Unearthed treasures

The house was quiet when I got home from the barn tonight--Steve is out playing music and Katie is working--so I wandered downstairs to the storage room looking for something else (what I don't recall) and found a box of treasures taped up and wrapped in a garbage bag. Stacks and stacks of unsorted pictures left over from Dad's things, showing some of my earliest memories in black and white and old-style color photos.

Such a treasure trove! I found a funny set from when we first bought our house in Berkeley--Dad's handwriting scrawling a different stage of the story on the back of each one, all chronicling his triumph over blackberry bushes and weeds to create what became the oasis of our back yard. There are, of course, lots of pictures of my sister and me in outfits I can't believe my parents let us wear. And school pictures with dates on the back in my mother's handwriting.

And then I flipped over this picture above. His name was Brian, I believe. I also think it was he who taught me about checking cinches after watching the horizon tilt rather rapidly to one side and eating dirt shortly thereafter.

I wasn't able to pursue horses back then--too much money for our family--but I'd like to think I'm making up for it with plenty of zeal now.

Thanks for the treasures, Dad. Wish you were still here to go through them with me.