Heat Waves and Cold Showers. (Timeline: 1950s & 1960s, Present)

The recent heat wave, and the need to take frequent, cool showers, made me think of the summers in Denmark. The heating system and the hot water in our apartment building depended entirely on viceværten (literal translation: "Vice Landlord"; the closest in American terms would probably be "building super".) The building, which had 12 stairwells with 10 units in each, plus several businesses in the cellars, was heated via hot water radiators. The water in the radiators, as well as the hot water we bathed in etc. all came from a HUGE boiler in the cellar. There might have been several such boilers; I only remember the one; located close to our "opgang" (literal: "up walk"; i.e. stairwell). It was the job of viceværten to keep the boiler stoked with coal around the clock. Truckloads of coal were delivered frequently, and everything was set up pretty efficiently, at least by the methods available back then. All us kids were a bit afraid of viceværten; he'd holler at us all the time when we were playing in the open space in the center of the building.

Viceværten did not have a helper; at least not that I ever knew. We had the same man all the time I grew up, and he had a son named John, about my age. Of course viceværten had to have a vacation every year, so for an entire month every summer we had no hot water. The radiator was no problem in the summer, and we could always heat water on the stove to wash dishes and faces, but those showers! Brrrrrrr......

We didn't have a bathtub. The tiny bathroom consisted of a shower; a wash bowl, a mirror and a shelf for our tooth brushes etc. It had been retro-fitted in a corner of the kitchen before I was born, and since my family took showers often, we seemed to always have problems with the floor leaking. We had the floor redone several times that I can remember. The toilet was located off a corner of the bedroom, and was only a toilet; no wash bowl.



The above picture is from Microsoft Virtual Earth and shows my apartment building as it looks now. The half building shown on the right belonged to the same landlord, and I think was also serviced by our vicevært. The arrow shows the window to our living room. The windows in the kitchen and bedroom and the tiny one in the toilet all opened out to "gården"; the open space in the middle of the building. When I grew up, there was a huge "guldregn" (literal: Gold Rain") tree in the middle of gården; it was taller than the building! I am not sure what the American name for guldregn is, but here is a picture of a guldregn tree:

Circus Schumann. (Timeline: 1950 to 1964)

One more early horse memory was our annual visit to Cirkus Schumann, a family run circus which was headquartered in the middle of København, only a block or two from Tivoli Gardens. They would have daily shows all through the summer. They always had several numbers with horses, and their horses, other than an occassional pony, were all ARABIANS! Beautiful and smart ARABIANS! They did all sorts of neat stuff, like liberty drills where they would walk on their hind legs, walk sideways, walk with the front feet on the edge of the ring, dance, stand on a platform with the front and walk around the platform with the hind legs, etc. They would do "dressage", i.e. dancing while being ridden. They would do vaulting. The perforing horses were always stallions, and they would work alone or in teams. They had a white (grey) team and a black team, and a few bays. I particular remember one, named "Sabu". When I first noticed him he worked with the black team, but then he started turning grey, so for a few years he worked solo, before he turned light enough to work with the white team. So I was brought up believing that Arabians were intelligent and very trainable animals, rather than the flaky, nutso creatures they have a reputation for being here in the US. At the time I think the Cirkus Schumann Arabians were pretty much the only Arabians in Denmark. Never thought about it as a child, but I assume they came mostly from the studs in Poland and England.

There were of course all sorts of other acts; clowns, high wire walkers, trapeze acts, and all the other typical circus acts. One year they even had a couple of GIRAFFES, but the acts with the horses were always my favorites.



I found this pic on Google Earth. The Cirkus building still looks pretty much as I remember it, except for that awful purple "WALLMANS" placard.

An Audie Murphy Memory. (Timeline: 1965)

One of my earliest visits to Audie's house (I think my second time, but I am not sure), he told me he had a horse racing the next day. He also told me that his racing colors (the colorful shirts the jockeys wear) were gold and black. Being still new in this country, I didn't realize that there were races for horses other than Thoroughbreds, so I arranged to swap my next day off so I could go to the races the following day, for the first time in this country. So I headed to Hollywood Park.

Surprisingly enough, Hollywood Park is nowhere near Hollywood, which I didn't know at the time. I finally found it after having to change buses several times. Bought a program, which lists all the horses entered in each race, including jockeys, owners, racing colors, etc. No horses owned by Audie and no colors like what Audie had described. There was one with black and tangerine racing colors. No reference to Audie Murphy as the owner, but I assumed that the ownership was a pseudonym, for obvious reasons. No such luck!

A bit of a disappointment that I never got to see Audie's horse running, but I still managed to enjoy myself. I only found out later that Audie Murphy's race horses were all Quarter Horses, and they race at a different track than the Thoroughbreds.

What Audie Murphy meant to me. (Timeline: My Life)

In a way one might say that Audie Murphy's influence in my life started before I was born, though of course I didn't realize it at the time. My country, Denmark, was occupied by Hitler's troops during WWII. My father was a policeman and was therefore sent to a German concentration camp. If it hadn't been for Audie and all his brave fellow soldiers of the Allied Forces, who knows when, or even if, my father would have been released. One thing I have in common with the sons and daughters of a lot of policemen is that I was born just about 9 months after their release from the concentration camps. One of my friends as a teenager was a girl also named Eva, also a policeman's daughter, and born one day after me.

My first exposure to Audie was at a movie theatre. My mother and I went to a Saturday late night double feature. The second feature was 'Den Vilde Rytter' ('Cast a Long Shadow'). I was impressed with him, so when I had a chance a few weeks later to see him in another movie, I jumped at it. That movie was none other than 'Helvede Retur' ('To Hell and Back'), which was being shown as a limited re-release in one theatre in the center of Copenhagen. That did it for me! Not only was he a good actor, but he was a REAL hero, not just a pretend hero. AND he was also a horse lover like myself. I was determined to find out more about this fascinating person. I searched for information everywhere I could. I haunted libraries, newspapers, news agencies, and the film companies that released his movies in Denmark. One of the results of this search was a pretty substantial collection of pictures, both from the films and otherwise.

A couple of years later I had a chance to move to the United States. Through an agency I found a job as a mother's helper for a family in Whittier, CA. who had 3 boys aged 3, 4, & 6. Because of the waiting list it took 10 months for my visa to clear, but FINALLY, just before Christmas 1964, I was standing on American soil.

Thus it started. Now I was actually in the same city as this fascinating person. All I had to do was to find him. "Maps of Movie Stars' Homes" didn't help. SAG didn't help. Universal Studios didn't help. All I had was a picture of Audie and his two boys outside their home that happened to show the street number. Not the street name, only the number. Every week, on my day off, I would take the bus to a different area in Hollywood or Beverly Hills, walk through the streets looking for that house number and checking whether the house that bore that number looked anything like the corner of the house in the picture. At one point I wrote a letter to one of Audie's co-stars that DID have his home listed in the "Maps of Movie Stars' Homes", Dan Duryea, asking if he could help me in my quest. He sent back an autographed picture and a very nice letter, saying that he didn't have Audie's address, but believed he lived "somewhere in the Toluca Lake Area". This gave me a place to focus on. Finally, one day, I found it! The house had changed a lot, there was now a brick and wrought iron fence around it, but the corner of the neighbor's house still looked identical to the one in the picture. I went back home feeling pretty good, and determined to come back the next week when I wasn't all tired and dusty.

Finally the day came. You wouldn't believe the butterflies in my stomach. I had come 7,000 miles for this, walked I don't know how many miles for this, but the hardest of all was those last few feet up to that front door. I don't know where I got the courage, my knees were shaking. I told myself that he probably wouldn't be home. I told myself that he had probably moved since the picture had been taken. I knocked on the door, and THERE HE WAS! After stammering a bit I finally got up the courage to talk to him. This gracious person invited me into his home, introduced me to his family and the dog, showed me around the house, talked to me just as if I was his equal. I had brought a couple of small presents for him from Denmark. He seemed pleased. He asked me how I had found the house, so I showed him the picture and told him about all the walking.



We talked for a while, and then I decided I'd better head for home before I wore out my welcome. He gave me his phone number and told me I was welcome to come back any time.

I visited from time to time. Not really often, I didn't want to be too pushy. Sometimes he was out of town, so I visited with Pam. I remember one time I was there and he had left his saddle on the railing by the stairs. He was in Israel at the time, I believe working on a movie. (Hindsight tells me it must have been 'Trunk to Cairo'.) Pam had just left the saddle where he'd put it, not realizing that it was NOT an appropriate place for a saddle for any long period of time, the skirt was getting all bent up. Funny what sticks in one's mind. The saddle was tan and with a basket weave pattern.

When I had been in Whittier for close to 5 years, the family I was working for decided that their boys were old enough so they no longer needed a live-in babysitter / housekeeper / jack-of-all-trades. I don't REMEMBER mentioning it to Pam, but I must have, because Audie called and told me that some horsey friends in Ontario were looking for someone. He came up to the house to pick me up and we drove out to see the people. It was a big Thoroughbred farm. They said I could bring my 3 horses, they could use my Arab stallion as a teaser stallion. I didn't like that much, I don't think it is fair to a stallion to ask him to get all excited over a girl, only to see her walk over to fool around with another guy. Therefore, after some soul searching, I didn't take the job. That was the last time I saw Audie.

Soon after, I found a temporary job with some other horsey people, room and board only for helping with their horses. I had to take a factory job to feed my OWN horses. I struggled for a while, had no time or energy to go visiting. It was a rough period of my life.

One evening, after I had been out riding, my mare wouldn't eat her dinner. I sat in the car with the radio on, keeping an eye on her. That was when I heard that Audie's plane was missing. We all know how that came out. I clipped the notices in the papers, but I never read them, just packed them down with all the other stuff. I pushed everything away, refusing to face the fact that this man was gone forever. My pain was such that I couldn't even face his wife, so I never sent my condolences to her or the boys. How utterly, utterly selfish of me! I was thinking only of my own pain, rather than that of his family, who must have been suffering so many times worse.

I bummed around for a few years before I finally found a good profession and was able to stabilize my life again. The horses were always cared for though. I'd live off pork and beans and later rice and potatoes just so they could eat. I dragged the boxes with Audie's pictures and other stuff with me wherever I moved to, but I never opened them. For many years I couldn't even bear to watch his movies when they were shown on TV. Finally, almost 20 years after his death, I've been able to, and I now record his movies any time I get the chance.

It still hurts. When I wrote the above down for The Audie Murphy Research Foundation some years back I had a big box of kleenex right next to me; it was much needed at the time and my eyes are misting up again as I am going over what I wrote.

Note: If you click on the title of this blog entry, it will take you to the Audie Murphy Memorial Website.

High School Final Exams. (Timeline: circa 1962)

Most people cram for their exams. Me, I always went in cold; relying on memory from lectures. I particularly remember the Oral Exam in Physics. Since my last name starts with a "D" and they call us in in alpha order, I was the first one in. I drew the internal workings of the hand water pump. I was able to draw a creditable illustration while explaining how the different parts worked. It earned me an UG- (A-); the best grade in my class.




After I got back out to the waiting room I listened to the others grilling each other; mentioning several subjects I had NO CLUE about! Pure luck I went in BEFORE I overheard this, or I would have been nervous and probably not done as well, even on the pump, which I had down pat!

I have NEVER heard of anyone that got an A in oral exams in Denmark, and A+ simply doesn't exist, so in practice, the A- is the best grade possible in orals. One can get UG (A) in WRITTEN exams, as in Algebra, if one gets ALL the answers right, but not in oral, where the presentation counts as much as the technical knowledge. We are brought, one at a time, into a room with a blackboard, and there are 3 examiners there; your teacher of that subject and two teachers (I suppose) from other schools, neither of which you have ever met. Your grade is posted later, not while you are in the exam room.

I did equally well in math that year; drew a rather convoluted algebra formula. I just kept on blabbering as my mind churned, and wrote it all down on the blackboard as I went on. Arrived at the correct solution, obviously, and I didn't freeze at all, so I landed another UG-; again the best in my class. Math and Physics were always my best subjects.

Dunno what they do in Denmark now, but back then, the grades were UG ("usædvaneligt godt" i.e. A or outstanding), UG-, MG+, MG ("meget godt" i.e. B or very good), MG-, G+, G ("godt" i.e. C or average). There were several lower grades as well, but I don't remember them. The lowest grade I ever got on a report card (quarterly, and a parent had to sign it) was a G+ in Geography, and I was SOOOO mortified when I had to show it to my mother! It never happened again!

Memorial Day. (Timeline: 1971/2010)

Thank You, American troops and troops of all nations!



Especially remembering my personal hero, AUDIE MURPHY, who came through WW II as the most decorated soldier of that war, only to die in a plane crash on Memorial Day weekend many years later. He was a great influence in my life, and I am proud that I could call him "Friend". Audie is buried at Arlington.



The statue of Audie is located in Greenville Texas, in front of the Audie Murphy/American Cotton Museum.

Dyrehaven & Bakken (Timeline: Late 1940s, early 1950s)

Another early horse memory was the occassional treasured trips to "Bakken", which is an amusement park located near Klampenborg, about 8 or 10 miles north of where we lived in København (Copenhagen). Bakken was located in a corner of the Royal Forest "Dyrehaven" (The Deer Park); which was a HUGE area, open to all, but which did not allow any motorized vehicles. Most of it was woods, but there were several open areas, a couple of smallish lakes, and even a golf course and a castle of sorts, called "Eremitagen". And lots of deer and smaller wildlife. You could walk or ride your bicycles around, or hire a horse and carriage. Or ride horses, if you were lucky enough to know any or knew where to rent one. At Bakken, where my parents often took my brother and myself when we were little, there was a pony ride, and I would always pick the biggest pony to ride, an Icelandic named Basse. I used to have a picture of my brother and myself riding the ponies, me, at three or four, on Basse and my 2 year older brother on Buster, another somewhat smaller Icelandic. Dunno what happened to the pic :-( I haven't seen it in YEARS!

One would get to Bakken and Dyrehaven from my home either on bicycles or on the S-Train to Klampenborg and then walk. When we were little, we would ride on child-seats either in front or in back of my parents' bicycles, but my 2 year older brother Bjørn and I both got our own full size bikes for our 6th birthday, and we soon learned to ride them! No training wheels for us! We had blocks on the pedals to begin with, so we could reach, and my dad put a broomstick behind the seat when we were learning, so he could grab the broomstick to balance us. Most folks, including my family, didn't have cars, so our transportation would be the bicycles, the trams that were plentiful all over København, or the S-train, which covered a wider area but wasn't as handy as the trams. On rare occassions we'd use a taxi, but they were expensive, so we tried to avoid them.

Note: Clicking on the title of this blog entry will take you to a site with several pics from Dyrehaven.

Horse Meat. (Timeline: Late 1950s)

This is largely my comments from a discussion on a list I belong to. We started out discussing what happened to the cavalry horses after the two world wars, and drifted into the eating of horse meat.

In Denmark, when I grew up, it was not unheard of to eat horse meat. We would mostly eat beef, pork, or fish (most often cod), but all kinds of meat was available. I have loved horses since I was a toddler, and my mother respected that I did NOT want to eat horse meat, but I know she and my brother did. Not often, but occassionally. My brother used to tease me about it, too! I have tried whale, shark (both fishy tasting; ugh!), octopus, eel, elephant, duck, goose, and I can't think of what else. My mother wanted us to have different experiences, and did her best for us within her very limited budget.

I don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with eating horse meat. I CHOOSE to not eat my friends, or anyone related to my equine friends; however remote. I also choose to not knowingly eat meat from any other animal that I have known personally. A few of my friends have raised cows or pigs for slaughter, but I have always stayed away from eating those. Heck; I even have a hard time eating the eggs from the chickens that seem to hang around my barn from time to time. In my defense, I was city bred and raised.

Even though I, as a rule, don't think the less of people who eat horse meat, or even dog or cat meat for that matter, I remember one incident from when I was a teenager that really rubbed me the wrong way. Hanging around with the ponies at Fortunen, we also had contact with several thoroughbred trainers that had stables nearby, and of course we knew the horses too. One of Brandy's fellow racers, who was stabled a block from the pony stable, had gotten injured while racing. I can't recall his name, but I can still picture him in my mind. He was chunky as racehorses go; looked almost quarterhorsey. A dark bay with a small star and one white fetlock. Well, it was decided that he couldn't recover enough to make it back to the race track, and he hadn't done well enough on the track to be valuable at stud, so they had him slaughtered, and they ATE him! I didn't much mind the slaughter, but I didn't like the idea of them eating an animal THEY had cared for for several years, ever since he was a long yearling. To my way of thinking that was crossing the line. Especially talking and joking about it. They should at least have kept it to themselves!

Boarding School. (Timeline: 1952 to 1958)

OK, this story doesn't have any horses, though there are a couple of donkeys :-)

First, the back story: When I was six, my dad, who was a policeman, left us after throwing my mom down two flights of stairs. My mother got custody of us kids. My mom would go to work early, so we'd get ourselves ready and off to school, which was only a few blocks away. We usually each went our own way, though I was only six and still in first grade. After school we'd walk over to the after-school place. I don't know what the American equivalent would be, but I'd guess it would be somewhat like kindergarten, but for older kids whose parents worked. I think it was a government-run facility. It had a fenced-in playground with swings and teeter-totters etc. and several large play rooms with toys and books. And adult supervision of course. Fairly loosely run; they didn't have roll call or anything. You'd show up after school, and either walk home or get picked up by a parent.

I guess I'd better mention . . . Even though we were technically left to ourselves in the morning to get ready for school, we had "Niller", Fru (Mrs.) Nielsen, who lived in the apartment next to us. There were 2 apartments per floor in each stairwell, and Fru Nielsen, who was a widow lady living by herself, had been our babysitter, more-or-less, since we were tiny. She was only a knock on the door or on the wall away, and she had keys and would sometimes peek in to make sure all was in order.

One day my brother didn't show up at the after-school place. We didn't walk there together; we got out from school at different times, and we didn't hang around together, so I didn't even realize he was missing until my mom came to pick us up. We didn't know for DAYS what had happened to my brother; as you can imagine, my mother was FRANTIC!!! We finally found out that my dad had picked my brother up outside the school and taken him to his place. Since my mother had custody of us, it was technically a kidnapping, but my dad, who had connections, never got in trouble for it, and it took about 6 months before we got my brother back.

Anywho, a few years later my mother decided to get us out of town for a while. Partly to get us away from my dad, who she was afraid of, and partly to give us an adventure; a memory to treasure. She located a boarding school that wintered in Spain, so at the beginning of fifth grade for me and seventh grade for my brother, we went off to the country. The first couple of months we were at a 'herresæde'; I guess it would be a country estate. A large house with extensive grounds. For us city kids it was an adventure all it's own. Fields, cows, trees, lots of fresh air, and an apple orchard; all within play/exploring distance. It wasn't cheap; my mom worked 2 full time jobs to pay for it, something we kids knew, but didn't think about.

The teachers at the school were not very good; looking back I am surprised the school wasn't closed down for incompetence, but we were treated OK, though I suppose we weren't supervised adequately; we were running around pretty wildly.

A couple of months into the school year the entire school packed up; lock, stock, and kids and adults, into several buses. Beds as well as luggage tied to the top of the buses, and off we went. Through Shælland; ferry to Fyn, then driving through Jylland and down to Tyskland (Germany), Frankrig (France), and Spanien (Spain). I don't remember everything about the trip, which took three days, but a few things stuck. In France, some of the public restrooms didn't have toilets with seats etc, but only foot pads and a hole in the ground. You were expected to squat to do your business! Another memory from France; we stopped on a hill outside Paris and could see the Eiffel tower in the distance.

Once we arrived in Llinas Del Valles (not sure of the correct spelling), we were all unpacked into a large house. The girls had the 3rd floor, which had several bedrooms; the boys had the second floor, where they were in a large room. To begin with, we didn't have enough beds for everyone, so we'd share, two to a bed, head to toe. Later we had more beds shipped in, so we'd each have our own beds. I think the buses went back for the rest of the stuff. Poor planning, but an 11 year old doesn't care about that!

Llinas was a small place; only a village I suppose, and our house was the biggest in the area. We were a bit north of Barcelona. There were mountains all around; a river with bamboo growing wild at the bank, and lots of sheep everywhere. I particularly remember a lot of tile; mostly in pastel greens & blues and white. There were tiles in the rooms; floors and walls, there were tiles in the other buildings; there were tiles in the ruin of a small round tower close by; down by the river. Tiles everywhere! From what we understood, the tower had been wrecked during the Spanish civil war, and it was open, so we'd go explore it too. There was a swimming pool close by too; open to the public. No life guard though.

Like it had been back home, we weren't very well supervised. Classes were pretty much hit-and-miss and didn't keep us from exploring the neighborhood. We weren't starved, but the food supply was pretty sparse; we seemed to always be hungry. I remember a couple of instances where we would 'appropriate' some sugar and butter and a frying pan from the kitchen and take off up to the mountain where we would build a fire and make caramel from our booty.

It was COLD in Spain! Not as cold as in Denmark, but that huge house was not adequately heated, so we were cold much of the time. One time the boys actually built a FIRE on the tile floor in the boys' dorm!

Being starved for horse company I soon found a couple of donkeys. One was tethered at the roadside close by to graze. I'd go see him and pet him pretty often, and once in a while I was able to mooch a bread crust or other goody for him. The other was being driven around town by a young Spaniard. I soon made friends with him, and he'd let me ride in the cart. He took care of a flock of sheep; would herd them out to graze in the morning and back into the stable at night. Sheep STINK!!! At least those sheep did! The fun riding around in the donkey cart came to a screeching halt one day, when the guy decided to try to feel me up. He didn't insist when I didn't like him touching me, but I still decided that I'd better not hang around with him any more, so after that I only had the grazing donkey as a friend. That, too, came to an end; the donkey BIT me in the leg. HARD!!! It barely broke skin, but it must have done some damage; to this day I do not have any feeling in that area on my leg.

Oh well; there were so many other adventures. Sometimes I would go swimming in the pool. Not too many others would; it was after all WINTER, but even when the puddles in the streets would be frozen over it wouldn't stop me. Heck, after all I AM from Viking stock! As long as you keep moving, the cold water would be bearable, and indeed quite enjoyable, but I was often alone. One time I found the lower jawbone of an animal in the shallows of the river, which really wasn't much of a river; more of a large stream, really. My guess is that the jawbone was from a goat or a sheep, but I never was sure.

One of the two jobs my mom had at the time was in a factory that made cookies and waffles. When they first fired up the big ovens, the first batch was often not quite up to standards, so the workers were allowed to bring them home. My mom would sometimes send big packages of these cookies and waffles to the school, but they would mostly disappear before they found their way to us kids {sigh}. She would also send 'care packages' directly to my brother and myself.

We didn't have much money available, so our shopping was pretty limited, but I remember some absolutely delicious licorice sticks. Americans have NO IDEA about REAL LICORICE!!!!! I miss it a lot; haven't had any good licorice since the last care package from my mom; a dozen or so years ago. However, the chocolate in Spain was AWFUL! Yuck! Tasted like it had soap in it.

We, of course, didn't speak Spanish, and none of the Spaniards spoke Danish, but we didn't seem to have much trouble communicating with the locals anyway. There was one young man in the village who spoke English, which helped a little. Not much to me; this was supposed to be my first year of learning English. We called him "Englænderen" (The Englishman), though of course he wasn't really. One of our 'teachers' was either Spanish or married to a Spaniard; I am not sure which, but she was the only one who spoke adequate Spanish. Her name was something Lopez something De Rey something. Mile long name! One would think that the school would set up a class in Spanish for us kids, having the teacher available and all. But NOOOO.... No such luck!

A lot of us went to Midnight Mass on Christmas. My very first experience with a Catholic church! It was very interesting; yet another adventure. Other than that, I don't remember much about that Christmas.

We were able to take day-trips to Barcelona. A bus ride of a bit over an hour would get us there; I went twice. I even got to see a real bull fight! Didn't like it much. The horses were beautiful, but I HATED it when the bulls tried to gore the horses. The horses were well padded, but still; it was awful. And I cried buckets when they killed the bull! I left after the first kill; couldn't take it! But I got to see some of the fabulous sights in Barcelona.

Some time after Christmas my mom came down and joined the staff for the rest of our stay. That was even better! She joined us on the second trip to Barcelona; the one with the bull fight. We brought home several souvenirs. One that I specifically remember was a leather wine 'bottle'. It was a typical souvenir, with a painting of a Barcelona sight on the side. We also had plenty of chance to taste the local wine. Red wine, sorta sour. Didn't like it much.

I spent my 12th birthday in Spain. Don't remember much about it. Soon after that, the latter part of March, we headed back home, again in buses. One of the kids, Caesar, had broken his leg a short while before. He had the entire back seat of 'my' bus to himself, so he could keep the leg elevated on the seat. I can't remember his real name; we called him Caesar because his haircut looked like that of Julius Caesar.

When we got home, my brother and I never went back to the country home of the school. My mom, by now QUITE aware of the sad lack of proper education, pulled us out and put us back in public school for the rest of the school year. Different school this time; dunno why, but all new kids. It was a struggle to catch up to the rest of the class! I managed to not be put back at the end of the year, but my brother, who didn't really like to dig into the books, had to repeat his grade, so after that he was only one grade ahead of me rather than the two.

Actually, I was never all that good at STUDYING, but I liked to LEARN, and I soaked up everything easily. So much so that the following year I managed to get WAAAYYY ahead of my class, especially in math; along with Physics my favorite subject. I got to be VERY good at "X plus Y divided by Z" {grin}

My memory of the time in Spain is a positive one; I thought it was a WONDERFUL experience, but my brother seems to have been in a totally different place; he remembers it as something awful, and he has never forgiven our mother for it. I totally can't get my mind around his attitude!

The Whittier Quad Pet Fair. (Timeline: 1966)

Another memory of Bahldin, my first horse. They were having a pet fair at the Whittier Quad, the smaller of the two shopping malls in Whittier, and the one closest to where we lived. We decided it would be fun to join, so Debbie, the cousin of the boys I was taking care of, entered Bahldin in the "Largest Pet" category. Sorry for the poor quality of the newspaper clipping; it IS, after all more than 40 years old. It was quite a trick getting a decent scan!

My entry at the pet fair was "Buddy O", the largest of my Sea Monkeys; named after Buck Owens' son. I was a country/western music fan back then, and Buck Owens and the Buckaroos were my favorites. I had most of their albums. Still have them!

Buddy O won first place as the "Smallest Aquatic Pet". His closest competitor was a baby guppy; at least 5 times his size. Some of you might remember Sea Monkeys; they were a form of brine shrimp. One would get them as eggs in a kit, and when they were exposed to water the eggs would hatch. They would supposedly grow to be an inch long, but mine never did, and I decided not to replace them. The aquarium that came with the kit had an enlargement glass, so one could actually SEE them. Sorry, no pics of Buddy O, who was about the size of this: I

Surprise, surprise! Sea Monkeys are still around, after all those years! I thought it was just a fad of the times, but when I googled the web, I found quite a few links to them, in case anyone is curious.