My grandmother Melba Wilkens lived next door to members of the Doyle family in Roseville California. The Doyles owned a small telephone company according to my father. Bob Doyle acted as president of the Roseville Telephone Company for many years. When we came to stay at grandma’s in the summer, we played with the Doyle children, and petted the farm animals. We loved their donkey. There was a vineyard in back where I did a oil painting of a small pond. We would go to the Roseville Zoo and tease the spitting monkey. Smokey the brown bear was a town icon.

My father was born in San Francisco, and grew up in Roseville and Oakland  His step-father, Joe Wilkins, was a rail-yard engineer for Southern Pacific. He built Melba a home on Folsom Road from scratch, complete with a great grease-pit where he worked on his Studebaker. That’s Christine and Claudia in bathing suits in from of…