Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 Here is an old photo of my Grandmother Davis standing out in her garden.  I have no idea of the date of this, except that it was probably early to mid 60s, before 1966 anyway.  I believe it was in 1967 when she had her right arm removed due to bone cancer (?).  I was born in July of 68, so her surgery could have been in early 68, I am not sure of the dates.  At any rate, I was just about a year old when she passed.  But my mom always said that she believed Grandmother Davis was partly the reason I turned out left-handed; when she held me in her lap she always used her left hand to move my left hand around, due to her having lost her right arm.   She was a character, from what I gather from my mother's stories of her.  A devout Christian lady, but still with her quirks and foibles, as we all have.   She loved her garden; both vegetables and flowers.  I believe her main love was flowers.  She had various blooming bushes gro...

 Lawrence (on the left) and Riley Davis.   I don't know if I have shared this photo on my blog before or not.  My father, Lawrence, was a lumberjack in his younger years in Northern California, there in the coastal redwoods of Humboldt County...he probably worked up in the mountains of the neighboring counties as well, but I am not for sure of that.   Perhaps I have shared stories of his before on here.  I am sure I have shared some on Facebook.  I wish I could hear him tell them again.  I don't remember him telling much about Riley working with him felling trees.  Riley was a sea man.  He and his second wife owned a ship and spent many years sailing up and down the East and South coasts of the USA. He had plenty of tales too.  I remember Shirley, his second wife, telling how she was swimming in a bay in Louisiana, or maybe it was Florida, and a gator was in there with her and Riley started yelling at her to swim faster.  ...