Memories of Grandpa & Grandma  


Diane & Ray Richey


      Our family moved from Holbrook, Arizona to Washington State in the summer of 1947. I was about three or four years old. At one time we lived at the end of the ROK airport. It was in the woods and we were camped out. We had a little camping trailer that had the kitchen in it and one bed where my sister Scharlotte slept. We had a tent and it had bunks in it and my three brothers and I slept in it, and we had a camper shell from the back of a pickup (sort of) where mom and dad slept.



      Well, Mom and Dad sent for Grandmother and she rode a bus from wherever she was staying at the time up to our campsite in Washington. I don't know where she slept. But I do remember helping her make a terarium out of a fish bowl. She put moss and other things from the forest floor into the fish bowl and covered the top with saran wrap. Then in 1951 or so we made a trip to St Johns and there that fish bowl was on her living room table. I was amazed that it was still living.
      Anyway here is a picture of her and me at the campsite. She was about 76 and I was about 4.





      In 1961 we lived in my Mom's brother's (Uncle Joe James) house in Los Lunas, New Mexico. Grandmother was living in Tucson, Arizona with Uncle Ivan and Aunt Daisy I think. Mom and Dad drove to Tucson and brought Grandmother back to stay with us for a while. She had broken her hip and then they operated on her and fixed it but she was still a little cautious when she was walking and she would use her crutches.
      Here is a picture of us in the kitchen of the old house. Grandmother would have been around 89.



Grandmother, my Dad Jay Richey
and my Mother Mabel James Richey