As I said before, we were rarely allowed to leave the house (or in my case, any farther than I could walk within an hour, although they were becoming more begrudging about my walks ever since Michelle had pointed out to them that I was gone most of the time and no one was entirely sure where), but there were exceptions. Nearly all of the exceptions involved work or tasks which our parents didn't want to do.

Puppies and kittens: When we had a litter that had to be disposed of, Denis would drive us to a store, either the local Tamrak, which was a combination restaurant, convenience store, laundromat, gas station, and general store, or the IGA in Priest River. This store was intimidating to me because it was so big, and I didn't know anyone at all there. Also, even though a family member (never me, thank goodness!) usually asked the store's owner's permission first, I was terrified that an owner or store employee would come out and ask us what we thought we were doing there in front of their store with a cardboard box crammed full of puppies, accosting the customers who tried to hurry past us before their spouse or child begged for a pet. My mom's record of Sheba's ancestry seemed to change with each litter she bore, and so did our writing on the box. One year it said they were half Border Collie, half Chow, that was simple enough. Next year she said that Sheba actually wasn't full Border Collie, she was part German Shepherd and part Labrador, too. We had no idea what the sire was, part Dingo, maybe? Husky? We weren't sure. The sign listed an impossible formula: 1/4 Border Collie, 1/3 German Shepherd, 1/4 Lab, 1/2 Husky, or something like that. It never really occurred to us to spay Sheba or the female cats, so we had to go through the finding homes for puppies at least twice a year, more often if there were kittens too.

Laundry: Since we didn't have a washer or dryer, we went to the laundromat. The trip to the laundromat seemed to drag on forever; the hot, feverish air, the din of the machines, Mom's constant griping for help. The truth of the matter is that I had no idea how to wash laundry. My dad had always done it and then we folded it, mostly items such as towels and blankets: square or rectangular things that were easy. I didn't know how to sort laundry, or measure out soap, or how to work the dials, or what kind of clothes got hot water or cold. Mom got mad if we didn't do more than folding, and even if we did, she got mad, because she said that I folded things wrong, that I folded towels and shirts my dad's way. I couldn't see that it really mattered as long as they were folded neatly, but she didn't like anything at all to remind her of him. Still, we looked forward to going to the Tamrak to do the laundry and begged her to take us. It was virtually the only time we got out of the house and got to go to the store and get a treat- a soda, or maybe even a candy bar. Times were tight, but I quickly realized that there was an awful lot of money under the machines, and so I unwrapped a wire coat hanger and fished all the quarters and lint out from under the machines. We got enough money to get candy and sodas for us all. That embarrassed Mom, she didn't want people to see us and think we were poor, but like most kids, the allure of the money won out over her disapproval.

Mom didn't want to take me a lot of the time. She preferred taking the others. She said that I didn't work hard enough, that I always embarrassed her, that I wasn't dressed to go to town, that there wasn't room. Then one day when she had taken me with her, I got terribly ill somehow. It was common for me to get migraines, she got them too, but this was something worse. My belly was gripped by such severe stomach cramps that I could hardly move. I curled up on one of the hard wooden benches and just moaned and wept. The pain was intense. Mom thought I was faking, but I seriously could hardly move a muscle without the cramps intensifying. Time seemed to stretch out indefinitely, all I wanted was to be pain-free again. I lay there thinking of all the times when I had happily skipped along, trotting carefree through the woods, giving no thought at all to how lucky I was not to feel any pain. Ohhhh...I would never again take that for granted, I thought. What a fool I had been! She yelled at me, complained that she needed me to fold clothes. I tried to tell her that I was really sick, that I needed to go to a doctor. She just got mad. I imagined vain fantasies wherein Don and Helen would come by and I would beg them to help me. Of course this was silly, no such thing happened. I somehow got transported to the car and rode home, still in pain, went to bed and stayed there quite willingly for the rest of the day. Looking back, I have no idea what could have caused such symptoms; food poisoning perhaps? I really don't know, except that it was quite real and extremely painful. After that, Mom wouldn't take me to the laundromat unless there was no other choice: "Well, I don't know if I want to take you, are you going to get sick again like you did last time, just when it's time to work?", just as though I had gotten sick on purpose.

Firewood: The weather was getting cooler at night and our small lot had no real firewood to offer as sacrifice for the wood burning stove that heated the home. We had to look elsewhere. Elsewhere turned out to be the lumber mills in Priest River. When lumber is milled, it gets cut and finished into its dimensions: 2"x4" or 2"x6" or whatever the size will be, and then it gets cut to length: a multiple of 2 beginning with 6' as the shortest available length. The ends that get trimmed off when the lumber is cut to length are called mill ends. At that time, they were free for whoever wanted to go to the work of shoveling them into their truck. Mike and I loaded many a truckload of mill ends. Once we got them home, we had to stack them neatly on the deck of the porch. I liked to stack them and build cubbies in the stack for the cats to nest away in. I used the longest 2x6 ends for the roofs.

Apples and other fruit: If Dennis could find a fruit tree with ripe fruit on it, he usually could persuade the tree's owners to let us pick it all. Steve and Verna had 3 or 4 apple trees that we picked. I loved picking apples, climbing the trees. The apples were always so crispy and good fresh off the tree. We got boxes from the grocery store and filled box after box with fruit. Once home, we kept them in the garage or mom would make pink applesauce by cooking the fruit with the peels, giving it a reddish tint and an especially good flavor. She was such a wonderful cook. Then we got European prune plums, and she dried those into prunes, pitting them first. They were much harder and better tasting than the store bought prunes.

Dennis often went off on day long business trips to scout out opportunities for salesmen (what he was best at) or other work which usually did not pan out. If there was physical labor involved at all, he took Mike or I or both of us. If there was not, he went alone or took Lisa.