We moved here when I was one and a half. My earliest memory is when we were driving up Long Canyon and a kitchen pot fell out of the back of the pickup down into the creek. We stopped and retrieved it. I remember asking why we stopped. It is funny but the man I asked, who was driving, was the man who molested me. Isn't it ironical that my first memory ever was of this man? My parents were in the pickup ahead of us. Leonard and I both were in the pickup with Ray Carlisle.
My memories of this place are very idealicle. It really was wonderful. Us kids were all over the mountains. Very much the Great Explorers. I think the saddest time of my life was when we had to go back to the ranch in the winter after we started school.
One of the things really different was that we had a pet deer, Bambi. The people at the mine before us had raised her from a fawn. They had mistreated her and she hated kids and would attack us if we were away from an adult. that didn't stop us from loving her though.
We put a bell around her neck and painted her back red every hunting season. (So she would have her red hunters colors on.) This was my father's very good idea. We stopped all the many hunters as they came into the area and asked them to not shoot Bambi. The hunters thought we were so cute they all promised to not hurt her. and they never did. |
