Take heart. Old Red, our typewriter, is undergoing treatment. He was taken to a center that specializes in typewriters of earlier centuries.

Actually, Old Red was sick and tired of “Top O’ the Morn,” and folded his letters and quit. He had suggested that we substitute “Cesspool Trivia” for “Top O’ the Morn.”

Old Red had been treated before to improve his language.

There is just so much a columnist can take.

Now that Old Red is back home, we decided that “home” would be a great topic for this week’s offering.

Is there anything like the word “home” that means so much?

Our earliest home memory goes back to a little town on the Skagit River, a river that overflowed at least once a year. Just as it had overflowed for many years.

Our mother came as a teenager to Mount Vernon and remembered people rowing from store to store downtown during a flood.

That old river will always be strong in our memories. We walked its dike to take painting lessons from a Mrs. Paylor. And the whole family gathered at Grandpa’s smokehouse over the river for picnics. We grew up on salmon, an offering from the river.

We will never forget the trail to the top of Little Mountain, or the fun at Harbert’s Grove. And beginning school with the same classmates we graduated with 12 years later!

Home changed to Oak Harbor, the little town on the water’s edge where one took the 6:30 a.m. boat to Seattle; the ferry to Everett and another ferry across wild Deception Pass and then on to Mount Vernon.

That was a long time ago and in between 1925 and 2002, our roots became more firmly fixed.

For 10 years we became a farmer’s wife — had two children and a husband who still clung to farming — garden, fruit trees, pen of chickens and a cow! All on top of the hill where green fields stretched to the north.

Our life changed in the 1940s when our Doug was born. We served on the school board and town council. We also began the work that has brought us to today, writing about our island and the people who live here.

Our Jim, age three announced one day that he never wanted to live anywhere but Oak Harbor.

His work took him to Alaska, California, the Olympic Peninsula, Everett and finally home. Our Mary Lee in Virginia was making plans to return to Seattle after years on the East Coast.

And Doug? Halfway around the globe in New Zealand, Whidbey Island is still calling him.