Slap my thigh; Ima WSI

I talked to an old friend last night. We all knew her as "Mow," the Water Safety Instructor at Camp Neewahlu on Lake Coeur d'Alene. Actually, we didn't know much of anyone by their real names. It was a Campfire Girls camp at Kidd Island Bay where staffers went by nicknames. I knew that Pop was Barb Diltz from Coeur d'Alene.

She was part of the fun-loving trio of counselors, Snap, Crackle and Pop. I was part of the kitchen team where Ginger was the cook, and Salt and Pepper were her helpers. My job was dishwashing; hence, our duo's assigned names were Spic and Span. Betcha can't guess which one I was.

Mow had a great job as water front director, and she didn't even have to take an assigned name like the rest of us. She simply took the first part of her last name and that was that. We got to know her well because the more we perfected our dishwashing routine, the more time we got to spend on the dock, talking to the swimming instructors. Mow always wore a red bandanna and a white pullover. She came from Kansas where she was an English major at Kansas University.

While Pop visted my house in Sandpoint once on one of our one-day weekends, she didn't make a good impression. Hard to believe but she was even more impish than I, and when she started snapping dish towels on people's rear ends in our kitchen, my mother spoke up. We could tell immediately that my mother didn't appreciate Pop's antics. I kept in touch with her for a while but then lost track of her for many years. About ten years ago, we exchanged letters when she was living in Michigan. Haven't heard from her since.

Now, Mow had different success when she came to our house. A great conversationalist and wonderful listener, she charmed my dad who loved to tell his own stories. My mother fed her huge homegrown steaks, which I'm sure she still remembers today. My dad would never let anyone touch his farm equipment, but he allowed Mow, whom he'd met only once, drive the yellow cow truck with its green rack to Priest Lake one time when we had a rare two-day break from the camp.

About half a dozen of us loaded up sleeping bags and headed to my brother Kevin's blister rust camp. There we met Kevin and his ribe-pulling crewmates. They climbed into the cow truck with us, and we did what folks back then did for summertime entertainment at Priest Lake. We drove to dumpsters where bears were feeding. We may have thrown stuff at the bears; I can't recall. I just know it was entertaining.

Then, we drove the Forest Service workers back to camp and headed for Dickensheet Campground where some slept in the back of the truck while others slept in the cab-----until it started raining about 1 a.m. The truck was low on gas so Mow drove it to nearby Lamb Creek, where we took our wet sleeping bags into a laundromat and bedded down on the floor.

The next day, after gasing up, Mow drove the truck from Priest Lake to Farragut State Park. I remember sitting on a picnic table admiring the view to the rugged mountains across the bay and listening to her marvel that it was the most beautiful scene imaginable. I agreed.

Since that day, I've been back to Farragut a lot. That's where I met my hubby who, like us, was taken with the beauty of the surroundings. Since that day, Mow's life and mine have taken different routes. She did teach English after graduating from KU, and I taught English after graduating from U of I. She's lived on a sheep ranch in South Dakota, in a beautiful home in Kansas and now resides with her husband Joe in Palm Springs.

Over the decades we've reconnected from time to time. She's been back to Sandpoint; I've visited her in Palm Springs. She leads a far different life from mine, but we've still got a few things in common: we love to talk and we love to laugh. We're still pretty good at both. So when we talked on the phone last night for nearly two hours for the first time in two years, it got a little noisy at my end and maybe at hers too. We enjoyed lots of giggling and lots of tales on the new home and all the latest family updates.

We also enjoy a common love for Border Collies, so many details of individual dogs were shared as minutes ticked by. At one point in our visit, I glanced at the muted TV and saw that the mad man on CNBC's "Mad Money" was talking about Coldwater Creek. During his characteristic dancing around, he kept donning Coldwater Creek clothing---hats, blouses and skirts as he practiced ordering items on the computer and telling his audience all the good reasons Coldwater Creek stock would be a good investment.

Mow switched her set in Palm Springs to the same channel, and we shared a few Coldwater Creek stories---- including the fact that she's got a big store in her area and that we have a new store in Sandpoint which has replaced the one on the bridge. Mow and I met each other long before Sandpoint had the sophistication of Coldwater Creek and the soon-to-come Jack Nicklaus golf course. She loved the place then, and I'm sure she'll still love it the next time she comes north for a visit.

We've been friends from afar over the decades since those days at Neewahlu in 1965 when she taught swimming and I washed dishes. Though we're bigtime story tellers ourselves, we've lived a few good ones of our own as we continue moving through life and catching up on the lost years in between visits.