Harriet Hobbletoe

One of my best friends when I was a little girl living on a farm with my family in the mountains of New Mexico lived on a school bus with her mom, Maria, and her teenage sister Blue Twinkie. Harriet Hobbletoe had a slight limp, but otherwise could run just as fast as me. We spent hours playing with the boys at the annual baseball game all the hippies from Northern New Mexico held each year. We played tag and hide and seek and placed bets on who would win the pie eating contest.

Sometimes Harriet and her family would come pick me up and take me to Mora Valley for the weekend and cook steak and artichokes and couscous for dinner on the woodstove in the fabulous handcrafted kitchen in their skoolie. Her bunk had a sliding wooden panel door which gave it a sense of privacy, as did the bunk below it which she shared with me while her sister slept on the sofa bed and her mom slept in the loft at the back of the bus.

Lots of our friends lived on buses while we lived on our farm next door to Tree Frog. One time we took thirteen kids and six adults to the Drive-In for the price of two adults because four of them were hiding under the bed in the back and the kids were free. Willy Wonka was playing and we were each allowed an Everlasting Gobstopper for the special occasion.

Another family of friends lived in a wooden panel truck. There were cabinets built in everywhere and even the bathroom was lined with cedar. A painting the kids had created pulled down into a double bed for the two girls while a sofa pulled out into one for the two boys. The parents slept in a queen sized bed over the cab of the truck with windows all around and a stained glass skylight. Our family went with theirs to watch the Planet of the Apes marathon. My mom brought a brown paper bag filled with her fried chicken cooked on our woodstove, another bag filled with popcorn, and a gallon of lemonade in a washed milk bottle.

To be continued, tagged and categorized, love you all.