The Zembal Family History

1953 Washington visit …

Uncle Joe Zembal with son Joey clam digging at the beach. (Never to young to learn ... )

One of these days I spent with Eddie on his rented farm where he was working the ground to plant Austrian Peas that was used either for hay or let mature to be combined for the seed. He had a Ford Ferguson tractor with a carry disc and that was a rarity for me to see. Joe stopped there on his way home from work to see the progress (?). Gee guys, I didn’t think you ever used those words!! I don’t know the problem but it must not have been a good day, what ever the happening.

I had spent a few days and/or nights at Joe and Mary’s checking out his amazing vegetable garden in the back yard where every square inch is efficiently utilized, and his basement normally filled with the sweet smell of fresh cut cord wood for their wood furnace. Mary Ann, Rosemarie, and Joey were just young kids. They lived in town.

Jim and Berna invited me for supper one evening and I thought I would be on time for a 5:00 pm. dinner. It took longer to get to their place than I thought. They were finished eating. I ate alone. Good salmon dinner but by being late, I missed out on a whole lot! I’ve never been late for anything since!!! Jim had built this new house and everything seemed so huge. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, since back home we lived in a pretty small house. I remember a couple girls they had at the time but remember little else.

To the woods, to Eddie’s farm, hunting, exploring, visiting the now abandoned Wishkah farm in it‘s lonesomeness, kept me entertained the whole time. Don’t know who I was with that was working with a crew demolishing a dam constructed out of logs, maybe on the Wishkah River. Looked like a pretty dangerous operation to me. There was water cascading down, men working in water to cut the logs out, a logging donkey machine and its spar pole of pulleys and cables to help them. Don’t slip!! A long day for me … to watch and to stay out of the way!!

Some years later I had come to visit in Aberdeen and then a chance to see Fran and Grant’s place. It was a Country Gentleman’s “Farm” of five acres. There was a barn, a chicken coop that looked like a guest house?  I don’t remember, only the curved path to it. What’s the matter with a straight path? It was kind of unique with flowers and lots of landscape plants. The whole place more of “show” than workable but then what can you do with five acres? Their kids, Billy and Kathy were youngsters and mostly out of sight. That seems to have been the custom in our generation -- kids to be seen but not heard!! 

Lives are held together by memories. I’m fortunate to have these remembrances to re-live those wonder years. So much forgotten to be sure, but thankful that all not lost!! My sorrow is that my next 45 years didn't allowed contact with the wonderful ancestors, the aunts and uncles, the cousins and families. How thrilled to have connected with some of the cousins in recent years!! What wonderful people and what a wonder for me to be a part of them!!!

I still have more to meet!! 

Don