Monday, April 14, 1958

April 14, 1958

411 Bonnie Dr

El Cerrito, Calif.

Dear Brothers & Sisters

In between bites of Jean’s cinnamon-raisin bread I will start my contribution to the round robin. The loaf from which my slice came was freshly baked today so it is very tasty. It is almost nine o’clock and I’ve finished the weekly letter to Gowrie and a note to Aunt Hulda so I’ll be about ready to turn in when I get this letter finished.

Today I felt sort of sleepy and lazy perhaps because of my unusual session in the yard over the weekend, so I don’t think I’ll last awake much past 9:30 or so. A week ago today the weather turned sunny after a long rainy spell & since then it has been nice. So on Saturday I really did a lot in the yard and I guess my out-of-shape muscles still feel it.

Altho there were quite a few cases of houses sliding or “subsiding” as the newspapers put it during the rainy weather, we fortunately escaped all of this. The little drainage sump I put in, in the basement, when I was putting in the concrete floor last fall, collected water faster than usual but still required attention only a couple of times a day. From our living room windows we can see a coupe of the slides that occurred on Albany hill a mile or so away. One of these slid into the back yard of a Shell Development employee, altho I didn’t happen to know him. Down at work during a particularly rainy spell the Temescal creek plugged up at a brush guard and sent the creek flowing out into the street so that Shell Dev was about ½ surrounded with water. old-timers said it was the worst they had ever seen it. The creek overflowed about noon and by five the waters had receded slightly but it must have been late at night by the time the Emeryville street dept got the creek unplugged. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Vivian’s little blue house by the river and the times when it has been flooded, or nearly so.

As usual our daily, weekly, & monthly schedule is largely det’d by what stage Muriel & Palma are in. Palma has a pretty good start on being trained and we hope that she will be nearly so when we make our planned trips this year to San Diego & Iowa. Tho still a blonde, she is a little darker-haired now than when she was born. She is a great imitator and picks up the things Muriel does even when she doesn’t know the reason. Muriel is in the “why?” stage now and Palma also has learned to say why (altho she doesn’t know why she is saying it). I’ll be reading to her and come to the end of a Mother Goose rhyme and she’ll say “why” like amen — not really asking about anything but just making the proper (to her) response.

This will be all for now. Hope you are all feeling well & fit.

With love

Carl