The Bob I Knew
It is with great pleasure that I can say that I had known Bob for 64 years before his passing. We shared many adventures together as we traveled together along a now very dusty road of life from childhood to adulthood. Bob was a person that was by your side during the good times and the bad times exhibiting warmth, compassion, and caring. I remember him as a generous individual that in time of need was there for his friends, family, and acquaintances.
Without much doubt, Bob was adventurous. He travelled around the United States by motorcycle twice and once in an old Volkswagen. I never really thought he was at home unless he was traveling down a road taking in the sights or behind the steering wheel in his boat, seeking out what was around the next turn. We traveled down many paved and unpaved roads together. Once we actually ran off the road in the middle of the night driving up a single lane, dirt road to Rock Creek Lake outside of Lone Pine, California.
At that time, Bob had an older 1936 Chevy coup in which he had cut down the center gear shift from about two feet to eight inches to be “sporty.” Well, in the middle of the night, he reached down for the gear shift. Since it was so low, and he could not feel it, he looked down……..Yipe! We veered to the right and went rapidly down an embankment but were fortunately stopped by a fallen tree about 10 feet down, sidewise and upright. Lucky us! Next morning, Tom from Tom’s garage pulled us out.
However, on that night, we ended up getting out of the car, grabbing our sleeping bags, climbing up to the road, and headed down the road to Clear Lake. Remember, this was in the middle of the night with no moonlight and quiet as could be…so-o-o we kinda felt our way along. As we were walking, we started wondering where in the world the lake was because we felt we had been walking a long time. Well, all of a sudden we heard splash...splash..splash and What was that? After a while we realized, it was our own footsteps! We were in the lake! We had walked right into it without realizing it was there.
That was one treasured moment in time during one of our youthful adventures that we often shared over the phone. We were able to share many moment like this as we got older, and now it is very sad to think I will not be able to share those treasured moments of life with him over the phone or in person.
Our first outing was a camping trip to his Uncle’s Ranch in Banning, California. I’ll never forget being amazed as Bob whipped up pancakes for our first breakfast. They were delicious! His grandfather worked at the nearby Highland Springs Guest Ranch where we visited. He was proud to say actress, Gale Storm, often stayed at the Ranch as he gave us a tour of the ranch in an old WW 2 military jeep.
One summer, Bob visited us here in Oregon so we took him on a little excursion to see the scenic sights of our area and while making the rounds we ended up looking over a large lake called Blue River. By chance, there was no one to be seen for miles around the lake or in the lake. It was a strikingly beautiful day. Bob turns to us and says in sincere astonishment, “Does anyone know about this place?” We could not help but laugh, because it is a favored place to fish for many in our area. Bob came up from LA where it would be very difficult to recreate that scene of emptiness.
Bob loved the water, and during his lifetime, he had two nice boats. We treasured our camping, boating and water skiing adventures with him.
Sixty-four years of memories remain from traveling down this road of life with Bob. It is not hard to say that I appreciated Bob for who he was. I will stash away all of those wonderful memories in my treasure chest of memories and revisit them. He will be dearly missed.
