In life, there are warm moments of memory that occasionally come floating back. Having moved from Seattle in 1959, to the Eglon area, with children ages 5 to 12, (four boys and two girls,) we were ready for a slower pace here, life was more peaceful, centered on school and the Eglon Community Church.
The siblings have memories of little traffic on the roads and no bus transportation. We were a one-car family and Don used it for work. The kids simply waited until a neighbor passing would offer a ride with a “Do your folks know where you’re headed?”
The older ones usually were off to Kingston or Eglon beach, and often to Buck Lake, or visit the kids whose dad took care of the lighthouse in Hansville. The boys could be gone all afternoon with a fixed time to be home. Packed with fishing gear, worms, and peanut butter and jam sandwiches, they looked forward to new adventures. A favorite spot was the Eglon beaver ponds (now gone) to fish. When the afternoons were over they would head for home, walking to where they knew a neighbor might pass and give them a ride. Everyone seemed to look out for each others’ prodigy.
Neighbors were kind and thoughtful. In seeing the kids, and often friends with them, they invited all in for cookies. If it was a hot afternoon out came the lemonade. If it was cold hot chocolate offered.
One of the boys, Raymond, remembers spending nights in sleeping bags in the upstairs of the Hansville light house with buddies Bobby Ingram, and Bobby Randall. Ingram Sr. of the Coast Guard was in charge at the time and Frank Randall of Randall’s Resort, (now Forbes Landing) the other Bobby’s father.
There are memories of the Eglon Church pastor loading the Sunday school class into the back of a big truck on Halloween, and driving down the few and in between backroads for trick for treating. The treats were given out all at once.
They remember several Christmas Eves, when a load of young cold-red nosed youngsters traveled about caroling for the neighbors, rewarded with cookies and hot chocolate. What a great time they had participating in Christmas pageants and summer Bible School. To this day we hear them tell of those wonderfully more simple days. Now they have become the tale tellers of the “good old days.”
Memories of their young years are dear to me too when the house was not only full of family but their friends from the city who visited and thought them the luckiest kids in the world to live here.
In winter there were chores of cutting and carrying fire wood for stoves, but when the pond froze there was ice skating and sledding for fun. The laughter and squealing still rings in my ears as I know it does in theirs who bring memories to be shared with a new generation of what country living used to be.
The old dairy, chicken and berry farms are all gone now as the city creeps closer and the beautiful woods are disappearing with the taking up of animal habitats that were here long before we came. Some call it progress, only I call it sad when all too soon we will be left with nothing but foggy memories of what used to be.
