A good time was had . . . .

It was the first time I'd seen Tammy Finney since she graduated from Sandpoint High School in 1979 with my sister Laurie. As Tammy, still strikingly beautiful, walked into the VFW Hall to join the party honoring June Paulet, I stopped in mid-sentence and yelled out her name. The visiting in the room was a bit too loud for her to hear me.

Eventually, however, we made eye contact, and then we shared mini-capsules of our lives since I'd been her sophomore honors English teacher and she was one of my students who rode horses in our neighborhood. She's been living in Denver all these years, and she's now the mother of four children. Tammy moved back to Finneyville two weeks ago. She's happy to be back home where there's still a sense of community.

Pardon me for going two days in a row on the same topic, but yesterday's gathering was another of those delectable events where snippets of nostalgia reigned supreme and faces from the past promised a smorgasboard of priceless memories.

Ginny Paulet Beller, who now lives in Salmon where her mother moved a year ago, delighted in telling about the old family movie she'd found of all of us little 4-H'ers walking out of Community Hall in our sewing creations. Ginny's observation suggested that it was obvious in the footage that Marianne was not feeling comfortable and would rather be home wrestling with a cow than preening for a style review. Ginny was right in her assumption.

Her mention of Community Hall jogged my memory of the 4-H achievement night when I was about 10 and one of my embarrassed older brothers walked up to me and said, "Put your legs together." Apparently, I didn't look too ladylike slumped in that big ol' chair in my dress with unds showing for all to see.

"How many years of sewing did you have to take?" Ginny asked me. When I told her that the flat-felt seam construction of my flannel pajamas during the third year project finally convinced my mother that it was time to quit putting me through this torture, everybody laughed. Of course, I added that I had to finish the project because Mother wouldn't allow quitters. I did and won a measly white ribbon for my efforts.

I saw another local author at the gathering. Steve Oliver of Spokane graduated with my brother Kevin. He's written a series of mystery books. He showed up because he's part of the same Oliver family as June. She's looking great at 78. She's had one knee replacement and will have to wait until the other, which she twisted, heals before having it replaced. June brought along a picture of her grandparents who settled here in 1908.

"Write a story about these people," she told me, handing me the photo. "They're always writing about people who have lived here all of 20 years as if they've been here forever." Again, June was right. Seems like, with all the newcomers, that many memories of local events and local people go back just so far--hardly far enough to be deemed historical.

Not with yesterday's crowd. The gathering offered a virtual goldmine of local lore. Manny Finney pointed to a picture on the VFW wall of a group of uniformed soldiers with a flag.

"This guy's name is Broadsword," he told me. "He was one of the last Civil War veterans in this county. He lived in Elmira." Another soldier in the photo had endured the Bataan Death March during World War II. Speaking of wars and soldiers, June told me she'd recently seen my brother Mike on a re-run of "Ollie North's War Stories" about his Cobra helicopter shoot-down by a SAM missile during the Vietnam War. June hadn't seen Mike since he had a mop of red hair and showed those Hereford steers in 4-H before going off to West Point.

"I remembered him with hair, and it was red," she said, "but I knew he looked familiar." She finally figured out it was that same kid who lived down Boyer from her Sand Creek Angus farm.

Manny also told me he had a tattered old quilt of his grandmother's, which featured squares with the names of all the Four Square Club members. I'm guessing the Four Square Club was out there in the Bronx area, and Finneyville was a part of it. Tammy Finney said she'd take that quilt and spruce it up a bit.

Judy Miller Spielman used to live on Boyer across the road from Racicots. I can still remember her big smile, her blue eyes and those blonde braids. The braids are gone, but the eyes still twinkle. Judy moved away when we were still growing up. She eventually married a nice man named Loren from Minnesota. One of their sons, Dallas, is one of my son's best friends from high school.

Anyway, Judy reminded us of her grandfather Bill Neu who owned land behind the Paulets at the base of Schweitzer, long before the present Schweitzer Road crossed through Paulets' northwest hayfield. I reminded Judy that my dad pastured his Hereford cattle in Bill Neu's fields. When he'd drive his pickup through those pastures to check up on old Mystic, Donna and their cow compatriates, we and the dogs got to ride in the back.

We enjoyed thumbing through pictures of Ginny's beautiful new home in Salmon which includes a guest house and a touching memorial for their much-beloved Thoroughbred race horse which had to be put down last fall because of Cushings Disease. Franny showed us pictures of their new 1,200-acre wheat and cattle spread in Whitman County where some of her dad's original Angus cows have a new crop of spring calves.

"We can sell our red wheat over the Internet," she said. "Steve's already got a couple of plots sold."

Frannie says her hubby Steve is fully retired from the University of Idaho farm and is now farming for himself. Frannie will retire this fall after finishing her responsibilities for one more year as the Latah County fair manager.

Indeed, a lot of water has passed under our Sand Creek bridges since we were all young farts growing up there on North Boyer. I doubt that when we were precocious little kids with snotty noses, ragged jeans and stinky tennis shoes, we ever gave so much as one thought about how much seeing each other and comparing notes about our lives would mean to us 50 years later.