Naturally, my initial memories of that year come from the perspective of a 13-year-old-girl.  My sister, Lynn, graduated midterm from high school that year, so she could join the family for our first eight months in Havasu.  Looking back, I realize now what she must have sacrificed to go so willingly with her family.
            While my parents began the clean up and worked on the master plans, they had to operate the ongoing business, which at the time meant running the store and marina, the small trailer park and the campground, picking up the trash, maintaining the water system, reading the electric meters, plus getting me to school.
            This last chore fell on my sister, who drove me over the dirt road each day, so I could attend 8th grade at Parker Dam Elementary School.  My mother joined us for the commute, and this took about three hours of their time each day.  Our highlight of the trip was always the daily visit to the post office at Parker Dam.  Since we had no real phone system, I wrote and received literally hundreds of letters that year. There was no email in those days.
            While I was at school, my sister worked the store and did her share of clean up, using a red wagon to collect the debris.  Havasu Palms came with its own share of vintage heavy equipment…remember the old TV show, Green Acres, and the kind of equipment he was forced to work with on his farm?  Well, that was our world.  One tenant nicknamed the equipment F.E.M., which meant Fix it Every Morning.
            Dad often spent hours each day coaxing some tractor or grader to life.  With the vintage equipment, he’d remove old sheds and gather up the large array of debris, as he cleaned up the park. 
            There was a dumpsite nearby, and in those days, we burned the trash.  There was also another area, which was an enormous junk yard.  One of the previous owners, named Homer, was a bit of a collector.  We came to call this junk yard Homer’s Pile. Eventually, we cleaned up Homer’s Pile, and closed and covered the landfill.
            During most of the winter, the park was relatively quiet.  Campers and trailer tenants showed up on the weekends, and occasionally a fisherman wandered in.  At times, our family would be the only ones in the park. Easter break was the first big holiday of the season.  It was perhaps just as crowded and as crazy as Havasu spring break is now, maybe more so. 

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Photo: Walt Johnson removing old Havasu Palms bait shack, circa 1968