I have mentioned before that most of the photos of me as a child contained my dog, Pete. She was a cocker spaniel that my parents had gotten before I was born. When our family traveled cross-country from Maine to California in early 1945, Pete came along with us.
She was my guardian and faithful friend.
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| Always by my side |
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This is such an historical photo, documenting the times when people used the old wooden play pens
and still hung their laundry out to dry. |
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| I am looking up to where Pete is still on guard. Look at that groovy old stroller! |
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| Here we are with my dad and a neighbor girl named Laurie. All of these photos were taken at Hunter's Point in San Francisco. The housing there, strictly utilitarian, was built for shipyard workers during World War II and was pretty new when we lived there. It looks like they were just getting the landscaping going. |
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Pete loved me and I loved her
Pete was my first and best friend until the time I was ten years old. One day, while I was playing with her on the stairs of our house, she snapped at me. I couldn't understand why my friend would turn on me like that, and I cried and cried. It turned out that she was in great pain from cancerous tumors, the only reason that she would ever behave like that. She had to be "put to sleep"--the first time I had ever heard that phrase, and my first experience with death and grief and loss. |
