Laughter keeps the gals afloat

 As many of you know, my cousin, Tink Nixon, has been ailing for some time and has been staying with her son and his family in Scottsdale. During these many months,* she and I have visited back and forth, and I have spent much time remembering our youthful activities.


 We were both very active and had little time to sit around to think unless we were thinking up some more mischief to create. From the time we were crawlers, we were very close and just seemed to want to get into things our parents warned us away from. We were very resourceful and could think up more trouble than we had time to get into, but we always tried to keep something going.


When she would go to the canyons to visit us, we would spend most of our time running from spot to spot and checking out what was going on at the store. Unfortunately, we spent a bit too much time relieving Uncle Burnace of some of his candy, but he always knew exactly what we were doing as he had already coped with the preceding generation and just sort of look the other way.


When I say we ran from place to place, I mean just that as we didn't have time to walk. Besides, we had more energy than we knew what to do with and would try to get rid of it before bed time. Even after we both moved to town, we did much running. We were both very proud of our Uncle Ray and his track records, so we would decide to copy some of his antics. Tink was better at all those events than I and could beat me at most games. We did, however, spend much time laughing as we got into various binds. For instance, we were pole vaulting over the barbed wire fence at Mrs. Nations'corral, and Tink hung her pant leg on the top barb, thus landing upside down and just dangling there while I went into hysterical laughter as I tried to lift her to the point we could get her loose from the barbs. I think she was more than a little impatient that time, but she wasn't seeing herself hanging upside down as I was and couldn't appreciate the humor involved.


We really never recovered from having great fun together and trying impossible activities. You may recall the story of our rafting down Ute Creek in the middle of the dark and nearly killing ourselves before we finally walked to her home near Logan. We were in our 50's at that time and should have known better than to try such an antic, especially since one of us couldn't swim. I just kept sinking in that red water and coming up gasping each time our raft capsized. We finally gave up because we couldn't see where we were going and because we had wrecked the raft. After walking for several miles, we puffed into her house to discover that her husband and friend were out hunting us and that he was a~lready busy planning our funerals.


Were we to be together this afternoon and could think of something exciting to do, we would be apt to try, no matter that she is in a weakened condition. In fact, if we could become involved in a major activity, she would begin feeling better, and we would laugh our way out of any jam into which we might land.


Let's all work toward her getting better so we can return to enjoying life as only two country cousins can!