40 Years Ago Today - May 31, 1977

I was not sure where to enter this particular info but as it appears that everything was written on May 31, 1977, that is the date I will stick with. This entry has two parts, one that occurs on May 31, 1977 and another that's post-dated for May 29, 1977.

The first entry is yet another ear infection, this one labeled as "serious." I can only assume Dr. Cho worked his magic and I healed just like I did from the other ear infections.

The second entry is dated May 29, 1977 but is listed as a "NOTE:" directly under the May 31st entry. It states I went to the Emergency Room in Bountiful, Utah and saw a "DR Mathews for a gastrointestinal virus" and that it was "contagious." As a parent, I can imagine how much that experience sucked.

What I find interesting from this second entry is that I was in Bountiful, Utah. This is where my aunt and uncle lived for decades.

[EDITED June 1, 2017]
Based on some additional information from my mother, it wasn't a "serious" ear infection but instead "serous" as in "serous otitis media" as in fluid in your middle ear. In other words, typically what small children get tubes in their ears to prevent from happening.

40 Years Ago Today - May 1977 - Part II

This is the second part of May 1977 and will focus on our trip to New Mexico. While I'm sure it was part of the same trip we took to Arizona and Nebraska, I'm not entirely sure. But I am pretty certain everything happened in May.

We start things off with what looks like a rest stop picnic area where I'm just chilling out on the picnic table. This photo is labeled as May 1977 but it's the small details that helped link this to the New Mexico trip. The key evidence is my dad's hat and lack of beard.

For the visit to New Mexico, we saw my Aunt Lorraine who was married to my mother's brother Dan Lester. The green van would play an important roll in my life much later.

40 Years Ago Today - May 1977 - Part I

May of 1977 was a busy month. There was travel to Arizona and Nebraska and possibly New Mexico. Starting in Arizona, we paid a visit to Aunt Wilma and Uncle George. Make sure you pay attention to my mother's shirt.

After Arizona, came Nebraska where we visited with Grandma Bertha. At the time, she was married to Merle Yaryan, her second husband. When I first started looking at these pictures, I had assumed that Grandma Bertha had come to visit us in California. But then I noticed that the kitchen furniture was different and that there appeared to be a bottle of Dorothy Lynch salad dressing on the table. For those that don't know, Dorothy Lynch salad dressing is kind of a blend between French dressing, Thousand Island dressing, and Ranch dressing. But more importantly, it was almost exclusively found in Nebraska, even into the early 1990s. I remember on later trips to Nebraska when I was older, we would stock up on Dorothy Lynch dressing and Squirt soda because they were impossible to find on the east coast. And while Grandma Bertha could have brought it with her during a visit, the exterior shot of her, my dad, and myself, match an earlier photo I have of her posing outside of her home with Christmas decorations. I was later able to confirm from my father that it was the home of both Merle and Bertha during their marriage when they lived in Mullen, Nebraska.

The New Mexico portion of the trip will be in a separate post, partly because there are a lot of photos, but mostly because I'm not certain it was the same trip.