Big Bear, A Simpler Way of Life; and We Love it That Way!

Every morning our dogs go bat shit crazy when they see the beautiful Huskies. Our neighbors have three absolutely out of this world beautiful Huskies and they are easily three times the size of our big dog. I’m pretty sure our dogs hate them because the Huskies are so beautiful and they are two mutts. When our neighbors walk by with the Huskies on a 10° degree March morning Mrs. Husky is usually wearing a long blue padded jacket which is so straight out of the 80s. I know because I remember the 80s and my mom and I used to have jackets just like that. It totally brings you back in time to a simpler time and place where families used to eat together around the dinner table and you only had one TV in the house and that was usually turn to MASH or Cheers because that was what dad watched, and so that’s what the family watched. I can almost see the ginormous horrible 80s glasses my mom and I used to wear back in 1989 when the whole world felt like a small town and not like it does today. This is before the Internet went crazy with information, before every single person had a smart phone and would rather bury her nose in them than have a polite conversation.


It’s funny how one little thing can take you back to a world of pong and playing Monopoly with the other kids in your neighborhood growing up. (As a padded blue 80’s jacket did to me today as our two rescue mutts looked on) In the eighties it was pong and Monopoly for me and  my two brothers, that was what we did on the weekends unless my mom kicked us out of the house which normally happened and then we had to go play outside. Do kids these days even know what playing outside is?

Just this morning as I was going back and forth, in and out the back door feeding the mutts, I mean not huskies, I mean dogs, and yelling

“Stay outside!” I thought of my mom in her eighties  jean shorts (which would probably be back in fashion today actually) and thought,

“Wow. I sound like my mom. Except I’m yelling at two salivating beasts and not three red-headed children”

I guess the time warp is what I love about the small town of Big Bear Lake. It’s a place stuck in time. On crazy Fourth of July holiday weekends your iPhone won’t even work up here, when 15,000 people are trying to Snapchat all at once. Forget about social media for a day. The cell towers are so overwhelmed you won’t be able to update your Twitter or write on Facebook..

And sometimes that’s just really nice; a simpler way of life.