She did it herself in her work room upstairs on a personal family sewing mahcine. Heavy duck, several layers, with industrial strength full length zippers over each leg from the peak to the bottom of the test.   The tent is set up, each leg adjusted to match the topography, and each zipper over each leg is zipped down to proper length. And the remaining flap of tent is folder over to keep out wind at the bottom.

  This image is taken up on the top of Timp during the ‘wet’ run to shake out the bugs.

  No doubt dad could have taken the sewing job to a commercial outfit who could have created the skin for the crab legs.  Perhaps such a creation would have been superior. But knowing dad and mom, I know how much easier it was for him to simply hand the project to his partner, confident that (1) she would make it so, (2) within budget, and (3)  on-time. More importantly, he wouldn’t have to deal with other humanbeings when something went wrong with the design. He handled stress with people reasonable well, but only to a point. But when that point had been reached, he became unreasonable and hostile, childish and sullen.  He felt, in those situations -this of course is pure speculation on my part- like people didn’t think he was capable, like he was perceived as less intelligent than he was. Or else, he may have responded with the irritation and frustration of a superior being who was tired of being impended by lower level people. Or maybe something else. But whatever it was, he was safe from these problems when she took the job over.  She knew how to jolly him along, how to get his decision about a problem that had come up in his design. It was very much like the situations I saw in hospitals where arrogatn physicians would angrily degrade and condescend to nurses who learned how to get around the good doctors. They would actually patronize the doctors by pretending to not understsand the orders but the way they did it, the doctor felt like the problem wasn’t in their order, rather in the nurses, so the change would be made. That’s how mom handled dad in these situations.
       She was his equal in more ways than he realized, which was why she could anticipate where he was going to blow out next and what would be required to get him back on track. Near the end of his life he did expresss great appreciation and affection for her -I’m still not sure it was love but since I never experienced love from them, perhaps I don’t know love- but it was rather late for him to shower her with affection that she had earned so many time during their marriage. I think that she was as intelligent and as creative as he was. She just didn’t let him know it, e.g. the decision she made to stop painting after (1) she knew she could surpass him, and (2) the intense grief he suffered when she won first prize in a cometition where both of them entered paintings.

Ceramics   Canvas TeePees   Charcoal Painting   $600 molding   Crab Tent   Snowmobile Ride on Timp

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