and rousted out any bears living there, but I was too chicken to do that.

    And I wonder now how it felt to be my mom – 4 kids and No Idea Where They Were a Lot of the Time. She never seemed worried about it, but did she worry a little, some of the time, and just never told us?

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  24. Tomorrow I am off for a summer adventure. In June, husband and I travelled to to Brookings, SD to bring son and DIL some potted Thai chilis, lemon grass, and Thai basil we had started for them. We were 200 miles from home in Jamestown, ND when husband exclaimed “we forgot the plants!” We sure had. Well, I am headed to Brookings tomorrow to deliver the plants. I will head to Grand Forks on Friday after retrieving daughter in Fargo, to watch her best friend sing the lead in a summer production of Der Fledermaus. I will get back home on Saturday.

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      1. I am making a list to guide me as I pack the van. I can never remember if it is die or der Fledermaus. I am so happy for a night st the opera.

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    2. Are you driving all of these miles by yourself, Renee? It has to be quite exciting to watch your daughter’s best friend perform in such a prominent role. Have fun, and drive carefully.

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      1. I love to drive. Husband just can’t appreciate opera, so he is staying home with the dog. I expect to see best friend on the stage at the Met some day. She is a treasure.

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  25. Even more exciting is that Corb Lund, who usually sings with the Hurtin Albertans, (Everything is better with some cows around ) is singing in our town later in August!

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    1. Dale says we are fresh out. I sent him a quickie but we will see if that gets up or we fake it here.
      The one I sent was on remembering g one kid from my childhood
      Ray dewberry
      My folks hated ray because he was manipulative but I thought he was great. What ever ray thought was cool I followed. Ray was a kid 2 or 3 years older than me and whil I remember lots of activities in the neighborhood with multiple kids I do remember lots of 1 on 1 time with ray playing cards playing catch, I remember getting into trouble multiple times for pulling out the surveyors sticks to hit rocks from the gravel driveway in a made up baseball game we had where if you hit it over the telephone line it was a 100 point hit, if it hit the ground before it hit the end of the driveway it was an out.
      Did you ever make up a game?
      Question of the day in case dale doesn’t post my ray dewberry quickie…. Or even if he does

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      1. Hi Baboons,
        Sorry to leave you hanging today. There was one post from VS in the hopper but it didn’t have a title and I got the sense it was not finished. In any case, a late night last night combined with an early morning and lots of work put me in a spot where I couldn’t do much to help – even though posts started coming in around the middle of the morning, it’s not appropriate for me to spend work time on a personal blog. Now that I’m home I see we have plenty of material for the next few days thanks to tim, VS and PJ. I’ll post one of these fresh ones tomorrow and we’ll begin again!

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        2. what are you doing at work that keeps you busy? kfai is the keeper of secrets as to who ides what or if you are even still there.is there news keeping you busy?
          thanks for giving me the quick blip to let us know we grained the tub this morning. 27 more coming your way

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  30. I really hate that my new devices can’t be trained to skip all these damn uppercase letters
    I feel violated every time I type a sentence
    Be thankful none of you chose such a vulnerable identity, I am betrayed every sentence.

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        1. Bingo. I pad and I phone. I can go back and lower case the first letter in a sentence but it corrects and I have to redo and it ends up being so cumbersome I can’t follow my sentence flow so I give up.
          I will figure it out because it matteres ee Cummings didn’t let the editors get him but he was per auto correct. I think even ee would have gotten brow beaten to publish upper case.
          No he wouldn’t
          i feel reenergized.
          i can do this.
          ( extra1 minute for last two sentences)

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  31. Evidently there wer plenty of times when there were 3 or 4 of us because I remember lots of games of playing hot box where two pieces of cardboard would be the bases and while two guys would be playing the 1st and second baseman and one guy pretending to be the pitcher One kid would try to steal a base without getting picked off. The pitcher would e ready to throw the ball to home plate ( but there was no catcher) and the runner would take a step or two off the bag and then make a bee line for second base. You would get in a rundown ( we called it the hot box) and go back and forth until you were either tagged out or made it to the base.
    My parents disliked the way ray would call himself safe or you out and be very passionate about it. That might be what I liked about him. Yeah he was wrong but he was passionate. Did you see huckabee over the weekend. How about the lion killer who offices 1 mile from my house. What a sorry sob he is.
    I will check back to see how the first day with no topic in line pans out. Steve Clyde BiR Renee vs Carolyn, we all did good now I think is the time to thank dale for 5 years without a miss. We made it almost two months… Fill the pipeline or die is the new trail mantra.

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      1. Our version of hot box was known as Chicken Base Bounce Out. Our backyard functioned as the softball field because it had the biggest open space. Home plate was on the east side next to the garage and under the front of the clothesline. First base was one pole of the swing set. There was a large pine tree with branches to the ground between home & first. Second base was one of mom’s perennials – don’t remember what it was – and we nearly killed it. A second pine tree was just off the baseline between first & second. A ball hit under either tree stopped the game while we lay on the ground with the bat to retrieve the ball. Tree #1 was just a strike but tree 2 was an automatic out. Third base was a dirt patch in front of the back door of the house. The pitcher stood about halfway between second and home. The west side (outfield) has a row of mature elm trees with a honeysuckle hedge behind them on the boulevard. Only one ball ever got stuck in an elm. A ball hit through the hedge and into the street was an automatic homer. Only one kitchen window was broken in all the years we used this field.

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    2. I posted one a couple of weeks ago that didn’t run (it had a Pluto theme so I thought maybe Dale didn’t want to double up after tim’s). I re-posted it and sent Dale a message…

      Have a couple in the works…

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      1. If you go to “My Site” and click on “Blogs Posts,” at the very top is a series of headings. There are “Drafts,” and Pending,” and one called “Scheduled.” The “Scheduled” is only visible if Dale has cleared it for publishing.

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  32. Just to let you know, Re my immediate future:
    Starting Saturday I cede control of my life for ten days, all focused on something Sandy and I did not want. Well, first Friday, I exchange my little Scion with my son-in-law’s full-sized Caravan. Friday we pick up my son, and daughter-in-law, and our 22 month old son we have not seen since he was three months old. Sunday and Saturday we are are a family of nine, doing some fun things. Tuesday we will have an open house in our apartment building community room, about 30 folks invited. Wednesday my son picks up his mother-in-law at the airport while I make gnocchis for 10 people. Thursday all ten of us head up to the North Shore to stay in a time share. We will some the San Diegans bits of the North Shore. One day up there we will have a second open house for about 30 folks in the basement of the church where I was pastor. Sunday we will come back here. All day Monday we will do some Twin Cities things my son wants, like Hell’s Kitchen. In the late evening they all fly back. We will go back to our dull lives, feeling duller for lack of son and grandson and daughter-in-law.
    Most of that time I will be absent. On the actual 50th anniversary day I will post a blog in re to it to wit, to naught. I plan in my blog to boast about how winderful we are to have done this, or not.

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      1. Not to mention the cleaning. But I spaced it out over 5 days. Sandy is pretty good this week, excitement, so she is doing the dusting and picky stuff. Dusting in a place with 200 carvings is not a small task.

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    2. Wow, that’s a lot to do, Clyde. I know how uneventful many days are for you, and then here comes a binge of talking and cooking and doing family stuff. I’ve been puzzling about the 22-month son you haven’t seen. I’ll bet he is a grandson. I hope this is a wonderful week for you.

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      1. Yeah, I see that is a mess. I had bad whole body cramping last night and much of it resides. Not from the cleaning, just hits me now and then. Gives me a bad headache, so not reading well. For one thing my son and GRANDSON JackJack fly in Saturday.

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    3. I got the impression that your 50th anniversary actually was the day that you made the comment was it last week what day is it exactly ?

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  33. I’ve been thinking of writing a piece about animals/pets but wonder if it is a topic that has been covered many times while I was absent. Please advise.

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  34. When we were kids we would vary board game rules. We invented backwards checkers only to discover it was already invented (be the first to lose all your pieces).

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  36. Hey everyone–

    It appears we do just fine without an official posting. We might need a fresh blank page eventually.

    My ‘hot box’ was the top of the haystack in the barn. haha– that last load and stuffing the last few bales into the peak was always fun. And at the very end, I’m standing at the elevator indicating 5 more bales, 2 more bales, ok, 2 more… 1 more… wait (while I rearrange it) OK, 1 more… ok, 1 more. ok, that’s it.
    Fun memories. Glad I don’t have to do it anymore. haha–

    This year I am anticipating a lot of straw so going to use the elevator for straw. That and my feet and knees seem to be worse and I don’t think I’ll be as agile as I have been for stacking.
    Straw goes in an open barn stacked only about 8 rows high. So usually we just throw them out the wagon and stack as I’m going.
    But if I get as much straw as I’m expecting I might have to stack higher. Back into the ‘hot box’ haha–

    OT from there… Kelly and I and daughter went to a class on ‘Energy Healing’ the other night. That was pretty fascinating.
    I’ll work on a blog about it.

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    1. Clyde – small town about 40 miles north of Minneapolis
      Tim – all of us hit lots of homers. We’re talking about a yard that was about 100 feet wide total.

      My mom’s 90th birthday is Sunday. My older sister from VA, her kids and their families from VA and MO are all at a rental lake home near Princeton. Get to meet my newest great nephew and nearly brand new great niece. Will be a crazy few days traveling back and forth for two open houses and celebrating other family birthdays. Fun but exhausting times.

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      2. cool k2
        we had a yard a street and a baseball diamond that was 2 blocks away or 8 yards if you cut through diagnolay. people would shake ther fists as we cut through and we would let them. they yard was ok for the hot box stuff and made up football games and hide and seek and red rover and duck duck gray duck and mumbly peg but we needed the ball field for ball even if there were only 5 or 6 of us. 3 on a tam with the other 2 playing in the field unless someone got a hit then the field got a little sparse. thats how we learned big kids with little ones, infield out field the neighbor hood from south of the field against the neighborhood to the north. it was a great time to be in the burbs
        enjoy the family this weekend. its nice of minnesota to cooperate and show off. nicest july august transition ever.

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    2. im thinking the straw bale maze might be a fun endevor ben we talked about it a couple weeks ago. much cooler than a corn maize ( pun) how many would you need? would it take away the usability afte rthe halloween crown was done doing it? is halloween the only time for maze popularity? is there an apple orchard or something you could partner with?

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      1. tim, they can’t be outside or they wouldn’t be much good after getting rained on.
        You’d have to stack 3 or 4 high to prevent people just crawling over or looking over to the exits.
        I can think of easier ways to do it than straw bales.

        This year I only have about 50 bales left over from last years straw. Last year I put up 750 bales. Half went to a strawberry farm in the fall.
        Straw bale gardeners took most of the rest and the last bit went to people using it as mulch or as bedding for animals.
        Thirty or Forty years ago, it was all used for bedding.
        This year I’m estimating 850 – 1000 bales. Just depends on the weather once it’s cut and combined and if I can get it baled without being rained on and spoiled.

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  37. This is as close as I can remember to making up a game –
    In fifth grade a group of 5 of us would act out “Little Women”, make up our own plot lines after we’d used up the ones in the book. I came to this later than the others, so I was Marmee to the four sisters. I still remember who was who, and the personalities of the girls actually fit their roles.

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  41. My summers were not much different than all of yours, but the one where we lived in our 17 ft Winnebago, while the lake house was being built, was the one I enjoyed the most. I told my husband, let’s forget the house and just stay in the trailer. He said you can do that, but I’m moving into the house when it’s done We had 25 happy years there. “Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.”.

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  42. my cousins dans grandma on his moms side (his dad and mine are brothers) lived in dl and got cancer and had to come the cities for the summer to do treatment. we swapped houses and got to live on his lake for 6 or 8 weeks. raised hell with my little league schedule but the summer was really cool. our lake had 3 people we nknew on it but every lake in the chain had 3 or 4 or 5 people we knew. water sking, bike rifing sailing fishing girls firecrackers trips to fargo to visit the the old sod even though no one is home in fargo in the summer. everyone goes to dl. they had a million kids but no one played ball. all boating sking and biking a little gold and lots of expeditions to back road connections to someone elses lake. social scene for 12 year olds.
    my kids dont know what they are missing.

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