a long, long time ago…my life as told by my friend Betty Boop and I

Cathy Sullens when we first moved to missouri, we were both sick. everyone on our street in colorado springs came down with hepatitis. the health department was going crazy, said it came from the water…the lady 2 houses down passed away. joe told me about his daddy’s 80 acre farm in missoui. we traded in our bicycles and bought an older international truck. we gave up our good paying jobs and headed east. i had been reading my “mother earth news” for years, i was ready to go homestead! his daddy Donald Ray thought it was funny as could be i was gonna homestead as he owned the land! hahaha this was in the fall of what 1976? 77? colder weather arrived quicker than we anticipated. so joe and his dad cut sassafras poles, his aunts had recently moved to MO from colorado, too, so we used their packing boxes…my homemade gravy held up the walls. we had a full size bed, a metal wardrobe for our clothes, a folding table with a coleman stove for cooking and a small old army coal stove for heat. it took tiny little pieces of wood, only! haha when it rained hard, we added straw to the floor. we had 2 kerosene lamps and had an 8 track hooked up to the car battery to have music! we had added one window for light, a wooden door and had a tin roof that sounded wonderful when it rained. we lived and healed in that wonderful, quiet place. compared to the hustle and bustle of living a few blocks from downtown colorado springs, it was truly heaven on earth. many a day, stretched out on a quilt in the sunshine, watching the clouds float by. his dad would let us carry water from his place, and take showers, our friend in cabool, Mimi Caldwell, let us come take showers when we came to town to do laundry. we lived there that fall, that winter and that spring…then we found jobs in town and our home at Bado…we lived there when we met you and yours, i do believe betty boop. here’s joe in our bed, our weekend stash of a cold beer and bracs chocolate candies in the bag.