Friday, November 14, 2008

Lucerne Valley


While going through a box of old pictures this week I found this one that I had never seen before. This is a picture of my husband as a boy with his brother and cousins near his Aunt Ruth's cabin in the desert near Lucerne Valley in California. You just have to love this picture of boys gathered around the skeletal remains of some animal they had found while playing near the cabin.

The cabin was a favorite vacation spot for my husband's family. It was a twenty by forty foot concrete block building with a shady porch and an outhouse that my husband remembers building. There was no electricity, no running water and no neighbors for miles. He and his cousins spent hours roaming the desert. He learned to shoot a rifle there, although the rabbits he tried to hit were relatively safe. He learned to shoot a bow and arrow and then to hunt for arrows all over the desert. At night everyone dragged old mattresses out from the cabin and slept under the stars. It was dark and clear. You could see shooting stars falling out of the sky.
It is a place full of wonderful memory.

Where did you play when you were a child?

7 comments:

Anne said...

Wow, your question kinda jerked me back to a time I wasn't expecting to go. I remember hanging out in the woods around my suburban neighborhood. There was a pipe that crossed a large culvert/small stream bed, maybe it was a fallen tree, but I remember being scared to cross standing up and always had to scoot on my bottom.

Sling said...

Gotta love the somber tribute the fellas are paying to the unfortunate beast..
I grew up near the ocean,so that's where most of my adventures took place.

Queenie said...

Sounds like heaven, sleeping underneath the stars so magical...

MarmiteToasty said...

oh my, what wonderful memories..... not many kids get that chance of a memory nowadays....

x

AM Kingsfield said...

I remember being there once. That cinderblock desert cabin was like a brick oven. We dragged those ancient mattresses outside for air. The shooting stars were a great reward!

The woods where I played are mostly office buildings now, sigh.

Jennie said...

That is an adorable picture. Me? I played in and around a lake and stream that was deemed a Superfund site several years later. The epa cleaned it up and now my flourescent kids play in it.

Middle Child said...

a ah ha ha hahahaha

boys eh! lookit the looks on their faces...this is classic and thank you