My Day in the Woods
As I have previously written, I was in the sixth grade when my father died. In the summer of 1970, between the seventh and eighth grades, Mom took our family on a vacation to visit my Dad’s brother, Tom and his family. I believe now that, by this simple act, she was trying to provide a “normal” childhood for her kids. Uncle Tom was a logger and earned a good living as a timber faller. He lived with his wife, Rosie and their children, Tommy, Kenny and Tina, in Happy Camp, CA. The population of their town was under 1,000 and it is located west of Yreka on Highway 96 in a remote area near the Klamath River. That vacation was one of the most fun and exciting things our family had ever done. Several of those days, Mom and Aunt Rosie took all of us kids to a great swimming hole on the Klamath River. We took a picnic lunch and spent the entire day there. We went swimming, explored up and down the river and skipped rocks on the water. Someone had tied a two by four foot board to a tree br