Back to Merced.
While we lived in California my other set of grandparents lived in Eagle, Idaho, which at that time was a small farming community, outside of Boise. One time we took the long drive to go visit and had stopped in Reno, Nevada. I had never seen a big city before, and the lights were overwhelmingly awesome. I slept on the floor in our hotel room and was right up against a huge glass window that went from the ceiling to the floor. I watched as the hotel and restaurant signs glowed throughout the night, creating a sort of electric energy. I loved it so much. Our room was so high that it looked like the cars were little match box cars below. That next morning we went to the first buffet that I can remember, breakfast at Circus Circus. I loaded up on as many sausage links as I could. I remember the eggs were a funny yellow color and had a different texture than the eggs we would have at home.
Grandma and Grandpa Beal lived in a modest 3 bedroom home. It was situated in a golf course neighborhood, but their back yard bordered corn fields as far as you could see. My grandpa had served a mission in Hawaii and much of their home decor reflected his love for the islands. In the entrance of their home was a coat closet with a record player sitting perfectly on corner shelves. They didn't have clutter in their closets and their home wasn't filled with a lof of "stuff". Everything they had had a purpose and a story behind it, it was significant to them. Grandma would turn on the record player with Hawaiian music and we would twirl and dance all over her brown shag carpet in her living room.
One of the spare bedrooms had an old dresser, where a beautiful small box filled with all sorts of buttons was found. They were all shapes and colors. Some looked so fancy. That room had a closet with an old baby crib and a really old baby doll who often had its eyes rolled up in her head, which at times was a little creepy. The doll felt real and was heavier than most baby dolls. I loved to wrap that baby in a blanket and lay it down in her cute little cradle. Everything at grandma’s was cared for. They had a shoe horn mounted to a counter in their laundry room that she would pile shoes up for me and I would polish them with a thin cloth. I remember polishing so many shoes. Why was that so fun?! She had a large Maple tree in her backyard that would shed little helicopter seeds. Grandpa would pay us a penny per seed that we picked. We played capture the flag when our cousins would come and often lounged around her backyard enjoying everyone’s company.
My grandpa had a beautiful Goldwing motorcycle, and he would load a couple of us kids on the back as we took turns riding with him through the neighborhood. I never learned how to drive a motorcycle, but this instilled in me a great love for riding on the back of one. Years later, Taylor (my husband) would purchase a Goldwing, and I looked forward to whenever the weather was nice enough and we could take it out. Grandpa also had a large two wheeled trash cart that he would load us up in, and roll us to the pond so we could feed the ducks.
When I learned that our family was going to move to Boise, being close to them was the thing that I was most excited for.
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