From Bob and
Erika Jensen’s 2004 Holiday Greetings
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Please note that our zip code
changed from 03585 to 03586. Our address is Bob and Erika Jensen,
More pictures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm
This has been an eventful first
full year of living in our mountain cottage.
Erika lived here all year, and I lived here on sabbatical leave from May
16 to the end of the year. After a
sabbatical leave, Bob returned to
We had visits in July from
Erika’s daughter (with Michelle and Jonathon) and in October from her oldest
son Mike. When Maria was here I took
them to the
Many of our friends over the years
expressed concerns that we would not find tried and true friends among the
Yankees in the
Meet Sonny and Bev (Yankees
for sure)
We’ve met some very, very dear
friends up here and some of them are real characters as well. True Yankees pride themselves on being
independent and versatile and suspicious of too much formal education. One of the most interesting characters that
became our very close, close friend is Sonny O’Neal. We first met Sonny when he blacktopped our
driveway with the help of his ever faithful and helpful wife Bev. Soon afterwards
we started meeting each other regularly in a restaurant and in each others’
homes (including Thanksgiving Day).
Sonny is a self-made man and a quarter Blackfoot Native American, a quarter
Irish, and half Lithuanian. His wife was
15 and he was 17 when they got married and they’ve been bonded now for nearly
50 years. He has a huge building for his
million+ dollars worth of heavy equipment and airplane. He taught himself how to fly. Now he’s a certified pilot instructor who
never had a lesson himself. He’s a
trucker, heavy machine operator, diesel mechanic, home builder, inventor, pilot
instructor, hunting guide, and just about everything else, including being a
professional bear chaser. He has very
expensive hound dogs bred for chasing bears with radio transmitters on their
collars. People hire him to clear the
area of bears that become real pests by repeatedly entering homes, garages, and
dumpsters. Mostly we tolerate and even enjoy
having the bears around, but on occasion some people want a meddlesome bear
cleared away. Sonny normally just chases
the bear out of the territory, but on occasion he kills it if his freezer is
too low. One sly old bear that now
stands (hugely stuffed) in his living room.
That male outfoxed Sonny for two years by repeatedly crossing back and
forth between
Meet Dorothy (a Yankee clean through)
Our old cottage has taken 18 months
to fix up with a new roof, metal trim, and really nice heavy siding. The job, at long last, is done. Erika with the help of a good friend named
Dorothy is slowly redecorating the inside as well as overhauling three
gardens. Dorothy’s a single-mom Yankee
who can do most anything. She has a
master’s degree in entomology and runs her own landscaping business in the
summer and is a painter and wallpaper hanger in
the winter. She recently put a new roof
on her mom’s house. At the moment she’s
redecorating parts of the historic Mt. Washington Hotel. She’s lean and strong. Her idea of a vacation is mountain
climbing. On one adventure this summer
she walked the entire north-south length of
Meet Helene and Helmut (God only knows how they ended
up in these mountains)
From the Sugar Hill Community Church
we met several good friends, including Helene and Helmut Gottwick. They’ve been very close
and showed up with meals and good cheer when Erika first came back home from
the hospital. The Gottwicks immigrated from
We indeed found a warm welcome
among the Yankees and would be Yankees.
Bob returned to
His main Website is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
We wish you all a truly merry
and warm holiday season as this horrible year of war and scandals gives way to
what we pray will be a much better year of prosperity and peace. God bless each and every one of you!
Bob
& E