MY COWBOY DAYS

 This is me with my grandmother Burke at the age of 3 or 5 some time between 1948-50 when we lived on Villa Street on the west side of Willows, in the Sacramento Valley.   Wearing cowboy outfits was my favorite thing at the time.  My ambition at this stage of life was to grow up and be a cowboy.  

My grandmother was born in Alabama, maybe in 1898 and was the youngest of six siblings.   Some time in the early 1900's her family moved to Alberta, Canada to work on the railroads.   Her family had a farm near Red Deer, Alberta where she learned to ride a horse.  She was on the girl's basket ball team in high school and shortly there after married my grandfather.    Their first son, Vernon was born I think around 1917 and my dad was born in 1922 in Lacombe, Alberta.   Sometime around 1928 they moved to southern California and got into the real estate business.    Vernon died around the age of 11 from pneumonia and my dad came down with pneumonia a few years later, but survived after they cut an opening between two ribs in his back to drain his lungs.   There was no penicillin back then.  

In the 1950's we made a couple of road trips up to Alberta for family reunions.  On one of these trips we stayed at a farm near Red Deer where grandma Burke's older sister lived with her husband.   They had running water in the old two story farm house and it had just been wired for electricity, but still required the use of an outhouse.   One day on my own at the age of  8 or 9, I climbed over a fence to explore a small lake on the farm and to my surprise I disturbed a bull that was laying down in the nearby woods.   I ran back to the fence just in time to avoid the bull hot on my behind.    It brought an instant end to my desires to be a cowboy.