SherPaHo

I know, that is a funny title for today's post...but let me explain.

My mother's family (Shearrer's, Palmer's, & Holley's) built a small cinder block lake house on Medina Lake in the mid 1950's. This lake house was the weekend gathering place for all the family. Those were some great times, spending most of the day swimming and skiing on the lake. I also got some of the worst sunburn of my life on Medina Lake--ah--but those were the good old days!!!

As was the tradition, most every lake property had a unique name assigned to it--our's was--SherPaHo (created from the first few letters of each family's surnames). This lake cabin, with the funny name has very fond memories for me; my husband and I spent our honeymoon there in 1967.

As many times as I had gone to this lake retreat in my childhood, you would think I would be able to return to the location--but this was not the case. Several times over the years, we have tried to find the elusive, SherPaHo to no avail. But about 3 weeks ago we finally accomplished our mission, quite by accident. We were just out for an afternoon drive and decided to make our way back to the Lake, never really planning on trying to find this cabin on the lake--for we had come to the conclusion many years ago that it had been torn down. As we made our way around the dusty roads we stopped periodically and took pictures, we saw several deer that day.

We knew that we had to be near the location of the property that once belonged to my family--but everything had changed so. For some reason I stopped, I really don't remember what I had stopped for, but as I did, I looked to the right, and there it was--the old cinder block cabin--and to my amazement--at the driveway entrance still lay the huge rock with the name--SherPaHo!

My aunt had painted the name on that rock over fifty years ago--and she had put these emblems on it: a tractor(my grandfather was a farmer), an airplane( my uncle was in the Air Force, and a telephone (both my parents worked for the phone company). The name and the emblems could still be seen after all these years. I sat there as tears welled up in my eyes, recalling those days gone by, my emotions overwhelmed me as I shared with David all the wonderful memories of those precious days of my childhood.

As we get older--I have found this to be true--how truly precious these discoveries from the past are, they flood our minds with memories too wonderful to forget.

Treasure these memories!