Just Two Fingers of Bourbon

Vake age 79 and Milly age 71

JL says:

At some point, whether by the medical authorities (or Millie ?), Vake was limited to one drink per day. Any of us around would request that that drink be measured by two of Vake's fingers,which would make it at least a drink & a half by normal standards.

On one really great visit to Florence,Vake & Millie surprised me by having Curt & Irene Emery to dinner that evening. (It was the last time I saw either of them.) Their son Tooey ended up as a General grade officer in the Air Force. Anyway, we had a wonderful evening, and thinking back, it reminded me of the social life in Florence about the time our family arrived in January of 1951.

Social life for the adults seemed to be going to dinner at the Hoffman restaurant, or getting together with other like-minded business/professional friends for a cook-out (many of which were held in the Emery's backyard/patio).

At some point, the idea came up that it might be nice to have a 'club' where they could socialize & have food available without having to cook it themselves.

The Florence Elks Club was formed partly as a result. The initial location was in rented space on the second floor of one the old buildings down on the waterfront.

One of the things the Elks Club offered was the use of their space to the 'kids' for weekly dances. The dances were a great hit, with the exception that we couldn't do things like the 'bunny hop' - for fear of collapsing the second floor.

jl

Sue adds: Vake's hands were so large, after years of heavy work, that he had to have his bowling ball custom drilled, and the size of the hole in it to accommodate his thumb made people laugh. I remember one cook-out where Irene Emery, after hearing some 60's era pop music, wondered out loud what had ever happened to sweet songs like "A Tisket, a Tasket," and that made Tina giggle. The Emerys had a dog that was a lab-German Shepherd mix that looked like a white lab.Always blunt-spoken, Vake called their dog "The crotch-sniffer." The dog used to ride to work with Curt every day, and wait for him in the truck outside the grocery store that they owned and operated.  When Tooey would water ski, the dog would pace up and down Uncle John's dock, until it finally jumped into Woahink Lake and started swimming toward the center of the lake, chasing after the ski boat. The teen-age dances were still going on at the old Elk's Club building, on the second floor of one of the buildings in "Old Town,"  when Patty, Tooey, and I were in high school, seven years behind Jon.  Milly let me attend, but only reluctantly, for fear that the wooden building would catch fire. General Curtis Harding Emery, II (USAF ret.) still answers to "Tooey" to folks from Florence.