The cousins.

I have fond memories of my cousins. I can say that I miss seeing and knowing them. My uncle Leon Bingham would visit Manassa to come celebrate the 24th of July. I always wanted to see Jim, Brenda, and all the others. We would play together, I don't remember just what, but we would. It was an exciting time to have them come. I remember going to Mesa Arizona once to visit them. It does not seem like a fair trade. I thought that they were the perfect family.



Sometimes we would go on a road trip to New Mexico to visit uncle Keith Bingham and his children. Kelly and Barry were the boys that I remember playing with. I do remember riding down the streets of their town in a wagon. They lived in Los Alamos. I vaguely remember going to the atomic processing plant and touring the facility where the atomic bomb was created. I can't remember anything other than the wall with the glass that had long rubber gloves attached to work on the materials on the opposite side.




The Whites lived in Manassa for the years when I was in early grade school. Barbara White lived in the white house a few blocks away with her children. Bob, Connie, Larry, Danny, and Jeff.

Larry, Danny, and Jeff were my buddies. They are all gone now. I get somewhat melancholy when I dwell on it. I don't have any good pictures of them. Only of few.

Larry Dean and I (Larry Arlo) are kneeling down in the front in the picture below Aunt Barbara. Barbara moved to Albuquerque New Mexico and we did not have much contact after that. I miss the days when we boys would go on our adventures. (I do not miss getting into trouble.)




LaRue Lawson came to live with us in Manassa while her husband Harold was serving in Viet Nam. They had a trailer that was parked on the lot where the garden plot used to be. Eddie and I were about the same age, but Eddie was a little older and quite a bit larger than me. I don't have any pictures of them.

Eddie and I play together, after a fashion. Eddie always wanted things his way (anyway that is the way I remember it) and I did not want to always do what he wanted, so we would sometimes engage in arguments and what our parents thought were fights. Go figure!

One day LaRue and Gatha determined that they were going to have an end of our fighting. They were going to make us fight until we wanted to fight no more. They secures some willow switches to use to threaten us if we did not continue to fight. We fought. But as seeing that Eddie was much larger than me, it was not long before he had the upper hand. I was on the bottom and he was sitting on me while we pushed each others hands and arms around. Nobody was really getting hurt, but I was getting tired.

I laid down on the ground and rested. Eddie exclaimed, "I KILLED HIM! I killed him!" and started to get up. As he did I actually hit him with a right cross to the head. I don't remember how the fight ended, but there we were having fought with probably no clear victor, and as I remember, not much changed in the way we played. Maybe Eddie, Gatha, or LaRue could add some light as to what really happened then and thereafter.

Doris Faye was mostly like a big sister. I don't remember her living with us, but I do remember her living in the house that Barbara used to have. Doris Faye and Bill and their children were close enough that we spent a lot of time interacting. Billy Jean was the one that we played with the most. When Bill died things changed a bit. I hear Aunt Doris Faye is getting ready to get married again.



I have lost touch with all my cousins. I wish then all well.