Betty Cooper rented her 3 bedroom house in North Highlands to us, retiring to Florida after 30 years at McClellan. She was a close friend and co-worker of my mother's, and she left behind most of her furniture and a parakeet she named Pretty Boy, whose cage sat next to the open-sided fireplace in a corner of a rather large living room.

To my eyes, nearly everything about that house loomed large: vaulted ceilings that soared above our heads, 3 large bedrooms each big enough for more than one occupant, a huge backyard rimmed with large, lush bushes and a sturdy hardwood fence. Only the kitchen seemed small in comparison, but the adjoining dinette — big enough to seat 4 and facing the backyard with a door to the patio — made up for that.

Big, cheerful and sunny. That's how I remember that house from earlier visits to it with my mother. I especially felt drawn to Betty back then, who was a painter in her spare time, which was increasing with the approach of her retirement. She left one or two of her paintings behind, and I remember they had the faintest

bare essence of a coral hue to them, dreamy waterscapes and mellowing sunsets. Before I even knew the meaning of the word, she seemed to me the ideal model of a true "Bohemian," with calm, expressive eyes and a subtle, upturned smile, as if she knew all the secrets of the universe and could express them in a word or an image on a whim. That she left so much of her spirit behind only added to the charm of the place we were moving into.

For me, moving there from that dreary little apartment in North Sac was like the transition from a hard, cruel Winter to a bright, sun-dappled Spring. The house was so large, we had no trouble finding space for our 10 years of accumulated possessions. Betty left behind her large, rather ornate television console, which meant I would inherit the GE black-and-white we'd had since I was 5. I felt really blessed and spoiled at the same time, with all my books, some painting supplies Betty had left behind, and my big TV in the corner of a room that was perpetually large, warm and bright.

I still walked everywhere when I was bored, and walking through the much larger and livelier North Highlands, the home of McClellan Air Force Base, just a