Family Gathering in Oysterville, 1943.

Back in the “olden days” — you know, in the late thirties and early forties when I was a little girl — my Oysterville grandparents looked forward to the summer weather when the relatives would come from North Bend or Portland or Salem or maybe from Medford… for a “good and proper visit.”  That usually meant a week-or-ten-day stay with the women helping Granny to put up jams and jellies and pickled pears or, perhaps, catch up with the mending or window washing. The men might help Papa split wood and fill the woodshed or, perhaps, re-shingle the “little barn” across the street.  Evenings, after dinner, everyone would sit in the library and visit — catching up with family news and — the part I liked best — reminiscing about their growing-up years right here in the Oysterville-Before-Electricity-And-Automobiles.

Summertime Linda, 2013

Last week, my good friend Linda Johnson spent five days here and we had ourselves just that sort of “good and proper visit” — the first in more than ten years, I think!  Linda and I first met in 1998 through our mutual friend Larry Weathers.  Larry brought her to one of Nyel and my Croquet Tournaments on the occasion of her 50th birthday.  Nyel and I were in the process of moving “into town” to my family home across from the Oysterville Church and we offered them the weekend at our place on the bay about a half mile south of town.  By then, I had known Larry since moving  to Oysterville permanently in 1978. We had met  through his work with the County Planning Department and, more importantly, through his affiliation with the Pacific County Historical Society as their Secretary and Editor of their Sou’wester Magazine (for which he encouraged me to write.)  Linda and Larry had grown up in Raymond and had been “connected” for almost half a century, both eventually settling in the Seattle area but staying closely entwined with friends and relatives in Pacific County.  On that first meeting, someone (perhaps our old friend, Michael Mathers) dubbed her “Linda-the-Pretty-One.”  (We laughed about that on this visit wondering if there was another Linda and who she might have been. In any case, she was “the pretty one.”)

Linda-the-Chef 2009 at her Condo

As the years galloped by, our friendship with Linda deepened.  She was living on Vashon Island when we first met and we visited her there and she continued to visit us down here now and then.  Sometimes Larry was in the mix; sometimes others of their “old crowd” from Raymond, now mostly in Seattle and some in the same Condo Complex.  When Linda, in her turn, moved into a condo there, she wanted to do some “remodeling” and went through a period during which we called her “Tool Belt Linda.”  She could (and did) do ANYthing she set her mind to.  Including, retire from her Microsoft job at age 55, go back to school to get an MA in Education and taught (4th grade?) from ages 60 to 65.  I think she was beginning to teach just about when I retired and I remember giving her samples of a lot of “projects” that I had loved doing with 1st/2nd/3rd graders over the years.

Dennis and Linda 2018

We saw her often during those years.  One summer she rented the Oysterville Guest House for a month and had various friends and relatives come visiting for three, four, or five days at a time and one of the weeks, she took a Roads Scholar Class in kayaking from our friend Andrew Emlen in Skamokawa.  Somewhere along the line, she met handsome Dennis, moved to San Diego, sold her condo, and  still we stayed connected… barely.  During the Pandemic they came to Oysterville on a visit and stood outside our fence and visited with us.  (Was Nyel wheelchair bound by then?  Perhaps.)  Then, at Nyel’s “Goodbye Party” in 2022. as I sat on the carpet in the Library listening to my cousin Sam play guitar with Andrew Emlen and Casey Killingsworth, I looked toward the north wall and there were Linda and Dennis, listening to the music and looking at me!  I couldn’t believe it.

WOW! A Huge Project Well Done!

Last week (or maybe 10 days ago) Linda helped Dennis’s family with his Celebration of Life which took place in his childhood home of Prosser.  And “on her way back” to her new home in Coeur d’Alene, she stopped here for five days.  We talked and ate and remembered and laughed and… cleaned my linen closet!  A good and proper visit to be sure!  I don’t think I cried once… until now.