With spring here, our two daughters have started to plan summer celebrations of anniversaries, birthdays and any family occasion worthy of note.

Their energy, ingenuity and ample resources have provided spectacular memories. Do you suppose future events will evaporate along with the resources that seemingly made them possible? Will our grandchildren create wonderful memories, even life-changing experiences, if resources are so limited?

Go back with me 62 years to the spring of 1946. I was a 29-year-old new ensign assigned to a new heavy cruiser. The Navy wisely chose to keep the ship and dispense with the ensign, along with three good friends.

Free to roam with mustering-out pay in our pockets, we set out for the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. One had a serviceable car and one access to a family cabin in Estes Park. Grudgingly we agreed that Ed could sleep in the cabin with his parents while the three of us pitched a tent in the yard.

We climbed six peaks over 14,000 feet. On one summit, we watched in awe as a thunderstorm passed below us and a two-inch spark jumped between hands passing a camera. We were the first that year to reach one summit, and there were no female names on the scroll. Male egos soared but soon crashed, because nobody dared to leave his shelter half on a dark stormy night to investigate a great commotion in the base camp cooking gear. Next morning we found a large cat's paw mark in a greasy frying pan.

Born in the Bronx, raised during the Great Depression and a World War, this 20-year-old kid who had never been more than 100 miles west of the East Coast found a new world, fell in love with it and came back with most of his mustering-out pay.

Fast-forward to the spring of 1947. Back in college as a civilian, I had delved deeply into the pleasures of Yale's unique fraternity system, the tables down at Mory's and their infamous Green Bowl concoction. Consequently, as I was explaining to the dean of engineering that I was returning to the wide open spaces that summer with enough money to go one way but would be back in the fall, it became clear he was about to eliminate that option.

A benevolent God sometimes puts the right person at a crossroad in life's journey. Shaking his head and taking a deep breath, he mouthed "OK" and put me on probation

A case of motor oil and two fuel pumps later, my 1937 four-door Ford Phaeton convertible with roommate Frank aboard somehow brought us to Klondike Ranch in the foothills of Wyoming's Little Big Horn Mountains. Sizing up two Yalies on his doorstep, Leo Tass, the owner, allowed as how we were too inept to avoid work and pointed toward a small bunkhouse next to the outhouse. Another great summer adventure began.

We put up hay for a month and threshed barley for a month. Leo drove the stacker while we spread the hay with pitchforks, rejecting the occasional rattlesnake, to build the stack. By noon the first day, I could not open my fists to get detached from the pitch fork. Weeks later, feeding bundles of barley into a stationary thresher, we had mastered the pitchfork. I have never worked harder.

Horses entered our lives. Mine was blind in the left eye. It shied every time I tried to mount, leaving me on my back in the stuff generally found in corrals. By the end of the summer, we could ride anywhere without losing leaves tucked between the saddle and our thighs and backside. We rode those horses cross-country into Buffalo for the annual rodeo parade. And as daylight faded, we walked along the wood sidewalk, chaps swishing and spurs jingling, through the swinging doors of the saloon to find the boss. We were loving it. We broke horses and rode bulls, briefly, to defend our honor because Frank foolishly mentioned he could handle any animal.

Once, riding through the mountain grazing lands, we came across cattle in a meadow adjacent to a road. We noticed cars slowing. They waved. We waved. So we rode over to the fence. Now cars stopped and kids jumped out. Frank suggested some action was called for. When the next car slowed, we ran the cattle. More cars stopped. Before we lost interest, we probably ran hundreds of pounds off someone's cattle. Possibly Leo's.

Ultimately, pleading tough times, Leo paid each of us $60 and said he was overlooking the times we dipped into his gasoline after dark. We had enough money to get back east with a lifetime of memories.

Let's hope the grandchildren are as lucky.

Dick Westcott is a retired business executive and former member of the Pinehurst Village Council.