I was Rose's next door neighbor at her cabin for 20 years. During that time, I managed to collect a lot of Rose stories. Her description of making potato champagne was hilarious, but was her story to tell. Stories from my own memory, are not quite as amusing, but here goes.  Every year, the game warden would come down to the rocks, and catch her fishing with barbed hooks, and every year, he would crimp them closed for her, so that she wouldn't be breaking the law. Mysteriously, she always had fresh barbed hooks the next time. She confided in me, that her stockpile was running out, and she would soon be forced to fish with barbless hooks.

Lightning struck the tree next to Roses cabin, and knocked the top off, but left it hanging in the air. Rose was worried that it would fall down in a wind, and damage her cabin, so she took care of it with her shotgun. I'm told somebody called the police at all the shooting (definitely not me) and Rose had to promise not to cut down any more trees with a shotgun.

My wife was staying up at our cabin while she was on vacation, and I wasn't. My wife and Rose, were always getting into trouble together. One day my wife spotted a cougar in the yard, and it wouldn't leave. She said she wasn't worried, because Rose still had a shotgun, and knew how to use it. I phoned my wife at the cabin everynight between 7:00 and 8:00, but the day of the cougar incident she didn't answer. I kept trying till 9:00 then started phoning the neighbors, including Rose. But nobody was home. Getting worried because of the aggressive cougar, I started driving up to the cabin, my wife finally phoned me at about 10:30, saying Rose had talked her into going out for beers at the neighbors. Relieved, I turned around and went home. After that if there was no one at our cabin, or at Roses, I knew that they were up to something together. My wife and I did a lot of work at our cabin, and whoever was working closest to Roses cabin seemed to disappear for a couple of hours in the afternoon. If I noticed it early enough, I could usually get over before happy hour was over, but my wife was not as suspicious when I disappeared, so often missed the whole happy hour. You snooze, you loose.

Rose was always cooking me supper, making a salad just like my mother used to make, reminding me of old times, cooking up saskatoon berry pie, with Saskatoons from my bushes. Whenever i stopped by, she always had time for a beer, except for the last 6 months of her life, when she told me, that the doctor was serious this time, when he said no more beer. But even then, she told us to not mind her, and enjoy a beer on our own, as she always had a couple in the fridge if we were coming over. Don't take my stories, wrong, Rose wasn't a heavy drinker, and I never saw her drink more than one beer at a time, but she loved the socializing.

When circunstances changed, and Huey stopped chopping wood for her, after leaving her with a lifetime supply, she would chop her own wood while in her 90's. I wasn't sure, why, maybe she thought that monster stockpile wouldn't last, but for whatever reason, she was chopping wood in her 90's. But she hurt herself, and bought an electric log splitter. Then she got a hernia, lifting logs into the splitter, by the time she was 93, she told me she would be happy to push the button, and stack the split wood, if I would load her splitter.

Rose was an avid curler, and curled well into her 90's, she once told me that if she went a full year without either curling, or going to her cabin,  that she would just die.

Rose told me about the hardships of growing up during the depression and WW2, except with Rose, there was always a laugh, and they never really sounded like hardships. I heard stories, of her running the store, and movie theatre, then logging in the winter. Rose did not have a lazy bone in her body, and I guess now she can finally rest. I have seen pictures of Rose as a child, and a youngwoman in her twenties, she was quite a looker, and it is no wonder she was able to get her pick of husbands. She mentioned Everett courting her, while he was working in a gas station she passed daily.

The thing about Rose, was, she lifted me up, she and my wife could be twins, they seldom said a bad word, and they always assumed things were going to be better tomorrow,  and telling me how despite having a spltting headace, that they were doing fabulous. You could not help but being happy around her. When we would visit her in the hospital, we always left in better spirits than when we went in. We were supposed to be lifting Roses spirts, and I'm sure my ever so witty wife, had Roses eyes gleaming when she left., but I always thought that it was me, that got the most out of it .

Next door neighbor Bob