The above picture is the present day modest three bedroom, one bath(no shower)house I was raised in.  It also has a basement, an unusual fixture for California.  The basement was the result of a request of my Mom from Montana, where finished basements were the norm.  This house was built entirely by my stepfather after arriving in California in approximately 1946.  The garage and shop to the left of the house was added by him sometime in 53 or 54.  A large barn was also added by him that was built entirely out of salvaged lumber.  That barn is history but everything else is still a monument to his craftsmanship.  The windmill was added by the present owner, "Bud Hoppe."

A little barn history as a kid.  There was a bunch of left over salvaged lumber after building the barn and while my step father was too busy to notice, I built a "fort" up in the roof area of the barn, accessible only by climbing the inside barn wall up to it.  It was quite spacious and afforded a birds eye view of the area in front of the barn.  My sister Bonnie and her friend Joanne, liked it so much that they camped out in it but only for one night.  My step father was a little ticked when he figured out where all the missing lumber went but looked the other way and let my "fort" stand.  You can still see the original barn to the right of our house, in the following photo.
  
This is what our house looked like originally in the 1950's.  My brother Don, thinks it was 1956 specifically.  This area was part of the low lying Sacramento River delta area and was on occasion prone to flooding.  My mother took this picture and on the back of it wrote, "I was standing in water up to my knees when I took this picture."  The "prone to flooding" was stemmed considerably by the building of the Folsom Dam on the American River.

The first year this dam was finished, Folsom Lake was filled in one season.  The lake was suppose to take five or more years.  It filled up so fast that the engineers were speculating whether it could hold the water back or not and they were seriously thinking of purposely releasing water to protect the dam from failing, even though it would cause flooding and damage down stream from the dam.

The dog on the front porch of my house is "Toby," a good old good for nothing but a pet, ranch dog. 

Mom enjoyed growing Cali Lilies and you can see a bunch of them under the kitchen window.  Based on this, I am guessing this picture was taken in late March or early April.  This was the time of year when the snow melt from the Sierra's would swell the many sloughs past their meager banks and onto our farm land.

This last picture has nothing to do with Franklin or Point Pleasant.  It has only to do with my mother. 

In June of 1961, I joined the Air Force for a four year hitch.  About six months later, my mother and step father invested in a Cafe/Fishing Sport Shop, located in New Hope Landing.  The original cafe my Mom and my step father ran, was downstairs in the pictured building and to the right, a little below the sign "Wimpy's."  The attached building on the left (with the restaurant sign) was added at some later unknown date.

New Hope Landing is just two miles east of Walnut Grove and on the Mokelumne River.  This was suppose to be the "Get Rich" venture for my Mom and my Step Father, Wesley.  It ended up being the place where my Mom passed away about three years after starting the business.  Please visit my memorial page for my Mother.

Some things change and some things remain the same.  I still miss my Mom.