Becky Osborne:  

I met Denver Osborne, my future husband, at the Sonoma County Fair in 1970! (The trend at that time was to get married where you met, so I guess we should have had our Wedding in the fairground's parking lot)!! We married (in a church!) in August of 1972. Contrary to popular opinion and a very mean rumor that was started, I was NOT pregnant!!!!! We honeymooned in Vegas, where we saw Elvis Presley!!! He was fantastic!! We moved to Anaheim, CA right after that and I attended high school there. However, in my heart, I will always be SRHS class of 1973! All of my friends are here! We have lived in so many places during the 46 years of our marriage! I'll just name most of them and only detail the most important ones. Here goes: Anaheim; Van Nuys; Sherman Oaks; San Pedro; then back to Santa Rosa, where, in 1975 our son, Kevin was born! When he was just 5 weeks old, we moved to Blythe, CA (ugh!) because Denver's dad had injured his hand and needed help running his meat market there. Denver had been working as a grocery clerk since before we were married, but was also getting his journeyman meat cutter's license. I had been "Suzy Homemaker" from Day 1, which I enjoyed. I'm so thankful I didn't have to leave the kids at Day Care while I went off to work. We wound up staying in Blythe for 2 1/2 years! I hated the heat! By the way, I didn't drive, so I walked everywhere--until the temp hit 110*!!!! But, it was a "dry" heat, like that made any difference! From Blythe, it was back to Santa Rosa (just couldn't stay away)! We bought our 1st house there in 1978. We lived there for a couple of years, then moved back to Blythe! (We were gluttons for punishment)! We leased our own little Mom and Pop store, but the whole thing literally fell apart within the 1st 7 weeks! (On opening day, the bottom fell out of the water tower, which cooled all of the motors! One by one we lost the freezer, milk box, beer box, produce case and air conditioner!!! Can you imagine being cooped up in a store all day in 110* or hotter with no air conditioning??? That was as close to Hell as I ever want to get!! We left Blythe after only a couple of months, never to live there again--I hope!!! We then moved to Citrus Heights, near Sacramento, where Denver got a job at Raley's. We lived there about a year or so, then moved again! (Are you confused yet? I sure am)! We were tired of living in a big city and saw an ad for a drive-in restaurant in a mountain community. I was 8 months pregnant with our 2nd son, but we decided to check it out. We fell in love with the little town (not even one traffic light)! We found out that Raley's was building a store there! Denver asked for a transfer and got it! We moved to Oakhurst, CA (near Yosemite National Park) in November 1981 when our son, Danny was 3 months old. We lived there for 16 years! Our daughter, Heather was born in 1985 in Fresno, about 45 minutes away. (There is only an Urgent Care here)! I was so afraid she would be born on the side of the road while racing to the hospital! Actually, that wasn't as far-fetched as you might think. It HAD happened to other women!! But not me, thank goodness! Denver really wanted to own his own business. In fact, we almost bought a Pizza Factory franchise in Colville, WA in about 1994, but the deal didn't work out, so we didn't go. Then, in Sept 1997 we bought a Maaco Auto Painting franchise and moved to Bakersfield!! Yuck!! Why we would leave our beautiful mountains and move to the armpit of CA was beyond me! Even our customers said we were nuts! However, the business was very successful and God really blessed us. We were able to keep our home in Oakhurst and buy a gorgeous one in Bakersfield, as well as the property on which the business was located! We had our Maaco for 6 1/2 years, but the stress was really getting to Denver. We often painted 50 cars a week and worked 14-16 hours a day!! Denver's only relief was very short weekends at our home in Oakhurst. (He left the shop around 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays and got back about 11:30 p.m. on Sunday)! I was always stuck doing a mountain of paperwork, so I rarely came up. (It's about a 2 1/2 drive). We sold our Maaco and our beautiful home in Bakersfield in May of 2004. That was the year of MAJOR events: we sold our business and our home and moved to an apartment in Bakersfield; I put together my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary; my parents sold their home of 49 years; I helped them get somewhat ready to move, but ran out of time because I went to Temecula, CA for a month to await the birth of our 1st grandson, Bryan Anthony (Kevin had gotten married 3 years earlier) and to help out for the first couple of weeks; our daughter got married in November and we moved back to Oakhurst in December! Whew! I get exhausted just thinking about it! We have been in Oakhurst ever since. We bought a Servpro fire and water clean-up and restoration franchise in September of '06. That was the same year I lost m...Expand for more