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We were a camping family.  It was a cheap way to see the country, and my dad loved the outdoors.  When he was in high school, he took an aptitude test for a career.  First option was Forest Ranger, second was engineer.  He loved the solitude and mountains, so we camped.  In the early years we had a tent trailer towed by a Chrysler station wagon that always overheated, particularly when going uphill.  Yes, the kind with the wood panels. But later we had a ’71 Ford pick-up with

From 1976-1980 we lived on a military base in the Pacific, in the Marshall Islands.  More about that later. But it was a small community and softball is what everybody did -- middle school all the way up to adults near retirement.  My dad was an excellent ball player and had a bag of probably 50 softballs.  We’d go to the soccer field near our house and my dad would would pitch all the balls to us as we practiced batting.  Then we’d practice throwing and fielding.  I loved th

My dad was an only child, with a mother who seemingly never wanted kids. He got ignored a lot and was lonely.  So after my mom gave birth to my older sister (in the cover pic), he immediately started pressing for a second child; no way were his kids going to grow up like he did.  And so I came along, a healthy 2 ½ years later.  I was bottle-fed, and the first night they brought me home from the hospital, my dad took the 2 AM feeding, held me in his arms, and said, “Yeah, you

My dad is (was) a wild man.  Not the sex-drugs-rock-n-roll kind of guy, but the I-can’t-believe-he-did-that kind of guy.  I love him and I am a daddy’s girl.  I don’t get my looks from him, except my hair color; his mom had red hair and, when he was in his twenties, he grew a beard and it grew in coppery red.  But I don’t have many of his other physical characteristics; however, emotionally and mentally we are very similar.  Introverts and logical thinkers.  Not subject to ef