Book Entry 77: 1968 Our Honeymoon Home

Larry’s folks were always such a blessing to me.  They accepted me as their daughter and never treated many any differently.  Del had a little 800 foot home build for us at 14436 Lombardy Rd.  It was on the backside of his property.  We were close to them but still separated and private.  It was a beautiful little house.  It had a kitchen, two small bedrooms, one bathroom, and a nice living room. 

Once the mess of all our wedding gifts was gone and everything was put away it was perfect.  It stayed perfect too!  I didn’t have anything to do but keep it clean, cook, and help Larry.   I remember John Hoino’s wife saying our house looked like it was in a magazine because I kept it so perfectly.  That changed later when babies started arriving!

Del gave Larry some old smudge pots and Alpha helped me spray-paint them pretty colors and put Pansies and Marigolds in them to decorate our yard.  The pots were no longer used in the fields and there were hundreds of them.  Alpha helps me pick out several that weren’t too badly dented.  

The pots didn’t look like the ones in this photo when I got them.  They were simple rectangle pots which flared out a bit so the top of the pot was a few inches bigger than the bottom.  They were metal and had been filled with oil many times.  The oil was thick on the inner sides of the pots. 

When I first saw them I was discouraged but Alpha was a trooper.  First she washed and spray painted the outside of the pots a dark green.  Then, she scraped down around the top of the inside of one for about three inches.  When she added dirt and flowers the ugly inside disappeared!  I felt like I’d hit it rich!  I talked Alpha into helping me choose several more. 

Larry was so busy.  He’d get up at five to work in the fields.  He’d come home about nine and clean up for his classes at Stanislaus State.  He’d be home by two and go to the fields again until supper time around six.  After dinner was homework, straightening his shop, or helping Del with a ranch chore or two.

 Somehow Larry got a little extra money from time to time to spruce up the yards.  Over the next year we added a small front fence and lawn.  The backyard had a fence too was nice sized.  We put in several plants in back and more flowering plants in the front. 

                            

I didn’t mind that we started out with nothing.  I didn’t mind the waiting between shopping trips for groceries or clothing or my constant gardening ideas.  I did mind the gophers!  I remember Larry setting traps for gophers.  He even taught me how to use a small shotgun, which I got very good at, to shoot the varmints.  Sometimes when the dirt at the opening of the mound would move I could tell a gopher was just under the ground.  I’d estimate how far back he was and push my shovel into the dirt as hard as I could chopping the gopher in half.  Living in the country can toughen a person up.  I didn’t want to kill anything but those gophers wanted my garden and I wasn’t going to let them have it!                    

The sandy ground at our home was nothing like the dirt in Hughson.  In Hughson dad would need to wait five or six days after irrigating to drive anything into the field.  Larry could irrigate in the morning and drive on the same ground in the afternoon.  

One day Larry saw me waiting with my shovel at the opening of a gopher hole behind our shop.  He laughed at me and said, “Get the hose by the shed and stick it in the hole and drown him.”  Of course, I did it.  I stuck the hose in the ground, turned it on, and started feeding more and more hose down the hole.  It was a long hose but before I knew it the whole thing was in the ground!  

Larry had a peculiar grin on his face when he said, “I guess he got away, you’d better put the hose back where it belongs now.”  The joke was on me.  That soft sand had just sucked that hose in and now there was no pulling it back out.  I tugged and tugged.  Finally Larry walked up with a pair of pruning shears and cut the hose off at the ground.  I felt foolish and knew at once a trick had been played on me.  When I got over the humiliation I thought it was pretty funny too.  Larry let me take the six or eight feel of hose that was left for my garden.

                                   

Our driveway was very long.  I loved turning onto our driveway and watching our home as we’d get closer and closer.  That little house just seemed so wonderful and perfect and full of love.  I still think it was!