When Elsbeth got sick recently my little sister came up from Portland to help me with household chores, cooking and other stuff women can do better than men. It is working and Elsbeth is recovering.

The plan worked out so well it prompted me to dig into my memory book of Norma when we were kids.

She is three years younger than I and the baby of the family. And I was urged by my Mom to be a good big brother as the others were older.

This was a great burden because I was a barefoot boy who delighted in untrammeled freedom during the summer months and I did my best to get away from this pesky girl whenever I could break free from the bondage of selling perfume or magazines, or piling wood.

We lived across the street from the Vancouver woods in Portland, a huge forest of tall trees and hazel nut bushes.

When I went blackberry picking or picking dock, a weed we gathered and ate as salad, there she was. She even wangled her way into picking strawberries along side me in the fields when we were in high school. Eating more than she picked.

It never failed. Every time I thought she should be absorbed in dolls or something she would appear and want to tag along on my adventures.

She even followed me to the hog ranch, the slaughterhouse, and the cooperage where we sold Dad's empty whiskey bottles for a penny each.

I think they used them to hold solvents or stuff.

Naturally, when I bought a Popsicle on the way home she always got half.

I got even with Miss Tagalong once when I asked her to go get a fork from the kitchen and carry horse manure from the iceman's horse and put it on Mom's rose bushes.

As we grew older, she was joined by her friend Nancy Slotboom, who didn't have a big brother, so now I had two to trail me like puppy dogs.

When my big brother who kiped ten bucks out of Dad's dresser drawer and bought me a 10th birthday used bike, she blew the whistle both to me and Dad.

Then when Russell whacked me and went riding away with it and I did the forbidden--I yelled "Dammit", Miss Tattle Tale rushed in to our Mom and shouted, "Gerald sweared."

That is when I vowed to never again let her follow me to the railroad tracks and watch me put rocks on the tracks and make dust.

I have mellowed a little, I guess.

If she wants to go with me down to the pasture by the slough and hunt frogs she is welcome, and I won't put any down her neck.