Name: Susan Smith Maiden: Baker

Personal narrative!

I'm married to Chuck Smith, we live in Idaho.  I'm an artist; my medium of choice is acrylics.  Chuck is an engineer with H/P currently working in the printer division.  We have no children of our own so we borrow our friends to join us in our activities.  We have a beautiful cabin in the Idaho central mountains 70 miles north of Boise. We snowmobile and 4-wheel from our door step.  We bird watch, berry pick, mushroom, hike and visit our friends in the summer. In the winter we ride our sleds (snowmobiles) through the mountains and enjoy the beauty of the area. We also go to West Yellowstone, MT for a week of riding and then a week later to the Jackson Hole Snowmobile Hill climb.
We belong to the Cougar Mountain Snowmobile Club and through them have learned a lot about and have been involved with some of our local environmental issues.  We also like to "junk" and go to the Sumpter OR. swap meet in the summer. Idaho is a great place to live if you love the outdoors as we do, but Colorado will always be my home.

A Loveland memory from 1950/60 era!
My sister and her friends putting an outhouse on the high school grounds and chaining it to the flag pole. Cruising up College Ave in Fort Collins with my friends. Going to Clancy's and Estes Park beer drinking and dancing. I did this right after graduation, because I was afraid to get into trouble. The one thing about our school, there weren't to many secrets well kept.  This is dumb but, rolling up my skirts because they were to long and mini's were coming into fashion. Oh, the Vaudeville skits we put together every year and how much we worked on them with no adult supervision, but just lots of hope.  And, how so nervous I used to get before going on. I still gigle when the guys from the L club were riding their little ity-bitty trikes to the, I believe, Beach Boys 409.  They were so big and kept falling off of them. Or how grown up I felt when I dressed up in a formal for Rainbow Girls activities and how my feet hurt in high heels.  Let's not mention how I hated the dress code and Mr. Patterson warning us about the rules. But, in spite of all of above memories, I will never forget John Deets dropping a bottle of wine on the floor in front of his locker, because mine was just two or three doors down and the floor was a sticky mess and my shoes stuck to it.  I also sadly remember Arlan Schaffer and Don Conn and Dennis Cressey who were lost in the Vietnam War. Arlon was in my English class with Mr. Wilson and he was always doing something funny.  It really hit hard because both my sister Breese Baker and my brother Joe Baker served to.  They graduated several years ahead of me. I could sit here all day thinking back, but these are just a few memories that come first to mind that I want to share.  There are many others and many people and friends that I think of now and wonder where they are and what they are doing and if their kids know that their parents were the wild child of the 60's and maybe some of them kept their beads.