284-7624 and Nuts!

Cheers to everyone who can remember their childhood phone number!  I can remember this from very young when living in the 3rd house I remember growing up in, in Illinois.

There was a white house we lived in the upstairs, I believe - my first memory of a place I lived.  Then a pink house on a street called Steinman, small and one story with a separate garage and shared driveway.  Then a red house on the corner of Jefferson Avenue (1135 - still remember the street number, too) and another street, two stories with a big yard, huge willow tree, and a tire swing.  I think we moved there about 1973, so I was about 5 or 6 years old.  This is the house that I remember most and we had that phone number until we moved to Wisconsin. 

It was a party line when we first had the phone there, meaning the whole street shared the same phone line.  You could pick up the phone and hear a neighbor on a call so have to wait your turn.  I don't remember the party line lasting long, and then we had our own line and this was the number.  It was taught to me at that young age just in case I was abducted or, much more likely, gotten lost as an oblivious child sometimes will.  I've now remembered a phone number I've not had for about 44 years, yet I can forget why I entered a room a minute ago.

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I found the above as an old draft from last year and figured why waste mediocre writing?  I just cleaned it up a bit and here it is.  I sat down this afternoon after work to write about the creek thing I did on Saturday morning and got distracted with finding that and another idea I had more recently, below, so I'll write about the creek monitoring later in the week.

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The other day I cleaned up some downed live branches from one of neighbor Dave's three black walnut trees in his back yard.  At the time I noticed the walnuts were pretty much full size already, and I have a feeling this year is going to be a bumper crop, so I decided to keep a running total of the number of walnuts I pick up with my grabber and send to the corner behind the lilac.  I've done this before, informally, both daily and cumulatively one year but gave up at about a thousand.  This time I'll note the counts in my garage notebook and update the total here whenever I post.  As the count goes up, remember, these are just from my small yard, next to the yard with the walnut trees.  I'd imagine Dave gets at least 5 times as many as I'll get, and probably more.

And before you ask, no, I do not try to save them, shell them, dry them, crack and eat them.  I leave that for the squirrels, they don't seem to mind fattening up on them.

Walnut Count:  22