Phoebe, ?-1992 Since I recently shared a video of our late pitbull Gabby, I thought today I’d go back further in time and introduce you to her predecessor. Phoebe was my first rescue dog and my first bully breed. She came unexpectedly into my life one afternoon in mid 1983; she and another young pitbull showed up in the front […]
I’ve been very slowly working at transferring my old Hi8 videotapes to DVD, and from there to my hard drive. I’ve been editing them with Windows Movie Maker and then uploading — with a little additional editing — to YouTube. Much of the footage is devoted to our three dogs, Buster, Gabby, and Pinkie. My final results are far from professional, but that’s okay. Most of the videos are at least 10 years old, and I’m just very happy that I’m finally able to watch them with more smiles than tears. As I wrote in the description of this video on YouTube, Gabby wasn’t allowed on the furniture inside the house, but once we moved this old chair to the back patio, she adopted it as her own. She loved that chair! One of her favorite things was to curl up in it during a spring storm and watch the rain fall. The music is Tucson Tease by John Deley and the 41 Players, courtesy of YouTube’s collection of ad-free tunes.
Higher Elevations, Summer 1987 When we weren’t traveling to the coast or fishing in our own backyard, The Big Guy and I liked spending a day or two up in the mountains — especially during the summer when the temperatures were uncomfortable in the valley. Back then our house had only an old “swamp cooler” and sometimes it just wasn’t […]
July 1986 — Camping and fishing at Prosser Lake. Prosser Creek Reservoir, near the California-Nevada state line, was one of the first places The Big Guy took me camping. It was a roughly 2-hour drive from our house east on Interstate 80 in my 1970 VW Bug; we left home at eight in the evening and by 11:30 we had […]
Back before The Big Guy was able to afford a fishing boat, we did an awful lot of fishing from the shore. There was frequently a fair bit of hiking to get to the water from wherever we’d left the car, and then of course we had to hunt around for the “right” spot to find the fish. Our dogs were […]
One of the images I used in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge today got me thinking back to our Doberman-Rottweiler, Buster, and how much he enjoyed snoozing on our sofa. He was the only one of our dogs ever allowed on the furniture, and he took full advantage of the privilege. As he got older, one of his favorite things was […]
Back in 1987 we had more free time than money on our hands, and we spent a lot of that free time going fishing — whether in our local area or on the Northern California coast. Bodega Bay and the Sonoma coast was one of our favorite places, and we had discovered that winter was a great time to be […]
Back in January 1987, The Big Guy decided we should make a list of San Francisco Bay Area fishing piers and hit them all, one by one. That was why, at 8 AM on this particular day, I was sitting in an improvised chair in the back of our 1976 Camaro watching the rain pour down at Ballena Bay in Alameda. […]
April 1974 — During the second half of our Southern California road trip we spent a full day at Knott’s Berry Farm — back in the days when it was still a relatively small and family-owned attraction. We also visited a now-defunct attraction in Buena Park, the Japanese Village. We loved the log ride at Knott’s Berry Farm: A lot of […]