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Featured Author Beverley Wood
The Author of
Hopscotch Days
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Author Beverley Wood
| Southern California was a good place and 1929 was a good year to be born. At least that has always been the opinion of Hopscotch Days' author, Beverley Wood. A good place because in that beautiful and moderate climate, the out-of-doors is always available for a child's play. And a good year because (if you were lucky enough to have a father who had a real job) it was a simple, structured, and secure time-a good time to be a child. Beverley was the youngest child in a close-knit family of six. So much younger that her brothers and sister were going about their grown-up lives before she was out of elementary school. Hopscotch Days is compiled of her delightful memories of growing up in that place and that time and in that family. |
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| Beverley met her husband-to-be Claude at college. They were married in 1949 and thus began the first 50 years. By 1957 they had five children, and a whirlwind life-style. While Claude worked (usually at two jobs) and graduated from college with honors, Beverley cooked, cleaned, and, she says, "played with the kids." In their little spare time between Church, PTA, Brownies, Cub Scouts the family swam at the beach, hiked in the hills, camped in the mountains, and picnicked at the park.
In 1963 the family made a major move, from the southern California coast to the vast, wide-open spaces of the high desert. "Try it for two years," said Claude persuasively, but the desert cast its spell and thirty-six years later, they are still there-all of them. (The grown-up children, who had made their way to the "big cities," all returned thankfully to the quiet desert town to raise their own families.) When the children were all grown, Beverley went to work as a secretary for the nearby Naval base. She and Claude bought ten acres of desert, built their ranch-style home, and (for some reason neither of them can quite remember) began planting part of their land into a "fun crop of Christmas trees." Over the15 years they have been selling their "crop" they have watched the families of their customers expand and grow, and now the children are bringing THEIR children to run up and down the rows of growing trees, ride the tractor, and pick out their own special Christmas tree. Sometimes in their busy life, Beverley found time to write. Her first published article was written about the family's favorite activity, backpacking, and was sold to the Women's Day Magazine. Realizing that writers write best about what they know best, Beverley went on to write of their other pleasures--four-wheeling in Baja, family camping, or hiking with children in tow. After retiring, Beverley and Claude began to work on their respective families' genealogy and it was then she began putting on paper her memories of a wonderful childhood to share with her children. That little plan grew and expanded, until it became Hopscotch Days, A Remembering of The Way it Was. Beverley and Claude will celebrate their 50th anniversary this fall. They are fortunate indeed (and well they know it) to be able still to garden and swim, ski and hike, camp and backpack. "Maybe," she says, "My next book will be about Backpacking for Senior Citizens!" |
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