When a daughter recently announced that she was moving to the country from our favorite city, where I have always loved to travel, all I could think of was, “Never. Ever. Again.”

I used to love crossing this beautiful bridge into that beautiful city. However, since I did it for the first time fifty years, things have changed and so have I.

I remember crossing the Golden Gate when the toll was a quarter and a friendly custom was to pay for the car behind you.  I think now it costs about $6 and no one is paying for anyone else.

I am so looking forward to visiting her new place in her tiny new town (pop. 175) on the Russian River, nestled in a redwood forest, a mile or so upstream from the coast. No mail delivery.  She has a P.O. box here:

Gotta love a place where the P.O. conveniently shares its location with a confectionery.

As for me, this is just about the right amount of traffic:

That’s my long-time paddling companion Dave up ahead.  After we’d paddled 20 miles on Friday, I said I didn’t want to get into Friday evening traffic on the interstate on the way home.  Dave knows every country road in Western Oregon and promised he could lead me home on them all the way.  And he did.  Through beautiful woods and across Willamette Valley farms ready to be harvested.  Only hold up was a few minutes when we had to wait for a large farm vehicle to turn off.

I can remember the big piece-of-furniture radio that stood in Mama and Papa Harrison’s living room.

We sat around it and listened to a few minutes of the evening news or a bit of country music from “The Light Crust Dough Boys,”  and some really great “family” shows.  Actually, I believe they were all family shows. “Fibber Magee and Molly.”  “Baby Snooks.”

Daddy gave one like this Mother for a very special gift.

I remember lying on a chenille bedspread with her on hot summer afternoons and listening to short soap operas. I was about five, which means she was about twenty-five.  I can still hum some of their theme songs and commercial jingles. “Just Plain Bill.”  “Stella Dallas.” “Pepper Young’s Family” was a particular favorite.  And I wanted Ivory soap for my bath.  “So pure it floats.”   Still, does, I think.  Or “Camay, the soap of beautiful women.”

Later, when I was about ten years old, I got to keep that radio in my bedroom and I remember listening to some great “radio plays” as I was falling asleep.  “The First Nighter from the Little Theatre just off Times Square,”  starring Barbara Luddy and Olan Soule.

When I was in high school, I was the very proud owner of a transistor radio.  Way out in West Texas at night, we could pick up all the top songs from KOMA in Oklahoma City.  “Only the Lonely, dum dum dum dummy doo ah.”

Now, I really only listen to NPR.  In the car or on my laptop.