The Chronicles of My Unique Life

Book excerpt: The author was raised in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, when the Valley was a wide-open area of orange groves, homes and estates. The large estates were owned by the movie stars such as Roy Rogers and other stars in their heyday. After marriage, my husband and I desired to raise our family in a country atmosphere with a minuscule population. We sold our first home in the valley in order to move to the tiny town of Acton, in the mountainous countryside sixty miles north of Los Angeles. The time line of book is 1928 to 2011 with many odd happening in our lives and unusual memories and pleasant days in the country. We cleared the land, put down a well, and built our home ourselves and raised a family of four children. Upon completion of the house it was necessary to move the home if we wished to continue living in it. It was a new home and yes we wanted it, but this proved to be frightening experience and a near tragic disaster! This is only one of the many unusual happenings in our life in the country. Unwanted animals are freely given to people who live in the country from friends. In this manner, we acquired a burro that soon gave birth to a strong baby burro (on its first day of birth, kicked our young son and knocked him down), several dogs, a beautiful horse and another burro. Life in the country was always surprising and a pleasant place to raise a family, sometimes difficult but nice! We knew friends in a circle of twenty miles in every direction. Our two sons still live in Acton, our daughters have moved to the beach cities in California.