Today this entry will be rather short.  I have had a cold and infection in my chest for the last seven days.  The most exciting part of it happened this morning. 

Our cats are fed in a hallway next to  their "cat door" leading outside and on the way to the laundry room.  I was passing past their area in the hallway and coughed - as I have been doing all week - one of the cats was eating out of its bowl and the sound of the cough was loud enough to send this cat into panic.  He jumped onto the bowl and tray and the dry cat food flew all over the hall area, onto the wall - the water in the cat dish spilled onto the tray and then onto the wall and carpet.  It was a mess and the cat stood there looking wild-eyed at me.

I had planned to write about the years I spent in an area outside of Beaverton, Oregon - 1954 -1959.  My family moved there after leaving my grandfather's farm in Damascus, Oregon and living in Portland for a year.  We lived with each grandmother for six months in 1953.  During that year I attended Laurelhurst School and then Llewellyn School in Sellwood.  Laurelhurst was my father's elementary school and Llewellyn was my mother's.

In 1954 we moved to an area just off the Sunset Highway.  This was the main highway between Portland and the Coast.  The area was newly developed and Sunset Valley Elementary School was new.

I am grateful that we were able to be part of this area.  There were many families moving into it and there was a real feeling of progress.  About three blocks from the school was a business called  Tektronix where a close friend of my parents worked.  At the time it was a small business, having just started after WW2.

Bill Marsh and his young family moved from the East Coast to Oregon so he could work at Tektronix.  They attended the Episcopal Church in Beaverton where we also attended - actually my parents were in the group of people who started that church in Beaverton.

We often spent time at the Marsh's house - my sister will remember some of the kids.  Their names were Thomas and Betsy - their mother, Virginia, has been raised in a wealthy family with maids, etc...and she loved her kids but she was not the most motivated person in the housekeeping department.  Their home was very "relaxed".

I can remember my parents often telling us that Bill Marsh was working on the beginnings of something called computers - or something to do with them.  It was all very advanced.  I can remember going to his office building - a smallish brick building - and thinking what important could be happening in there????  He was also very "relaxed" - he didn't seem very important to me at all.

Years later his place of business became an international company.  John proudly tells me that he a Tektronix oscilloscope.

I believe that Nike is also quite close to where we lived - it was just open fields that we had to drive by to get to Beaverton for the things that Sunset didn't have:  swimming at the indoor pool, movies, shopping, etc...  Beaverton was our big town.