CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOOD
PHOTO: PAT McCULLOUGH

ROLLER SKATES

It was in Shaniko that I learned to roller skate.  The service station where Pat lived in back rooms had an addition off to one side that might have been a dance hall at one time, but had more recently been used as a garage.  It had a low foot-high stage at one end.  The floor was all wood and was wonderfully smooth.  The skates we had at that time were the kind that fastened onto our shoes and were tightened with a skate key.  We learned to do fancy turns and slalom off the stage and hit the floor smoothly like swans coming in for a landing.

CHRISTMAS TREE

Mother always put on elaborate Christmas programs.  In Shaniko we had a big tree, the ceilings of the school house being high, and we decorated it with paper chains.  We decided to do the chains in a new way.  Instead of draping them around the tree in swags, we made them in short lengths, from a foot to 18 inches, so that they all hung straight down.  We made them in two alternating colors.  Most of the time we could only see the links that had their broad sides toward us in all one color; they seemed to float in space because the links going the other way disappeared.  But if the viewer moved to one side the colors would reverse.  It was a great effect.

SWIMMING HOLE

Shaniko even had a place to swim.  It was about a mile up the highway to the north.  It was a place where a highway crew had dug out some fill for building the original highway, and it had filled up with water.  I had learned to swim the summer before, going to Camp Fire Girls camp at Suttle Lake near Camp Sherman.  So now I could make the most of this lovely large pond of clear, clean water.  The water hole was in a fairytale setting of low mounds about six feet high called “The Devils Potato Patch.”  I have never heard how they were geologically formed, but they were wonderful to run over and around, and for finding secret hiding places.  After playing in the Potato Patch, it was marvelous to jump in the swimming pool and swim from one side to the other!

I had many happy times in Shaniko, and Pat and I have been friends all our lives.