The Back Yard - 1966
I used to love this photo. It looked like Jane Holland and I were engaged in something naughty. (Jane's facial expression is perfect.) For a reason I have long since forgotten we thought it would be fun to throw one of mom's bedspreads into the water.
Jane Holland was one of the five daugthers in the Holland family, who were family friends. Jane was closest to me in age - perhaps a year or so older, I forget. Every year we'd go to their house for Christmas dinner. The adults would play cards and Jane and I would scramble around under the table, picking up stray pennies.
Jane had a great sense of humor; she could make me laugh easily. I recall once in 1964, when the Beatles were big, during a visit to our house, she carefully cut out a photo of the band in a fan magazine meant for insertion into a telephone dial. Not knowing how to remove the dial she taped it, and called down to me in the back yard, "Wesley! You have a telephone call!" I ran up to the house wondering who on earth would call me, and saw the Beatles looking back at me on the telephone dial... for some reason I have never forgotten that little prank.
You can see the bamboo fence my parents had built to conceal the back of the yard from swimmers. What was behind it? Stuff we discarded: scrap wood, a sofa, plywood, etc. Also a deep hole my friends and I once dug, seeking buried treasure. I recall building a control panel out of one of the big pieces of discarded plywood, set up in the corner where the neighbor's tree grew over their fence. It was my laboratory.
You can see where the pool filter sits by the side of the pool, a black hose dipping into the water. You can also see a turquoise pole sticking up. What's that? It was Dad's solution to the challenge of providing AC power to the filter motor. A long extension cord ran up the mast and, some distance away, was suspended to an unpainted 2 X 4 (you can see it on the left). This provided walking clearance. The cord was then draped in the air and run into the window of the back house and plugged into a wall outlet. Problem solved!
Finally, note the ultra-cool port hole in the side of the pool wall, enabling me to sneak up and gawk at girls in swim suits without being seen.