Stories about Mom and Dad

You never think much about what happens to servicemen who are deployed at the end of a war, especially not as large of a war as WWII was... Dad was in or near Manilla when WWII ended and the task of bringing everyone home started. He was told that he might be there for months before there was room on a transport to get him home. He ended up spending a few days before he was able to secure a spot on a very very crowded ship on its way back to California. I don't know if Dad had much to come home to; I know he married Marilyn shortly after the war, and was with her for close to 10 years, but I don't know if he knew her before he left. His father, Edwin Earl Hampton Sr (Slim), had died of a heart attack in 1940. Slim and Ange (nee Ange Atkinson Isham) had separated a couple years before his death. Ange ran their house in Wasco as a boarding house, and had the two boys with her, while Slim had moved to Coalinga or near there, and had taken up with another woman, who I know nothin...

Mom always made Christmas cookies, and we kids always helped. Mom would make Chocolate Chip and Oatmeal Nut cookies mostly for us kids, then make some special cookies that only happened at Christmas; Vanilla Kipfel, cinnamon stars, some anise type cookies, sugar cookies cut into shapes with colored sugar on them, and some twisted cookies with yeast in them. We kids hated the anise cookies, but Mom made them for herself. The cookies would go into tins and cannisters, and come out for special occasions during the Christmas season; for visitors, for game nights, as a second dessert. One year, the wife of one of Dad's colleagues had emergency surgery right before Christmas; they had 5 children, if I recall correctly, and the thought of those poor kids not having Christmas cookies did not sit well with Mom. She and I started baking, and making mostly traditional American cookies, we filled up a HUGE platter of cookies and delivered it to the family a few days before Christmas. I'l...