[jdviole2]

Helena hated snakes. All kinds of snakes. Any snakes. She would hyperventilate and come very close to passing out when she saw a snake. Our first house was not very well caulked around the foundation and let all kinds of bugs and (yes) snakes into the interior of the house. Also the neighborhood we lived in had lots of snakes. We also had large dogs living in the houses to the right, left and behind our house. So our yard was kind of a snake refuge. We had a mating ball of garter snakes once in the back yard. A group orgy of 200 or so garter snakes writhing around in a large mass. Helena refused to come out and see and didn't even want me to take a picture of it for her. I would get panicked calls at work from time to time and when I got home I would find Helena sitting outside on the back stoop waiting for me to enter the house and corner the beast. At one time or another we had them in the kitchen, the living room, the basement, and even once under the bed. One day Helena got up and started her morning routine. Like all of us, I expect, a part of that routine involved sitting briefly on the toilet. While she was sitting there she felt something tickling her ankle. When she looked down she saw a snake crawling over her foot on the way out into the hall. By the time I got home she had calmed down and the snake was gone. She couldn't tell me how she got rid of the snake. Everytime she started the story she would relive the panic and couldn't continue. This is one time where humor did nothing to help. (I told her that if you had to encounter something that scared the crap out of you sitting on the toilet was the best place to be) She didn't find me funny at all. Years later we went to California and I wanted to visit a reptile farm they had there. Supposedly they had the worlds largest crocodile. I don't know if that was true but it was a big one. The had all sorts of other reptiles including, of course, tons of snakes. All of them were in glass aquariums. Helena fought against her fears and finally was able to get close to examine all the snakes without panic setting in. She was looking at the King Cobra they had and was disappointed. She expected to see the movie version with the hood flaring out. Instead the snake was relaxed and just looked like a regular snake. By now she was pressing her nose against the glass to really get a good look. Now I swear I was just trying to help her get a good view. I knocked on the side of the aquarium. In less than a second the cobra raised up about a foot and a half, flared out its hood (real movie snake style) and lunged at Helena's nose. She levitated a good meter off the ground and instantly lost both the ability to breath and the power of speach. She recovered quickly though, mainly so she could give me holy hell for what I had done. I tried to explain that I just wanted her to fully experience the "wildlife fun". I could have saved my breath. The excuse meant nothing to her, I don't even think she heard me. She yelled at me for a good ten minutes, and I may be wrong but I don't think she even took a breath in that time. I was eventually forgiven but the incident was never forgotten. The first picture for today is Helena on our first trip to California in 1975 coming back up the stairs from the beach, where she had encountered her first nude sunbather. The next shot is from 1979 and another trip to California and another beach. Next is a slightly blurry clothed picture from one of her nude sessions in early 1974. Next we have a shot from the Worlds Fair, I think this was in New Orleans in 1986. The next picture is Helena running across a medow in Germany in 1974. This was about a month after we were married when she and her mom came over to visit some relatives and I went up to Munich to meet her and bring her back to Naples with me. The last shot is another of Helena and the hat. This is from 1975.