When I was 12 years old, my Dad retired from the Navy. We had primarily lived in Navy housing, apartment buildings, Quonset Huts, and small houses that Dad bought and sold as we moved up and down the West Coast. When Dad retired, we purchased a 120-acre farm. That began a long list of new experiences and skills I learned. I caught my first trout, and my first salmon. I shot a gun for the first time; I bought my own rifle from a military surplus store for $12. Dad helped me, and I shortened the barrel. I bought a piece of black walnut and, using a wood rasp, made a new stock for it, a Russian 7.62.

I shot several deer with that rifle. I milked a cow for the first time, butchered a pig, and a whole host of other animals. I learned how to plumb and wire a house, how to trap a beaver, how to operate a chainsaw, and how to split firewood and fence posts. I learned how to run a DeLaval cream separator and how to churn butter by hand. I learned how to pan for gold and how to tan rabbit hides. I had hundreds of new experiences and learned about as many new skills in five years before we sold the farm and moved again to a much more modern dairy farm setup. That first farm was 120 acres of blackberries and poison oak, which we cleared with goats and pigs. We farmed it using horse-drawn equipment, pulling it with our 1948 Ford pickup. The house was a sheep barn. We chased the sheep out, shoveled out the sheep manure, and moved in. Over the next five years, we added a water supply, an indoor bathroom, electricity, an electric oven, a water heater, and glass windows with swinging doors. I was at an age when all those challenges and changes were an adventure and very exciting. My Dad made it exciting as we worked together to make our little farm profitable and a home. We sold that farm for a nice profit and were able to buy the dairy in Trout Lake, Washington. At 77 years of age, reflecting on my life, I am sure that most of my character growth occurred during that brief five-year period. When we bought our present house in 1990, it was over 100 years old, leaning like the Tower of Pisa, full of rat nests and bats, leaking like a sieve, and the walls and windows were so porous that an average wind outside would blow your hat off inside. Many people questioned our decision to buy that old house, but I was so excited for our eight kids to have some of the same experiences that I did and to grow the same way I did. I considered our old house a gift from God.