1984

Life continued at Yosemite Lakes Park, and Dick expanded our rear decks with their lovely mountain views.

Our involvement in the Park events grew when Dick became the President of the Golf Association.     He started a series of fund raising events, like Par-Tee Time, where we took the existing golf cart storage shed and turned it into a party room and dance room.     It was a great success except for someone suggesting to me that I put Corn Meal on the concrete floor to make the dancing easier.     A good idea, right?     Unfortunately I 'heard' Corn Starch and we danced to a cloud of white floating and getting on everyone's clothes!     Ah well, the idea was good.

Another idea Dick came up with was a series of Spaghetti Dinners in the little club house.     Dick and I catered the first one, and other volunteers did future ones with different variations of spaghetti.     We had huge success with this and with the funds raised with the two events were able to expand the club house to its present size.     I can't remember exactly how many Spaghetti dinners we had, but Dick came up with the idea of having a special dinner for those who had attended each time (free of charge to them of course).     We had it in the main community club house, and Louise, niece Tricia and one other person we hired helped us put on the show.     We started with shrimp cocktail, followed by cornish game hens, baked potato and salad, and then a dessert.    We had wine, breads, butter and after dinner mints, to round it off.     It was quite a success, but like all things did have its problems.     This time it was because the ovens were too small to handle the individual cornish game hens and even though we managed to get them all in, the oven was so crowded that the heat would not distribute evenly, so poor Louise sat on the floor during the whole time of their cooking, moving the trays around and the hens around to get them done evenly.     It slowed down the process, so we kept people waiting, but they seemed to appreciate it anyway.   

We took a couple of trips up to Sacramento, and had one great trip to Florida staying at the Saddlebrook Golf Resort in a five day event put on by Affordable Inns, the company we had left that had the Regal 8 Inns.     It was packed with great golf, fantastic meals and great renewed friendships.

Gordon and Irene left us this year and went back to live in Canada.     Not to the Eastern part where they had lived before, but up to Vancouver Island.     Their oldest son David lived there and wanted them to move and they were also lured by the free medical in Canada compared to paying for a policy here.     We were both sad to see them go.     Dick's best golf was always with Gordon and Irene and I were very close.

One of the things that happened when we expanded the Golf Club was that they found a cat that had kittens under a section that they wanted to build on.     As soon as the kittens were old enough, we found families for them, and Callie joined our house.     You know how dogs and cats hate each other, but I think Taffy and Callie didn't get the message.

Chow Time, with Dick's treats, always brought the complete family.     Sam (on the right) always thought she was a dog, but Callie knew she was a cat, so obviously didn't want to look too eager!

1984 started our slide downhill financially, but I will let Dick tell that story.