OK, so maybe it is 2-5? All I know is we had a lot of fun going to the bottom of the paved road and sliding the rear end around to slide the wheels until we stopped. There were no brakes! Sometimes we would slide around in a full 360 circle or other times slide around 180 and roll additional distance backwards. You have to picture our legs elevated just under the handle bars straight out in front high enough so the pedals didn't smack the back of our legs as they whipped around.

My sister, KJ, asked me to say something about our blackberry picking experiences. Blackberry bushes grew wild everywhere! I am talking the biggest, plumpiest, blackest berries ever! We would swim for awhile and then when hungry walk barefooted up the trail and pick blackberries until content and then go back to swimming. Anyone who has done such a thing knows that there is evidence of having done so! Blackberries stain so your fingers would be dyed! It was worth it! Blackberries have horrible vines and thorns though so you have to be careful. My sister Julie is expert at this and could shed more light on the subject than I. One day she was riding her tricycle around on our deck (prior to dad installing railing). She must have been contemplating why her older brother was so mean to her or something because she neglected to notice the edge of the deck and literally rode her trike right off into a huge patch of blackberries! Oh the horror. I am guessing she has nightmares to this day. Of the blackberry bush... not her mean big brother!

Our dog brownie was chasing a cat across the deck and wasn't aware of something that the cat was! Cats can jump into trees a few feet away from the edge of the deck. So, brownie realizes too late that the cat was safe in a tree as he free-fell 12 feet to the rivers edge. I don't know if it was Julie or Brownie that prompted dad to build a railing but it was soon started. That leads me to another memory. The railing had a top rail of 2x4 and a bottom rail of 2x4. Between them were vertical pieces with ends cut on an angle for pattern. These pieces were around 3' long. During construction it proved to be too much of a tempation while dad was at work for a couple of boys wanting something to do. So, Roy and I threw many pieces of what we thought were scrap 2x4 into the creek to watch them float over the rapids below our home. Some of the pieces didn't make water and remained as evidence on the banks of the creek. If you are going to try to throw some of your dads wood away make sure you don't leave evidence so you can make something up and at least try to blame it on your sister! Well, as we were following instructions and were bringing the wood back up the bank past the blackberry bush onto the deck I realized throwing them on top of the deck from below would be a whole lot faster! So, since I hadn't yet come to learn the valuable lesson that not all of my ideas are good ones I began! A few pieces found their intended target and landed on the deck (probably denting the surface). However, the next one missed and came back down. I simply moved out of the way and it fell to the ground. No harm. But, a few later one appeared to have found it's target but as I bent over to pick up another I was struck on top of the head with the 45 degree end of the rail part. It appears the 2x4 landed on the deck on it's end and it bounced it right back over the deck in my direction. To this day I still wonder if my little sister was up there. Yep, the 2nd of my 6 sets of stitches. Mom and Dad had to drive me out the river road 75 miles to Yreka for this set.

So, I have had my share of head trauma in life so please be a little more understanding and patient with me.