Monday, September 3, 2012

Treasure Island

It's awful how many friends and I have grown separated from each other. I will tell you how one friendship began. She was very pregnant and I was very pregnant with my second child. Discussing the degree of our pregnancies we discovered that we might very well be room mates at Mills Hospital in San Mateo. We had different doctors who had enrolled us in the same hospital and since both of us were having sections they had guessed on the same week in January. I had asked Sam to forego h is momthly Army meeting at San Foran  (sp) , because I wanted to have this baby on my birthday Jan25).
This was not possible, either because of Sam , or because of the doctor. Anna was born January 21 and my fellow hospital mate's baby was born the same day. Co-incidentally the mother had been a class mate of Sam's in San Mateo High School.

We became good friends and since the father was in a related field of work with Sam, the four of us would hang around for maybe  a monthly dinner out.Baby sitters were a difficult new added expence. We had taken our first baby with us where ever we went. He was now 18 months old and it was time for a baby sitter.

Suddenly our friends discovered that Treasure Island had a Navy club with a fabulous restaurant with very affordable prices. And there was gambling. Slot machines and twenty one tables etc. And so we went there a couple of times. Since I came from Sweden I knew that drinking and driving was taboo I began putting on the breaks. One night after dinner, we said we could gamble for only minuteds and then we would leave. When I went to say good by to them I found our host for the evening at a 25 cent slot machine. He said, please Gertrud, stand guard over this machine while I go to get new quarters. I have put so much money in this machine, I know it is going to pay off soon. It took him ages and i had to pretend I was playing the machine. At last he came back and Sam and I could leave. It was a horrible drive back home to Burlingame. We made it and they made it. The machine never paid off and Sam and I took turns to drive sober.

Why all this? Jane, our youngest cleaned out her Aunt Bunty's house after she died and just recently came across old post cards she had saved. She sent me a picture of Treasure Is;and and the message on thee back of the card was Do you have any memories from here? This blog is Jane's answer.