Camera, Purse, Cheese

 

Camera, Purse, Cheese

During my 5^th grade year, my friend Lee Ann Frank moved to Moscow, Idaho.  I think her dad was going to be a professor at the University there.  I was sad.  Lee Ann lived just down the street from me and we played together almost every day.  I remember once Lee Ann got very ill with the flu and was sick for several weeks.  I thought I would die before she got well and we could play together again.  Her mother Ellie and my mother were good friends.  Ellie was a kind, good woman and I felt very comfortable in their home.

During the summer after fifth grade, the Franks came to Caldwell to visit for a few days.  Ellie invited me to come back with them to Moscow for a week.  She and my mom made arrangements that I would ride with them, spend a week there, then fly home.  There was a prop jet airline that flew from Moscow to Boise.  I was so excited to go with them and then to fly for my very first time.

I had a wonderful week with the Franks.  I don’t remember everything that we did, but I have a few memories.  On the first day there, Ellie asked my favorite kind of cereal.  I told her Cap’n Crunch.  Lee Ann chose Fortified Oat Flakes.

I loved Cap’n Crunch, but I really loved those Fortified Oat Flakes.  I wish they still made them.

They treated me like a queen.  They took me across the border of Oregon to Pullman to a cheese factory.  I bought a wheel of cheese in a can to take home to my family.  Ellie was so kind, helping me choose what kind of cheese to buy.

We went swimming one day and I’m sure did a lot of other fun things that I can’t remember. One day, Ellie made Congo Bars.  They were like chocolate chip cookie bar cookies and were so delicious.  I thought they were the best thing I had ever eaten.

As I prepared to go home on the airplane, I was very nervous.  Ellie taught me to chant over and over and over, “Camera, purse, cheese,” the three things I needed to remember to have with me when I got off the plane.  I so enjoyed the plane ride home, seeing clouds up close for the first time.  The whole plane ride, I chanted over and over in my head, “Camera, purse, cheese” as Ellie taught me.  It so embedded itself into my head, that I still can remember and chant it.  I guess that is a lesson to memorize scriptures when you are young so they will stick in your mind forever.  “Camera, purse, cheese!” 

This is a story about a chant, but mostly it is a story about good people who made a little girl feel important.