California Springs

As a child in California, spring came early to the East Bay, thirty miles east of San Francisco. The fogs and rains of winter, where the temperature dipped down to nearly below fifty degrees (burr), had passed and the warmth of spring brought out the sun, birds, and insects.

Author, 1956?, Easter in California

School was soon over, and we ran through the fresh grass. The ice cream/snow cone truck would play its jingle and we'd ask for a dime to buy and fill our mouths with that sweet sugar. The neighborhood kids would gather to play Freeze Tag, or Hide and Seek.

Before we had a dryer, my mother hung out the laundry as soon as spring came, putting away the drying rack that sat before our heater in our home's narrow hallway. My most vivid memory is the dragonflies that landed on the clothes line, their orange and green wings sparkling like jewels when the sunlight hit them.

My mom would soon plant her garden and we've have fresh, tangy tomatoes and crunchy cucumbers. Her gardenia plant would bloom and we'd smell the flowers' heady, perfumed scent.

My towering father, who commuted into a city for his job at a radio station, would change his long-sleeved shirts for short sleeves, and barbeque on the patio he'd built.

After marriage, when I lived on tropical islands, Puerto Rico and Guam, every day was the same as far as weather (sweltering); unless the occasional hurricane or typhoon blew through.

Now I live in Western PA to be closer to my granddaughters. I took this picture on April 3rd, and there is snow on the ground. It's snowed twice more, and snow is predicted for next week.

 

When I think of spring, it's those California days of warmth, no humidity, the laughter of my friends and the jingle of the ice-cream truck. Playing cowboys with my brother (now deceased) and other kids on my street, climbing trees, catching crawdads in the creek, my parents young and healthy, the innocent times of children.

 

In New Brunswick, Canada, where my Brides book is set, spring comes even later. I read that when the ice in the rivers break up it's like an earthquake. For a California girl, I understand that experience.

 

 

 

Night Owl Reviews gave my historical novel a Reviewer Top Pick:
'Historical romance readers will fall in love with both Amelia and Gilbert. "On A Stormy Primeval Shore" was a fabulous tale of life and hardship in historical Canada.'

Blurb: In 1784, Englishwoman Amelia Latimer sails to New Brunswick to marry a man chosen by her father. Amelia is repulsed and refuses the marriage. She is attracted to a handsome Acadian, Gilbert, a man beneath her. Gilbert fights the incursion of Loyalists from the American war to hold onto his heritage. Will they find love when events seek to destroy them?

 

E-book and paperback are available at Amazon and All Markets

For more information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.



What I Would Change was Beyond My Control, by Diane Scott Lewis

When I was a little girl, more decades ago than I care to count, I was skinny as a string bean. If I were a child in school today they'd probably worry I was Anorexic. But I ate like a field-hand, as my mother would say. I loved all sorts of foods, exotic and otherwise, salads, tempura shrimp, desserts, pizza, anything.

The boys teased me relentlessly, one calling me Bird Legs every time he saw me on the recess yard. (maybe he had a crush on me...?) Back then girls had to wear dresses to school, so my stick legs were always on display. I grew up in California, where fifty degrees meant winter, so no hiding my limbs under thick tights and tons of sweaters.

Then if that wasn't enough, at age twelve I had a huge growth spurt. Not out, as I wished for, but up. Other girl's were developing into shapely teens, I was becoming a narrow tower. "How's the weather up there?" I'd hear.

My best friend's mother, who stood maybe four-foot ten said I needed to stop growing and she was going to have my mother tie a brick to my head. (if only that worked)

 

When I entered high school I was five-foot-nine, (3/4 inches was yet to add itself on), and still skinny as a needle. I longed to be 'willowy' but 'gangly' applied. I wasn't the tallest girl in school, but all the others had meat on their bones. Where were my hips and other womanly shapes? I resembled my dad who was six-foot-four. Two bricks please! I still gobbled down plenty of food, but to no avail.

 

I planned to join the navy at nineteen, I loved to travel, but I didn't weigh enough for their height/weight ratio. For weeks I had to stuff myself and barely slid by.

 

I met my husband when I was stationed in Greece, and while most of my friends went through unhappy marriages and divorces--and ours wasn't always a piece of cake (yum, did anyone say cake?)--we've been together for over forty years, and that's one thing I wouldn't change.

We have two sons and two beautiful granddaughters.

 

I came to terms with my gangly body and in my mature years accept things far better than I used to. I've shrunk a half inch, and I finally got the fat I wanted. Unfortunately, it's only around my middle.

 

My experiences made me stronger and resilient. I rarely back down (but I do wish I could go back in time and have a long "talk" with Robbie-who labeled me Bird Legs).

 

I also love writing, starting in kindergarten. My pens and pencils never cared how boney I was. Well, those implements are long and skinny, too. The way I prefer historicals, I should be using a quill pen.

 

My latest novel, On a Stormy Primeval Shore, part of the Canadian Historical Brides Series, is available for pre-order, (link below) release date: January 1, 2018.

 

Blurb: In 1784, Amelia sails to New Brunswick, a land overrun by Loyalists escaping the American Revolution, to marry a soldier whom she rejects. Acadian Gilbert fights to preserve his heritage and property—will they find love when events seek to destroy them?

 

 

 

Pre-order HERE

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the word with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.

 

An adventurous childhood in Northern California by Diane Scott Lewis

 

 

Available in 2018

Since I’ve already spoken of my childhood visit to British Columbia, I can’t wax nostalgic about Canada, so I’ll have to talk of my girlhood in a small town in California.

I grew up in the village of Pacheco, which had been an important place in the 1800’s, a commercial center with access to shipping. But by the time I came along, in the 1950’s, it was a tiny town with a mom and pop grocery store, a candy store, the Pacheco Inn (a bar), drug store, and the bowling alley. Of all those places, only the bowling alley is left.

 

We didn’t get our first traffic light until I was sixteen, something my husband often teases me about.

Pacheco is twenty-seven miles north-east of San Francisco. My wonderfully flamboyant Aunt Mary lived in that great metropolis, so when my family visited her my brother and I spent many days roaming the city, riding cable cars and exploring Fisherman’s Warf.


Brother, Scott

Surrounded by farms in Pacheco, we lived in Country Club Homes, which sounds much grander than it actually was. It’s tract homes with cookie-cutter houses on asphalt roads. No wonder in my novels I write about quant half-timbered cottages on crooked, cobbled lanes.

Our life was still quite rural. We kept pigeons on the roof, chickens in the yard, and sheltered stray cats with kittens in cardboard boxes.

Best friend Candy, and author, 1964

My best friend and I would walk everywhere, feed apples to a horse named Chief, pick apricots and pomegranates from trees.

My friends and I rode our own horses along the country roads, and into the fields, racing through landscape now built up with houses.

The hills above Pacheco were lush, green and full of grazing cows—now condos scar the landscape.

A creek flowed through the town and on into the next, with a dirt road on both sides. We once played with snapping crawdads in the summer and watched tiny frogs emerge like a marching army. The creek is filled in today, no trace left.

We attended the local elementary school, a rambling pink stucco structure now torn down. Below is the mural I helped to draw of our school when I was in sixth grade.

 

I’m not sad (well sometimes) about these changes, only disappointed for the children currently growing up there . I know life must move forward, but I’m grateful I lived my childhood when I did, when it was wild and rural.


Author at sixteen, front yard of childhood home, 1970

 

To find out more about Diane Scott Lewis and my novels, please visit my BWL Author page

or my website: dianescottlewis.org