Boars at Dinner

Page from Fred Gwynne's book:

I spent the morning working on my book. I was at the part of my story where I began life as a Navy wife in San Diego.  After moving there in January of 1964, I moved back to Port Townsend for six months while John was overseas. Then we drove back to California in January of 1965. One story I remembered about our second neighborhood down there was this....

John found a little one-bedroom house about two miles from our old Cherokee apartment, at 2611 Wightman. It was a cozy little house with two or three similar homes on either side. I was timid about driving in the city so when it was time to do the laundry (I used cloth diapers), I would put the diaper pail in the basket of the baby stroller and push Susan and her diapers down the street to a coin-operated laundry.

Dad and my brothers came to visit that summer and we all went to the San Diego Zoo. Dad always remembered that day because I had put Susan on a bench to change her and she rolled off onto the grass. As she was hollering to beat the band, a whole bus load of tourists drove by and watched us. I also recall there was a serial murderer loose in the city and everyone was on edge and cautioned to keep their doors locked. I got a scare one night when I heard a knock at my backdoor (which had a glass window) and I was home alone. I peeked out and saw it was the neighbor lady. She whispered for me to let her in and I nervously unlocked the door. She had a huge butcher knife in her hand and said she had heard someone trying to break into her house. I didn’t have a phone and didn’t know what we could do to save ourselves.

This memory got my curiosity up as I sat here writing about it and I decided to call the San Diego library to see if they had any information. The researcher there told me that Clyde Carl Wilkerson was convicted in 2004 in Oklahoma for murders in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego in 1965. He was a truck driver and suspected of other murders as well. It took DNA to bring him to justice 40 years later.  Interesting what you can find online these days. I even found his picture.

I left the house around 11:30 to stop at Walgreens and then head over to Susan's place to pick her up. Her house sits in the woods and I do mean sits in the woods.  You'd never know it was there unless you drove down this narrow alley. I parked on the road nearby and took this shot of the path leading to her front door.

She took a picture of me coming through the trees and I took one of her when we were in the parking lot at the casino.

We met my sister for lunch at the buffet and I treated her for her birthday. A big tour bus pulled in to unload 4 or 5 dozen seniors who had traveled from  Chehalis. That meant line ups at the restroom and to buy dinner tickets but we eventually got seated.  They were serving liver and onions as one of the entrees. I passed on that and had some eggplant parmesan.  I didn't get rich playing the slots but I probably was $10 ahead.  Sue and I left after an hour or so as I needed to stop at Costco and Walmart in Sequim.

Janie had told me this story about a friend of hers (Carol Plaster)  ..... Carol was having some kind of sinus procedure done but Janie misunderstood exactly what they were doing and she was telling people that Carol was having her face peeled down so they could clean out the sinuses.  When she saw a picture of me and Carol on my blog, she mentioned to her that she looked awfully good for having the drastic face surgery she had had. Carol asked her what she was talking about and then laughed her head off when Janie told her she thought her face skin was being completely peeled down. 

They went to lunch at Hadlock House yesterday and inside Carol's card to Janie, she included this picture that she "doctored up"...

Now, that's funny!