Life and Times of E.O.B.

(Written in 1976 – 1978, maybe…)

 

“For as long as I can remember, I have gone to sleep at night thinking of a story or a poem.  Some poems I have written down.  I am sure my life has not been as colorful as Dad’s, but to me it is a medley of joy, sadness, wondering, loving, and nostalgia.  (The latter, especially lately, with the loss of Grandma Osthoff – Mama, June 13, 1975.)

 

My very first memories are of the farm we called the ‘Shepherd’s’ place, on the South St. Vrain, south of Lyons, CO.  The house is gone, burned about 1940, and it sat a little south of the large house which is there now.  To me it was a pretty house, though I think we had no running water, and I know our toilet was outside.  (It had one small and one large bedroom, and parents slept in the parlor area.  So many houses then had a large living room, with columns and bookcases separating it form the parlor.)  I remember the bucket of water, which sat on the counter, with the diaper in it.  Also, we used coal oil light, and a heater in the living room – a coal stove in the kitchen.  No one heated bedrooms in 1918, and in winter we often took a wrapped heated brick or flat iron to bed with us.  I was about 3 ½ when I began to recall, but the things I remember may not be in the proper sequence.  I remember the end of WWI, and we may or may not have climbed the slope south of our place to look back on Lyons and see why all the bells were ringing – church and fire bells.  That was November 1918.  It seemed to be a very big day for all, even in a small town.  (Helen says we took big tubs and pans out in the yard and banged on them.)

 

Don’t know how many acres we had, but most of the land north of the house, as I’ve showed you, was in thick forest, where the cows and horses grazed – Lots of grass, a stream, and our own mushroom ground.  Papa had a penchant for raising fruit and vegetables, though we nearly always had corn, alfalfa, and barley or wheat fields.

 

One occasion I seem to recall very vividly.  Several neighbors were bringing wheat to be threshed, and the noisy old machine was set up just across the lane north of our place.  There were lots of men and children around, and I think probably the women were cooking (inside and out) for everyone.  The youngest Shepherd girl, about a year younger than I, always ‘put on airs’, and acted as if she were much better than anyone else (I think several Shepherds had TB, and died quite young.  Probably the little girl was delicate).  About five or six of us were allowed to get into the large wagon into which the grain was streaming, all gold and clean and exciting – no hulls or sticks, kind of slippery.  We were all prancing about, having fun, keeping out of the way of the falling grain (it shot out of a large metal spout at one end of the truck).  Suddenly, the little Shepherd [girl] started crying and wailing.  She’d lost a shoe – a brand new patent leather shoe!  Why she was wearing new ones and good too, we never knew.  All the machinery had to shut down – and it was evening and the last day we could use the machines.  Papa was so upset – everyone hunted for the shoe.  As far as I know, it was never found.  She may have lost it on the ground some place earlier and just noticed.  Mama was unhappy because ‘the work must be finished’, and by trying to be so fancy, the little girl had stopped it.  Also, the Shepherds were very poor, and were known to receive some kind of ‘aid’ from the town

 

or county.  So what were they doing with the red patent leather shoes?  Don’t know what form ‘aid’ took in those days, but it carried a sad stigma.  The Shepherds lived east of us, down the lane north of us, and also had a large family.

 

Mama had a super abundance of pride – It could be almost her ruling trait.

 

We loved the ‘forest’ and special times – to me, at least – were when several of us could go play in it.  Helen made herself a really nice ‘stick horse’ – named it Hector, and no one else could use it.  One day I finally convinced her she should make one for Janice and me.  They were a treat, and we cavorted and galloped in style, but had to have different names for them.  This had to be when Helen was quite young, as Papa found an old, slow, gentle horse for us (Dick) to ride (pictures, 3 girls on a horse, and 2 boys).

 

Herbert, Helen, and even Janice got in on some field work summers.  Papa had always said that onions were the best paying field crop.  He really raised nice ones – but OH!  the work involved.  No tractors for us – all plows, harrows, discs, and planters drawn by horse.  Some of the machinery we owned, some was part of rental.  (We sharecropped on all our farms.  Cash available was not enough to buy land.)  The onions had to be weeded, hoed, thinned by hand (a picture taken at harvest time shows ten onions covering almost a yard).  I guess I was too young to work, but Janice says she still remembers how she hated the onion work!  It is all very sad, because no matter how hard Papa worked, we never made anything because the prices were so low, marketing uncertain, and everyone had a backyard garden.  They were especially prevalent during WWI, then came a period when lawns were popular, until WWII, when Victory gardens became the style.

 

At ‘Shepherds’’ Place, we raised all our own vegetables and had a large root and fruit cellar.  Somehow, Papa had learned of the dangers of botulism (through Grange or home demo?), and somehow our folks found a way to get a pressure cooker for canning peas, corn, beans, beets, spinach, and several kinds of meat.  Mama was always a little fearful it would blow up, but it had a safety valve, and I don’t remember any serious blowups.  In our root cellar, always away from the house, we stored all kinds of celery, potatoes, apples, onions, cabbage, beets, turnips, sauerkraut, and pickles in crocks.  Some apples, like Jonathon and Wealthy, lasted only till Christmas.  Others, Delicious and Winesap lasted a little longer.  The waxy skinned Winesap and Rome Beauty would last all winter if properly wrapped.  On a warm, late winter day, apples were sorted to get rid of spoiled ones; potatoes were de-sprouted, to prevent spoilage.  I have wondered so many times how Mama and Papa got so much done.  Work seemed endless.  Mama made all our clothes, except man’s pants or coats, and sometimes boy’s corduroys.  Winters, we all wore long underwear – long sleeves and legs, which were bought, but in summer we wore ‘waists’, short or no sleeve vests which had a ‘supporter’ to hold stockings up.  (Mama made all our waists, and told once of making 125 buttonholes in an evening, by hand.)  If we wore shoes, the only stockings were long.  In summer, we went barefoot, except on Sunday for Sunday school and church, or for a special party (I only remember

 

about one, but people often had Sunday dinner for friends).  I remember having a bad bumblebee sting when I was about four or five.  I couldn’t get my shoes on to go to Sunday school or church.  I think Mama stayed home with me.  Papa loved to show off his kids, his garden, his crops, talk about new ideas, and hope for better prices.  If the weather were decent, occasional company would come on Sunday in the winter.  The evening always ended with popcorn (home grown) and candy and apples.  Try popcorn with whole milk.  Mix a pitcher of milk, sugar, and vanilla, and our on fresh, unsalted popcorn.  I still like it.  ‘Old maid’ popcorn was saved until we had about a quart, usually only two or three weeks, then ground and cooked as a cereal.  It was good!  (Helen says it tasted awful to her.)  A very special treat on occasion was parched corn.  It was made with sweet corn (dried seeds).  A handful of corn was put in a skillet, medium hot, in which about 2 tbsp. of butter was melted.  The corn has to brown slowly, and puff up a little.  Add a little salt.  It was crunchy and nutty.  Stores sell ‘corn nuts’ now, but don’t seem to use sweet corn, so it’s not as good.

 

Things were very bad for our parents – crops were hard to sell.  No fancy co-ops, though we did have some sort of Granges or county agents for information.  The fruit crops must have frozen several years in a row.  I distinctly remember two very bad hail storms in early June.  I know it was June because the St. Vrain flooded, washing down into our year, and the water was probably seven or eight inches deep, full of hail, and the blossoms of the snowball bushes all around.  Lyons seems to be in a hail belt even today.  We sold fruit to anyone who stopped.  Cherries, apples, strawberries, gooseberries, currants.  Fancy boxes of cherries, with clipped stems, sold for good prices, so we children helped do that.  The boxes we used had to be made by hand.  Long strips of very thin wood were soaked in water, then bent to the proper shape to fit over the bottom (see diagram, page 10, memoirs, ‘Book 1, My Life – EOB’).

 

We younger ones soaked and bent the wood, and the older ones fastened the overlaps with tiny tacks and hammers.  I’ll never forget the smell and feel of the wood.  The boxes had hollow bottoms so the fruit would not be mashed when the boxes were set on one another.  (See diagram on page noted above.)

 

There were lots to be done in the summer.  Any job possible was done out of doors, as it was cool under the cottonwoods, and the house didn’t get so messed up.  Papa had built up an outdoor area with flat rocks, so he could build a fire in it, and set the copper boiler (large, oval, copper tub pot, used for boiling clothes, canning, heating water for anything, as it also fit over two ‘stove lids’ on the stove inside).  White or light clothes were soaked overnight, then boiled with soapy water (lye soap).  Two large wash tubs also had rinsing water and bluing water.  They sat on a bench as near as possible to the boiler.  Usually, a funnel shaped plunger was used for white clothes.  I think Mama had a washer, even then, but it was easier to wash outdoors in the summer.  The washer was oblong with ribs along bottom and ends.  A sort of paddle was pushed back and forth, rubbing the clothes against the ribs.  I can’t remember how the paddle was fastened on.  (See diagram, page

 

11, same reference.)  There was always a hand wringer, which swung from one tub to another.

 

The ashes from stoves and fires were carefully saved, leached, and the liquid was used as lye for soap.  Mama made almost all her soap, which nearly all farm women did.  I have several recipes for soap – some people love it, but I don’t.  It hurts my hands and is hard to use in modern washers.  I have never made any, but with all the grease we throw away, I guess I should.

 

We had dairy cows, and used the extras for beef.  Once, a cow had twin heifers, and as any farmer could tell you, twin cattle are sterile.  [Is this really true?]  Twin heifers are ‘free-martins’ and can never have calves.  I know we used one of them for meat.  Helen always named any animal.  These were Josephine and Geraldine.  You always butchered in the fall, and with luck, it was cold enough to save lots of the meat (steaks, chops, roasts, etc.).  Some we gave to neighbors or put on a bill at the grocery store in town.  When the neighbors butchered, they gave us some.  Several large pieces were brined and smoked in the smokehouse.  Others were brined in corned beef recipe brine.  These lasted a long time, and the dried beef, if kept cold, all winter.

 

Hogs were easier to keep, as most cuts of them were brined in a barrel or smoked.  We always saved a few pieces of ‘salt side’ (unsmoked bacon).  It was sliced like bacon and dipped in cornmeal, then fried.  Huge slabs of bacon were cured along with the four hams.  Feet, parts of the head, and some scraps, were made into souse.  All fat (and hogs were big and fat then!) was rendered and put in covered pails for lard.  Mama prided herself in the smooth, white lard she made.  We never had anything else for shortening.  Scraps and small pieces of meat were ground into sausage – oh, how good that sausage was!  (A sausage grinder was like a food grinder; you put the meat through, seasoned it, mixed well, and then attached a tubular sausage stuffer instead of a grinder blade.  Every few inches you gave it a twist for a new sausage.)  It was stuffed into a cleaned and scraped small intestine.  There is a membrane in them that can be removed and they are used in a lot of sausages today.  Wish I knew what seasonings Papa used.  I do know he smoked a lot of sausages in the smokehouse.  When they ran out of the natural tubes, we made muslin ones, then made patties, fried them, and layered them with lard in crocks.  Most farmers had lots of cylindrical crocks for meat, sauerkraut, pickles, etc.

 

Papa had a good touch with kraut, seldom did it spoil.  It was put down in a large (10 gallon or larger) crock.  Cabbage was sliced on a regular ‘kraut slicer’, with a box on top to protect fingers.  Every few inches of cabbage in the crock, a measure of salt was added, then tamped down by one of us until it looked juicy, then more layers were added until it was full.  A damp cloth was laid on top of the crock, then a wooden lid – wood breathes.  It had to be stored at the right temperature or it would spoil (38 degrees?).  This was a good source of vitamin C, as a couple of crocks of sauerkraut lasted all winter.  When some was needed, a light scum was removed from the top of the kraut, and underneath it was as crisp and sour as if vinegar were used.  Dill and sour pickles were done the same way.  No one put vinegar in to cure dills.  They gently fermented, layers of

 

 

cucumbers, dill, and salt.  (German cookery was not garlic oriented.)  Those dills were so good – sour and dilly and solid!

 

Our car then was a Model-T truck.  Papa put a seat in the back, one he made of course, but it was windy, even at the slow speeds we attained then.  We got to Raymond, Allens Park, and Estes Park often in the summer.  Gas was cheap, and how much could a Model-T use?  Papa became adept at working on the motor, and tried to keep it in shape.  It was never unusual to pass a farm house and see a car front hoisted into a tree while someone worked on the motor.  Also, seldom did anyone go anyplace without getting at least one flat tire.  You didn’t carry a spare – you carried patching sets.  Maybe we really didn’t enjoy going to the mountains as much as it seems now, but I think we did.  We always had fried chicken, sandwiches, pickles, celery, beet pickles with eggs, often a freezer of ice cream, and of course, cake.  We had no lights on this car, so had to be home before dark.  If it rained, we had to find an old barn or shed or a big tree to get under, for we had no top.

 

We girls wore dresses, coats, and hats.  One of us was bound to lose a hat, and Papa wasn’t very patient if it happened often.  The roads were exciting, really, narrow dirt, some corners so sharp that the big aspen buses or large cars had to back up at least once to get around it.  (You always obeyed the signs ‘honk for corner’, and on some corners a mirror was installed to see whether a car was coming.)  These large cars and buses were always in the way, for they couldn’t make it up the hills, either, and we had to wait behind them while they ‘geared down’ or got out and pushed.  By that time we’d either lost our speed and had to back up and make a run for it or get out and push. If the road was clear, we could usually make it.  Papa would steer or have Herbert steer (Mama wouldn’t touch the wheel – more of that later) and all of us except maybe George or Bob would push, depending on the age of the boys at the time.  Mama never really got to like the mountains like Papa did – I can see she was in for lots of work when we went out, and lots of roads were so poor, with virtual cliffs on one side.  She never got over her fear of cliffs and mountain roads – neither have I! 

 

But, how beautiful it all was – not too much traffic at times, no end of flowers, shrubs, meadows, and such wonderful picnic places.  Papa often talked of buying a piece of land near Allenspark for a cabin.  How I wish he could have!  No big ski slopes then, and how beautiful the mountains were!  Some of those places are priceless now, and one of us could have made improvements over the years.  We nearly always met friends here and there, usually by accident, so a picnic party took shape.

 

One incident I’ll never forget.  On the road leading up out of peaceful valley, the old dirt road in the twenties was steep, narrow, and scary.  One of the bad things about a Model-T was that the radiator heated up so easily, and our radiator cap didn’t screw on, but was just pushed on.  Also, cars at that time had open caps – that is the hood didn’t cover them.  When George was about three, Bob just a baby, we started up the hill one Sunday, got behind some slow cars, and before we knew it, the radiator was boiling.  The cap blew off.  Boiling water spewed over my folks and the little boys.  I think George was burned the worst, probably had no cap on.  Mama always wore a hat with a brim, and Papa his cap with a bill, so whatever came over the windshield didn’t hit the upper faces, at least.  I know they all had some burns, and Mama was so angry that it had burned the boys.  I think she cried.  Of course, they had no water, so I suppose Herbert walked or got a ride to the bottom of the hill for water (you always carried a pail).  Meanwhile, we had to park on the edge of a turnout – cliffside.  The road now is wide, much farther up mountains in the trees, but every time I go over it, I remember.  (You can still see little parts of the old road.  When our Dick and George were small, about 3 or 4, the county was building the present road area, but it wasn’t yet paved and was very rough.  Just beyond the top of the hill, it got so rough a back window shattered.  It scared us terribly, as there was no safety glass in our old `34.  How lucky that no one was cut!  We often talk of it when we go up there.)

 

We had one camping trip when I was about five.  Someone went with us, and we set up tents (borrowed?).  We girls, Mama, George, and Bob all had new coveralls for camping.  We went to Peaceful Valley.  I don’t know how long we stayed, but probably several days.  At that time, Peaceful Valley was just a huge meadow with a stream, a toilet, and almost no road in.  (Everyone bogged down at a small creek where there should have been a bridge.)  There were probably only two or three groups there, so it was peaceful.  Papa tried fishing, and we have a picture of all us kids out catching grasshoppers, but I imagine he and Herbert didn’t catch many fish.  Helen and Janice were the ones who went to the store, probably ½ mile away, down the lane to the main road, then follow that to the Peaceful Valley store.  One day when they went, they thought they saw a coyote.  They were so scared.  It was really dark, and trees overhung the road then.

 

Mama never learned to drive a car.  Papa thought she should, but he made her so nervous, and she always did something so ‘dumb’.  Model-T’s were hard to learn on, for they had three pedals, and if you hit the wrong one you went into the wrong gear, or reversed.  One day she got so upset and scared she took her eyes off the road for a second – the next thing she knew she was off the road and into a pasture.  Luckily, the road back was very low and not rocky.  It was many years before we could laugh about it, and she never could.

 

One day, Papa noticed some shrill squeaks in the car.  He examined the motor, brakes, gears – everything.  He finally took out the front seat, which of course was pretty worn, and there in the shredded wood and hair seat was a mouse nest – full of mice.  A whole family!  They scattered in no time at all, but we had no more squeaks.

 

I remember Grandma Forney coming to visit us here.  George was her pet, and no one else.  She was always fond of Papa and got along well with him.  I felt a little left out, for I always wanted to be liked, but being fourth in a family and the third girl, I was too small to be smart and too big to be cute.  I know I sometimes resorted to tattling, just to be noticed.  One morning, Grandma Forney asked George to find her cane, as she had lost it.  Being a very observant girl, I ran to it at once and brought it to her.  Grandma scolded me, as she said George had been sent for it.  I was terribly hurt.

 

I remember so well, later, that Janice was so cute and sweet, Helen so pretty – what was I?  (Not a pretty child…)  At sometime, Helen and Janice had both had long hair, mine had always been bobbed.  At one time, Janice had lovely long curls, which were made by ‘rag curlers’.  Seemed as if for a while there, everything I had was ‘hand-me-downs’ – dresses, slips, coats.  Shoes and stockings at least wore out.  Papa always mended our shoes – put half-soles on, or heels, or toe caps.  How embarrassed we were when he got tired of us kicking rocks and cans and wore out our shoe toes.  The Papa had to put copper toes on and everyone teased us.  Papa had a complete shoe repair set, with about six different size lasts [?].  I’ll never forget the feel and smell of the leather.

 

About 1921, we moved (as we later found out, owing the landlord, for we had poor crops for two years) and went to the big (13 or 14 room) house on the North St. Vrain, one which has been very much changed, but is still there, as I’ve shown you.  [The house plan, as mother drew, is on file.]  About the only things I remember about moving were (1), electric lights – when you push the button in, how do you get it out; (2), the huge bathroom – our first; (3), the telephone; (4), the bits of toys in the years; and (5), the two rooms used by the landlord for storage, which we were forbidden to try to get into – we never did.

 

(Extra Insight…)  {A large family also lived down the road from us on the North St. Vrain, the Roy Platts.  I don’t remember how many there were, as some of the older ones were grown and married.  One girl, Fern, was Helen’s best friend.  There was Vernon, a boy my age, and one younger.  The older girls had to work in the fields, planting, plowing, disking, etc.  Mama was always shocked that any woman had to do ‘man’s’ work with a team, but I guess someone had to do it.

 

One Sunday, we loaded up our big wagon with sides on it (as opposed to the hayrack, which was open and had no sides).  We packed a super lunch, and Platts did the same.  We drove up the little canyon which was later to become a park for CU Professors, and is now all built up.  It was quite a rough road, and we forded several creeks.  It’s really rough riding in a wagon like that, but no road for cars.  We had a good day and enjoyed it all.  I know Platts moved out near Hygiene, east of Lyons, then later north of Boulder, where we visited a time or two.  Sad to say, Mrs. Platt died rather young (49-50?) of a heart attack, and Fern helped with the younger boys.  Then one day, she tasted some canned corn and was dead of botulism in a few days.  This was about 1930, as Helen was already married and living in Lamar.  She was very hurt that she couldn’t come, even for the funeral.}

 

Papa worked awfully hard on this farm, but it still wasn’t enough with the rent/crop-sharing plan.  The Freemans had lived here, and they had just one very spoiled boy, about George’s age.  He had pink skin, and pinkish blonde hair, and was about the worst brat I ever knew.  His father was an old man who had been married before; his mother was an artificial redhead, about 35.  She was about as mean and nasty a person as I have ever known, doing everything she could to embarrass or hurt Mama.  She made big talk on party lines about our poverty and shabbiness, and when she gave us something, it was when she could hurt or embarrass us.  This house had either one or two steps up or down to each room.  I still think of it as a beautiful house (then), but it is so changed, one would never know it to be the same place.  The so-called pantry had a sandstone floor, and was so big we had shelves along one side, the cream separator on another side, an old butter churn (wooden) which we never used, and I think some storage cupboards or shelves on another side.  It was cool all summer, and whatever we could not get into the icebox could go into the pantry.  When Grandma Forney came to visit us here, she thought all the ups and downs were awful.  Grandma Forney had a stroke about 1919 and used a cane for many years.  I don’t remember anyone ever falling down any of them.

 

So many interesting little things happened here.  Helen, being the horse lover, immediately started riding ‘Dick’, the younger horse.  His mother ‘Kit’ I don’t remember much, but they were just big, broad work horses.  We also had ‘May’, a slimmer, smaller

horse.  (We heard she had been a race horse – maybe she had (a quarter horse?).  However, because he was wide and frisky and young, Helen rode Dick when she was standing up.  We must have been to Boulder about that time and seen our first circus.  She made it down the road and back, but we girls were scared to death.  He only trotted or an easy canter – less jarring than a trot, but it seemed very daring to us.  Another time Helen followed a bunch of about 50 horses on round-up down the road (was she on foot?).  She chose a likely looking one and rode him a ways – just to show she could.  Helen also climbed to the top of a huge silo (one built by us – with some help – and made of cement slabs), and sat on the edge, petrifying us again.  She loved horses, dogs, cats, and any baby animal.  She helped nurse baby pigs when our old sow had 11 or 12 babies and had only 8 or 10 ‘dinner plates’.  They had to be fed every few hours the first few days, then the old sow never accepted them, as they weren’t ‘hers’.  Once in a while, if a sow had too many and another too few, within a few days, a transfer could be made, but that seldom happened.  Helen was often the one to teach a calf to drink from a bucket.  The calf was seldom left with the mother long, as they didn’t use all the milk each nursing and cut down on dairy supply.  A cow will only ‘make’ as much milk as is needed, so if a good milker could start on her and strip the most possible milk, some could go to the calf, and the farmer got some, too.  We didn’t have a fancy bucket with nipples, as they have now.  You had to straddle the calf to keep it from running (sometimes you had help).  You hold a bucket of milk up to the calf, put one hand into the milk, and try to get him to suck on a finger in the milk.  It was a poor substitute, but Helen and Herbert seemed to get it done.  Of course it never helped to have ‘mama cow’ bawling nearby for her baby.  We had some cows that bawled off and on for weeks.  They knew it wasn’t natural.

 

Sometimes Mrs. Freeman would ask Helen and Janice to help her clean house.  She didn’t pay much, but gave an old coat or dress or old junk jewelry.

 

To me, this was a most magical place.  It’s the one I dream of most.  As soon as we moved in, we younger ones began finding marbles, torn up balls, broken toys, jacks, etc., all over the back yard.  ‘Finders keepers’ we said, but if Tommy Freeman was there he claimed anything that we found -–took it, too, though he probably threw it away afterward.  If we were very lucky, he threw it in our yard and we craftily waited till he left to hunt for it.

 

We had a small creek right in front of the house – for irrigation.  (It is very small now – 1976).  At that time, we could catch fish in it.  How we loved it!  We could wade, fish, or even swim.  I don’t remember ever getting in very deep.  It was quite shallow except for holes.  Papa heard that one summer the river (North St. Vrain) had been stocked with fish and some were coming down our creek.  He had an old net, and at the risk of getting caught, we used it and got several dozen trout and suckers.  We ate suckers in those days.  We kept some of those fish two days, just because it was so unusual to get to see them

 

Out of the back door and up the hill about 30 feet was a small hill.  Into this had been dug a cellar, so again we had a good place for produce.  Being on a main highway now, we set up a fruit stand and got some tourist trade (to Estes).

 

This was a nice big cellar, and often we could sell fruit to a neighbor late in the winter.  A little farther down the hill were two smaller cellars, but we were not allowed to go in there except with Papa.  It was his vinegar cellar.  In it were three or four big wooden barrels, with apple cider in various stages of fermentation.  Papa was a very strict abstainer, and if anyone ever drank any ‘in between’ cider, I never knew of it.  I don’t remember how long it takes to make vinegar – probably a year, as we went from one vinegar season to the next.  I suppose we gave a lot of it away or traded it.  The making of good vinegar depends on the ‘mother’ being used.  In a vinegar barrel or vat, there is always a thickish slimy hunk of stuff, which is what makes the cider turn sour after fermenting.  If this is present, it makes vinegar, if not, you take some from a barrel which is already cured and put it in the other barrel.  It would ‘make’ vinegar so sour and good as any ever made.  It is so much more sour than ‘store bought’ stuff you wouldn’t believe it, but that is homogenized, pasteurized, diluted.  Store cider is a travesty, too.  It is also treated the same way.  If you ever tasted fresh-off-the-press cider, you would know what I mean.  Some folks let it stand two or three days, to the fermentation stage, or even longer, but when ours started to ferment, into one of the barrels it went.

 

Why was Papa so radical about drinking?  His father lost his business (a nice butcher meat shop) and all rights to family recipes as used in the shop, because he was drunk so much he couldn’t tend to business.  Many nights he came home so drunk he abused his children and beat his wife.  Papa adored his mother – she seemed to try to understand him, many ways.  We think Papa may have tried drinking during the time he was away from home.  He really was so unhappy he ran away at 16.  Don’t know how long he stayed, but know he came to Colorado later, and that’s when he became so excited about it.

 

At one time, there was a lot of poison ivy growing on the hill just north of the vinegar cellar.  Papa decided he should get rid of it, so he grubbed it out with a shovel and hoe, raked it up, and burned it.  He had been careful not to touch it, but when he burned it, the fumes carried the oils to him and he had the worst case of poison ivy.  Some of the ivy grew back, but we just left it.  As far as I know, we all had poison ivy outbreaks at one time or another.  My case will come up later.  [Mother always told me that Grandma was terribly allergic to poison ivy – all she had to do was walk near it, and she would break out…]

 

I don’t know how many acres we had, but it was a nice farm, a huge lawn all across the front, a low picket fence in front of the creek, apple and cherry trees west of the house, and a small garden.  North of the house was the hill with the cellars.  [See rough map, page 35, ibid.]  It was in kind of a curve and Papa used the west end of the hill to the creek for his watermelon patch.  He had the best watermelons in the world.  Always got the same.  He tried others, and settled (I think) on Kleckley Sweets.  They were long and slim and dark green.  Of course, the other vining growths grew there, too – cantaloupe and cucumbers.  But the melons were the best.  We had several watermelon feeds each fall before frost, and everyone agreed on their taste.  He loved to give the kids a long slice to eat with hands and mouths only, and see who had ‘seeds in their ears’.

 

Beyond the melon patch was a fence, and beyond that a big alfalfa field that reached clear up to the road that is still there (houses in field now).  He used a small corner back of the cellar for the pig pens.  It wasn’t too close to the house, and yet the garbage and the ‘slops’ could be gotten to them easily.  ‘Slops’ were whatever you made them.  Cherry or peach seeds, whey, skim milk, sweet or sour, if any to spare, and there usually was.  We always had lots of corn for pigs.  We fed it to them right on the cobs.  We younger kids had to go out and gather dry cobs for stove fires.  It was a dirty job, and we hated it!  In winter, he used a commercial feed recommended by Country Gentleman magazine.  I think it was stored in one of the rooms on the lower level marked ‘storage’.  I don’t remember how many pigs we kept, probably three or four sows and one boar (he always had to be a good one) and whatever small pigs not yet ready for market.  We had lots of pasture below the alfalfa (east), another ditch between, then the area where we grew corn (sweet), potatoes, cabbage, beans, onions, and so forth – any vegetable that would grow in Colorado.  We caned or stored hundreds of quarts or pounds, sold or traded some.  Market hard to find, still.  There was a storage barn, icehouse, and chicken house east of the main house, with lots of fruit trees all over.  We kept the car in the south barn, one side.  Some of the field tools in the other barn, as well as all larger tools needed to repair machines.  Our land reached across the river and way up the side of steamboat mountain (there was no road there then, of course).  Just across the creek was the best mushroom area I have ever seen.  Always morals – we had no way to identify others.  You can hardly find them anymore.  It was a lovely damp grassy pasture area, full of trees and shrubs.  I remember we (Papa of course) drove a wagon across a wide shallow part of the river to pick up dead limbs and parts of trees.  Mostly narrow-leafed cottonwood, alder, willows by the creek.  Up a little higher, I think it was fenced, so the animals wouldn’t get into the neighbor’s property.  Steamboat Mountain base rose pretty steep and was rocky.  Possibly someone owned or leased the upper parts.  I do know Papa was cautious about rocky grazing for his milk cows.

 

A large family (eventually 8) from Missouri now lived in the house we had first lived in in Colorado.  Mr. Harvey was stubborn, lazy, and a know-it-all, but several of us had good friends among the children.  Helen was known to go hiking or on a picnic with Albert (along with Herbert and another neighbor, Adeline Clark) and sometimes as many of us younger ones as they would allow.

 

Once in a while in the summer, a lot of us would gather in our big front yard and play ‘run, sheep, run’ or ‘last couple out’.  I think there would have been at least 20 of us, though, of course, I was only seven or eight and just a nuisance. 

 

Mr. Hervey finally proved his manners when he let some fence posts rot, and also across the river the fence was destroyed.  I think our cattle got into his crops.  He was going to have the law on us.  Papa called landlord Freeman to tell of it, and Mr. Hervey yelled across the party line he would get out his .22 rifle and kill the cows.  As I recall, Papa fixed the fences, but the two never liked one another in any way.  He was so mad he almost got out his own gun.  I imagine Mama prevailed there.  She was horrified of guns and ‘feuds’. 

 

Virginia Hervey Twist was my best friend as long as we lived there, and we corresponded until about 1940.  I just learned this year (1976) that she died of a heart attack several years ago.

 

On this place, we walked on the old road we’ve shown you [???] (it has changed a little as of `77) two miles to school almost every day.  On hot days we scuffed the dust and climbed roadside hills or rocks, but not very long.  Mama was quite aware of our ‘due time’.  Once or twice in the spring, we were tempted to pick soft fuzzy crocuses on that pretty hillside just out of town.  Also yellow Johnny-jump-ups, spring beauties (pink) and yellow ‘wild sweet peas’.  We were always careful to watch for snakes, for there were quite a few on this hill, as no one had built on it.  Often we got wood ticks, but at that time we didn’t know of ‘tick fever’ and evidently it wasn’t prevalent.  Now there are houses at the West End.  Just where you leave the ‘new’ highway to turn onto this old one, we walked by the river about a quarter of a mile.  Here, Helen lost her hat.  We were definitely forbidden ever to go down to the river, so we just watched the hat float away.  I hated those hats.  They were hot and had wide brims.  Some relatives sent them to us.  Janice’s and mine were felted and fuzzy.  Helen’s was fuzzier!  One place we passed had big Airedales, which they raised to sell, and we were so scared of them.  Although, they were either tied or penned up.

 

Winter was most difficult, and we younger ones had enough to worry about just getting to school and back.  When I think of Herbert, Helen, and Papa doing the milking (I think we had about four cows and milked or boarded about five or six more) before school, all the chores to do – coal and wood to get in, fill tubs to wash on wash day, feed horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and so much more.  Mama had five lunches to pack (Bob started first grade in Boulder in 1925).  Helen and Janice had long hair until then, too, and sometimes needed help.  For a while, Janice had long curls, and they were put up in rags at night.  Helen’s hair was braided and worn in whatever mode girls her age wore (12-15 years).  I always had short hair, and how I longed for long hair, but I guess that two girls with long hair were enough to manage. 

 

If the Model-T would start, Papa could take us as well as five or six others once or twice a week, but sometimes it wouldn’t start in winter, or the milk wasn’t ready (he’d have to go later – no big milk trucks to come by then).  Many, many days we trudged off down the road, and our winters then were often snowy – a foot or eighteen inches lay on the ground months at a time.  Few cars passed, but sometimes a mail truck from Estes Park would leave tracks.  It helped to walk in those tracks.  Once in a while a few of us got on the road before the bus and he would pick us up, but that was seldom.  I can still see Mama rushing around to get breakfast ready, lunches done, check the younger ones hair and faces, hands, help with boots and shoes.  (Helen said we all had some sort of boots – big buckle ones.)  Never-the-less, our feet were always wet.  One very bad day we had to walk – Herbert, Helen, and Janice were ready earlier, so they started out and down the road a ways the big bus picked them up, just as we got to the road.  We yelled and ran, but they were full or didn’t see us, so we two little ones dragged off to school – freezing all the way.  (A Freeman boy or Shinkle boy sometimes came with a Hervey, or us.)  That day when I got there, I had to take my boots off (holey socks?) to get warm, and got to sit by the stove all morning.  I was subject to chilblains – none of you know about those [want to bet?]  Some way, I always got my feet wet so often and never had sense enough to go in the house till I was frozen.  When I was about four I started having them.  I would come into the house, take off shoes and socks and warm too fast.  Soon, my feet began to hurt and itch, and a layer of skin blistered and came off around my toes.  It was a pain I often couldn’t bear – I guess I often fried a lot, but in a day or two I’d be out in the snow again.  (Dad says he wrapped gunny sacks around his shoes, but I know we did not.)

 

Each room at school had a large stove in a corner.  A thick round shield of asbestos surrounded it, so we couldn’t get burned, but there sure wasn’t much circulation of the hot and cold air.  If you sat by the stove, you toasted.  If you sat very far away, you chilled.

 

No food ever tasted so good as Mama’s sandwiches.  My favorites were jelly and butter, or cottage cheese with onion and butter.  She must have had quite a time deciding on what to use, but I know we had roast pork or beef, scrambled eggs, meat loaf, or real old fashioned peanut butter once I a while.  Mama’s cottage cheese was as different from store-bought as a product can be.  It was softer, more tart – no cream added, no tough blobs.  It takes raw milk to make that, and it is hard to find now.  I could write a whole book on her recipes, though most of Papa’s meat recipes are lost.

 

Besides the big Hervey family, we played with Tommy Freeman, Bobby Shinkle, and some of the Platts.  B. Shinkle’s father ran the power plant west of our place, in the little valley.  I think it is still there and running.  That was nearby to a pond where we could cut ice in winter.  Mr. Shinkle made a little wooden chest for each of us girls one Christmas.  They were so cute, and I have some very nostalgic things stored in mine.  (It was badly scratched by the Harlow boys in about 1946, at 1608 7 Street, when they were installing a gas furnace.  They stood on it.  We will refinish it for someone.)  Shinkles were ‘high tone’, though friendly in a way.  Not neighborly, but because Papa had been an electrician, they had similar interests.  The pond where we cut the ice is probably still there.  We had a very large icehouse.  The ice was packed in sawdust, lay upon layer, large squares of ice.  With proper use, it lasted all summer.  It was a sad day when the ice ran out.  Needless to say, that icehouse door wasn’t opened very often.

 

We raised quite a few chickens, sold eggs and poultry, along with all the other vegetables, fruits, meats, and live animals.  In the summer we had a fruit stand and sold to tourists, boxing fruit as we had before.  We built the silo that used to stand across the creek by the cow barn (Helen and Herbert painted it red and it stood till the `60’s).  After the silo was put up, a ‘new’ grain storage plan could be used.  A corn chopper, run by motor, was brought in, and while corn was still green, but almost ripe, it was cut and h hauled in wagons to the cutter.  It was a co-op venture, but I don’t know the details.  The chopped corn was stored till winter, when it was sort of fermented – you never forget the smell of it.  The farmers still use silage, and some put it in large pits in the ground, then cover it with plastic sheets, and weight it down with old tires.

 

How well I remember when Mama and some neighbors were cooking for the ‘crew’ and we ran out of butter.  Herbert was sent to town.  He had hardly learned to drive and was only 14 or 15.  He ran one wheel of our old car off a bridge!  Mama was tearful, but I guess the car wasn’t damaged.  I still don’t know if we got the butter!

 

And, once in a while when the silage was halfway down the silo or more, we sneaked up a ladder through the chute, and played on the fruity stuff.  Of course Mama always found out – we were quite odorous – and there were always large spiders all around, but we liked the adventurous feeling.  This was the silo Helen climbed and sat on top of when it was empty.  Cows did well on silage, but horses needed hay and oats.  It was best not to feed silage to them.

 

Another thing we really liked was to climb into the barn loft and jump into the hay below.  Our hay was stored form the ground up to the loft, which was floored only narrowly on two sides.  When the hay was half gone, we could jump into it, or swing on a rope until we could hit a soft deep spot across the hay area.  Mama just knew one of us would fall on a ‘lost’ pitchfork, or a hiding rattlesnake, but we never did.

 

Once in a while a cat would hide out in a hay nest to have babies, and what a thrill when we found them!  Or an old hen would get ‘broody’, leave the flock, and start laying eggs in a hay nest.  She knew enough not to sit on them long till she had a nice nest full.  They don’t start developing till they are kept warm for a day or two at a time, so they all hatched at once.  As soon as they hatched, we’d put the hen in a coop alone with her chicks, leaving holes the chicks could get out of.  They could get out and eat and run about and get used to the area around other chickens, but run to mother at night or when they got cold or scared.  In a few weeks, the old hen had forgotten the barn, and could be let out too. 

 

One night, when it was rainy, Mr. Freeman backed his coupe (Buick or Chrysler or something) into the creek – the bank was about four feet high.  I think he was trying to turn and couldn’t see.  (Mr. Freeman was small, thin, and a little crippled.)  They got several neighbors and teams of horses to pull it out of the water.  They finally got it out, but the men worked so hard.  It’s funny, but I remember we were having our first mutton for supper – none of us liked it much…

 

That same night, Bob had convulsions – Mama thought he was dying.  They got him into a tub of warm water (probably called the doctor and asked what to do) and soon he was all right.  They thought some frozen turnips we had for supper might have caused it.

 

We went swimming a few times in the North St. Vrain in a deep hole (four feet or so).  I think Papa had an old swim suit -–I don’t remember.  The rest of us wore what we could find and still be decent.  I know I wore a very old dress, with a pair of very worn out overalls (George or Herb’s?).  Generally, girls did not wear any kind of pants in public.  My first pair was one of George’s overalls.  I was about 14.  Once in a while a woman would wear coveralls or knickers for mountains or sports.  The coveralls were loose all over and not too ‘mannish’. 

 

When we were on Shepherd’s places and Bob was still pretty small, I remember we went for a hike – started south toward rattlesnake mountain, then finally around a hill and down into a valley where some friends lived.  Bob and sometimes George rode in a little wagon we had then.  It was a long day’s walk.  Mama never was much of a hiker.  By the time we got a day’s worth of work done around the house (and yard) she was too tired to hike.

 

In 1926, after we had moved to 2020 Spruce in Boulder, Papa wanted to take a hike, so he and Mama, and probably the younger boys, drove to the foot of Flagstaff Mountain in Boulder.  They hiked up to the ‘half-way area’, not much developed then, and Papa wanted to go on, so they hiked to the top.  It was rough going and pretty steep.  I’ve gone up by the road, but never by the front.  Mama was so lame and sore she had to go to bed – her back was very lame  - she was in bed at least a week.  That was about the last big hike she ever took, though I know they hiked up to Fulford cave from Fulford camp ground after they met the Browns.  Mama and Papa both went into the cave at least once.  We were going on hikes or walks or ’kin-we’s’ every day that we could.  Hills, pastures, creeks, fields, but we always had to ask.

 

Herbert and Helen worked hard, too.  Herbert helped with the plowing, disking, harrowing, etc., but he was a small boy for his age, and it was hard.  (He sometimes used several rocks for added weight…)  Helen worked at whatever was needed – hoeing, painting, herding cattle (keeping them out of alfalfa).

 

At least once, some of them got into the alfalfa – and they love it, but in one stomach (3^rd?) it causes severe gas and bloating, and the remedy then was a long sharp knife stuck into the proper area, piercing the stomach and releasing the gas, and it usually healed fine.  I know Papa did it at least once, and I watched.

 

One day Helen, Janice, and I took off on our riding horse, up the road, around the corner, and down through a neighbor’s pasture (with permission) across the river.  We had never crossed here before, and on the far side it was steep, but Helen just called ‘hang on’ and across the river we went!  When the horse got to the high, rocky bank, she just started scrambling up as best she could.  I was in back and started slipping.  I grabbed Janice tighter, and she started slipping.  Then she pulled Helen off, but she fell on the bank.  We didn’t put a saddle on the horse when we rode triple.  I wonder if we had shoes on – we were so worried about what Mama would say?  Were we looking for mushrooms or berries or just adventuring?

 

To me, Lyons was interesting, exciting, wicked, and sophisticated – though that word I didn’t know.  Friends who lived there had nice furniture, small, neat yards – smaller families – and usually were merchants of the town.  Some girls even had their own bedrooms and pretty dolls and dollhouses.  One girl was very spoiled – she’d take us into ‘her’ drug and sundry store and give us things.  Once, I think she gave Janice or me some beads.  Next day she asked for them back, as ‘they weren’t mine’.  We were quite hurt.

 

Sometime back in the years just before we moved here [to Lyons], there was an awful scandal.  One man caught his wife with another man, and took an axe to him.  He killed him, and I can’t remember what happened – maybe he was exonerated before the jury on grounds he was protecting his honor and home.  We children heard only whispers.

 

One fall, Papa had a huge amount of onions, and somehow decided to save them a while for a better price.  He rented a room in town over a grocery store.  The onions were in huge piles all over the floor of a large room.  Onions can’t keep if frozen, so there was a stove.  Everything went well for a few days, then whoever was to keep the stove going let it go out – a cold spell came and all the onions froze.  It was heart-breaking – all the work and the money loss.  We had to shovel all the musky onions and clean the place up – but I bet it smelled as long as the building stood!

 

The movie theater was near that building, and we only got to go a few times, though at least three of us got in free and full admission was only 15 cents.  My big problem was that there was no restroom, and I always got excited and had to wet.  I was sent out behind the theater in the dark.  If there was a toilet there I don’t remember.  I would have been afraid to go in for fear someone else was there.  I could find a dark place behind some old boxes.  I don’t remember my first show, but we saw so few, they were really ‘big deals’.

 

Most of our social life centered about the church.  We went to Sunday school, church, then sometimes stayed for a covered dish get together and had evening church (here was an outside toilet too, and I made good use of it, as did everyone).  Our good clothes were nearly always white, so it was a problem for Mama to try to keep us clean.  Most of us were in all the church programs – any kind of school play or entertainment was given in one of the large school rooms (crowded), the church (if suitable), or a large dance hall most of us would not have seen any other way.  Many, many people considered dancing as evil, also card playing, drinking, and women smoking.  One spring, when I was about six, we all were in a big program (children’s day?).  Different ages learned their parts, and the little ones performed first.  I begged to ‘go’ and hurried to make it back in time.  Somehow, the program of little tots went on and on, and I had a speech to say (kneeling with four others in a semi-circle).  The longer I waited, the more nervous I became (I still do!).  Suddenly I knew I had to ‘go’ again, and then our names were called!  We trooped up, ten or twelve, got through our parts.  I wiggled and suffered.  Everyone knew.  When we knelt for the last part, I couldn’t wiggle, and when the inevitable happened, I was so relieved.  I got mad when Janice ‘shamed’ me.  I made a nice spot about eight inches across, and it showed up beautifully for all of the older kids programs.  Nothing has ever been found to change this, though, and I think lots of others have the problem and don’t talk about it.  I avoid being president of anything, and I assume that my present blood pressure may be caused by the same tension.

 

Papa was a fairly important personage in the church.  He was Sunday School Superintendent for years, and was on the Board, and got along with everyone.  He really liked our small church.  Mama had her hands full with us three younger ones, but she enjoyed so many of our church families.  The Gordons, Eatwells, Spencers – to name but a few.  Mary Eatwell was a teacher in our school, and was very good.  She got her few science students (including Herbert) interested in chemistry far beyond the times.  Herbert and Mama met with her at Raymond resort in the mountains in about 1973  (She was still living in the Springs in 1987…).  (Papa made a big play cradle for Cradle Roll Department – it was so nice.  Then Janice made one (with a little help?).  So Papa made one for me – I still have it.)

 

The Spencers were very nice elderly folks (older than ours were).  He put out the Lyons Recorder and was a pretty good newspaperman.  I wish I had an old copy of his paper.  He explored all the mountain areas near and far in Colorado, and made little maps of roads that could lead to good fishing.  He took Papa and some others to areas where only a wagon of buggy could go, and then you either rode a horse of walked in farther for super fishing.  Of course most people were too busy trying to keep food on the table to have time for ‘recreation’, and usually these trips took more than one day (most folks did observe Sunday as a day of rest from daily work).  The Spencers lived to celebrate their 70^th Anniversary.  I can’t remember how either of them looked, but I know how much my folks liked them.

 

‘Meadow Park’ was our one big recreational facility.  It is still there, though a little cut up and bedraggled.  Most of our summer picnics were held there.  Everyone went, even both church groups (Methodist and Congregational).  They had competitive races, games, baseball, and always-good food.  I do remember my first bottle of pop.  Mama didn’t want us to have such stuff – artificial flavor, just sugar and water – as opposed to our own lemonade (lemons were cheap, but we didn’t have them except for our own special picnic in summer).

 

They finally bought us each a bottle – mine was strawberry – so fizzy – I got it up my nose and it felt awful.  I don’t like strawberry pop!

 

To my memory, we had just got out of church when word came that an empty train car was loose at the quarry on the hill, and they had switched it to go over the dead end, past the depot, in Meadow Park entry.  We had only about three blocks to drive, and many of us jumped into cars and rushed down to see it.  I know we beat the train car down, as it had a wide circle to make and there was a long flat stretch past town.  I remember George and I at least, getting out on the track to see where it was coming, and couldn’t see it.  We were quickly ordered to get out of the way by parents and others, and soon, the big, empty, open train car came rumbling along, not too fast, but it made a lovely crash and crunch at the dead end against a pile of dirt.  That was the talk of the town for weeks.

 

(One time, Francis Lyons, a girl Janice’s age, fell into the creek, and drowned.  It was an awful shock to all of us.)

 

Just across the river and up a cliff was a big square ‘cave’.  (The cave was hewn out of real red Lyons sandstone.  It is still there in 1984… 1998.  There was a trail up, which we took once, I think.  You four older boys [Dick, George, Dave, and Wayne] remember climbing the face of the hill/cliff when Wayne was about three (1949).  Once we went right up the side of the steep hill, helping Wayne and me (again, 1949?).  WE have pictures of all of you on the little footbridge.  I made it up then, too.  Later, dad and I took Randy up the trail, but my fear of heights took over on a curve, and I had to sit down.  That was about 1963.

 

I don’t remember learning to read, but I do have a little book with several of our names in it.  We learned on approved books, but they were interesting.  Stories about homes, family, farms.  Miss Henry was my grade one and two teacher; Elsie Kirk three and four.  They were very good and kind and patient.  In school, too, I had toilet problems.  The girl’s toilet was way out behind the school and down a little slope.  There was a fence between the boy’s playground and girls, so we never played together.  We had swings, teeter-totters, a basketball area (dirt).  We played ‘Annie over’ on a big shed and ‘Pump pump pull away’, but it got rough with high schoolers trampling over us little ones.  If the big girls played basketball, we could watch or go and play.  I think younger boys came over to play some games, and small groups giant step or red light.

 

Helen played basketball a little, and there is a cute picture of her with a team, sitting on the ‘new’ fire escape, a tunnel affair which we were allowed to play in once a week, by turns.  The fire escape was a large round pipe that came from upstairs.

 

In winter we slid, one way or another, down a very inviting hill just west of the school.  This hill north of the school was a favorite place to play, even though we knew we weren’t supposed to.  It was probably ½ block long and ¼ block wide, steep and rocky.  But, ‘Outlaws’ and ‘Kidnappers’ games were fun.  Usually, some town kid brought a sled, so there was a chance of a turn on it.  Bravely, we could slide on our feet.  If we fell, we slid on whatever hit first.  This was pretty hard on clothes, especially girls, as we never wore any kind of jeans or pants.  Our black heavy stockings constantly had hole in the knees – too big to be darned, but they could be patched with a piece from an old one.

 

In winter, we had an old sled that Papa made.  It had iron runners, and we could find lots of hills to slide down.  We experimented with skis made from barrel staves.  There was always an old barrel somewhere.  The iron hoop rings [from the barrels] could be used to roll on the sidewalk or lawn or just a dirt yard, with a stick to guide it.  The staves were just bent pieces of wood and made pretty good skis, on the small slopes we used.  Herbert would nail small pieces of leather on the slats for us tho put the toes of our shoes into, and off we went – always hopeful.  I don’t remember anyone ever getting down too far without spilling.

 

Papa made a ‘sledge’ as we called it.  It was a homemade sleigh, with wooden runners (usually used half-logs, smoothed and turned up at the ends).  The roads were snowy most of the wintertime, and we could go to neighbors in it or haul things around when the car couldn’t be used.  In about `23 or `24, our folks went to Denver for the big January Stock Show.  They came home in a ‘new car’.  I don’t know what year car it was, but it was a Model-T touring car with two seats with celluloid and imitation leather snap-on curtains.  We thought it was pretty classy.  They had so many stories to tell of all the many interesting things they saw.  One I remember was of a woman who was knitting and weaving with the fur she combed from her Angora rabbits.

 

Papa was always looking for new and better things to grow.  One was soybean, which were even then acclaimed as extra good for many uses.  I had some seeds saved in my toy chest for years, but don’t have them now.  He grew Sudan grass as a supplement for fodder for cattle.  (There is a picture of Herbert and Helen with tall corn and Sudan grass.)  He grew his own corn seed, and when we lived on Shepherd’s was when I recall his testing for good seed.  He saved a lot of good, big straight ears of corn, and each was tagged (the tags on the end of corn ears had a number).  Then he got some large squares of unbleached muslin, tacked them to frames, laid flat, and marked off two-inch squares on each.  Each square was numbered and about three kernels of corn were taken from the center of the ear of corn, and placed in the proper numbered square.  I think they were stored in the attic, on the rafters, and the cloth kept damp.  Under those dark, damp conditions, they soon sprouted.  Then Papa saved the numbers of the quickest and strongest sprouters for his seeds.  I believe he did this every year.

 

On Freeman’s place, because we were on the main road to Estes Park, we could sell more to tourists, and I know that for several years, Papa furnished fresh sweet corn to the Stanley Hotel.  He had to get up very early to get it picked fresh (he never picked the night before).  WE all helped at times, and of course, if Mama helped, she couldn’t leave the boys alone.  I never could tell when it was ready without pealing it down, and that encouraged worms, but I had to do it.  Papa could just grab an ear and give it a jerk, or leave it alone.  He always could tell when it was ready.  We packed the corn in gunny sacks, by the dozen, and left it by the gate for the 6:00 or 7:00 bus.  Oh, those busses were pretty.  Some of them were big Stanley Touring cars, probably holding about 20 people, plus mail and baggage.  We were real proud of our being able to supply the Stanley.  Sometimes, we sent fruit (in season), but fresh corn was the big thing.

 

Our mail was delivered in a canvas bag.  We had a tall post with an arm extending from it and placed near the edge of the road.  A snap clothespin was on the end of the arm.  We put our mail in a bag, drew the string closed, and snapped it on the clothespin.  On his trip back to Lyons or Longmont, the driver slowed a little, grabbed the bag, and the next day threw the bag out of the bus near the post.  I don’t think we got mail every day.

 

(Dad says I go into too much detail, but it is hard to tell how I feel or how we live, otherwise.)

 

Well, as time went on, Papa found he needed more than farm money and would take jobs wiring or helping operate power plants.  We finally sold everything and moved into Lyons (1924).  We were there about a year.  Papa worked in Estes Park at the power plant [There is a letter on file that George sent Daisy from Estes Park when he was working there.], and our little house in Lyons seemed very closed in.  One day, he went to Boulder to look for work at the Valmont Power Plant.  (The first day he went over to try for work, a man walked up and said ‘hello, George, remember me?’.  It was Herb Woodward, who had known him in Kansas and had dated Dolly a few times.  He and Ethel Woodward had twin boys, but one died at birth.  The other twin, Eugene, lives in Greeley, and we used to see him at times.  Mama and Ethel W. remained friends until Ethel died in 1972.   Papa and Herb kept in touch as well….)  He was hired to help finish the plant (wiring?), and when he was finished, he went to work permanently.

 

We moved to Boulder in June 1925 when school was out.  We had kept one of our cows, Betsy.  How Papa hated to part with his favorite, Spot [there is a reference story on Spot…later in this writing], when he left the farm.  They really got along – she was the one that gave so much milk.  Also, Herbert won some blue ribbons with pigs at the Boulder County Fair in Longmont.  I don’t remember whether we entered grains or fruit.  Betsy was young, and a good producer.  We moved to a place on 24^th Street, an ugly old dark gray stone house.  There was a large pasture on the south and east of the house, and also a good big tract for a garden, a large apple orchard, grapes, barn, chicken house, and two horses.  Helen began to immediately plan on which horse she could ride first – Cream or Buck.  Cream was a beautiful light palomino, her son Buck buckskin.  I think they were broken to working, not riding, but Helen caught Cream every time she could.  She mad a lasso around the top gate posts on a narrow gate on a lane that went into the barn.  She often fed the horses oats from a pail, and they got so they came when she banged the bucket and called them.  Cream usually came first, so all Helen had to do was close the lasso on Cream’s neck.  Once caught, she was fairly tractable. 

 

(Many horses made a game of being caught.  When I visited the Browns in `34 and `35, at Yeoman Park, we always had to chase two of the horses.  Once a rope was on them, they were OK.

 

One day, Helen got a saddle on Cream.  I think she’d asked the owners, and they told her Cream had been ridden.  Papa was cautious, but Helen got on.  Cream was skittish but didn’t buck – she ran.  Helen stayed on, and everyone cheered as they went off down the road to the south.  She soon came back and rode whenever she could.

 

(To this day, I don’t remember my bedroom in this house, but I do remember a friend of Helen’s telling a ghost story.  I always looked under a bed after that, even when I was married six or seven years and Dad worked nights at the sub-station.)  We lived here only from the time we moved to Boulder until the end of October.  Helen and Herbert went to Prep school, where we all went later.  Janice, George, Bob, and I went to South Side – University Hill School.  It was the ‘snooty’ school in Boulder.  We loved the walk to school – cross the street, through a lane, an apple orchard (I never picked any of the apples, but sometimes got a good windfall, and the apples were so good…), another lane to a street, then to our school.  I was scared to death!  How different it was to what I had known.  Of course, there were differences in curricula between Lyons and Boulder.  I didn’t do too well in fifth grade.  They had mandatory homework, and woe unto the pupil who forgot their books!  (I did once, and Mama, bless her, got a neighbor to bring her up and give me the books.)  One day we were told we had to go down and get weighed and measured.  I was immediately panic-stricken.  Not only were my long black stockings dirty, but my toes were all out.  Desperately, I pulled them down and lopped them under at the toes.  Nobody said anything, but I’m sure some of them – and the teachers – knew! 

 

We had a wonderful summer, running in the hill pastures to the east, climbing trees, playing on the bar Papa put up.  One day, Helen tied a rope tight between two trees, and we walked the tightrope.  Helen did quite well, but the rope stretched and was pretty loose.  We took off our shoes so we could grip the rope better.  When I got my shoes, I put one on and tied it, the put on the other – what’s this – a trick?  Something was stuffed in the toe.  I turned it up and shook it, and out came a mouse – he was no more surprised than I was. 

 

There were enough kids to play ball in our backyard (I received my first hit on the nose by a fast grounder – it hurt so much and bled badly, and Mama scolded me for crying, but I do have a crooked nose and a deviated septum)!

 

I was always the one to climb to the top of the tree and pick apples.  I was lightweight, nimble, and always on the lookout for some way to impress Papa with my agility.

 

Helen and Janice worked a while at the Garnick’s chicken farm north of us.  They had the job of plucking feathers from birds, getting them ready for market.  How the girls hated that job!  (In 1983, when our Prep class had its 50^th anniversary, I met Nadine Garnick and her husband.  They remembered some of us.)

 

The Clements lived across the street in a big brick house.  Sometimes they would herd cattle (15 or 20) along the roadside for a neighbor.  They had a horse, and had to be on the ball.  Mae was Helen’s age and Ramona Janice’s age.  Once Janice and I were taking a turn at herding the cattle when they got away from us.  We had to get help to get them back, and were so embarrassed.  Of course, the roads were dirt and cars were few, so that helped.  Ramona had a big donkey for a while and we learned well the foibles of that stubborn animal.  What a bony backbone he had!

 

Papa was working eight hours or more a day for Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo), then coming home and trying to do all of the field work.  Herbert had worked all summer delivering produce to stores, looking for other work for winter, helping around the place where he could.  In the fall, Papa got a bad case of what the doctor called the flu.  He was very sick.  I remember the doctor coming.  Then another man came (Berger or Burger?) and the folks had bought their first home – a house on 2020 Spruce ($2900?).

 

I don’t know how we ever managed that first winter.  The house was small (only two bedrooms), but Papa knew he could make a bedroom upstairs.  They crowded two beds into their bedroom (one for the boys – hardly room for one!), then when spring came the boy’s bed was put on the back porch, which was partly screened in, partly walled.  We girls had the other bedroom, and for a while, slept together.  We each had a special drawer in a chest (chiffonier) for under things, stockings, and special things like my paper dolls (I wish I had saved a few!).  In the closet, we each had an area to hang things, but none of us had much, so space didn’t matter.  (We had two beds in our room by the winter of `27.)

 

In the winter of `27 our cousin Hazel came to go to school at CU.  [Probably Hazel Irene Forney, daughter of Charles J. Forney, Daisy’s brother…]  I think Papa had part of the upstairs done by then so the boys could be there.  Herbert graduated [from H.S.] in 1926.  He had so many jobs over there [Ft. Collins?], I’ll never remember them all.  (Herbert worked in 1926 and 1927 at the service station on 15^th and Walnut.  He saved for school at Aggies.)  How hard he worked!  Cafeteria, yard work, helping the folks he lived with.  After about two years, he got a job with PSCo sub-station south of Ft. Collins, and also got a job with Munsells, who had a shoe store, but also had a room or two to rent.  It was close to the sub-station.  He usually managed to work out his room and board, and could study on the job.  More on him later.  (Years later, Harold Curtis bought Munsells shoe store.  Dick, Jr., drove over at times to work there.  The store burned down in 1954, while we were on vacation in California.)

 

When Hazel came, of course things changed.  She had married young, lost a baby, got a divorce, then her parents decided she should get away and go to a good art school.  She was very talented, a little spoiled, and much more sophisticated than we were.  Papa worried that we would get too fussy and want too much.  I think Hazel stayed at least a year.  I know we had a mix-up for Helen’s graduation.  Janice had got a piece of yellow voile for a dress, and Hazel said ‘why not smocking?  I can do that’.  Well, the dress was all made except the smocking, and the next day was Helen’s graduation!  I asked Hazel about it, and she cried ‘Oh my, I didn’t know you wanted it for that day!  I’ll do it now’.  She worked late into the night, and the next morning started again.  I had no other dress to wear!  But, Hazel finished it, then said she didn’t have time to dress, and didn’t go.  She and I both cried a lot.  I wonder if she still remembers?

 

I’m sure I have written someplace else about our neighbors, but we did have a ‘big family’ surplus!  Six Osthoffs, four Wahlstroms, seven Neiheisels, seven Smileys, plus a few pikers with only two or three.  We enjoyed tremendously playing outside at summer time (say, from May to October), especially if the big 14-16 year olds would play.  They kind of ran things; especially with ‘Run sheep run’ you needed a smart and fearless leader or two.  We had quite a few good game summers.  Afternoons, those who didn’t have jobs, gathered over at Whittier School – next block north of us.  There, we could really get loose on the hits, fights, softball, mostly, but we hated the hard ground.  Whittier is still being used, and its most memorable features to me were the two long, dark halls, restrooms hard to get to (in the basement), though the teachers had several on each floor.  I was kind of a tri-level, as it had been added to and there were steps (3 or 4) up and down here and there.  The basement was restrooms, furnace, etc.  Also, this school had an old slide or chute, so old it was made of hardwood (sliding area).  Usually we sat on a piece of waxed paper for speed and safety.  Even so, several of us got painful splinters in our legs or seats!

 

When I started school here, about the last of October 1925, again I was intimidated by a new school -–new rules, and my teacher was a very cross young woman who more than once hit a child’s hand with a ruler.  Once, she forgot to use the flat side and a girl’s hand was cut by the ruler.  (The girl who was hit was Opal Easter.  She lived east of 2020, and I palled with her a little.  One day we went on a trip to a farm, stayed all night, and came home on Sunday.  It was a relative of Opal’s.  When fall came, I couldn’t find my coat.  We finally decided I’d left it on a nail in the barn.  We never got it back.)  The parents came to protest, but the parents were ‘no one’, so nothing was done, although I think the Principal – Miss Fitzpatrick – made her understand she should be more careful.  Dad and I both had parents who believed that a teacher needed good discipline in class, and if we were spanked at school, we might just get another one at home.  In this year, after height and weight were taken, I was considered ‘undernourished’, and letters were sent home.  I was to have a better diet!  As I remember our food, it was pretty well balanced.  A little too much starch here and there, but would that make me skinny?  I think it is a family trait, as so many of our family were that way when young.  (Our own boys had a fast growth, skinny stage.)  Also, the schools offered a recess snack – free if we couldn’t buy it, three cents, if we could.  It was ½ pint of milk and some graham crackers.  My folks were furious, and so, I took my snack from home – my folks said it was cheaper that way, and they wouldn’t take charity, even if they needed it.  I was a pretty lively child, and felt good, but I did grow fast.  When I was 13, I was taller than Janice [she was two years older] was.

 

(A funny thing happened years later.  We were having a family gathering at 2020.  It must have been when our older boys were fifth and sixth grades – little league players.  Dick, Herbert, George, Harold, and some of their kids and ours grabbed a couple of footballs and went over to Whittier to play ball.  A couple of hours later, they came back laughing and joking, but a little apprehensive.  Someone had kicked a ball through an upper window – they couldn’t get it back.  So, they wrote a letter to the school, sent some money for the window, and got the ball back.  We’ve all laughed about the ‘adult juveniles’.)

 

Miss Fitzpatrick was a pretty woman with white hair, a sweet face, and small and plump, but she was so strict.  I guess she had to have rules.  I never got into trouble with her – I was too scared to try.  One of the hardest things about school here was music.  I had always like to sing – all of us except Bob carried a tune well.  But in Fifth Grade we had to learn to read notes!  Most kids had been having a little of that in Boulder schools, but I had not.  It was a sudden and mysterious force thrust upon me, and I hated it.  However, there were about four or five from our room, four or five from the other fifth grade room, some from both sixth grades, and we had to stay after school several afternoons a week to study music.  I was the only one who never had any note reading, but I did eventually catch up and got so that, by seventh grade, I almost understood what it was all about.

 

We had an older, somewhat fussy teacher in sixth grade – Miss Moorhouse.  I did fairly well with her, and felt more at home now in Whittier.  One thing we had to do, which maddened George, but I loved: Every Friday, the fifth and sixth grades had turns at ‘good music’.  We filed out into the big, ugly, dark hallway, and where it widened a little beyond the stairway, there was an old phonograph.  Not old to me, as that’s what most people used then, but old to you, our children.  There, Miss Fitzpatrick played Minuets (2), Ave` Marias (2), To a Wild Rose, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Anitra’s Dance, Barcarole, and so forth.  I loved them all – I still do – and I am thrilled to hear them.  To George, it was always agony – he still feels animosity about it.

 

We were offered a prize for anyone who wrote a poem and put it to music.  I wrote my first poem (it is in my group of poems, #1).  But not for anything would I tell the teacher – I could have sung a good tune for it – but not in front of all those kids.  So another girl got the prize – and her poem didn’t even have rhythm.  I had learned to sing first or second alto in sixth grade, and it came natural to me.  I could always carry a tune, and when you learn alto, you just sing it.  I sometimes had to solo for the teacher (to prove worthiness of being in the chorus), and I always came out on tune.  The girl who had won the prize turned out to be flat on notes, but she was always in the chorus, too.

 

During our early teens, when Janice and I did dishes, we always sang – Janice soprano, I alto or harmony.  We sang ‘aloha-o’, ‘Don’t say aloha when I go’, ‘Down by the Old Mill Stream’, etc.  We both carry a tune well, and I think Mama said Janice was carrying a tune well at 18 months.  Being Sunday school attendees, we all learned short little songs, and also Mama sang to us – little rhymes or poems she knew.  I wish I had the words to them!

 

Helen was always trying to get more work, and she was good at housework and also baby-sitting.  One family she worked for was the Lawrence Lights.  They were the managers of a rent-a-car business.  Mrs. (Mabel) Light’s brother, Lawrence Reid, came up from Lamar to work for a while, and he and Helen got acquainted.  Then Edwin Reid came, too, and fell for Hazel.  They double dated some, and when Helen graduated in 1928, Lawrence asked her to go to Lamar to visit his parents.  They had a large farm near Wiley, and Lawrence as well as Ernest – an older brother – worked with their dad.  The crops were super, there was a small tenant house available, so Helen and Lawrence decided they would save money if she stayed and they got married – and they did on June 13, 1928, just a month before her 18^th birthday.  She wired home for permission, and they had a quiet ceremony.  Mrs. Reid was a termagant and made life so miserable for Helen.  Our folks thought Helen too young, but Lawrence was such a nice man, and ten years older, ready to settle down.  We all loved Lawrence so much.  He died in October 1937, of a perforated stomach ulcer and peritonitis (no penicillin or sulfa drugs then).  Hazel and Edwin married that fall, but were divorced a few years later.

 

Our years at 2020 weren’t so long, but once we got acquainted, it was home.  After Herbert went to school and Helen married, it wasn’t so very crowded, and Papa was always working to improve the house.  After he got the upstairs finished, he had to make a small closet in their bedroom, as the stairway used their closet to come down in.  He made a double-door area between the living and dining rooms, and made it larger, so it would heat easier.  He also built a cupboard under the sink, and installed a floor gas furnace between the living and dining areas.  The back yard was all garden, fruit trees, and flowers.

 

A year or so after we moved to 2020, Papa also built a one-car garage on the alley.  We had been renting a neighbor’s old garage, but it was down the alley east, and not very secure.  Papa once found a man hiding in the front, near some boxes.  Mama was so scared, but the man just walked out and went on down the alley.  They built their garage with a coal bin on the side, and later used it for storage. 

 

When we first moved here, we bought our cow ‘Betsy’, but after the first winter, we were told we could not have her here.  We took her out to Woodward’s – three miles east, on Arapaho – and got milk from them twice a week.  .  They were my folk’s best friends for years. 

 

When Helen and Lawrence’s Darrel was almost two, and she was expecting a new baby, they moved to Boulder for a while.  Things were not so good on the farm, and they thought Lawrence could get a job in Boulder.  Donna was born in the north Bedroom at 2020, and I was just 16 and remember it so well.  Papa never trusted hospitals because of the many infections they could spread, so the doctor came to us.  Mama and Papa helped, holding special lights, etc., but Papa said he’d never do it again.  It was so nerve wracking, but I think we four older children were born at home, in Hoisington.  He was younger then, and probably didn’t have to help, as they usually had some neighbor (experienced) who came to help. 

 

The Depression was in full force.  Papa’s salary had been cut several times, and the bank lowered the monthly payments to $25.  Lawrence took any job he could get – selling Christmas trees for Copeland’s greenhouse, and wreathes.  He also helped process turkeys for my boy friend’s parents (Delbert Brown).

 

Janice had met Harold that summer (`31) and I was dating Delbert.  Before Harold went back to Holyrood, KS, to his teaching job, they were engaged and were to be married in the spring or early summer.  However, Harold became very homesick, and decided they shouldn’t wait, so they planned a November wedding.  Everything had to be done at once, Papa grew very impatient with the ‘formalities’.  Copeland’s planned everything – even insisted that Janice have a ‘yo-yo’ quilt done by then (See picture and description on page 93, ibid.).  So many hours of work!  Copeland’s chose everything – flowers, maid of honor (Goldene), soloist (Marilyn C.), time of day.  I never even had a chance to be bride’s maid for my only unmarried sister.  I was taller than Harold was, but the best man wasn’t so short.  I did get busy and make a beautiful dark green crepe dress, long flared skirt, puff sleeves.  We served cake, ice cream, and plain punch.  Helen and I helped some, but it was Copelands all around.

 

On November 30 [1931], Grandma Forney died, so Mama made a very hurried trip to Lyons, KS.  She had a dress being altered for the wedding, and insisted that they must go on with it, as Harold had only the Thanksgiving weekend.  It must have been very hard on Mama – everyone thought so much of Grandma - though we didn’t see her often.  Janice and Harold went to Longmont to a hotel, but Harold became ill and his folks had to go get them (nerves?).  Janice had always been a kind of favorite of Papas, and he hated to see her leave on Sunday when they went back to Holyrood.  He told Harold to take care of his girl.  (I asked Delbert to come to the wedding, and was so naïve – we had no formal invitation for him, but he came in a dark suit, derby hat, and all.)

 

(Extra insight…)  {Mama was first and foremost always a lady.  When she and Papa were married, he was 26, she 23, so both had lots of girls and boys to date all those years.  They were able to get their furniture, pans, dishes, etc., from Uncle Frank’s furniture store at a very good price (you know most of the furniture, as we all have some).  They rented a nice little home in Hoisington, where Papa had worked for quite a while for the local ice and electric company.  I think the railroad owned it.  He was the electrical man, and took great pride in learning everything he could of it (I.C.C graduate).  We have some of his electric books.  His job was what might be called a pretty good one, though of course wages were quite low then – but so was everything.  Evidently, though, his boyhood or young manhood trip or trips to Colorado were on his mind.  Mama was happy where they were, and they had a plan to build a new house, but he took another trip to Colorado to look around (postcard on that to Mama) and just had the definite urge to ‘go west’ and get to the fishing and mountains.  In some way, he persuaded her to go, and she once told me ‘things were never the same’.  They moved from Kansas in January 1917 and rented a place on the North St. Vrain just west and north of the place we later lived in.  I was only 16 months [actually 20 months], so I don’t remember this place.  Mama hated it.  It was small and cold (and a cold winter).  When spring came, it was hard to do any planting, and I guess it rained too much all summer.  The big cash crop, onions, wouldn’t ‘season’ – that is the tops stayed fat and green and he couldn’t harvest them.  He finally rolled a log back and forth to break them, but the big money crop was not so good.

 

George had been born in May, and they had to rush Mama and him to the Longmont hospital.  George was 10 pounds, and she was so little.  Perhaps that was the winter we moved to Longmont, rented a house, and Papa got enough electric wiring jobs (stores and businesses) to see us through for a wile.  We probably moved to Shepherd’s place in 1918.  But, as Mama often said in her late years, ‘we just never had anything after leaving Kansas’.  Papa worked so hard, and she did, too, and each child, as soon as he got big enough.  But Mama had been a proud, clean, self-supporting person all her life, and to be so poor and work so hard for almost nothing was so hard on her.  Because of her tough ancestors, though, she proved to be the one who endured, but she never lost her pride, and she was always a lady.}

 

Generally, we had a very noisy few years here, as the Smiley’s were noisy, and the Neuheisel’s, too.  (The Smiley’s kept goats – they never were asked to get rid of them.  We always thought they smelled as bad as cows.  They kept rabbits too, and often one or two would get out and all of us would chase them.  We always got them.)

 

I played mostly with Esther Smiley, and a little later, with Anna Marie Sutter (one block west).  Another big family.  Mrs. Sutter was a widow, with about seven kids, all ages.  She worked at Hygienic pool, east of us, received ADC, and was really a hard working woman.  I met my first boy friend through Ester.  Twenty-second Street was closed off for two blocks when it snowed.  There was a good hill at the top (dead end), through Bluff Street, Mapleton, and Pine.  We could coast through to Pine.  One winter (I was almost 14), Esther and I and some others (George, Bob, Stella Smiley), got bundled up and were going coasting.  We had the old sled Papa had made, and a second-hand one, rather small.  Esther was all agog.  She had met a boy who liked her, and maybe he would be there with a friend.  The crossing guard had a good fire going all evening, and we all huddled around it.  Sure enough, there were some ‘extra older boys’ there.  One was Virgil Harris, Esther’s friend, and I met Joe Springs (I was glad he was tall!).  He was a blondish, happy guy, with straight light hair.  Of course we all wore caps.  It was a pretty cold night, with about a foot of snow, and the road was packed.  We all had turns sliding down, spilling, falling.  The boys walked home with us.  I was so happy to have a boy like me. 

 

I wasn’t very sure of myself, but when Joe and Virgil met us again, a night or two later, Joe took me sliding on his sled, and already, I understood I was to be ‘his girl’.  I went riding, to shows, and carnivals for about a year.  He and a friend would get a car to working, and we would ride around – once in a while park and kiss.  My folks didn’t like it, and they weren’t too friendly to him, and he seldom came in and talked.  The summer came, and Joe and Virgil joined us for night games.  About this time, I found out that Mama had told George not to let us out of his sight.  I was very insulted.  (Actually, a light kiss or two was all we ever had, and if George was to watch me, he should have done so the year before, when Louis Neuheisel not only kissed me, but remarks and suggestions that I later knew were ‘not decent’.  I was a very private person, ‘hands off’, etc., otherwise my dumbness about such things was sure to get me into some kind of problem.  However, Louis was only alone with me once, and he really preferred one of the others (Evelyn Wahlstrom or Thelma White, both of whom were cute, and ‘fresh’, too). 

 

Within a few months, Anna Sutter was Virgil’s girl – Esther was furious and the words flew.  So for many months I tried to keep peace between my neighbor Esther and my dating companion, Anna.  It was probably two years before they were on speaking terms.  Virgil was a small, homely boy, from a large family – relief – and his father died of cancer that summer.  I never forgot about how Virgil talked about his pain and misery.  We all went to the funeral in a group.

 

On my 14^th birthday that year, Joe gave me some aqua blue beads.  They were pretty, but I lost them when we had a wreck while going to Kansas in August.

 

Lots of things happened that summer.  We girls heard that the wealthy summer folks at the Chautauqua wanted girls to baby-sit, help cook, and clean cabins.  Esther, Anna, Stella Smiley, and I rode the streetcar up the hill to talk to the lady who hired.  We were all too young – 14 or 15 – but when I got home I had a call from her.  She liked my modesty and quietness, so I was hired.  Scared, ignorant, never away from home more than one night.  I was completely unfit for such a job.  I went to the cabin, and found several southern women and three small girls.  Bedlam reigned, and I had to get right to work.  More than anything else, they really needed a cook and laundress.  I had a few basic things I could cook, but there were never any groceries.  They ate out almost always, leaving me with the baby.  I grew to hate her.  She was cute, but I was supposed to feed, bathe, potty train, and wash for her.  Everyone had wash tubs, and ours were out the back door on a hill.  The diaper scrubbing was endless – and always stains so hard to remove.  Mrs. Cade was the wife of a doctor (dentist), and he was to come in two weeks.

 

The second day we moved to a little larger cabin.  I slept on a screened-in front porch, on a cot.  I had only three changes of clothes, and it was hard to stay clean.  On July 4^th, my folks surprised me by having a picnic on the grassy Chautauqua Park.  I was eating with the Cades (to watch the baby), but was allowed about 15 minutes to run up and visit my folks.  Already I was homesick.  (It was about my 5^th day there.)  The oldest girl was very nasty, trying to treat me as they did their southern servants.  One day, Mrs. C. decided I should wash the girl’s red serge pleated skirts by hand and iron them.  I had no idea how to put pleats in.  I did do lots of ironing for the family, but not too well.  On a Monday morning, there was a nock on the door and there stood Mama!  Everyone was gone but the baby and I.  I was so glad to see her I cried.  I told her of the lack of food to eat, except for the baby, the awful red skirts I couldn’t handle, and how far behind I was in housework.  She dust-mopped here and there, ironed the skirts, gave me some change to buy a few snacks, then went to the hiring lady and told her what was going on.  Mrs. Cade was furious.  Her famous doctor husband was coming in four days, and she needed help.  I cried and was scolded more.  I stayed the two weeks, leaving just before Dr. C. was coming.  I had grown to dislike all of them.  Mrs. C. was skinny and sharp, with thin dark hair drawn back severely into a bun.  When she ran about the cabin fussing and doing the dressing of the children (I should have done it!), she was in a loose robe and her breasts were so pendulous and thin they hung down about eight inches.  I wondered what any man could see in her.  I think I ended up with $14.  I bought a pique dress with short jacket.  Janice went with me to buy it.  She had a similar one.  I think that was the summer she worked a mangle in a laundry shop.  It was such hot, hard work, but she worked most of the summer.  I was terribly hurt by the ‘servant’ attitude of the summer people, and shrank from going up again for a picnic, lest the Cades see me.

 

(That 4^th of July when the folks came up, Mrs. Cade had sent the oldest girl to tell me to ‘dress the baby and come to the dining hall for lunch’.  I dressed the baby but I left on my cotton print dress.  When Mrs. C. saw us, she said, ‘well, I thought you would have at least put on a decent dress – and the baby’s face is dirty’.  Maybe it was.  We went on to eat, and I was very proud of myself that I knew to push the big soupspoon away from m, and to only sip from it.  The lunch was about the only decent meal I had in two weeks, but I was miserably self-conscious.)

 

About two weeks later, we rented our house and left for Kansas.  Helen was married and near Wiley on the Reid farm, and Herbert was working, so there were just four of us kids.  We were driving the ’26 Chevrolet and that was the trip that made us all hate Chevies.  Before we got to Lamar, the motor was knocking, so when we arrived at Helen’s, we hoisted the front end into a tree, and the men put in new bearings.  It was about a day and a half job.  Helen had been married over a year and was pregnant.  She was as thin as a rail – she worked in the field a lot, and the baby (Darrel) wasn’t due till January.  They lived in a small tenant house.  I don’t remember where we slept, but I do remember the flies.  They were so thick on the screen door, you couldn’t see out.  Helen would spray with flit, then do a little cleaning or cooking, then the door was covered again.  Of course, lots of flies got in.  They had a nice big icebox, which helped to keep food cool and clean.  We didn’t do much but work and visit.  Farm work can’t wait.  The men (Papa, George, Lawrence, and Mr. Reid) went out into a low area to look at crops and so on, and George almost stepped on a rattlesnake.  He jumped up about three feet – it scared him so!

 

After we left Helen’s, we had more car trouble – don’t remember where.  So we were very anxious to get to Lyons [Kansas] where Aunt Dollie and Uncle Ray and Grandma Forney lived.  AS it got darker, we saw a hay wagon ahead of us, being pulled by a tractor.  No one was coming, so Papa passed it – only to see that there were two hay wagons, and here came a car!

 

They side swiped us and went into a ditch, upright.  Our car came to stop in the road – no one was hurt, but some of our clothes were packed in the running board, so were scattered all over.  Papa was fined for passing, and had to borrow money from Uncle Ray.  The hay haulers (no lights) weren’t fined, and the two young men in the other car, though speeding (they bragged about it, and about how many wrecks they had that year), got off because the justice knew them.  Needless to say, everyone was terribly upset, and we got into Aunt Dollie’s very late.  I lost my aqua beads – Joe’s gift – in the road.

 

We had a good visit with all our relatives.  Grandma was confined to a wheel chair and her disposition was sad.  We never saw her again.  We visited uncles and aunts and cousins, some dirt poor and some well-to-do.  I shouldn’t go into details on that.  Suffice it to say that we saw Aunt Dollie and Uncle Ray, Raymond and several cousins in Lyons.  (I sure hated the hard water!)  Uncle Ralph and Aunt Pearl in Hutchinson, Uncle Ode and Aunt Effie also in Hutchinson, Uncle Newt and Aunt Pearl in Hutchinson, Uncle Frank and Aunt Addie in Sterling, Cousin George Ross and Edith in Aden, then to Wichita to see Aunt Gertie (Osthoff) Murphy and Uncle Leveret and Elizabeth.  (Years later, Elizabeth came to Greeley for her Master’s degree and we saw her several times.)

 

Mama’s older sister Mary lived near Windom [I can’t find Windom on the map – no listing] on a farm, and we had a noon dinner there.  They were awfully poor.  The boy, Lynn, was married, and my folks saw him later.  The girls were all there, several kind of homely, but mostly, even I, at 14, felt the poverty.  Uncle John and Aunt Mary never had much, but they shared with others.  (Lynn is gone now, in 1975 and one girl – Velma.)  I sometimes write to Angie, who also married a farmer.

 

Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mary must have been there, as their girl Ruth (my age) was there.  She was pretty, and kind of sophisticated, as I remember her.  Grandma sat on the porch a lot, and seemed not to feel too well.  We were all very impressed with Dollie’s nice dishes, silver, house (though half the basement was full of beds for roomers).  She always felt she had to have something to fall back on, as Uncle Ray was, if nothing else, a speculator.  They had owned or run several cafes, hotels, restaurants, invested in stocks, bonds, sometimes good, sometimes not.  Raymond was born when Aunt Dollie was 40, long after they had given up on having babies, and they adored him.  (When Randy was born, I was 41!)  She wrote to me how wonderful it was to have a late baby, and knew we would enjoy him so much (we did!).

 

After two weeks, we started home again.  This time we got as far as Castle Rock (almost) before the car broke down (same problem).  Papa got someone to take the rest of us into Castle Rock to a hotel (how extravagant!), got the car parts he needed, then he and George slept out by the car.  They had coasted own by a farm, and were allowed to hoist the car into a tree again and repair it.  Mama and we three kids slept in one room (two beds) and the next morning had cereal in the dining room for breakfast.  (Everything else was too expensive.)  About noon, Papa and George came and we got home OK.  Our renters, two old maid teachers, hadn’t left yet.  I think they stayed at least a day or two, so things were strained and crowded.  (They made rose petal beads.)

 

Joe gave me some new beads (flat graduated pearls), and blushed when Virgil kidded him about his sister’s beads disappearing, so I knew where they came from.  Joe began to get mushier, and I really didn’t know how to handle him, though we had some parties at YWCA that were OK.  Christmas came and I gave him some hankies.  He got me a big dresser set – celluloid comb, brush, mirror, powder box, etc. (probably not expensive, but anything was for him, as his mother or father got his paycheck, $15 as week).  By then I knew I just couldn’t go on with him.  In my ignorance, I could have let anything happen, but my ‘hands off’ feeling prevailed.  In January, I told him no more dates.  He was devastated.  He cried and begged and wouldn’t give up – how hard it was for us both!  But, he was almost 18 then and I almost 15 and young for my age.

 

I had no more dates for a while – spent lots of time avoiding him.  That spring I was in a play at Epworth League.  We put it on as a part of evening service for Sunday church.  It was ‘Simon’s Wife’s Mother’.  I was Adah, Simon’s wife, and Gene Little was Peter.  Dad, John, and others like Bertie Ellen Hively and Grace Hively were in it.  When Gene put his arm around me it felt so strange – I shrank from him.  That amused him, but he was green, too.  We never really dated, but I saw him on occasion for several months.  Joe stopped me whenever he saw me and argued, then twice he called Gene and threatened him.  I was so embarrassed.  Nobody had a right to ‘own’ me.  I went to a few school dances with Gene, but he was poor too (as most were at that time), no money for dates.  We mostly met at church meetings or Sunday school.  I was so afraid that no boy would look at me.  Toward summer, I met a cousin of Anna Marie Sutter’s – Kenneth Miller.  He really was a good-looking boy, not too fresh.  We ran around together for a while – rides, games at Sutters, carnival rides.  Towards fall, he and his brothers left for Oregon – a sad good-bye, for after all, he was 16, I 15, and we kind of knew the end was near.  He wrote off and on, I really felt just relieved.  His brothers were pretty rough – hinted at things that couldn’t happen, as far as I knew.  (They were Elmer and Merle.)  Well, there I was that fall going into high school and no boy friend.  I always looked for height, as I was 5-6 by now, and like high heels.  I wrote lots of poems, day-dreamed a lot, wished I knew how to flirt.  Once in a while a blind date or something – school dance, but I was the proverbial wallflower when I went alone (with girls, that is).

 

Now days, there are so many ways for girls to make the most of their looks – lots of dress and pants styles and sizes – all kinds of creams, advice on skin care.  I had a very thin body – but clothes never were long enough.  Now days, if I had that figure, I could get a ten tall and not worry about it.

 

I was timid about school – my vision was poor and I knew my folks would be hard-pressed too buy glasses, but I finally went to Crowder’s Jewelry – where Dr. Swanson fitted me for glasses.  What a wonderful world it was to be able to see!  For months I noticed things I had never seen before.  I have progressive myopia, and have always hated glasses, but have decided my eyes are too sensitive to try contact lenses.  I found that the stars were not blurry blobs, tree leaves were easy to see afar, and even the pines in the foothills were distinct.

 

Starting in Prep, I was shy, but tried not to appear so.  Lots of new kids, as now we were all mixed, Northside and Southside Jr. Highs.  Had some good teachers, but never did understand Geometry, though I had almost straight A’s in 9^th grade Algebra.

 

Prep was set up as a three-year school, Toots, Trips, and Quads were the nickname for the class years.

 

The Trips had what was called the flag rush.  A team of six or eight from each class was chosen, and the Toots were given three flags.  They got a half-hour head start, walking through town from Prep, up the Flagstaff Mountain, and to place the flag on the flagpole. 

 

The Trips were to try to prevent them from placing the flag on the pole.  Referees were placed everywhere, so no cheating took place.  Meanwhile, everyone from school got to cars some way and either rode or walked to the top, to wait and see who was the winner.  Also, a picnic lunch was set up with class funds, so every one got something to eat.  The road up Flagstaff is and was dangerous, but I never heard of a serious wreck except one – a car rolled on the first steep stretch and injured a boy and his girl friend (Jay Hays).

 

We had Rough House night – that’s about what it was – wrestling and other contests among all three classes.  [Ethel’s side note – I lost my new Gruen watch my senior year at the Rough House.  Dick was with me and we searched till we found it.  It was OK.]  Junior and Senior proms always came in the spring - always live music.  Girls wore long dresses, but the boys mostly just suits. 

 

Always had a dance after football games, and a “rally” the day before, or on the morning of the game.  Prep was a huge old building, and the hallway was very large with rooms all around it. 

 

One thing we all enjoyed was the “snake dance” to a local theater downtown, after the Rough House.  There were about 650-700 students my year.  Most of us walked, trotted, or ran, in a long twisting line all the way down Uni. Hill to a theater, where the manager tried to hold us back till the first show was out.  When the theater was cleared, we all rushed in, usually breaking at least one window, which we all paid for.  Fortunately, as far as I can remember, no one was ever hurt badly.  A few years after I graduated (’33) the snake dance was omitted because it was too rough.  I think most of our old traditions were changed or omitted when the new High School was built on Arapaho (’39 or ’40?).  The old building was gone, but how often I dream of it!  Also, only about five years ago, they tore down old Central school, which was basically the oldest school in Colo.  The old part of it should have been saved and renovated, as an historical site.  We girls had gym classes there – oddly enough, gym upstairs, boys manual training downstairs.  In bad weather when we had gym inside, the boys must have tho’t that the building was falling, but it never did.  I was on volleyball team, baseball (soft) team, and basketball.  We had to go to the gym at Northside for basketball.  The boys went up on University Hill to the old Armory.  I had played all these sports in Northside too, and even had a fling at Field Hockey – and what a vicious game that was – big sticks and a very hard ball.

 

Jr. High was a very interesting experience because I had very good grades.  I was placed in "D” class – the highest of four classes.  So I had a lot to live up to.  I was exceptional in English, Art, Gym.  Good in Math, History, Music, and Science.  Most of our teachers were pretty good – really worked at it, and the school was only a few years old.  (Latin was the hardest.)  The halls were very long and we had to pass very quietly but quickly.  If I hadn’t mentioned it before the girl’s toilet was on the South end of the building, the boys on the North, on each floor.  Therefore, when we had classes on the wrong end, it was hard to get to a toilet and back to class on time.  We had recesses, but they were short, and you couldn’t even get in first door, it was so crowded.

 

We had to walk over a mile to school, so we carried lunches or went to a little home lunch place.  We could get a sandwich for a dime, a roll or doughnut for a nickel, and milk three cents.  Cheap as it was, we mostly took sack lunches.  We ate in the balcony of the gym, and it was fun.  You always found friends to sit with, and the boys rushed through lunch so they could play basketball.  Once a week the girls got to play and how we loved that.  In 8^th grade I had a sort of classroom boy friend – the teasing kind.  He was so cute – he was short, but fiery red hair and a big grin – Jack Koon.  One day he came into class and pulled my sash untied.  I grabbed my book and hit him on the head.  It was all in fun, but Miss Ponder saw my attack and not his, and told me to be more lady like.  I was so hurt, but loved her as a teacher, and never had any problems with her.  She and my 9^th Grade teacher (Mrs. Dodge) really got me excited about writing.  In 8 & 9 grades we had YWCA meetings, and a young married woman had a sort of club for us at the “Y”, downtown – we did handicrafts, sewing, reading “good books” and generally were generally supposed to tell her our problems.  (Virginia Pumphrey’s married sister.)

 

The “Y” was upstairs over a bank, a very old building (I think it was rebuilt some after a fire in the forties, but haven’t looked lately {‘77}).  There was a large hardwood dance floor, and several offices and a kitchen.  Most High School and Jr. High dances were held there.  How the music rang!  (Jr. High dances mostly 9^th Grade and seldom.)  We had a super football team at Northside, and we played Southside (the snobs) about five times.  When basketball season came, we did the same – quite a rivalry developed, but it was fun. 

 

I was in “D” class every year (high grades warranted “D”) & was proud of it – tho Latin wasn’t too easy in 9^th Grade, still it was only first year Latin & Latin & English compliment each other.  Our Principal was Miss Lovelace, an elderly tyrant who ran the school strictly.  She had pinkish hair, piled high and ending in a short soft knot on the top of her head.  She always wore a wide black ribbon round her neck, usually with a cameo on it.  I think she had a scar she covered.  Her approach was heralded by a clapping, & woe be unto the boy or girl she singled out.  Lots of boys teased her just to get a rise out of her, but she ran a pretty good school.  She would station herself at a different door each afternoon (there were four) and woe be unto the person who was not taking home at least two books to study.  My Latin teacher always insisted on nightly homework, & a parent had to sign your paper with the time you spent on it.  In the whole year, I forgot only once, & in a panic, traced Mom’s signature and got away with it.  I guess I was too timid to cause much trouble. 

 

The fall of ’29 (after our trip to Kansas) was the beginning of the depression & it alone is worth a book.  Papa’s wages were cut, then cut again in spring of ’30, so when graduation time came we were to have a graduation dress (white, long sleeves, tailored) and a class day dress.  Class day was a sort of punch and cookie affair one afternoon, dancing for those who wished to.  Mama said they just could not afford two new dresses for me & I was devastated.  Finally, with a little babysitting money of mine, we got the very cheapest broadcloth for 10 cents a yard for the white, and some sheer rayon (yellow print) for the class day dress.  I made them both, & even made a lace trimmed hanky to match the yellow.  Quite a few girls showed up in short sleeves for graduation (they were the rich girls who had “pull”).  No word was said to them, and those of us with hot sleeves were very uncomfortable.

 

That summer was a lonely one.  I was babysitting quite a lot – but the going price was only 10-15 cents an hour.  One lady had had Janice for a while, but Janice was older and could do better elsewhere.  These people lived in half of the Episcopal Priest’s home, and I thought that meant they were probably more honest & dependable than most. Most of the time I got 10 cents an hour, took care of Bonnie 5, and Dale 3, washed dishes, picked up rooms.  Jobs were so hard to get.  I stayed on the job at least three days a week, for almost a year.  The children were spoiled, hard to handle, and I hated daytimes when Mrs. Forester went out.  I wanted to be outdoors playing ball or hiking.  I would be going to H.S. in the fall and needed money so much.  How well I remember one Sunday Mrs. Forester asked me to come about two, as she had company, and they wanted to go to the mountains.  I was completely shocked when I saw the big table loaded with dishes (about 10 people).  She hinted at the possibility of my getting things “all cleaned up” but I was restless, and hoped Joe and friends would come by.  They never did and I fooled around and didn’t touch the dishes.  She was so disappointed and from then on I was told to do them – regardless.  I worked for them about a year.  She was another thin, unhappy woman.  Mama heard from several sources that Mrs. F. was “running around”, & she warned me to be pretty careful around him.  He never bothered me, be he was a real flirt.  His younger brother came to visit for a month or so around Christmas that year, & I did have to work pretty hard to keep out of his roving hands.  The Foresters moved that next Spring, owing some 5.00 which meant 50 hours of work.  They left town and we couldn’t find them.  I always hated her for taking advantage of me.

 

I baby sat quite often for the Charles Smiths – they have one very lovely, very spoiled child.  Mr. S. was not well.  He had T.B. up one month down the next, but they had good friends, well-to-do parents & did go out a lot.  I think they paid me 15 cents an hour – but they always paid and Mr. S. always took me home or had a friend do so.  (When I was at the Forrester’s I had to walk about 10 blocks on very dark streets, & it really scared me.)  Smiths were very patient with me.  How dumb I was!  Twice I got locked out of the house.  Once when I took Patsy trick or treating, and once we just went out to play.  She was 9 or 10 then, and so pretty with very long black (natural curls) curls and I enjoyed her.  I took care of her off and on till I was married.  Mama was afraid Charles would get fresh with me (he never did).  A time or two Joe would wait for me.  I was afraid to ask him in.  When Mrs. Smith (Kathryn) found that out she quickly assured me that I was welcome to have a friend in, if he was someone my folks approved of.

 

One night I heard a muffled crash, and looked out to see a car speeding away.  I didn’t go out, but nothing seemed out of place.  When Smiths and their friends (Arnolds) came about 11:30 they had a fit.  Why didn't I call the police?  Why didn't I get the license?  I was scared silly.  Could they hold me responsible?  The car was badly smashed on the rear fender.  I think they never did find out who did it.  Smiths lived about a block east of Mom Brown’s house on Bluff 2120.  However she (mom) moved there several years later.  The coasting (snow) hill was 22^nd, between the two houses areas. 

 

That fall I entered H.S., known all over the State as State Preparatory School (Prep or S.P.S.).  I have already written of it.  Here, as well as in Epsworth League, I met several new friends.  When she became 16 Esther Smiley left school to work and help her family.  Anna Merie Sutter was going steady with Virgil, and V. hated me for jilting Joe.  That fall, I was seeing Gene Little a little.  It’s no wonder that Gene was soon looking at other girls.  Most of our time was studying, with a dance once a week on Fri., when there was a game.  I became a close friend of Bertie Ellen Hively.  She was always a pleasant girl.  She hired out as housekeeper to a woman who needed help.  Part of the time she stayed overnight.  She got much better pay than babysitters and really did a good job.  I loved her family – her parents were super, she had three sisters – one married and moved away, Grace in our grade too, and Lucille younger.  Bertie was really the sweetest, and tho we’ve lost track of her for a while, when we find her again she’s always just as friendly.  She married Leonard (Jock) Breach about 1935 and he died in 1966.  She adored him, tho he was so ill and mean for 10 years at least (arthritis and heart).  She must have married again, as we can’t find her name in the book.  The Hively family also had a retarded boy, but they kept him at home.  He must have been a Mongoloid – he was so sweet and kind – but he often embarrassed me by coming into Kresses and looking for me.  (Later, when Herbert and Fay lived near the Hivelys, the boy came by often, and always told Herbert that I was “his girl”).

 

The spring I was 16, Prep had a big swimming party at Hygienic Pool, just ½ block from 2020 Spruce.  We all went, and when I went down the slide someone grabbed me.  It was Delbert Brown, and Frank Helart.   When they learned my name Del said “Hey – introduce me to your sister Janice”.  I didn’t, then, but later when they came by to see if we could go for a ride, I talked Janice into going, so I could.  I sort of presumed I would go with Del, so got in front with him.  Frank and Janice were in back.  We didn’t park or anything, just rode for a while.  Frank had a “thing” about me, but I never liked him – he was so short and a little crude.  Delbert was about 5-9 or 5-10, a very homely boy, but fairly intelligent.  I dated Del most of that summer.  In May, several of us girls (who?) went down to Hiker’s Potato Chip factory to get work.  Again, as at Chautauqua, I was the one hired.  Our pay was a generous $7.00 a week for six days work and nine hours a day.  I started in as a bagger, then we got to changing off from bagging to weighing and sealing.  I have never to this day eaten chips as god as theirs.  The floors were caked with black grease.  It accumulated for months, then they chipped it off and that cement floor was so hard.  Mr. shore and his son own the place, & it was the only one in Boulder.  Mr. Shore, Sr. was so very good to the girls.  (Louise Meyers was my partner – a very large girl, a year ahead of me in school.)  Mr. Shore kept an eagle eye on us, & when one of us seemed tired or upset, he took us into the room where he made mayonnaise, and we helped there.  It was a break in the monotony.  My feet got tired, but not too much.  On Saturday, payday, we got to stop an hour or two early, and sat around drinking pop till the pay envelopes were ready.  It was really a neat place to work, and I got a few clothes which I needed badly.

 

That summer was a pretty happy one for me – I had a boy friend to take me places, tho my folks didn’t especially like him either.  He was a Catholic, and in those days it was very hard to work out a Catholic-Protestant union, or even relationship.  He drank at home – sometimes too much.  (The story went that the Catholics defied Prohibition and always had drinks available – mostly wine.)  We were strict, radical prohibitionists and Protestants.  Delbert never could understand how an old German wouldn’t have a cellar full of wine and beer.

 

We mostly double-dated with Delbert’s cousin Elinor Earl and her friend Don Tripp.  She was Del’s cousin and Secretary at Prep.  She was beautiful and dainty and very sweet.  They eventually married.  We went to Eldorado Springs near Boulder on Sat night for dancing.  Del lived in South Boulder, a Catholic farming community.  All his friends and relatives were at the dances, and of course I had to dance with about all of them.  [Ethel’s side note – Saw Delbert in ’82 at his 50^th reunion.  He looked so different (I guess most of us do) and wasn’t well – diabetes, for one thing.  His “new” wife was unfriendly.]  Delbert was always good to me – only tried to get out of bounds once – never tried again.  We went to parties at his friends homes, special dance at Tumbleson’s (up on road between Estes and Nederland – it’s all still there, but changed of course).  Delbert’s dad died when he was in his forties (heart) and Del’s mother married again, Mr. Archer.  He had a half-sister named Valerie.  Mrs. Archer was always kind and good to me.  The one and only time I went to church with Del, a Sunday evening, I had no idea how to act  - so finally just sat and did nothing.  It was so different from Methodists!  When we got out of church Del took me to see his Grandmother (father’s mother).  She was a tall dignified lady, and took us into her parlor, turned on a special light, which focused on a huge picture of Del’s father. It had been enlarged and tinted, as color photography was not then known.  It was probably 24x36.  I said the appropriate things, but I felt spooky.  Under the picture were the Catholic prayer symbols, small table, candles, Catholic Bible.  I was not familiar with shrines.

 

We dated till after Christmas – but gradually he stopped calling, & I was by then President of Epworth League, so was enjoying all day Sunday affairs, and at least a party a month.  Del came to one, but in those days it was a sin to be confessed to even enter the doors of another church.  He was beginning to see other girls, and I was hurt – no one wants to be unwanted – but League kept me busy.  That fall the League was going to have a “kid” party.  I borrowed some “rompers” that Helen had made several years before for a “dress-up” party.  The day before the party, I was up town with Nadine Halldorsen, a League member, and friend.  We had walked up town after school – we loved to go thru the dime stores and maybe buy a few pieces of candy.  Both Kresses and Woolworth’s were between 13^th and 12^th Streets (on Pearl), so we just walked up to 12^th and turned north to Spruce.  Mid-way, some boys across the street yelled at us.  We called “what?” and one of the boys threw something at us.  It hit my right ankle and oh how it hurt.  It was a bar of cheap soap they had thrown – you don’t see it now.  It was about 3x4x2 inches.  I limped home, with Nadine’s help, and Mama had me use a hot bucket of water, and I soaked my ankle all evening, hobbled to school next day well bandaged.  Some of the League kids found out what happened, and wanted me to report it to the school office, but I was afraid to.  The boys were both well known, sons of “big shots”, and I wouldn’t cause trouble.  Dick, whom I knew casually through League, & his friend Burton Barnes, were going to “beat up on” the boys, but they didn’t.  That night was the party & I was chosen “best dressed kid”, tho I could hardly walk.  [side note by Ethel:  ‘In the summer of 1942 when David was nine months old, I made a sort of jump up to catch a leafy twig and sprained my ankle.  This was when the Brown’s lived on the farm east of Boulder {farm was directly south across the road from the Valmont Generating Plant} on Arapaho.  Dick got me to a doctor who took x-rays and decided I had only a sprain.  However, I had a small scar on one of my ankle bones showing that my ankle had been broken by that bar of soap.  I had recalled that I was trying to care for

active David as I limped around the house for a few weeks.] That night was my first “sort of” date with Dick.  He and Burt took me home, & I made a date for Sunday to go to League with him.  He thought Burt would take us, & he did.  My ankle got better gradually and I found I had a new “steady” boy friend.  Brown’s lived close, 1515 Walnut, so he started coming over to take me to Sunday school class, then church.  Later we would go to League for an hour then church again.  We enjoyed it all.  Burton was dating Winifred McClintock, but she was in nursing training at St. Luke’s in Denver, so wasn’t home often.  Dick was a big, shy, mischievous boy.  He was his mother’s helper, really.  No one else could rub her back, or get her meals when she was sick.  As far as I can remember, she began being sick before they moved to Boulder (1930).  She had several operations (female problems) and continued to enjoy poor health most of her life.  Mr. Brown had brought the family over from Eagle because Bob, the eldest, had a full scholarship to C.U.  Mrs. B. considered that they could almost live on what his board and room would cost.  To give her all credit due, she was leaving her husband in hopes of helping the five boys thru school.  At different places they lived in she took in roomers, boarders, apt.  dwellers, or who ever she could get.  She was careful with money, canny with it in ways, but tried to get the best when she did buy something. 

 

She was not very happy to have one of her boys dating, and someone she really didn’t approve of.  She’d met Janice, who was League Pres. before me, and she liked her, but of course I met her on different ground, as a potential “son snatcher”.  Thru several years, she constantly arranged dates with other girls, had a girl she admired a lot come in and clean house and cook when one of her “spells” came on.  (The girl’s name was Laura McGowan).  Also, when they lived at 1515 Walnut, she had a roomer from Eagle, Billie Reynolds, who helped do a lot of the work and went to school.  Of course I was jealous of her.  She was thrown together with Dick whenever they went to a show r family dinner.  I knew he liked her but they never really dated.  Real dating as a “no-no”!  Dick often just left and then came down to see me, or if I was working on Sat. night, he and Burt would wait for me.  Burt called me “Ozzie” and still does!  Sometime Winnie could come home weekend.  (Ethel note: Burt died April 10, 1986.)

 

Summers were awful, those years, as the whole family went back to Eagle, up to the Ranger Station at Yeoman Park.  I went to visit Dick there for a week in Aug. ’34.  I loved the country.  It was so wild and primitive then.  Mom B. was grudgingly receptive of our feelings, but it was a hectic week!  That summer Bob was off on his annual surveying job with Mr. Reddick, whom he worked for several summers.  John was in Pensacola one year, learning to fly, and was to join some military group, but he turned them down.  He and Dick got roadwork, or worked for Dad B.  They had a “helper” who turned in hours for them when they were younger (under 16) but I don’t know how long this went on.  In ’34 I took the train out of Boulder, transferred in Denver, then up through the Moffatt tunnel, which was fairly new.  Dick met me at State Bridge, with the family car.  I think this was the year the whole family came, then we went to a ranch south of State Bridge, and they were having some sort of big gathering (wedding reception ranch style or just a party?).  There were probably 30 or more people in a small hall, near a ranch and I do remember a young couple had been married recently and were going to honeymoon out in the mountains, herding cattle.  It seemed very exciting to me.  Would Dick ever be a Ranger?  He had completed a year at C.U. (cheaper) but wanted to study forestry in Ft. Collins.  Mom B. wanted him to get to Missoula, Montana (to separate us and it is a good school) but the money was too scarce.

 

The Ranger Station at best was very primitive – kitchen and dining area w/board table, and benches, one bed room, and an added on rather rickety sleeping porch, with several cots.  I slept on floor with sleeping bag, in the one bedroom.  The two parents slept I the only bed.  The thing that really bothered me most was the constant fussing or yelling.  Max and Wayne were about 10 & 12 – and wanted to be free to do as they pleased.  Dick had many chores – milking a cow, feed the horses, take care of several camp grounds, run the washer (a hand operated one), churn butter, scrub floors, clean toilet – or mend it where the porcupines chewed on it (the wood), door, floor, etc. 

 

We got to Glenwood Springs once to swim, and once Dick had to ride trail to cut some trees that had fallen.  Once we borrowed two horses and all went up Hat Creek trail.  I got so sore my behind was all swollen in big lumps.  Also the first visit I was also unwisely in the sun too much one day, then went fishing the next, and reflection really got me.  My face swelled like a balloon, & Mom was really worried, yet scolded me endlessly.  I peeled about three times.  I was hideous, & still had some swelling & deep scabs when I went back to work at Kress.  I guess in the long run I wasn’t as efficient as I should have been at work, but they did expect so much of us.  I was in charge of the toy counter and had a long counter and had a long counter in back end of store, which consisted of baby things, some household things – oil cloth, window shades, paint.  At Christmas time the toy counter was a mess – lots of new things, not enough space.  In Sept. ’35 we eloped – had no one we could talk to, no family this is.  I had registered to go to C.U., so went anyway.  Dick was going to Aggies and was home most weekends.  Should have been studying!  Never did have good grades in College.  Too hard for him to write his thoughts.  We told our families about being married in Feb.  I quit school after 1^st quarter – no money.  [Side note by Ethel: Herbert was so anxious that Geo. and I start school that he took money out of postal savings - $40 for me.  I had $40 in savings to use.  Tuition one semester $34 & books, lab, etc.]  Of course I was pregnant – so very hard to find birth control methods then.  [Ethel note: I lived at 2020 until July, Dick coming when he could, from school or work.]  We were young and in love and it was a lovely winter, tho hard on Dick, I know.  Toward summer Dick got a job near Bennett, working in field.  I missed him so much – it was so far away.

 

The morning of June 12 I awake early & started to get up.  The water broke!  I called Mama and she brought towels & called the doctor & Janice.  Papa had gone to work by then.  Janice and Harold were living in Copeland's basement in summer, while he went to C.U. for Master’s.  In winter they went back to Holyrood, Kansas, where he taught math and science and some sports.  He was a champion wrestler in college at Hays. 

 

I finally got dressed and, wearing a towel for a pad, got to the hospital.  Janice and Mama got me signed in then she took Mama home, and I was wheeled to a room.  I was so scared and knew so little of what to expect.  Janice came back and stayed with me till about one thirty, when they took me to delivery.  I’ll never forget that when I told Janice about how bad it felt, and asked what to expect, she replied that it would be much worse!  Our dear baby Dickie was born at 2:00 p.m.  I was awake to the last, then out only a few minutes.  They used chloroform then.  Janice thought he had an “awfully pointed” head.  He was only 6-11 & where all that 60 pounds I gained went, I don’t know.  I weighed only 125 a few weeks later – had gained 60 pounds.  Dick had left his job and got a ride home – probably a bad mistake, but how we needed one another!  I was in bed and hosp. for 10 days – not even sitting up.  I had an awful time getting Dickie to nurse – he wanted to sleep, and I wasn’t sure when he took hold.  No one stayed to help.  I was in a 3-bed ward.  Finally a nurse brought a nipple guard, & he got to nursing for sure.  But he had already lost weight down to 6 pounds, so we were glad he finally got a good meal.  We went home in ten days, feeling weak but OK.  The Drs. wouldn’t circumcise him until he gained more (circumcision was almost mandatory then).  At home a few days later, Dick and George O. found out that they could work on Copeland’s (an uncle) farm, near Hays, KS, for two weeks, so again I was alone. 

 

When Dick came back from Kansas, he talked a lot about early hours and hard work.  His folks had been in Boulder a few days, when Dickie was about a week old.  Dad B. had come over to get the family and go back to Glenwood, as his office was there then.  He said Dick could get a job building a road up to Maroon Bells.  I don’t remember how we got the car back to Boulder so we could use it, but shortly after the 4^th we planned to leave Boulder.  Meanwhile, our beautiful baby was getting fat and healthy.  About July 10 we took him to the Drs. office and he weighed 10 pounds – quite a gain.  He was circumcised and we left a few days later for Glenwood Springs, taking with us Clyde _________ brother who would work too.  John was there already.  Browns had finally reserved a cabin for us next to theirs, in Noonan’s Grove, on the juncture of the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers (some of the cabins are still there).  Mom B. had tried very hard to get me to stay in their cabin, but we couldn’t stay there – It was already so crowded.  It was one room, one bed, small table, 4 chairs, a small heating and cooking stove, a shelf for dishes, a 12x15 box cooler for butter and milk.  Max and Wayne slept in a sort of half tent outside, by the rabbit hutch.  I think John made a bed on the floor when he came for weekends.  Our cabin was the same, but smaller, cost $25 a month.  The baby was still happy in his bassinet.  I didn’t cook much, as Mom B. often insisted I eat with them.  Dickie was nursing, & I was trying to get used to using a scrub board for diapers.  I wanted a clothesline, & sometimes borrowed one at a neighbors, an older couple, Irish, who lived nearby.  Mom insisted that I strew diapers on the lawn, bushes, any place.  If Max and Wayne didn’t disappear at once after breakfast they were commanded to help wash, but I just couldn’t make them.

 

Dick tried to come every Sat. evening.  He worked six days a week, 10 hours a day – princely pay - $60 a month.  Mom was proud of her first grandson, but I never did anything right.  I wasn’t very happy.

 

One night that summer, we left Dickie with the folks and went to a show (and parked afterward!).  When we got home, Dickie was crying and mom and dad were furious.  We’d been gone only 2 ½ hours.  They could have given Dickie a bottle – once in a while I gave him some canned milk and Karo formula.  I never did understand why we couldn’t ever be allowed to have a few minutes on our own.

 

The days were so busy – wash every day – nurse baby every three or four hours, try to keep clean – never a moment’s peace, for one thin Mom B. always did… she yelled “Ethel, what are you doing?  Is Dickie eating (sleeping)?  Come over and help me iron – wash – cook – look for the boys.  Max – Wayne – where are you – come wash the dishes – clothes – floor.”

 

It was a painful summer for her, I know.  She was in bed a lot of the time with what she called arthritis.  She could get around a little, but her arms hurt so, she could hardly lift the baby.  Sometimes I thought she pretended, but I could see her arms soft and slack & knew it hurt.

 

One week Aunt Bessie (her sister) was there.  I don’t remember where she slept, but it seems when any company came, they could rent an empty cabin across the lawn.  We went down to Glenwood Springs that weekend and Dick, John, Max, Wayne, and I went swimming.  Mom B. and Aunt Bessie had a fit.  They claimed swimming would “sour” my milk and make Dickie sick.  I don’t believe it would, but every time he cried, they said “see there?  You shouldn’t have gone swimming!”.

 

I drove Dad B. to work at the Post Office building two or three days a week.  Mom had me take her to one of the hot springs so she could sit in the ht mineral water, to help her pains.  The boys and I sat in the car and waited.  Once we went to an orchard for apricots and she made jam – it didn’t set.  Max and Wayne were very ornery and fought a lot.  In the mornings if they couldn’t sneak away to the stables, Mom put them to work.  Max was enthralled with horses, and every chance he got he took Wayne and went over to watch at the breeding shed.  He knew all about it, and talked of it a lot.  To me it was a little immodest, but I was old fashioned.  I always thought such talk belonged in the stable.

 

One afternoon Max and Wayne were going to go fishing so I left Dickie asleep and we went down to the fork where the Colo. and Roaring Fork met.  They decided to wade out into the Roaring Fork, and cast their lines in the Colo.  I went with them.  The water was about a foot deep and lots of small rock in it, but they helped me and we made it.  Mom scolded us all for risking it, but I never knew why – the boys did about what they wanted anyway.

 

Uncle Burl and Aunt Lucille came with some friends and stayed a few days.  They were so nice, but it was always hard for me to understand the yelling and laughing that went on when two or three Fahls got together.  Mom sat on her brother’s laps, and really cut up.  She acted like a little girl!  Maybe she needed to feel that way once in a while.  One evening after dad got home we all got in two cars and drove up to see Dick and John.  It was a cold wet evening and we got there just as the men came back to camp in trucks.  John went right to the cars, but Dick went back to the camp and cleaned up.  My time with him was so short.

 

Toward the end of August, we all got in the car and went down to Grand Junction for peaches.  (peaches 50 cents a bushel)  I got two bushels and the next day we canned them.  Mom had brought empty jars, and picked up a few more on sale.  I wanted to can them my way, as I had learned, but nothing I ever did was right.  She chopped them all up in chunks, and had the boys helping.  They had such dirty hands, and when they washed, it was only fingertips.  They seldom were clean anyway, but when the juice ran down off their arms into the fruit, I thought I would be ill.  We got it done though.

 

Several times we visited Brown friends.  A best friend was Mrs. Hudson who lived in Eagle.  Mr. H. was the local druggist (till about ’37, when a price cutting chain came in – then they moved to Arvada).  Mrs. H. had been a nurse, and gave me all kinds of advice on raising children.  She had only one (Darrel).  However, they were best friends to Browns, and we still see Darrel once in a while.  Early in Sept., we packed up and with a borrowed small trailer just loaded, started for home.  In the car were mom, dad, Dick, Max, Wayne, Dickie, and me.  We had gone over in two loads, and come home in one!  As we went up the road toward Aspen, the trailer suddenly came loose.  If it hadn’t had a safety chain, it would have all gone into the river – the Roaring Fork, which is a pretty good-sized river.  The men got busy and fixed it up some way.  We went over Independence Pass, through Buena Vista, then off to Colo. Springs and home to Boulder.  We had some kind of car trouble about the beginning of South Park.  Dick went off to a mile away farmhouse and borrowed some odd part.  He can’t remember what it was.  We got home early in the morning – it was almost light.  My folks had gone someplace and weren’t home yet.  Janice and Harold were there, looking after the house and sort of helping George and Bob.  My folks had been two nights with us in Glenwood Springs.  That was the year that Mama got her hair cut.  It was hard to get used to.  They had been to the San Francisco World’s Fair – very famous, as it was held on a man-made island in the bay. 

 

Mid-Sept., we packed up and went to Ft. Collins to find an apt. so Dick could go to school.  We sure saw some crazy ones.  One had a toilet in a corner of a room (living room) on a raised platform.  (Smiths, for whom I had baby-sat years ago.)  It had a curtain to pull around it when in use!  Another basement apt. was being re-modeled, and we had to climb down a ladder to get in.  They thought they might have the stairs in by Christmas.  We finally found a two-room place on West Lake.  It was $15 a month, mostly furnished.  By then we had found a cheap second-hand baby bed, and we moved in.  The folks who owned it were the Reeds, and her mother lived there too.  They had a little three-year-old girl, Lu Ann, who appears in some pictures.  It was fairly warm, as the furnace room was next to the bedroom – living room. 

 

I remember so well going into the furnace room, where we could hear Reed’s radio, and hearing Edward VIII resign as King of England because the Royal Family didn’t want him to Marry Wallis Warfield Simpson (a divorced woman!).  We had an old washer in the kitchen, and a small space to put our canned peaches.  One day we heard of tomatoes for sale for 50 cents a bushel.  We canned two bushels.  We had a tiny two-burner stove.  Dick got registered and started to school.  He got an NYA job, janitoring two buildings every afternoon after school ($15 a month).  He worked awfully hard, walking to school, studying at night. 

 

There was no bathroom downstairs, but a “thunder mug” stood in a tiny closet.  For serious business we just had to knock on the kitchen door and use the Reed’s bathroom.  Bathed in it too, once or twice a week.

 

By January, we knew that Dick’s grades were too low (he was already on probation), and he would be out of school at least a semester.  Around the first of Feb., we packed up and moved to Boulder.  It was very depressing, and also discouraging.  He always felt so bad when he realized his failure was due to the fact that he never could or had learned to write out properly what he knew on a subject.  We just stayed at Brown’s, then at my folks.  I remember especially at Osthoff’s how cold our north bedroom was.  There was no crib for Dickie.  He slept between us to keep warm, and when he had to go to bed before us, we put him in sort of a sleeping bag sleeper, then rolled him tight in a light blanket.  Everyone thought that was odd, but he kept warm.  Once in a while he got to squirming and we had to re-wrap him.

 

Brown’s had only a single bed for us, and we slept fairly warm, but it sure was crowded!  Dickie’s bed was set up there, as we were there the most.  We had hoped Red James (Papa’s boss) would put Dick (or help) on Public Service, but the Ft. Collins sub-station job was given to someone else.  However, in a few days we heard there was an opening in construction on a new sub-station in Greeley (23^rd Ave. – 10^th Street; it is still there, but no operators).  Dick went over alone, got a room – one room – at about 1200 10^th Street with Mrs. Dunn’s parents.  They served very good but cheap meals.  He was there only a few weeks, then found an apt. at 506 9^th Ave. 

 

We moved over to Greeley mid-march.  Dick had to take me past the landlady’s house so she could “pass” on me.  She seemed satisfied.  Her name was McNulty.  The house we moved into was old, hard to clean.  It had five, two-room apt.’s.  We had two rooms, which was to be standard for late depression apts. in most towns.  The house has been torn down, but I’ll never forget it.  (Ethel’s note: It was a block east of The Greeley Place – The Tribune built offices in that block.)

 

There was a living room, bedroom, and kitchen.  We still had a few jars of tomatoes and peaches, so they were stowed away in the cupboard.  There was only a small cupboard, but we had few dishes.  The small kitchen table held a drawer for “silverware”.  The pots and pans, also very few, were in cupboard too.  Our rent was $15 per month.  Dickie’s bed was in the living room, too.

 

By this time, I finally found the courage to tell Dick I was pregnant.  I had so dreaded telling him.  We had so little and now another baby to feed and clothe.  My folks, and Dick’s, too, were shocked.  We had no advice from anyone about birth control, and in those days, most everyone thought that you couldn’t get pregnant while nursing.  (I had quit in November, and had not had a period since Dickie’s birth.)”  [The narrative stops here for some reason.  I hope to find more as I go through her journals.  Below are some short narratives she wrote…]

 

The Move

 

“When I was six, we moved from a farm south of Lyons (CO) to one north, a larger farm, and a nice big house.  There were vines on the screen posts, and the porch on the front went all across the house.  We children thought it was great – there were 13 rooms, but we soon found that there were only 11 for us to use, and we never could use the two others – too hard to heat (except for storage).

 

I am sure we had help moving, but those details we ignored.  I was too busy exploring the house, trying to discover new areas and things.  There was a huge lawn in front, with a low picket fence, and a small creek beyond it.  In back the yard was grass and packed earth.  We three younger children had little work to do, so we ran around getting in the way, trying to help, finding parts of toys and junk.  Tommy, the landlord’s son, was playing with us.  He was a very spoiled boy, about five, with pinkish hair and pale blue eyes.

 

I found some cracked and broken marbles – maybe I could use some of them!  “Gimmie those”, yelled Tommy.  “They’re mine!”  Before long, a broken wheel turned up.  “That’s off my wagon”, he cried.  “You can’t have it!”  (Could I have mended it?)  A rubber ball (with a small hole) also was “his”.  He had a small, noisy dog, which chased us and yapped at our heels.  I finally escaped into the kitchen, where Mama was putting away kitchen things.  There was a strident jangling in the dining room.

 

“The telephone!”, Mama cried.  “I’m coming!  I’m coming!”  It was the landlord’s wife.  She needed him at once.  Mama was upset, I was still crying eyeing our first telephone with great trepidation.  (Telephones are still NOT my favorite means of communication.)  I asked Mama what the little buttons on the wall were (our first electricity).  She showed me how to push the button – beautiful lights flashed on!  Then Mama left and I was faced with wondering how to turn the lights off again.  I pulled on the upper button – it wouldn’t budge.  I felt very guilty – what would I do?  Then Mama came in again, and laughed at me.  “Just push the other button.”  I was embarrassed.  It became a small family joke.

 

In the yard, Tommy had a real fight with my brother George, and Mr. F. grabbed him and headed for home, to see what his wife needed done.  Another day we would find “treasures” and tell no one.  In those days, any small toy, broken or not, was a real pleasure.  You could pretend they were whole, or mend them.”

 

 

The Baby Girl Who Got Away

 

“In August, 1945, we had news of the impending visit of two of Dick’s cousins, a boy Lloyd, 21, and a girl Martha, 23.  We had not seen them for 13 years.  They lived in a very small town in the Deep South, southern Alabama.

 

Lloyd was a Lieutenant in the Army, and Martha a sophomore in college.  They day they came, we had prepared a nice dinner.  Everything went well.  Lloyd had fun with our three young sons, but I was disappointed in Martha.  She was short, quite stout, and very shy.

 

After they left, I told Dick I was surprised at Martha being so fat as she’d always been dainty and slim.  What a shock when he told me she was seven months pregnant and her brother had come with her to Denver, where she would go to the Florence Crittendon Home, and let the baby be adopted.

 

“How could her mother let a grandchild be given away”, I cried?  “Her child will be as much a Brown as ours are!”  Dick was careful to explain, “That’s the way it is – the town is so small, and Martha hopes to get a job teaching there.  I guess she was involved with a nice young soldier who was I a camp near their home.  He didn’t want to get married, and soon was transferred.”

 

Immediately, I knew what I wanted to do – why couldn’t we adopt this baby?  It would be from a nice family.  We were young and healthy – times were not so hard as they had been.

 

We talked to the adoption agency administrator in Denver, and went to the home to see Martha.  Now that we knew her secret, she was friendlier, and we had a good visit.  We saw her two more times before the baby came in October, then went to see her and the baby (it was a lovely girl baby, seven pounds).  We talked of adoption, and Martha seemed willing.  However, the Crittendon manager and the adoption agency… seemed to feel it might not be best for her to know who adopted her baby. 

 

They said the final decision was up to her.  After another visit with Martha, we came home to Greeley, still hopeful.  A few weeks later, we had a long letter from Martha, explaining that she would rather not know the adoptive parents, so we would not be allowed to have our girl, as we had hoped.  We wrote one more letter asking her to reconsider, but it was no use.

 

We felt so let down – how could a cousin of our children be lost to all of us?

 

Almost a year later, we became the proud parents of our son Wayne.  He has always been a pleasure to us – big brown eyes, curly dark hair, good natured, and sweet.

 

We have seen Martha twice in these later years.  She married a schoolteacher in her hometown, and got her teaching job.  They had one child, a boy, who grew up to be a fat – 300 pound – adult.  We’ve never heard how Martha feels, but I think she would often wonder about her baby girl, who would now be 42 years old.”

 

 

 

NAN

 

“About 1976, a dear friend’s mother, Nan, suddenly learned that she had five half-brothers (she was 76 at the time) and sisters.  One of her grandchildren had been writing to a cousin and the subject of relatives had come up.

 

It happened that Nan was born in Sweden, and when she was eight, her father had died.  An Aunt in America offered to take the little girl for a while.  The family took Nan to the harbor, where a big ship was docked.  Nan remembers crying when the aunt took her aboard, and recalls also how sick she was on the voyage.

 

Now she had to go back to Sweden and see her new family.  It seems that after a short time her mother re-married and eventually had five more children.  However, she had promised never to get in touch with her daughter, and her aunt and uncle adopted her.  Several of the new half-brothers at once got in touch with Nan and began to plan a trip for her.  She must come to Sweden and meet everyone.

 

It took a lot of doing – money was scarce and Nan’s health was not very good.  The whole family came to her rescue – that is her daughter’s family.  Not long after her learning of her Swedish family, a cousin from Sweden, who was here on business, encouraged her to go soon, and also helped her financially.

 

Several months passed.  She had her passport, made plans, and on a bright spring day, flew to New York, then on to Sweden.  The plane landed first in Holland – it was not a non-stop flight.  Poor Nan was interrogated by Dutch police and security guards.  They accused her of being a dope smuggler.  She was handled, body searched, roughly treated.  She finally called home, and everyone encouraged her to go on to Sweden.  The police had to give up and admit she was an innocent passenger.

 

The reunion in Sweden was a gala affair.  Imagine, at 76, meeting brothers and sisters you’ve never even known existed!  She was there a month and came home with many a tale of places, relatives, food, and more relatives.  She couldn’t leave, but she must!  Her only daughter lives here, and her grand children.  It was a long remembered visit.”

 

 

 

WHO AM I?

 

[No date of when written]  “I am the sum of all my year’s experiences, the essence of my mother and father.  The medley of events I my life could easily be penned as a comedy or a tragedy.  I try to dwell on the comedy, as there is too much tragedy among us.  The comedy – and embarrassment of my swimsuit top suddenly coming off in a public pool; the surprise and fun when a mouse hid I my shoe, which I had taken off to walk a tight rope in the orchard; the times I have fallen while wading in a river, always sitting down, holding aloft my expensive fishing pole, while my watch, on the other arm, drowns; the jokes we play on one another at family gatherings.

 

Always, if we can, we go fishing on vacations.  Rain may come, wind, maybe snow – you’ll see us on a rocky river bank, or wading knee-deep near a pool, anticipating not only the snap of a fish striking, but also the quiet seclusion of the glorious mountains and streams.

 

Immerse them in memory as I try, my father’s death of a heart attack, at only 57, and my mother’s being alone, unable to work, for almost 40 years.  The death in Italy of my husband’s young brother, in WWII, was very traumatic to us all.  Probably even greater tragedies were the deaths from cancer of our two young, lovely daughters-in-law.  Beverly, was only 39 when she died in 1981.  Three years later Jane was gone too, at 37.  Each left one of our sons stunned.  Beverly left two children – 11 and 7.  Jane left three, ages 11, 8, and 5 [sic – actually, they were 12, 9, and 6].  These losses presented many problems, but you cope with each a day at a time.

 

My whole being has been affected by our son’s misery – yet what can one do?  It must have strengthened me to stay with our church.  I find that friends are a part of me, too.  If I seem to have a chance to praise someone – that is an integral part of living.  Complaints and sarcasm cannot always be held within.

 

[Interjected poem]

“On Youth and Age”

 

“When you were young and gay and free

Your hair was thick and soft –

But now your forehead has got high

You needn’t comb so oft! 

 

And I, in youth, was svelte and trim

I bragged about my “figger”

But must admit, as age comes on,

My “figger” has got bigger!

 

So, as we wander down life’s road

No longer lads and lasses,

Perhaps at times we’re better off

To just remove our glasses!”

 

My life is simple – a loving husband who sustains me, a family of five sons and three daughters-in-law – many grand children – who could ask for more?  My painting, my writing – these too I hold dear.  Here is a short poem I wrote for Dick and our sons several years ago”:

 

“By what sheer chance

Did I meet you –?

Or maybe you met me?

No matter – we’re together now

For all the days that be.

 

As fate decreed that I should be

The one you waited for,

So also did she wink one eye

 For all that was in store.

 

A lovely family for us,

Each one a pride and joy.

Filled with health and happiness

And every one a boy.”

 

 

 

GOIN’ FISHING

 

[No date}  “As a small child, I learned to like fishing.  On a warm summer Saturday, Papa would get out our poles – plain knobby bamboo – and Mama would pack a light lunch.  There are many lakes around Boulder, all good places for a family of four or five to try their luck.

 

Once we arrived at the scene, the older children would help the younger ones get the poles and lines ready, and sometimes bait the hooks.  We fished with bright floats, to show when a fish was biting.  When the float bobbed or sank, we pulled in a fish.  Usually it was a small sun fish or blue gill, and we had as big a thrill each time as any fisherman.  Sometimes another group of hopefuls would come by, and information on where the schools of fish might be, were exchanged.  We all hated to take a fish off the hook – these little lake fish had a lot of sharp spines.  Another drawback was that they must be cleaned and scaled.  However, if we each caught several, they would make a nice supper.

 

When I first met Dick, and we talked about going fishing, he laughed at me.  He was a fly fisherman, and never understood how anyone could fish with bait, especially on a lake.  He owned an old fly rod, of split bamboo, and an automatic reel.  Our first summer we were able to go to the mountains, and Dick brought two rods, so I could practice.  I loved getting into the mountains, and catching my first trout was a thrill to me.

 

We dated over three years, and after we married and had a family, we tried to take our toddlers fishing, too.  At three or four, our first two sons learned a few techniques, and we felt safe as we always went to small creeks with them.  Each son has learned to enjoy the mountains, the solitude, sometimes hiking a ways.

 

What great fun we had for 30 years, taking whichever boys could go, sleeping on the ground in Army sleeping bags.  For years we made campfires, scrubbed pans with sand.  Then one year we came home a little early – the ground was getting so hard, the tent leaked when it rained, and I never learned to unzip my mummy sleeping bag.

 

Now we are seniors, going fishing each summer whenever we can, though not hiking as far.  We got an old jeep, a Cherokee two-door, and we try each year to go on a real “jeep” trail, trying to find some place where not too may people go, bumping over huge rocks and into deep ruts.

Both of us wear wading boots and nearly every years we have a turn at slipping and falling, but never in real deep water – just medium creeks.  We don’t wade in the big ones any more.  Always when I fall, I fall backwards and sit down.  What a shock when that icy mountain water hits my body!  And always the expensive glass rod is held proudly aloft (must not get the reel wet!) while the expensive watch, on the other arm, goes into the water.

 

The year we had been married for 37 years, we found a small trailer, and sleeping was so much easier – so was cooking and doing dishes.  It’s a new way of “camping”, but at least we can get out, hike, play games with those who are with us, then fish to our heart’s content.  And somehow I’m always the last to quit.  So far, my fishing habits, while not perfect, net me about as many fish as Dick can catch.”

 

[Notes from Dick Brown’s narrative – short as it may be… :o))]

 

“Recollections from as early an age of life as I can remember.

 

I was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and lived there till I was about 4 or 5 years old.  Dad (Wm. S. Brown) was a carpenter during these years and built several homes in Manitou and Colo. Spgs., and was a finish carpenter foreman when they were building the Broadmoor Hotel.  He and Grandpa Brown knew the Penrose family and some other well known Springs pioneers.  When we lived on Hancock Street, it was on the very edge of town, and dad used to take care of a dairy north of town when Mr. Penrose, the owner, took vacations.  He would let dad use his car and we kids would go with him to watch him milk.  They had a hand crank generator there that we could hold onto the handles of two wires and see how long we could endure the “shock” as the crank was turned faster and faster.  I remember that I was always the champion (I guess that’s why I got into the electric business).  We used to delight in going to work at the Broadmoor with dad and play in the park and playground they had there.  I remember going up the cog road in Manitou.  Everything was great, lots of fun, till we started down.  I was scared to death, and I just knew that the cogs or whatever they are was going to break and we would go down the hill 1000 miles an hour.

 

 Dad, about this time during WWI when construction was down, got tired of trying to always find another job, and decided to try to go into the forest service.  He took an extensive course, passed the necessary Forest Service exam, and was sent to Radium Ranger station south of Kremmling in 1918, I believe [sic – it was in 1919].  This was a remote station where dad had to ride his horse about 10 miles to get groceries.  We had two horses and a cow, the first of our own.  Dad would ride one horse and pack the other one with bedding, tent, groceries, and whatever else he needed and would go all over his district.  He would be gone for sometimes as long as two weeks at a time.  Bob, John, and I had to cut wood, get the cow in from the pasture, feed and feed the chickens.  Dad did the milking then because we were not big enough.  I remember once when dad had been out for about a week, he came home with a timber wolf tied on his saddle.  He took it off his saddle and tied a rope to it so we could all see it and how vicious it could be.  (He said he had come across it and our big dog “Jim” had engaged it in a fight.  The dog won, and dad just picked the wolf up and tied him to the saddle.)  Dad later shot it and had the skin and head mounted into a wall hanging.  The first winter we were there the snows were so deep we had a tunnel from the house to the barn.  That was lots of fun for us kids, but I’m sure only work for dad.  I remember playing away from the house a little ways and fell through a snow drift that must have been eight foot deep.  They had to dig me out.  Dad made us a sled which we seemed to be particularly adept at breaking. 

 

We went to school all summer because the snow was too bad in the winter.  Bob and I would ride a horse, and on the way to and from [school] would ride up to a service berry tree and sitting on the horse, eat all the berries we could.  One day when dad came home with groceries he told us about a good friend (Billy Ungren) that lived at Radium was riding across the Colorado River on a bridge when the wagon broke through the floor of the bridge letting the wagon hang down.  He held on and the horses pulled the wagon up.  It was a narrow escape.”

 

Dick’s work:

 

June ’35 – September ’35 ……………. Boulder

            June 22-July 1………………… Trail construction; Harvest @ Hays, KS

July ’36 – September ’36……………... Road construction again

March ’37 – May ’37 ………………… construction, Public Service

May ’37 – February ’38 ……………… Public Service Sub-station operator

March 20^th – May ……………………. Tree plant with George (Osthoff) (w. of C.Spgs)

February ’38 – September ’39……….. Trail maintenance on the western slope

September ’38 – November ’38 ……... Brown’s basement, F.S. (trails, west of Bldr)

December ’38 – March ’45 ………….. Public Service Sub-station operator, Greeley

March ’45 …………………………… Home, Gas, and Electric

February ’57 ………………………… H,L, &P, Mtr Superintendent, Mgr. Cust Srvcs

 

 

 

 

Writings by EOB on genealogy, etc.:

 

Genealogies always seem to follow the father’s family, but we have so much more knowledge of my grandmother’s family.  Isaac Morgan was born in Virginia in 1778.  We have authentic lists of his wife and family.  He was my great-great grandfather.  As new territory opened up, the group went on west to Illinois, then to Iowa.  They were the parents of the first baby born in Powshiek County, Iowa.

 

One son, John Morgan, was my great-grandfather.  His family had 12 children, including twin daughters Angeline and Adeline.  Angeline was my grandmother and was a gray- eyed, black haired baby.  Her twin was blonde and blue-eyed, with curly hair.  Angeline had a rather sad life.  Her first husband died in a Civil War Camp, and left her with a small daughter.  [Questionable, since Mary (the two-year old daughter) was born in October 1867, and the husband could not have died in a war camp six months after the war ended.  Perhaps a convenient story by the family to cover-up illegitimate pregnancy?]

 

Two years later, Josephus Linder Forney married Angeline.  Josephus was a widower with two sons, quite young.  Within a few years they had children of their own.  How they ever decided to move to Kansas we aren’t sure.  Somehow, Josephus had acquired a homestead grant.  We think it was land that someone else had failed to ‘prove up’ on.

 

They started out in 1873 in a covered wagon.  This was not the usual big Conestoga, which we read about, but a small home-outfitted one, much smaller and less beautiful to look at than the famous ‘ship of the desert’ we read about. 

 

We have no details of the trip, but Angeline was pregnant, and it must have been a difficult trip.  Kansas was so different from Iowa, and as they traveled along, they could see that Iowa’s frequent rolling hills and wooded ravines were mostly flat land in Kansas, with only very meager rolls of land.

 

When they finally arrived at the area they claimed, they saw to their dismay, the ‘small house’ was a Soddy, and not in good shape.  Because wood was fairly scarce in that area, they knew they would have to live here.  We think it was April, so the new baby was only two months from birth. 

 

After several nights of sleeping and living as they had on their trek, Josephus and Angeline had the Soddy cleaned out and a few repairs made.  We do know that it had just one room, with a fireplace at one end.  Soddies were usually built with only one or two windows, small ones, sometimes covered with oiled paper, seldom with glass.  Fortunately, the door was sturdy, and made of heavy wood.  At least they had protection at night from wolves!  Occasionally someone would see a rattlesnake, but snakes do not like people either, and after a few snakes had been killed, no more were seen around the Soddy. 

 

(At one time we lived next door to a charming elderly couple, the Bartons.  John J. was 85 then, and Lillie 80.  He told us of living on a ranch east of Greeley, and being bitten by a rattlesnake while he worked in a field.  He hastened to the house, and had Lillie harness the horse to a buggy.

 

Before the got in, she caught a chicken, killed it, and split it open.  She laid the warm carcuss on the snakebite, wrapped it with a cloth, and they left for town.  John J. was distraught, and began to chill, as if in shock.  When they were about halfway to town, he began to feel better.  He told Lillie to stop the buggy, and to remove the bandage.

 

She did so, and to her surprise, the chicken’s insides were an ugly green, where the poison had been drawn out.  They went back home, and John J. had no ill effects.  This was a truthful, sincere, God fearing couple.  We had to believe them.)

 

When Angeline’s new baby came, only her husband and a friendly neighbor attended her.  It was a lovely little girl.  Custom decreed that a new mother lie abed for at least ten days, but Angeline was needed, especially but the young children.

 

No one today can begin to imagine the endless work of those days.  There were meals to prepare, dishes to clean up, beds to make up and get out of the way.  Churning sour cream for butter couldn’t wait, candle making before winter, clothing, and socks to mend and darn.  Where did everyone sleep?  There was a bed for parents in one corner – tow poles poked securely into the grassy wall, then two posts securely wrapped to the poles.  Ropes were interwoven for support, and a lovely thick, down mattress was used.  Everyone had heavy quilts and comforters.  The three boys slept in ‘made up’ quilts on the floor.  The baby in a trundle bed, which could be pushed under the bed.”  [End of narrative…]

 

MY PARENTS

 

(By EOB)

 

“(Daisy was of Pennsylvania Dutch, Welsh, French.)  Daisy Forney and George Osthoff were as opposite in temperament as any two people ever were.  Daisy was born on a farm near Lyons, KS, [the] next to the youngest of eleven [with the two children who died in infancy, thirteen] children.  Many families were large years ago, and many children died young.  Daisy was always happy that ten of her siblings lived long, useful lives. 

 

She was a quiet, sweet person, very modest and unassuming.  She liked school and had very good grades.  At the end of the Tenth Grade she was given a teaching certificate.  She taught grade school for several years, keeping careful records, and was always well liked.

 

George was only half German [I would question that remark, as his father was Osthoff and mother was Steinmetz, but we have no record of who his parents married to make the “blood mix”], but his temperament was as we would expect of German men.  He was quick tempered, self-righteous, forceful.  His father, whom I saw only a few times, had a few German sayings, but never allowed German to be spoken in the home, just as his father – my great-grandfather, had done.  (George’s father was a real old-fashioned German butcher.  We have a picture [I sure don’t know where it would be…] of grandpa with his father, each holding meat cleavers.  They lived in Sterling, KS.)  Because Grandpa and George could not get along, George left home, at 16, and came to Colorado.  [It has been frequently mentioned that he worked on the Georgetown loop railroad on that trip to CO.]  When he returned home, he got a job, bought some oak furniture for his bedroom, and was sorry he had gone away.  He adored his mother, and felt she had been mistreated while he was gone, for Grandpa was a heavy drinker, and abused Grandma at times.

 

George sometimes drove [team and wagon?  This was in ~1905, and I don’t think they had too many cars available in that era in Kansas.]  to Lyons for an evening with friends, who often went to church on Sunday evening.  One night he met an attractive, sparkling girl – Daisy’s sister, Dolly.  The next week Daisy was there, too, and he knew he met someone he could like better.  George dated Daisy – or in better, 1890’s parlance – courted her.  She had an offer to go back and teach another year, but in February, George proposed – Daisy accepted.  She was 23 now, and George was 26.

 

She never went back to teach, and in September 1907, they were married and moved to a home in Hoisington, KS, where four of us were born [Herbert, Helen, Janice, and Ethel].

 

Typical of the times, my parents bought and paid for all the furniture for their first little home.  All of it was in golden oak, and I have several of those lovely chairs and other furniture.  I also have a very short but sweet diary my mother kept for only a few months, during this time [have no idea where that diary might be…].”

 

DENTISTS IN MY LIFE

(EOB)

 

“I suppose, to begin, I should say “there should have been more dentists in my life”.  I believe that none of us but my mother ever saw a dentist, when all of us were young.  Mama lost several teeth when she was in her 20’s, and had an upper denture.

 

The visiting of dentists, as we do it today, was almost unheard of when I was a child.  We lived in Lyons, a small town – one doctor, no dentist.  One of Mama’s brothers was a dentist and Orthodontist in Keokuk, IA, but he did not visit us during these years.  I guess we all had fairly sound teeth, but when we moved to Boulder (I was ten), the school nurses peeked at our teeth once a year, and when I was about fourteen I finally went to the dentist for the first time.  (Once a year, in Lyons, CO, someone came to each room in school and passed out “Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream”, and told us how to brush.  One year we all received tooth brushes.  That was the year Papa made a long shelf for toiletries, with a hook for each child’s toothbrush.  We were so proud of that shelf, with its row of brushes.)

 

The drills used in those days were fearsome, painful, and hated.  Dr. Gordon was pleasant, a graying man – he seemed old to me.  Now I know he was only 50 or so.  He drilled and chipped a filled three teeth.  Papa said he (and all dentists) probably chipped teeth more than he should.  Who knows?  I lost one tooth when I was 16 and another about seven years later.

 

A real character, happy, helpful, careful, was Dr. Aaser, also of Boulder.  For several years we drove to Boulder from Greeley just to go to him.  Our older boys were small then, and this dentist really knew how to deal with children.  He also took care of dog’s teeth now and then, which fascinated our boys.  We he moved to a larger town, we had to find a Greeley man.  Our choice will not be named, as some of you may know him.  He cared for us and our children for years.  He was rough, gruff, and perhaps not as good as we had hoped.  When several of us had bad cavities one year, he told my husband he could no longer take care of us – our cavities and tooth care costs were increasing faster than our payments.  We were paying all that we could, so we had to change again.

 

In due time, salaries were better, but for me it seemed too late.  In 1983, after much arguing with our present dentist, I insisted on having my few remaining upper teeth extracted.  He wanted me to let him try to save front teeth and bridge the rest.  His price was $2500 just to try.  I finally insisted on a denture.  It was a highly successful try.  I’ve never been sorry.  No more experiments, drilling, root canals, and crowns on uppers.  I am not ashamed to say I wear an upper denture.  It was the best decision I ever made and my dentist says “you were right – but I never thought you could put up with it”.”

 

 

 

PRESIDENTS I REMEMBER

(EOB)

 

“Presenting my ideas of the Presidents may be a serious problem.  As a child, I remember my parents talking about LaFollette, a Progressive, and how dangerous a revolutionary he was.  I knew so little of what went on, but my parents were definitely Republican, and my views have turned that way many times.  (My first chance to vote came in 1936.  I never got to vote for a winning presidential runner of my choice till Eisenhower ran.)

 

Coolidge was ‘calm, safe, and quiet’.  When he said ‘I do not choose to run in 1928’ everyone quoted him, and in Boulder, where I lived then, we heard this quote applied to people who were tired, bicycles which were worn out, and a neighbor’s car displayed the sign conspicuously.  ‘I do not choose to run.’  It didn’t.

 

My young heart broke for Herbert Hoover, who has been proven not to have caused the depression.  A Democratic Congress turned down most of the plans he made to help the nation recover.  Many of these plans and ideas were later used by Roosevelt, and passed by Congress.

 

There are still those who claim that ‘Hoover made the Depression’.  They are badly misinformed.  It was a nation of prosperity and greed that caused the Depression, quite similar t what we have today.

 

When Roosevelt became President, we were appalled.  I was only 17, but we all heard a lot of radio talks, both ways.  We still feel that the government has no business handing out money to people who won’t work.  Many of the ‘jobs’ he tried to create were only welfare ploys.

 

Although some of the CCC camps were fairly well run and did do some good in keeping some of the youths busy, WPA and others were strictly for votes.  He couldn’t have been elected four times but for welfare votes.

 

And, looked at from this many years, the Depression did not have an end, or even great improvement, until the war effort, ’37 to ’40, sending arms to Europe, building ships and planes; these cured the Depression.

 

Roosevelt’s ‘womanizing’ was told by his son in a biography, and really shocked me.  I hadn’t realized that he was involved with other women.  His wife was a good, honest woman, but was way ahead of her time.

 

I think Truman was a ‘strong’ President, but his swearing was disgusting and unnecessary.  Probably he should not have given the order to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.  Who knows what might have happened if he had not done so.  He was feisty, shrewd, and stubborn, but I learned to hate ‘The Missouri Waltz’.

 

One of my personal ideals for many years was Eisenhower.  I knew his role as a general, and admired his family.  He was my kind of President.  I have read his biographies many times, and find few faults with his lifestyle. 

 

Kennedy was another ‘woman chaser’.  I do not see how anyone could admire someone who has no fidelity in his make-up.  He was no more handsome than Nixon was, and almost lost to him.  I regretted his assassination – I wanted to beat him at the ballot box.  No one will ever know if he would have been a good President, but the Bay of Pigs defeat showed a lack of knowledge.  When he threatened the Russians to make them remove their missiles from Cuba, it is a well-known fact in some sources that the hills of Cuba were still, and are today, bristling with missiles.  We never felt that Kennedy’s wife was so great as some do.  She was off partying so often how could she ‘make a home’ as she proudly boasted she would.  She was actually on Onassis’ yacht while her husband was President, and the partying was constant.

 

To those of us who study the man before election, Johnson had far to go.  He started our army getting into the armed conflict in VN, then didn’t know how to handle it.  We had two sons there, each at different times and places, so we know the agony of waiting and hoping for their safety.  They both felt that war could have been won, to stop the Russians then and there.  It was a very bitter memory to us.  My husband who has a brother who helped NVN by sending food, blood, and money to the North.  It seemed as if he was holding a gun to our sons’ heads.

 

Richard Nixon is a self-made person.  He worked as hard to get an education and rise in the political arena as any other President.  No silver spoons and inherited wealth for him.  I would love to see him and shake his hand.  He is probably the most maligned and misunderstood President since Andrew Johnson.

 

We still feel that he has phenomenal knowledge in foreign affairs, and the Watergate scandal was blown all out of proportion to its importance.  If congress took as much time to balance the budget as it does to fuss over Watergates and Iran, we’d have a nicely balanced budget today.

 

President Nixon resigned in the face of pressure by the press, that all-powerful, wide open never censored group.  He made some mistakes – he’s only human, but he was the scapegoat of the press.

 

President Nixon did bring our boys home again as he promised, but the Reds have taken all.  Probably his greatest achievement was in foreign policy.  Few men today have the knowledge he does.

 

Pat Nixon is a fine, good woman, who had a very difficult home life as a child.  She lost her mother when Pat was ten, and she helped raise her younger brothers and sisters and had time for an education which she paid for herself.  She is still an admirable woman.

 

Ford was quiet, easy, and likeable as President.  His ascent to President was at a difficult time, and he handled it well.  He should have had a term of his own, but lost narrowly to Carter.

 

Carter was honest, clean, and hopeful of a good term.  Not really a good politician, like Hoover, he had trouble expressing his needs for governing.  The Iran affair was probably no fault of his.  The Near East, as well as the Far East, has been warring for thousands of years.  George Washington was right when he said we should ‘keep out of foreign entanglements’.  But in today’s world, with jests and missiles and spacecrafts, it would be hard to do.

 

Reagan is probably as well liked as any President ever was.  We saw him briefly at a political meeting in Cheyenne in ‘75 [it was in ‘79].  He was forceful, seemed to know the answers to many problems.  But until a man gets into the Presidency he does not know how little control he has over Congress, and how little he can do when they are against him.

 

He has probably tried as hard as any President to solve the problems that face the nation.  He is stopped at almost every turn.  Senators and Representatives want only to impress those who vote and keep them in office.  They mostly trade votes; ‘you vote for my little dam or road and I’ll vote for yours.’  We need hundreds fewer lawyers and more good businessmen.  Nancy has been a good influence on many, working on drug awareness and being a good help mate to Ron.”

 

 

 

COPING WITH CHANGES

(EOB)

 

I really do not know how to express my ideas of changes.  There are so many things to consider now, but when I look back, I remember my mother saying ‘things were never the same after the war started in 1914’.  I know what she meant.  Women started cutting their hair, raising their hems on dresses, drinking in bars, smoking in public.  As women changed, men did too.  There were no longer feelings of respect as there had been.

 

In my own early childhood, in the ‘20’s, I saw kindness and respect in our home, at other homes, at school.  Men tipped their hats to women, walked on the outside of the street; held doors open for them.  Later, wen I had my boy friends, they always came to the door when they had a date.  Never was anyone allowed to run out to a car, if a boy honked the horn and waited.

 

It’s a different world now, and how do we know what our attitudes should be?  We have many grandchildren, ranging in age from 9 to 29, and it seems to us there is a gap in the school lessons.  The things we learned in a whole lifetime mean little t them.  They no longer have history or geography in school.  Thus, many do not know of the events that lead up to either world war, or even the Korean was, or Vietnam.  If they cannot learn about these events, they must repeat them. 

 

The aggressiveness of one nation against another is hard to understand.  Children now do not seem to know that Communism is a dangerous belief, just as Nazism was 50 years ago.  Do you need to study the ideas in these ‘isms’?  It seems to us that you do.  Also, the more they study, the more they should be able to realize the falseness of such practices.  If they do not know that the Nazis destroyed six million Jews, the Communists probably that many teachers, preachers, and intellectuals.  [Thought left unfinished.]

 

As a nation, we seem to be pursuing, faster and faster, a false promise, and a golden glow – more money, more ‘things’.  We have some beautiful and wonderful grandchildren – we want the world to be a good place for them.  Perhaps they will find a way to improve the future.

 

Many times we try to talk to them, to instill in them better morality, honesty, and hard work.  Their parents have tried to do so, but two of our sons lost their wives, one in ’81, one in ’84.  It is very hard to do everything at home and hold a job too.  It is, however, almost impossible to keep up on the problems that arise.  There is no way that a single parent can make up for the absence of a child’s mother or father.

 

One of our sons has re-married and things are much better for him and the children.  We still worry about the other one.”

 

OPEN MIND

(EOB)

 

“I do not believe that I have an open mind on many of our so-called ‘progressive’ ventures.  Progress is a matter of perspective.  Destroying farms to build cities is questionable.  Building dams for recreation is abominable.

 

I am interested in new ideas, but, within reason.  Perhaps we have become too far advanced to fast.  Do computers really mean that much to tiny tots?  Where are the basics?  Why leap ahead so fast?  Let children be children for a while.  They all grow up much too soon.

 

We try to talk to all of them, answering questions, trying to act knowing.  Most of the time we are not able to convince them, but they probably still absorb some of it.

 

It is true that we have seen many changes, but I for one did not see nearly as many as my mother, who came from a covered wagon and Soddy to satellites.

 

The changes we see now are so profound, so deeply involved; most of us can’t conceive them in our minds.  Economic problems get more and more complicated.  The national debt is frightening, but the interest alone is the biggest problem now. 

 

One way to keep a little with expenses is to bring back family gardens.  Most of us water a lawn – why not a garden?  It would be a little more work, but well worth the effort.

 

The moral and social problems seem to be growing rapidly.  No one seems to want a lasting relationship – just coming and going.  Children do not have boundaries and often run free.  Discipline is still a very good method.  Raising children is still a risky adventure – but how wonderful a feeling one gets as they grow and mature.  When we got all our children raised, we always felt that our immediate child raising problems were over.  How naïve!  They were only beginning!

 

A DAY IN OUR LIVES

(June 5, 1987 – EOB)

 

We went fishing yesterday – first time in six weeks.  We went up the Thompson – Dick got two nice rainbows – I got a small one.  So we decided to have them for breakfast.  While I got breakfast ready, I noticed starlings and robins flying around squawking – some cat was after their babies!  We knew there were at least two nests in the south evergreen, one for each, the robins and starlings.

 

I went to the garage to get a rake or broom to chase the cat, and there was a big fat prairie dog.  We didn’t know when he got in, as there are no holes, though I think a mouse could squeeze through the cracks at the sides of door.  I left at once – I was barefoot and in no position to chase an animal.  I went on down and out the back door, where I found a long stick and, still barefoot, waded through wet grass to the blue spruce.  About half way up I could see a cat’s white feet – I poked at it and down the tree it came.  I didn’t see whether it was carrying a baby bird, it ran down so fast.  The big birds followed it, so it probably did.

 

I told Dick about the surprise in the garage.  He said it must have been the one he saw in the yard a few nights ago, being chased by the Johnson’s dog.  It must have sneaked in while the garage was open.  Dick leaves it open a lot.  There is nothing in the garage to eat, though a few months ago our open trash barrels may have tempted many animals.  Now we have one covered barrel.

 

We had a nice bacon and fish breakfast, and then Dick had to decide what to do.  Have someone from the city come and trap it?  Try to hit it with a hoe or rake?  He wanted to get a neighbor’s cat to catch it, but I wondered about fleas on the animal.  Also, the prairie dog was a big one – almost as big as any cat!  Suddenly he said, ‘I know what to do.  We can’t just turn it loose.  I’ll run the car motor in the garage for a while.  The gas will kill him’.  I didn’t think it was too safe, but we opened the doors and the garage door to the kitchen is weather-stripped, so that’s what he did.  Was it cruel – I doubt it?  Not every wild animal is good to have around.  In half an hour the prairie dog was dead, and in the trash.  To us it was like a rat – dangerous and germ-laden.

 

At 10:30, when the mail came, there was a letter from Rosalie and George.  Dan has more car trouble.  Steve’s job at Murrieta, CA, where he was in charge of security, terminated, and he will try to go ‘on his own’.  We keep hoping he’ll give up Sikhism, but no such luck!”

 

 

 

MAMA’S DRIVING LESSONS

(Takes place about 1922 – EOB)

 

 “We were living on a fruit farm south of Lyons, CO.  Papa had found a second hand Model T truck he could buy.  It was old, topless, and ugly, but it ran most of the time.  We needed a truck to haul produce to town, or even to Longmont. 

 

Several times, since he bought it, he offered to teach Mama to drive.  She was reluctant, but finally gave in.  They went on a very narrow country road, but that was good, no traffic.  Papa stopped the car, and Mama walked around and got in.  He carefully explained what to do.  She tried to start the motor and did it wrong.  He explained again and the finally jumped to a start.  Every time he yelled at her, she got more nervous.  (According to Helen, when Mama got in the car, she was to help start it.  Papa would crank, and Mama would move the right pedals.  She had very poor luck.)

 

Model T’s had three pedals, and Mama got confused as to which to use when.  They came to a long straight stretch of road.  Papa told her to ‘step on the gas’.  She tried, hit the wrong pedal, lost control, and they went bumping off the road, across a small ditch, and out into a field.  Papa grabbed the wheel, and the car gradually slowed down.  By that time, Mama remembered where the brake was, so the car stopped.

 

Without a word, she got out of the car, walked around to the passenger side, and waited for him to move over.  For once, he was speechless too.  Our parents came home, barely speaking.  It was years before Mama would tell us what had happened.  She never learned to drive, in all her 91 years.”

 

 

 

SKATING ON THE ST. VRAIN

(EOB)

 

“One of the joys of childhood was ice skating.  As very young children we had been initiated into the rites of winter, usually at Christmas time, by stuffing our pockets with hard candy and chunks of coconut, and trekking to the frozen river.  I remember the St Vrain best.  In winter, the flow of water was just enough to make long, smooth pools, which froze for many months.  Papa had clamp-on skates, which he had worn as a young man in Kansas, and used when he went skating on the Arkansas River.  (No true Kansan ever said ‘Arkansaw’.)

 

He always put them on and tried the ice, then, at our urging, cut a few didoes just to please us.  Herbert and Helen, nearing teenage, put on their second hand clamp-ons, which Papa had painstakingly sharpened.  Soon some neighbors appeared, and a three on three ice hockey game was started.  Meanwhile, we three younger children clamored for a turn.  Helen would say ‘no you can’t – the skates are too big’.  Then we finally made enough noise that Papa decided to help us, and we got a turn skating.  Clamp-on skates had a big advantage – they were adjustable, even for us.

 

For a while, we were blissfully happy – skating, falling, bumping in to one another.  Then, as our gloves, stocking, and clothes became wet, we got cold.  Sometimes Papa would build a fire and we all took turns skating, and huddling near the fire.  When all were as wet and tired as we could possibly stand, Papa went up the creek, took a big rock off the bank, and smashed a good big hole on the ice.  Soon, the water was flowing over the badly scuffed and chopped ice.  It would freeze during the night and we would come down another day and skate on the smooth ice.

 

(In winter we wore galoshes, always handed down from brother or sister, heavy black stockings (or brown), long underwear, sweater, and coat.  A heavy knit stocking cap and gloves were available.  We had several severe winters in the early `20’s, with at least a foot of snow on the ground for a long period of time.)”

 

 

 

THE INVENTION

 

 

“George and Daisy were married September 4, 1907, and moved into their little home in Hoisington, KS.  George had a new job in a comparatively new business – an electric plant.  This kind of power was just becoming known, and he had taken a course in the International Correspondence School, on electrical engineering.  This company also owned an ice plant and a railroad system.

 

My folks had worked very hard to furnish their home, and everything was paid for and installed before they were married.  There was only one problem – at times, George had to work the ‘swing shift’ – four to midnight, leaving his young and timid wife alone all evening.

 

As winter came on, the evenings seemed especially long to Daisy, and going to bed in a cold room, she had trouble getting warm.  In general, bedrooms were not heated at this time, and Kansas winters, like many others, are quite cold.

 

One day, George had an idea.  He set to work making a surprise for Daisy.  When he finished it, he presented her with – an electric blanket!  He plugged it into an outlet – it was one of the few electrically wired homes in town.  He showed her how safe it was, and said it would keep her warm at night, until he came home. 

 

That night Daisy went to bed, secure in the warmth her new electric blanket gave her.  About ten o’clock, George got an urgent feeling of anxiety.  He asked a friend to take his place and started for home.  It had been snowing all day, and now the wind had come up.  As always, he had walked to work, and as the wind increased, he had more and more difficulty struggling through the snow.  Finally he arrived at home, and as he went in the door, smoke billowed out.  He rushed to the bedroom.  Daisy was almost unconscious from smoke inhalation.  He carried her out to the other room, and opened all the windows, then hurried back and unplugged the blanket.

 

He realized that in a few more minutes it would have burst into flames.  Daisy was coughing and crying, but recovered quickly.  George knew why he had wanted to come home early, but he was thankful.  He never really analyzed why the blanket wouldn’t work.  If he had, he might have patented the first electric blanket!”

 

MAMA AND THE SKUNKS

(EOB)

 

“When Mama was only 56, papa died of a heart attack.  They had lived in a small house in east Boulder, but after a few years my sister Janice helped her move to a house near them, so she could watch Mama easier and visit oftener.

 

This small house was built on the ground with only a ten-inch air space.  There were several vents, which were covered with heavy screen.  One of these vents was right outside Mama’s bedroom window.  One summer, she was awakened by a noise under the floor.  She listened for a while then got up and stamped on the floor.  Soon there was a scurrying noise, and she peeked out her window.  It was quite dark that night, but she could see an animal running across the grass. 

 

The next night she lay awake a long time.  Sure enough, when it was quite late, she heard the animal again.  They seemed to be fighting – she always said it sounded like a cat fight.

 

This went on for weeks, and one night when the moon was bright, she saw that her noisy visitors were skunks!  What if one of them released their scent under her bedroom?  What could she do?  (They tried mothballs…)  Janice had been consulted and had no answers.  Her husband, Harold, called the city animal shelter.  They called someone else, and each one said ‘you can’t do anything – it’s illegal to trap or shoot them.  Maybe they’ll go away’.

 

Harold put new and stronger screening on the vent.  The skunks tore it off.  Mama was not getting any sleep – she knew those skunks were making a nest for a family.  Finally, in desperation, she had Harold replace the screen, and then she walked out into the yard and sprinkled Drano around the vent.  That night the skunks came, tip toed around the area, then scatted across the yard.  They were not seen again, and Mama’s rest was undisturbed.”

 

 

 

HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEARTS

(EOB)

 

“The year I was ‘sweet 16’ I was dating a boy I met at the big indoor swimming pool in Boulder.  The pool was only half a block from our home, and cost 10 cents, if you had a suit.  I was having fun sliding down a chute, and when I stumbled on landing he caught me.  We dated a few months, but he was very different from what I was looking for.  He came to our Epworth League Party, but said it was always too much trouble to explain to his priest why he had been in another church.  He was Catholic.

 

I was very active in our church group for young people, the Epworth League, and gradually got acquainted with Richard Brown, a tall, pleasant boy who was always there.  He was so different from other boys I had met; he had just moved to Boulder from Eagle, where his dad was a Forest Ranger.  It sounded very exciting and romantic to be able to live in the mountains.

 

One fine October afternoon, I had gone to town with a friend, Nadine, after school.  We had started home when we saw three high school boys across the street.  One of them yelled at us – we didn’t answer.  They yelled again, and one of them threw something at us.  It was so sudden; we couldn’t even avoid it.  It struck my ankle and bounced into the gutter.

 

I was so shocked; I just stood there, fearing I had broken a bone.  The boys went on, laughing and jeering.  Nadine said ‘that was one of those big, hard bars of soap.  Why did they throw it?’  Then she took my arm and I limped all the way home.  The pain was so bad.  Mama had me soak my ankle in a pail of hot water.  When Papa came home he was angry, but what could we do?  I knew by name two of the boys.  They were from the ‘best families’ and we knew we couldn’t do anything.  We lived on the wrong side of town.

 

I went to bed with the heat of an old flatiron near my ankle, and next morning I limped to school.  Dick saw me limping and I told him about it.  He wanted to beat up on the boys, but I was timid.  I asked him not to – I was all right.

 

That night was a kid party in our church basement.  Everyone dressed with hair ribbons, knee pants, or whatever they could find.  They had a parade so that the sponsors could choose the best costume.  I had come in a car, my father driving.  I could not walk around the room, but I was chosen for best costume.  How I wish I had a picture of me, with a hair ribbon and wearing a pair of old style rompers my sister had made.

 

That night, Dick and I rode home with a friend.  It was my first date with him.  The next Sunday, Dick borrowed his dad’s car, and took me to morning church and evening League.  It was several dates later before he even tried to kiss me.

 

I think I knew then that this was serious.  We dated all through high school – no money, but seeing one another at school and in our church was enough.  We sometimes had walking dates.  We graduated together, and I wrote the class song and the class poem.  Dick received letters for football, two years.  Our 50^th high school reunion was in June 1983 and we both enjoyed it so much.

 

In 1985, September, we celebrated our 50^th Wedding Anniversary, with five sons, three daughters-in-law [actually, two – Bev and Jane had already died], eleven grand children, and three step-grandchildren.

 

SHADES OF WWI

The Verleys

(EOB)

 

“When the war (WWI) ended, we were living about two miles south of Lyons, CO.  I was only a little past three, but I remember we all took pans and spoons out in the yard and made a lovely racket.  We could hear the fire station bell in town, and several neighbors shot off guns.  My father had not gone off to war – there were five of us by then, but we were glad the war was over. 

 

Two years later we moved to the North St. Vrain house.  That’s the one I dream of, have written about, and remember the best.  Our road to school was longer, about 2 ½ miles, and in pleasant weather was no problem at all.  However, we had two obstacles.  At one farm down the road was a fenced in area, where the owner was raising Airedale dogs.  The noise they raised when we passed filled us with foreboding.  What if one of them jumped over the fence?  We would be helpless.  We were always relieved when the owner came out and yelled at the dogs, then at us.  He thought we were teasing them.  I don’t believe we ever did.

 

After school, we had another gauntlet to run.  Near town, in a beautiful stone house, lived a Belgian family, who had never been friendly to us, though Papa always spoke to them.  They had a big, seven-year old girl.  She was loud and noisy and every day our first fall in that area, she waited for us after school.  I was six, and Janice was eight, but she was bigger than either of us.

 

We had a German name, and she would begin yelling at us ‘I’m going to get a big butcher knife and cut you to pieces.  You are Krauts, and you stabbed Belgian babies in the war’.  She was furious, we were timid.  We always ran part of the way home.  This happened many times.  Perhaps my father called them – I never heard, but when winter came, she stopped chasing us.  We were so relieved, it was almost a pleasure to walk past the noisy dogs.

 

About a year later, we were friendly enough to walk home from school with her, but I always feared she might run into her house for that knife.”

 

 

 

NARRATIVE BY EOB

(Early years)

 

“I was born in Hoisington, KS, April 8, 1915.  When I was 20 months old we came to Colorado, to Lyons.  This is the childhood home I remember best.

 

 

Very vivid memories come to me of our lives 2 ½ miles NW of Lyons.  It was a farming area, amid the beautiful foothills, the valley of the North St. Vrain River.  In the twenties and thirties, the road was a winding, narrow one.  Our rented land and house seemed very dear to me.  How many exciting things we did!

 

Our rented home was long and rambling with 13 rooms [there is a sketch by EOB of the house on file].  Two rooms on the lower level were for our landlord’s storage.  How we wished we could only once see what was in them, but we never did.  We were so proud of being so close to Steamboat Mountain, a jutting cliff of lovely red sandstone.  Our home went clear up to the base of the mountain east of our house.  On the west were low lying hills, and the road was the main highway to Estes Park.

 

My father had brought his family to Lyons, hoping to make a living farming.  As others have told, we also canned, dried, or preserved everything.  We had three cellars for storage of bushels of apples, cabbages, celery, carrots, and potatoes – anything we grew.

 

(Extra insight…)  {This was the first place where we had a bathroom, telephone, or electricity.  I was six, and became frantic when I pushed a button for lights, and I couldn’t pull it out again!  The bathroom was huge, but I think we seldom used the tub.  We had lots of water, but the cesspool filled up to fast, and the tub was huge!  We often bathed in our small galvanized oval tub, one after another.  In a novel I read long ago, a woman asked her friend ‘how do you keep presentable, with only a bath a week?’.  The friend replied, ‘character, my dear, character!’.

 

I had a traumatic feeling about the telephone, too.  Often, when we really needed it, it was busy, and when my folks got to use it, they knew someone -–or several people – was listening.  I must have heard them fussing about it – I still hate telephoning.}

 

My mother was an expert at canning, preserving, pickling, and when he could, my father helped.  In our cellar were barrels of cider, fermenting into vinegar – we never tasted hard cider.  This was a part of the Bible Belt – no drinking, dancing, or playing cards.

 

As others have told, we always had our own beef, pork, and chickens.  Our most notable meat preserver was a big old smokehouse, and my father always found some old pieces of hickory to make the smoke.  I can still taste those home smoked meats, the ham, bacon, sausage, and dried beef.

 

One or two small barrels held sauerkraut, another corned beef.  Several five-gallon crocks held dill or sour pickles.

 

(Extra insight…)  {Our icehouse was second to none.  As soon as the ice on a small pond was think enough, Papa, the landlord, and several neighbors, took special ice saws, tongs, and two trucks, and they cut the ice into big blocks, about two feet by three feet.  They were heavy, but many hands make light work.  On our farm was a large shed, next to the car barn, and the ice was packed in, with thick layers of sawdust between the blocks.  This ice lasted all summer – it wasn’t needed in winter, of course.  Winters were more snowy then, and we had a wonderful sandstone-floored big pantry to keep food cool.

 

One of my chores was churning butter, but Mama always had to ‘gather the butter’, special tactics to press out the buttermilk.  Ah, that buttermilk!  It was so tart and good, with small bits of butter floating in it.  You can’t find it today.}

 

Our sweet corn was always golden bantam – large ears, and plentiful on the stalks.  Papa studied the Country Gentleman magazine, both folks belonged to Home Demonstration Clubs, and up-to-date planting methods were used.  For several years, Papa was up at 4 a.m. to pick several gunnysacks of that sweet corn.  About 6 a.m., a Stanley Steamer chugged to a halt at the corn field gate, and the driver got out to pick up those sacks of corn to take to Estes Park, to serve at the Stanley Hotel.  This Stanley Steamer also carried mail and newspapers.

 

Our mail bag, a 2x18 canvas bag, was clipped by a clothespin to a wooden arm that was set on a post near the road, and was snatched by the carrier as he drove by.  When we received mail, the bag was closed by a drawstring and thrown at random near the post.

 

What did we do for fun?  We did not jump from the rafters of the hay barn – my older sister Helen, and [older] brother Herbert, contrived to fasten a rope we could swing from, and we would soar out over the piles of hay from the rafters, dropping when we got the nerve.  Herbert and Helen swung out several times, Janice and I only once.  She was nine [Janice] and I was seven.  When Mama found out what we were up to, she forbade a repeat performance, and it was not done again.  Mama just knew we would land on a pitchfork or a stray rattlesnake. 

 

(Extra insight…) {I was about seven when Helen supposedly brought home the small pox.  She had broken out, and although she was not terribly ill, the doctor had looked at her and said that’s what it was.  I think we five other children and our parents went into town to be vaccinated.  We all had very good ‘takes’, and have scars to show for them (Helen thinks now she had only chicken pox, but can you have it twice?  We had that when I was about eight months old).

 

We were quarantined when Helen had the small pox.  We were selling milk to a creamery, so Papa went down to a storeroom and lived there.  Mama cooked his meals and boiled the pans and dishes for about three weeks.

 

I brought home the mumps.  I guess there was an epidemic at the school.  I was so ill I almost fainted (first and only time in life).  I was about eight, and of course Papa and all the rest of the family had them too.  I can still feel the ache, when I think about it.  Mama never did get them from her sisters when she was young or from us later.}

 

Helen was quite daring, often doing things we admired, but could not achieve.  After we had seen our first circus in Boulder, Helen bravely climbed to the top of our empty silo, sitting on the top, and waving and shouting till Mama saw her and demanded that she come down.  Next, Helen got our big, broad plow horse and rode him half a mile down the road, while standing precariously on his back.  Next, she tried to ride him and another horse, one foot on each back.  That didn’t work so well – the horses were out of sync.

 

We often had a big wash tub or a box with baby chicks or new pigs in it, behind the stove.  Helen was the official ‘baby animal tender’.  She really loved hem, and she had to teach the new calves to drink from a bucket.  She straddled the calf and put two fingers in its mouth, then pushed its nose into the bucket of milk.  After a time or two, the calf would suck on the fingers, then discover liquid food.

 

When the older children had to work in the fields, milk the cows, or do housework, we three younger ones were pretty well confined to the yard – a huge one, mostly lawn.  A small creek ran in front of the lawn, and when Mama would keep the baby, two, we could take a small lunch and go fishing or even wading.  The boys, neighbors, my brother George, and I once took a skillet, made a fire, and fried potatoes and one lovely little trout we caught.  The potatoes were a little burned, as was the fish, but what fun we had!  I think we had apples and cookies also, which probably saved us all from starvation.

 

One bright and warm day, some well-meaning friend stopped by to tell us that a lot of fish had been put in our creek.  Papa found an old net, and while he and my small brother filled wash tubs with water, Janice, 10, and I, 8, waded into the creek and each held and end of the net.  When a car came by, we sat down so they couldn’t see the net, getting gloriously wet.  We knew the law said nets were illegal for fishing!  Before long, the fish started coming.  When we got a few in the net, we rushed back to the tubs, put the fish in, and hastened back to the creek to catch more.  We ended up with at least two-dozen 9 and 10-inch trout, and a few suckers, for several days, we had fresh fish, and we all loved to eat fish.

 

We lived near Lyons only nine years, but in that time, Papa was Sunday school Super, two years, and also had a stint at being Justice of the Peace.

 

Mama was PTA President two years, and started a hot lunch program unequaled to this day.  For two cents, a pupil could buy a bowl of home made soup with crackers.  The PTA members did the cooking in their homes, and transported big pots of soup to the school.

 

I remember the first bowl of chili I ever ate.  We had gone into a room to share seats with older children.  My seatmate had finished and left.  I crumbled some crackers into the bowl, then very carefully brushed the cracker crumbs into the bowl, too.  It tasted funny.  Did chili always taste that way?  I was hungry, though, and finished it.  We were taught never to leave food on our plates.  I went outside to play, but felt nauseated.  I rubbed my mouth with my hands – someone laughed because my face was so dirty.  I licked my fingers – they were almost black!  When I tasted the black, I knew it was lead!  I had brushed shaving from a sharpened pencil lead into my soup!  It was many months before I could eat at school again, but I never told anyone till years later.

 

My old school at Lyons is now a museum, a well-preserved old building, two stories high.  Many of the seats, slates, books, and pictures are there, and the memories are precious indeed.

 

We left Lyons and moved to Boulder in 1925, when school was out.  Papa had to give up farming and go back to his first love – electricity.  He had gone to work with Public Service Company of Colorado.

 

Someone once told a farmer, ‘How could you leave – you had all the food you needed right there’?  The farmer replied, “You come around in six months, and you’ll see the fattest, sleekest, nakedest family in the state’!”

 

 

 

CHAUTAUQUA

(My first real job – June-July, 1929)

(Pay $6.00/week)

 

“I had just turned 14, and was so anxious to find work.  I had been taking care of young children now and then, since I was ten, but I felt there must be something better.  One day in mid-June, my best friend Esther Smiley (15) was so excited about going to the Boulder Chautauqua and ask for job.  She had heard that waitresses were needed, and some summer residents wanted girls to help with house keeping and baby tending. 

 

Five of us (Esther (15), Anna Marie Sutter (14), Stella Smiley (13), Stella Mae Sutter (12), and myself (14)), in age from 12 to 15, hustled around, finding nickels for the streetcar ride, dressing in clean dresses, combing hair – soon we started out.  It was two blocks to the streetcar track, and then we had to transfer mid-town.  All went well, and soon we were walking up the beautiful tree-shaded path to the home of the ‘matron’, who could hire help for the summer residents.  She interviewed us and sent the older girl (Esther) to the restaurant manager.  WE had a nickel each to buy a bottle of pop, so we played a while in the huge tree-covered park, and enjoyed the slide and swings.  It was a good day, an interesting outing.

 

The next day, we received a telephone call from the Matron.  She told my mother she was impressed with my modesty and quiet talk, and did I want to come to work two days later?  I was to help with three girls, do a little housework, and help with meals.  I would half a day a week off, and half a day on Sunday.

 

I needed clothes, so we decided I should try to please my employer.  I packed to dresses, some underclothes, shoes, and personal items, and again caught the streetcar.  The Matron took me to a small canvas walled cabin right into bedlam.  Four noisy children were squabbling right in the middle of the floor.  A baby was screaming, and two women were trying to start a kettle of chili.  Both were extremely thin and harried-looking.  They were arguing about the ingredients to be out into the soup pot.  Someone picked up the baby and gave her to me.  I could hush her, I thought.  One woman, Mrs. Cade, was to be my new ‘boss’, and she wanted me to tell her how to make chili.  I had never done so, but had helped, so I told her what we used at home.

 

I was amazed to see that the women were chopping steak, opening cans of beans, and trying to act like cooks.  Mrs. Cade said, ‘I never have to cook at home – my husband is a dentist and we have niggers to do all the work’.  I told her I could cut the steak and gave her baby to her.  She put the baby back in the crib and tried to hush the older girls.

 

We all had a small bowl of chili for lunch, and I washed the dishes, the other woman, a sister of Mrs. C. helping.  Then I was informed that as son as ‘bubba’ came (he was a nephew of Mrs. C.), we would all carry the Cade family belongings to her cabin.  It was being cleaned, and would be ready soon.  Everyone rushed around and tried to be helpful.  I was given a bushel basket full of clothes to carry, and we paraded up the street half a block.

 

There were many summer homes near the Chautauqua building, and most of them had two rooms and a screened in porch.  The front room held two double beds, a few chairs, and a closet area covered by a cloth.  A table, four chairs, a small gas stove, and a very small icebox adorned the kitchen.  A tiny bathroom completed the cabin.  But wait – the screened-in porch, that was for me.  There was muslin nailed over one end, for semi-privacy – at least from neighbors.

 

My first day had been new and different.  My instructions from Mrs. C. were as follows:  ‘you are to take care of Betty and Eleanor, and the baby, Billy Caroline.  I expect you to wash the children’s clothes (by hand), iron them, and help cook and clean.  It should be easy – they are such good girls.  Twice a day put Billy C. on the toilet and help her to be trained.  She’s a year old and should not have to have diapers.  I will be here a lot today, but there are many friends here this year, so I’ll want to visit’.

 

I didn’t know where to start, so I got Billy C.’s bath water ready – only to be told ‘toilet first’.  I guess I didn’t say the right words – nothing happened.  Billy C. cried on the toilet and Mrs. C. scolded again.  Mrs. C. scolded me for not getting the B.M. started.  After a few minutes, I tested the bath water and it was about right so Billy C. got her bath and loved it.  I dressed her and put her in her crib with a bottle.  I washed the dishes and Eleanor helped dry – the first time ever – she was only eight.

 

Now I was shown the wash tubs in the back of the cabin and a bench.  I set the tubs on the bench, filled one with hot water, one with cold.  There were two days diapers to do – and someone had not rinsed them.  Ignorant of that, I put them all in the hot soapy water.  Soon, fragments of matter from the diapers floated to the top.  When no one was watching, I scooped them out, one by one, and flung them into a tree and brush covered gully behind the cabin.  Then I proceeded to put a scrub board in the tub, scrubbed each diaper, wrung them out, and put them in the rinse water.

 

Buy eleven, I had a clothesline full of snowy diapers.  At least they looked snowy to me.  Mrs. C. said they certainly didn’t look as white as her nigger lady got them.  I didn’t answer.  The dirty water all went into the gully too – small fragments of baby diaper dirt visible to me were hastily washed down the hill with rinse water.

 

It was time to consider lunch.  I was so hungry, as breakfast had been juice, toast, and cereal, in very small portions.  Mrs. C. wanted the girls to have gelatin, so she told me how to make it w/real lemon juice and unflavored gelatin and sugar.  I had fair luck with that, and soon had it in the icebox.  Now what?  There was a bowl of very thin soup, crackers, and some lunchmeat (‘cold-cuts’, she called them).  Then she left, going shopping.  As soon as she was out the door, Eleanor and Betty got to fighting.  I tried to stop them, and Eleanor yelled at me that I couldn’t boss her – no poor white trash ever bossed her, and no niggers either.

 

Betty cried and said she like me, then Billy C. wakened from a nap and was ready for lunch.  The gelatin was ready, so I warmed the soup, set the table, and the girls stopped fighting for a while.

 

I ate what there was and fed Billy C. her Jell-O and a little soup with crackers softened in it.  We put her back in her bed with a bottle, and I washed dishes and dried them.  I tried to sweep up a little, but the girls demanded that I play with them, so we played several games they knew, talked a little, then brought Billy C. to a bed with us and played with her.  They were all pretty children, healthy looking, and clean.  Eleanor was dark, with black curly hair and tanned skin.  Betty and Billy C. were blondes, like their father I guessed, as Mrs. C. had very long black hair, a little gray.  She wore it in a bun on her neck, and drew I back from her face, very tight.  The first morning she had slipped a robe over her gown – a flimsy, sleeveless thing.  Once, as she bent over, I saw her breasts – long stringy things hanging down six inches.  I was embarrassed – so skinny, so sharp voiced – how did she hold a husband?

 

She came home about four – she had eaten with friends – ‘the nicest lunch’. She complained about the house – hadn’t I cleaned it?  I tried to explain that I had tried to watch the girls.

 

I don’t remember what we had for supper that night – but I do know it wasn’t much.  There was nothing to do at night.  I was ‘on duty’ anyway.  Mrs. C. went with her sister and friends to a show at the Chautauqua – I put the girls all to bed about eight.  While they were undressing I heard a knock at the door.  It was bubba – Mrs. C.’s nephew.  How did I know he was retarded?  I’d not seen or heard of one like him.  He was short, chubby, and very friendly.  I was a little scared of him.  I told him it was the girl’s bedtime, and he left.

 

I slept poorly at night – my bed was a mall cot and this was the first time I had ever been away from home at night, alone.  One night I was dreaming of being on a mountain road in a car, and someone was calling ‘go slow – go slow’.  I awakened – it was Mrs. C. calling ‘Ethel – Ethel’.  She said I was sure hard to waken.

 

I’ll admit I was not the best house cleaner.  My experience at home had always been that of youngest girl, and I did the little jobs like dusting and dishes.  Mama, Helen, and Janice did the ‘big’ jobs.  Of course, by now Helen had been married a year.  However, this cabin was crude, and how much cleaning does a cabin need?  The floors were rough and hard to sweep.  Not many girls of 14 can ‘run’ a house.  Mrs. C. was gone every day, and often at noon she sent Bubba to tell me that the girls could dine with her, at the restaurant or friends homes.  The refrigerator continued to be almost empty, except for food for Billy C.  Mrs. C. didn’t make lists for me or plan any meals.  There was always bread and milk.

 

I was so hungry!  And lonely!  One day, after I had been there about a week, I remembered the fourth of July was in two days.  That was the day when our family always had a picnic.  My Matron had come over and said that my mother had called (most cabins had no phones) her and they would have a picnic lunch at Chautauqua park on the 4^th.  I told Mrs. C., but she said that wasn’t my day off. 

 

The 4^th came, and Mrs. C. left as usual.  About noon, she sent word hat I was to dress the girls and Billy C. and come to the restaurant.  I guess I didn’t wash everyone, as I should.  How would I know what the girls should wear?  As for myself, I wore a print dress – not too fresh, and the girls wanted to wear what they had on.  Who was I to argue with them?  Billy C. had a clean diaper and everyday dress.

 

When we got to the restaurant, Mrs. C. was so embarrassed.  She took me aside and said, ‘I thought at least you would wash faces and put clean clothes on them.  And look at you!  You wear that dress every day!’  She was sitting with friends and relatives, and I think I sat by one girl and Mrs. C.’s sister.  The food was fair and I tried to be careful and quiet.  The soup was mostly broth and I was so careful to scoop it away from the front and sip from the big spoon.  After we had finished, Mrs. C. said ‘I guess you can have one hour to visit your parents, then come to the cabin – up that E.W. street – you know’ – she pointed.  I nodded and said ‘thank you’, and hurried to hunt for Mama and Papa.

 

The park was crowded – it was such a nice place to picnic.  I was almost in tears – so glad to see everyone.  George and Bob were playing in swings and chutes.  I was offered several things – chicken and potato salad and chocolate cake.  I told them I had already eaten.  They were surprised.  Eleanor and Betty came running over and said that it was time to go.  My hour was too short – both my folks wondered if I needed anything.  They said that Herbert would be home from school for two days, and maybe he’d have time to see me.

 

The next day, Mrs. C. said that there was a great show on the Chautauqua stage that night, and did I want to go.  I said my brother might come and I couldn’t miss him.  Mrs. C. gave me two tickets and said I could leave one at the ticket door, and if my brother came he could get in, too.  I finally decided to go and was so disappointed.  The show was just an imitator – not too good, and Herbert never showed up.  I think it was the only time he ever let me down.

 

Next day, Mrs. C. left with the older girls again.  I was so blue and so unhappy.  To make things worse, I had been asked to wash and iron the girl’s red pleated skirts.  I told her I never had, and she said it was easy.  About 10: a.m., there was a knock at the back door.  Bubba again?  I wondered how I would get rid of him.  When I opened the door, there was Mama!  I was so surprised, and sat on the bed and cried, telling her all my problems.  She had brought me some candy bars, and asked all about my work, food, etc.  She said Herbert had only one day, and just didn’t have tome to come see me.  Then she found the broom, swept a little, then tied a cloth on the broom, and dusted the corners. 

 

The ironing board was in the corner, so she got the red wool skirts, and while I hunted for something for lunch, she pressed the skirts, laying a damp cloth on them for each pleat.  It looked so easy.  We had a very light lunch – there still wasn’t much to eat.  She admired Billy C., and changed her.  The baby was being so good.  After Mama left, I sat on the bed and ate a candy bar.  Billy C. wanted some, but I didn’t give any to her.

 

When Mrs. C. and the girls came home, Mrs. C. raved about the house then the skirts.  I told her my mother had done most of it.  The next morning the Matron talked to Mrs. C., telling her how bad she had treated me.  She especially stressed the lack of food in the house.  Mrs. C. rushed home and accused me of lying.  I tried to tell her how little food there had been, and showed her the icebox.  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were needing more?  I didn’t know you were hungry.  You have not been much help.  I’ll let you stay till Saturday.  What will I do?  My doctor husband will come Sunday, and I need help!’

 

I was crying and trying to talk, but what could I say?  I stayed two more days, was paid $12.00 for two weeks, and left for home.  I was ashamed – I felt for years that I had failed at my first job, but I had enough money to buy a jacket dress, and a few other things I needed.  In August, we rented our house for two weeks, and took the never-to-be-forgotten trip to Kansas.”

 

TRIP TO KANSAS

Mid August – September 1, 1929

 

“I had spent most of my $12 for myself – it was great to go shopping with Janice and have her advise me.  (She almost never did.)  My one ‘good dress’ was a sleeveless pique` with tiny orange and yellow flowers and green leaves.  The jacket was short, with half-sleeves. 

 

Since February, I had a ‘boy friend’, my very first.  He had met me when we were coasting on the 22^nd street hill.  For my birthday, he had given me a strand of beads – aqua blue, with a design similar to a double wheel, with spokes.  I was so proud of them.  Joe Springs was about 17 and had quit school to work.  His family was very poor.  He was about 5-10, with sandy hair and blue eyes.  He worked at the Boulder Cutlery, for $15 a week.

 

At this time we had a Chevrolet touring car, circa 1926.  WE had never had any faith in Chevys, but it had been a bargain.  On a lovely August day, we packed and left.  The two women who were renting the house arrived and were given keys and instructions.  Cars did not have trunks then, usually.  All our suitcases were packed on the left running board.  Papa had built a wooden guardrail to hold them.  Of course, we really didn’t have much to take – we could always wash a few things when we visited.

 

We would stop first near Wiley, CO, Where Helen and Lawrence were farming at his parent’s rental home.  Before we got there, the car was making a knocking noise, but we made it.  Helen was so glad to see us, but she looked so tired and thin.  I think she was a little embarrassed, too.  They were living in a two-room house, which had once been a chicken house.  It had been cleaned, of course, and white-washed and calcimined.

 

We had super with them, then Papa and Lawrence went out to see what they could do with the car.  When they came back in, Papa said ‘it looks like the doggoned main bearing.  We’ll have to pull it up in a tree and work on it.’  That was the way most car repairs were done, using pulleys and chains or heavy ropes.

 

I can’t remember where we all slept, but I’m sure Janice and our folks and I slept with the older Reids, as they had a large house.  Maybe George and Bob had cots in Helen’s house, or maybe they went to the barn and slept in the hay.

 

The next day, Lawrence took Papa to town to get the car parts.  But before they left, the car had been left hanging, by the front end, in a big tree.  When they came back, Mr. Reid and Lawrence did what they could to help and by evening the motor was OK.  There were a few cows to milk, and other chores.  Helen made lunch for us, and in the afternoon, Janice and I visited, looked around, and watched the men.  Helen had a funny little small icebox that opened from the top.  I don’t remember if it had a shelf, but I do know she kept butter and milk in it, either beside the ice block or on top of it.

 

When I told Mama that Helen was so thin and tired, Mama admitted that Helen was PG and would have her baby in January.  I was so excited – the very first baby in our family!  The men did some farm work Saturday, and the men and boys went out a ways where the fields were a little wild.  They were standing and just talking (the men) when George and Bob suddenly let out a yell and George says he jumped four feet in the air!  ‘A big rattlesnake’, he yelled.  I don’t remember if the men killed it, but probably they did.  They had hoped to see and shoot some pheasants, but saw none.

 

(Extra insight…)  {…Have never forgotten the flies at Helen’s.  The barn and the corral were quite a ways away, but the only fly killer then was a flit gun, which sprayed a very oily, smelly poison on everything.  Of course, there was never any reason to spray a barnyard.  The flies gathered on Helen’s front screen door so thick you couldn’t see out, so you sprayed them, killed them, and at once another swarm gathered on the screen.  Helen said sometimes it wasn’t that bad.}

 

Next day was Sunday, and all the Reids met us at a lake not too far away.  Lawrence had two sisters, Lavina and Mable, and two brothers, Ernest and Edwin.  (Edwin married our cousin Hazel in September, after Helen was married in June.)  There were quite a few small children, and we all got acquainted.

 

The next day, we left for Kansas.  It was a long day, and about half way to Lyons (KS), Janice was driving when another car problem arose.  I don’ know what it was, now, but we were delayed about three hours.  (Papa called Uncle Ray to tell him we’d be late.)  We were about sixty miles from Lyons.  It was dusk, and we hated to drive at night.  Suddenly ahead of us was a big wagon of hay.  Papa could see no one coming, so passed it, only to see another wagon.  (No lights or reflectors on either wagon.)  Now he saw lights coming, but couldn’t get between the wagons, so hurried to pass the second one.  The car never slowed down, and it side-swiped us and went into the barrow ditch.  It wasn’t damaged much, nor were we, but our carrier was torn off and all the suitcases were torn up.

 

We searched the road for a long time, picking up pieces.  The two young men in the other car were not hurt, but were joking and laughing about their two accidents this week.  The hay wagons moved on, still without lights.  Papa drove on into a nearby town to report, and because he was the passing car, he was fined.  We were sure the other men had been drinking, but the sheriff knew them.  Papa used all his money and had to borrow from Uncle Ray when we got to Lyons. 

 

We were all so glad that no one was hurt, but several of us lost things we valued.  I lost those blue beads.  We got to Aunt Dollie’s and Uncle Rays about 9:30, and everyone was upset.  Uncle Ray had promise Uncle Ray some money so we could get back home.  Grandma Forney had gone to bed at her usual 9 p.m. 

We four children and Raymond shared two basement rooms, which Aunt Dollie often rented out.  She felt very insecure because Uncle Ray was a sort of gambler, in oil and other stocks, and she felt that the money from four to six men rooming and boarding with her would keep her in funds.

 

The next day, Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mary [Forney – Daisy’s brother], and cousin Ruth [youngest child], 15, were there.  Ruth was a very pretty, sophisticated young girl.  She acted even older than Janice, who was 16 did.  Grandma [Forney] seemed thin, and not too happy.  I’m sure she was overwhelmed by all the people.  She was wheelchair bound, and it must have been wearisome.  She’d had a stroke ten years before, but I remember her being in Colorado in 1919 and about 1922, using a cane then.

 

I don’t remember all the relatives who came while we were there.  I do remember going to visit Uncle Ode and Aunt Effie [Forney – Daisy’s brother], Uncle Ralph and Aunt Pearl [Forney – Daisy’s brother], Aunt Mary and Uncle John [Frey – Daisy’s oldest sister] and family.  Effie and Ode had a very nice home, and a player piano.  We must have driven them crazy, playing it all evening.  Ruth and her parents [Charles and Mary Forney? – Daisy’s brother] were there, too.  Charlie and Ode were very close, as they had lived together all through Medical school.  Effie and Mary had kept roomers and boarders to help out.  At the time, Ode and Effie lived in Hutchinson, and Mary and Charlie with Ruth, lived in Woodward, OK.  Perhaps they stayed with Ode and Effie for this vacation.

 

We had some lovely dinners while we visited.  Mama was very fond of her brothers and sisters.  It was hard for her the next day when we went to or near Little River [Iowa] to see Aunt Mary and Uncle John.  They lived in a very old stone house, a rental, I believe.  They had six children – 5 girls and 1 boy.  They seemed very poor, even no screens on the windows, so flies and wasps were thick in the rooms.  Not as bad as at Helen’s, but enough to annoy.  There were several sticky fly-catching spirals here and there.  I don’t remember how many of the girls were home, but at least three were.  Lynn was working someplace and we didn’t get to see him.  We had a good chicken dinner, though.  Everyone had his or her own chicken.

 

Papa and John talked crops and took the boys out and looked at all the corn, wheat, and animals.  I do think Mama enjoyed having just ‘women talk’.  Mary was the sister who married late, and after helping to raise he 10 brothers and sisters, married John, who had two grown sons, and in a few years raised her six children.  Her youngest was about Janice’s age.

 

We spent one evening at Ralph and Pearl’s.  I don’t remember much about it, but it seemed as if they had been arguing, so weren’t too friendly.  Pearl was a second wife, the first having been divorced long ago.  She was, I learned later, very fond of any man, and ran around constantly.

 

We missed Newt and Pearl, who were on a farm in Oklahoma, and couldn’t come at that time.  We had a delightful visit with George and Sadie Ross.  Sadie was a second cousin to Mama.  They lived on a farm near Alden, and raised about everything they used or ate.  George was a cut-up and really seemed to love children, but had none.  They had a storage cellar where they kept so much canned, smoked, and other food.  The only way to get down there was from the kitchen, by ladder steps.  To say the least, George was a character.  He played jokes on everyone, played games with the kids, and sheared his hedges to look like animals.  Everyone always considered him a little lazy, but Papa always liked him.  I remember them coming to Colorado at least twice.

 

They had the most gorgeous antique furniture.  What a pity some of our families could not have had at least one piece.  When Janice and Harold lived in Kansas, they saw George now and then.  Sadie offered to give Janice the parlor organ, but Harold never tried to find a way to get it.  It was beautiful.

 

There is a picture among my photo books showing Sadie running from a wolf that is in mid-air, and George is attacking with an axe.  He gave everyone who came a copy.

 

We went to Wichita for a few days.  Papa’s sister Gertie and her husband Leverett lived there.  Leverett ran a potato chip factory in his built up garage.  Those were the best chips I have ever tasted!  And, that’s saying a lot, as I worked at Hiker Potato Chip factory two years later, and they were good – but not as good as Uncle Leverett’s.

 

Aunt Mary was short, a little chubby, and had a thick, reddish braid around her head.  Elizabeth, just my age, and Harold, Janice’s age, were at home.  Clewell, older, was married and, I think, living too far away to come.  Several cousins came (whom?).  One day Mama and Gertie took us three girls to town on the streetcar.  They got us each a present.  Elizabeth looked so much like her father – not a pretty face, but a likeable girl.  She came to Greeley to school, in about June `44, to get her Master’s degree.  She saw us several times, and we took her and a friend  (or two) to Denver to the Denver Post Opera at Cheesman Park.  Already she and they were ‘old maidish’.  Elizabeth still lives in Wichita, where she retired from teaching years ago.  She still lives with one of the friends who came to school here.  She never got her Masters, as the next year she was in a bad auto accident and couldn’t miss one summer (rules!).

 

Papa’s other living sister lived in Tucson, AZ.  She was Aunt Carrie Rechif [I have it listed as Reichief in the genealogy section].  We’ve lost track of her family completely.

 

We visited briefly some other relatives, but I don’t remember their names.

 

We went back to Lyons.  I think we saw Uncle Frank Forney sometime and Pearl.  She had married Burt and he [Frank] had married Maude.  Frank and Burt were Grandpa Forney’s sons by his first wife.  When both Burt and Maude died [Burt died of TB in 1915], in a few years Frank married Pearl [I don’t know where the name Pearl comes in – none of the wives are listed by that name in my records…].  These two half-brothers [of Daisy] ran the furniture store where Mama and Papa bought their first furniture, before they were married.  I have some of it.

 

We were at Dollie and Ray’s another day, then started for home.  No incidents until we came to Castle Rock (almost).  About 10 miles out, once again the bearing went out.  I don’t remember how we got to town, but Papa and George drove into a farm lane and once again got ready to work.  Mama, Janice, Bob, and I got into town by getting a ride from someone.  We rented a hotel room and stayed all night.  Papa and George had come in with us, got what they needed, and went back and slept in the car. 

 

I guess it was an adventure, but at the time it was grim.  No one had much money.  We were told to order a bowl of cereal for breakfast the next day.  Close to noon, the car was repaired and we went on.  I guess it wasn’t as bad this time.  I guess that’s one reason we never liked Chevrolets. 

 

We came in to 2020 [Spruce] sooner than we had expected.  Our renters weren’t very happy, but they found a way to move out.  They had been making rose petal heads – but we couldn’t afford to buy any.  We were so glad to be home.

 

That fall, the stock market crashed, and the Depression began.  It would be a grim time.”

 

 

 

INFLUENZA – 1918

 

“In the fall and winter of 1918, a terrible epidemic of flu was rampant all over the world.  I was only 3 ½ years old, but vivid flashes of our illness came through all through the years.

 

Papa became ill first.  He was not in bed many days – he forced himself to get up and help the rest of us.  We have often wondered if this caused a heart problem.  We had no indoor toilet and Papa carried the bedpan, slop jar, and wash basin so many, many times.  Then the chores had to be done.  He must have been utterly exhausted.

 

I think George had it worst.  He had not been too husky a baby, and that winter his ears became infected.  I remember so well the doctor coming at least once.  There was some awful tasting medicine, I remember that.  George cried a lot and needed Mama.  I think Papa moved the baby crib next to Mama’s bed so she could hold his hand.  How anyone could take care of six ill people, I’ll never know.  I’m sure some of us were not as sick as others.  Flashes of people’s faces, actions, and voices often come to me when I think of that epidemic.  How hard the doctors had to work!  And there was so little they could do.

 

The WWI ended that November, but flu had struck everywhere, and soldiers were not exempt.  I think Uncle Ode was our only close relative to be drafted, and he did not get overseas.  I don’t know how many relatives died in this fly epidemic, but Papa’s favorite young sister, Allie, died of it, and I think Virginia Mertz’s father did.  She’s Dick’s cousin, and her mother had died a few years earlier of TB.”

 

 

 

LAWRENCES

 

I was past ten when we moved to our new little home in Boulder.  It was much too crowded for six children and two adults, So Papa made plans to build an upstairs in the attic.  We got along for two winters and one summer, then the building began.  A neighbor who lived across the street, Mr. Lawrence, was interested.  He was a handsome man, with thick white hair and smiling eyes.

 

He came across the street to visit and brought a darling little red-haired grandson with him.  I have always like red hair, and having two younger brothers, I knew how to play and get along with boys.  But, I was a very shy person, and needed lots of encouragement in many areas.  Dale was about three, lively, and fun to play with.  I was just past eleven, and when Mr. Lawrence asked me to bring my brothers over to his house and play, I was very happy.

 

We were often invited again, and a few weeks later was asked to be a ‘helper’.  We had never heard of ‘baby –sitters’.  We ‘took care’ of children.  Mrs. Lawrence was as sweet and kind as her husband, and explained that if I would keep Dale busy, she could get her work done sooner.  She wanted to visit her son and his wife too, and Dale was a pest at times.

 

It really kept me on my toes – trying to think up new games to play and to keep Dale busy.  I took care of him about twice a week all that summer.  In August, the family invited me to go to Lyons on a picnic with them.  Their big Nash touring car was a treat to ride in, and I was on my best behavior all day.

 

Our friendship with Lawrences lasted many years.  I’ve never forgotten their kind, thoughtful ways of helping a shy little girl.”

 

THE REVEREND BECKMAN

 

“From the time I was ten until I was married, our family very faithfully attended the Methodist Church in Boulder.  It was a very beautiful stone church, only seven blocks from us.  The Reverend Beckman was the minister.  He seemed to be one of the most patient, understanding man I have ever known.

 

His sermons were strong, helpful, and never too long.  He seemed to hold everyone’s attention, and never did he have to read a word.  He must have had a wonderful memory, and probably worked very hard to present his ideas.

 

All through my teens he was active with us, especially in our Junior and senior high years.  We were all active in Epworth League, and in due time, one sister, one brother, and I were all presidents of the League.  Our dear Reverend Beckman helped us, counseled us, listened to us, and was active many years after I moved away, a married woman.”

THE BARTONS

 

“We had been married for five years, and had endured living in tiny, messy, bed-bug ridden apartments.  Now, we had found an old but clean and neat house to rent.  There was only one drawback – the elderly neighbors who lived across a vacant lot did not want children to bother them.

 

The day we moved in, we were tired and discouraged.  Then we heard a pleasant voice.  ‘Good morning, neighbors’.  It was Mr. Barton, waving to us on his was across the lot.  He carried a plate on which was some coffeecake, neatly wrapped.  He patted the boys on their heads and left.

 

It was the helpful beginning of a helpful relationship.  John James Barton was short, gray-haired, sturdy, and the best neighbor we have ever had.  His wife, Lillie, was kind, too, a large, kind, thoughtful woman.  They were a very religious couple, attending no organized church, but living their ideals.

 

They both grew to love and appreciate our small boys, who always seemed especially good when with the Bartons, whose credo was ‘never tell a child he’s bad or naughty.  Tell him he can be better and be happier.  Be positive, not negative.’

 

We lived there for seven years, and the emanations of their goodness are with us always.

 

A Poem for John and Lillie Barton

 

Your lives touched our lives, once long ago.

Your smiles touched our hearts more than you know.

Blessings you gave us, lessons of life,

Helping us always, through pain and strife.

Linger a moment – leave us not alone,

Age has defeated you – can we atone?

God saw you gentle and always kind,

Somehow your going leaves us peace of mind.

 

 

 

WILMA SCOTT

 

 

When our eldest son was ready for third grade, he had to start going to Central School, the large red brick building we are familiar with.  Children in our area all attended the small, cozy, 5-room, Washington school for Kindergarten, 1^st, and 2^nd grades, and we knew the change would be difficult.  Rumors were circulating about the new principal, Mass Scott.  She was too strict, too bossy.  There was a problem about lunches.

 

When we first met her, we liked her, and the lunch problem was easily solve.  As I worked with her on PTA organizing, playground problems, and school discipline problems, I soon discovered that Wilma Scott was an absolute marvel.  Within a few weeks, she knew all the children’s names, parents’ names, and relationships.  There were 400 students, and I never knew her to miss a name.  She was strict, but she was kind, helpful, and always interested.

 

Each of our five boys was privileged to have her as principle of his school, at least part of his primary school years.

 

A few years ago, a beautiful grade school was given her name – an honor she greatly appreciated.  We continue to see her at church, at our grand children’s school functions, our son’s weddings, and social gatherings.  We are retired now, as is Wilma Scott, but her way of living affected so many Greeley people.  It is a privilege to know her.”

 

THE BROWN BOYS

 

Richard Sears Brown, Jr.

 

“On a perfectly gorgeous June day in 1936, my sister Janice and my mother took me to Boulder Community Hospital for the birth of our first baby.  If anyone was ever ignorant about the details, pains, and aches, it was I.  We had been married less than a year, and my doctor’s examinations were brief, though I thought he was great because he was friendly, and talked a lot.  At 2:10, June 12^th, our little son arrived.  No serious problems had arisen, not even stitches!  Janice said that she thought the baby’s head was a little pointy, but the doctor said that heads often looked out of shape, but only for a short while.

 

Dick had gone out east of Boulder for a job, and arrived home that evening.  He thought our Dickie was beautiful – so did I.  On the birth certificate, we named him Richard Sears Brown, Jr., to be known for five years [I’ll bet it was longer…] as Dickie.

 

In those days, we had to stay in bed for ten days, no sitting up, and with bed baths.  Dickie was a sleepy head, and it took a while to get him to nurse.  We stayed with my parents for a month, then Dick got a job near Aspen, working on a road crew, so baby and all, we packed out to Glenwood Springs, where Dick’s folks had rented a one-room cabin for the summer.  Mom B. wanted us to move in with her and Dad B. and their two sons, but we rented a neighboring cabin.  I couldn’t imagine even trying to squeeze another bed into that tiny space, and the baby’s basket, too.  The boys [Max and Wayne] went out to sleep in a tiny make-shift tent beside the cabin.  Dick was with me only Saturday afternoon and Sunday, but we surely needed a little privacy.

 

Mom knew everything about babies – what I should eat, drink, say, or do, especially as long as I was nursing him.  When he cried, it must be because of something I’d eaten.  If I fed him early, I was spoiling him.  If I were late, I would upset his schedule.

 

One weekend we indulged in a swim at the beautiful mineral spring pool at Glenwood Springs.  I was admonished, both by Mom B. and a visiting Aunt, that mothers of nursing babies shouldn’t get into the pool – it would ‘spoil my milk’.  It didn’t.

 

Dick’s two younger brothers, Max and Wayne, ages 14 and 12, spent the summer at a nearby stable, where horse breeding was going on.  When we went to Grand Junction for peaches in August, we bought jars and canned two bushels of peaches.  And straight from the stables came Max and Wayne, unwashed, reluctant, but having to help.  I almost rejected the whole batch of fruit, but we needed everything we could get, as Dick intended to go on to school in September, in Ft. Collins.

 

We found a tiny apartment, and he was registered.  Our bed was in the living room, Dickie’s in the kitchen.  Our grocery allotment was $2.50 a week.  We had canned a bushel of tomatoes after we moved, so our diet consisted of lots of oatmeal, macaroni with tomatoes, and those peaches.

 

Dickie was a delightful baby – lively, curious, and gained weight fast.  He rolled over early, sat up alone before we expected it, and walked at 11 months.  At night, we would put him to bed and go to the living room so Dick could study.  Soon, we would see a little head appear between the bed rails – Dickie was watching us.  Time after time one of us would lay him down again.  Finally, we learned to put a blanket over the side of the crib so the light didn’t shine onto the baby.  There was no door between the rooms.

 

Dick had to drop out of school in February, and in March we moved to Greeley [I question the timeframe – they moved to Boulder first…].  By then, I was aware of a new baby on the way.  My parents were horrified, Dick’s parents scolded.  How did that help?  Altogether, though, we were so proud of Dickie.  WE knew another baby would be just as wonderful.  Dickie was walking and talking by 11 months – only a few words, and charmed everyone who saw him.  His hair came in so curly, sort of a silver brown.

 

At 14 months, he had his first haircut, much to my regret, for there went his curls!  He was a little show off, and loved to stand on his head, laughing at us between his legs.  He sneaked apples or lemons and nibbled at them.  Often that summer, he stood at the screen door and yelled ‘hi’ to anyone who went by.

 

I went for a walk frequently, and he wanted to walk up every sidewalk and sit on a porch step for a minute, sometimes greeting everyone he met with his ‘hi’.  One day, a nice woman in an adjoining apartment asked whether she could take him for a little ride.  I let her take him, then wondered what I had done.  We knew so little about our neighbors then.  I had a brief half-hour of wondering, then they came back.  After that, we felt better about neighbors, and this one often took Dickie walking, or just to her apartment, and I could get a little res.

 

The new baby was due soon, and Dickie had a new word – ‘baby’.  He was to go to Boulder when the time came, with my folks.  My dear mother – so many babies she helped with, so many brothers and sisters to keep when a new bay arrived.  She always offered to help.  One year, she had three grand children in the family and she helped with all three.  One of them was mine.

 

Dick, Jr., married in 1957, a lovely girl he met in college, and they graduated man and wife.  They have three tall and handsome sons, and a talented daughter.  Dick graduated in 1958 from the college here, and as a second lieutenant in the Air Force.  It has been a go career for him.  It 1971, he got his Masters degree at Auburn, in World Affairs, and at the same time studied at the Staff Officer’s School, and became a Major.

 

He spent over a year in Vietnam and felt we needed to be there, but someone wasn’t handling it right.  He rightly felt that the rioting and protests here were completely out of line and un-American.  After another remote tour, in Alaska, he came home to Omaha, and the Strategic Air Command, then retired, after 23 years of duty, in 1981.”  [Mitzi

died of breast cancer in 1999]

 

 

George William Brown

 

“This was one of the apartments in Greeley which was infested with bed bugs.  We’d never had them before, so we knew they were in the walls and under the edges of the wallpaper.  We got some dope at a drug store, and held the bugs at bay for a while.  Apartments were so hard to find – our budget allowed $15.00, and with children, it was almost impossible. 

 

We found a nice buggy for the new baby, and I settled down to wait.  On the exact date the doctor had set, I was off again – August 18, 1937.  Our neighbor promised to listen for Dickie, and Dick called my brother, who was in school in Greeley and had a car.  George William appeared at 5:30 a.m.  Also a small baby, he would be known as Billy.  He looked like my father, and still does.  He was named for our two fathers – George for my father and William for Dick’s.  I went home in seven days, but was a little shaky.  My doctor was most unhelpful, though he was liked by some.  We had no later check-ups, and when I called him for a part-time formula, he recommended Eagle brand and water.

 

We soon discovered that Billy would have brown eyes.  Dickie’s were blue.  His hair was light brown.  He weighed 6-13 and was 19 inches long.  When he was six weeks old, my sister’s husband died.  She lived in Lamar, so I took Billy, left Dickie with Dick’s parents, and went to Lamar with my folks.  It was very sad.  Lawrence was only 37, but had peritonitis from a perforated ulcer.  No sulfa drugs or penicillin then!

 

I had to stop nursing Billy, so when we all got home, I went to another doctor, who was to be our family doctor for the next 40 years, and got a sensible formula.  Billy was a charming baby, happy and sweet, but not as lively as Dickie.  He was slower to walk and talk, but his weight gain was good, and by now we’ve studied enough baby manuals to know that each baby has his own speed and development.

 

In January, Dick’s job ended and we went back to Boulder.  This time, we rented an apartment in the Brown’s basement.  We were there almost a year.  Dick got work with the Forest Service, making trails and fighting pine beetles.  I was alone a lot.  Billy was walking one day and hurt his ankle, so his walking was stopped for a while.  He was still a good baby, with a cute little grin, and both boys flourished.  Mom Brown was awfully hard to live near.  I wanted so much to do my own cleaning and cooking and have my own ideas.  She always knew that I was helpless.

 

As summer came on, we had lots of fun in the back yard, which was grassy and shady.  The boys loved it.  Billy sprawled and rolled all over.  Dickie had to learn not to stray.  I have always said I should have had twins – it wasn’t easy to have two babies 14 months apart.

 

In April, we took both boys, in pretty new romper suits, and had them baptized in the Methodist Church in Boulder.  We thought it was so wonderful that all four of our parents could be there, as well as several of our brothers and sisters.

 

George graduated from Aggies [Colorado State University] in 1959, working his way all the way.  He married in March 1958, and his baby was born before he graduated in 1959.  They have two sons.  After two years with the New Mexico Wildlife Department, he and his family moved to Greeley and he got his Master’s in math.  He has been teaching Math in Denver for over 20 years.”

 

David Forney Brown

 

“We moved back to Greeley in the fall of ’38, this time to stay, though we didn’t know it at the time.  We found a clean apartment this time, but it wasn’t heated well, so we moved again.  Our lives seemed to be a constant move.  This time our landlady seemed to worry about the boys ‘bothering’ her, so back to a smaller place we went – more bed bugs!  We now hoped to find a house to rent.  In November ’39, my father took ill, and after much nursing and a long hospital stay, he died in January 1940 of a heart attack.  How little they knew of heart problems then!  My poor mother was devastated.  She lived alone for the next 34 years, visiting all of us, never marrying again.

 

Our boys stayed with the Browns, and Dickie, only 3 ½, showed grandpa he knew many letters, and started learning to read.  Billy was just a loveable baby yet.  He looked so much like my father, and was such a good boy.

 

In a few months we got some furniture and looked for a house.  No more babies until we had more room.  In June 1940, we finally found a place where we could rent and still have our boys – we had begun to wonder.

 

That was a great summer, and more so because that was the summer we met the Bartons, of whom I have written.  In January I was PG again, and we knew that this time it would be a girl.  Dick was working nights, 4-12.  On September 30, at 12:30 a.m., he came home, and I alerted him to my suspicions – it was time to go.  My mother had been here a week, so we packed up and started for the hospital.  By now we had a car, but much good it did us.  We went three blocks and no gas!  It was shivering and shaking, hoping just to get to the hospital.  Dick remembered he had a key to a service station three blocks away.  He worked there part time, as a second job.  He got a can of gas, came back, and we went on.  As I went into the lobby of the hospital, that baby started to come.  A nurse brought a wheel chair, and in a few minutes I was prepped and ready, rushed to the delivery room and suddenly David Forney was born – a big, long baby – 9-6 and 23 inches.  Dr. Barber said ‘well, there’s your football player’.  He was wrong.  David grew to be our tallest  (at 6-9), and was All State basketball player in 1959, with Jim Baggot’s boys [at Greeley High School].

 

He was a new delight, a very active boy, and always big for his age.  He had one serious setback.  When he was almost three months old, we went to Boulder, as usual, to be with my mother and Dick’s parents.  David had a cold, but it didn’t seem serious.  We tried to keep him warm, and did everything our parents thought was best.  When we came home, he was worse – that cough was deep and tense!

 

We called our wonderful Doctor Barber, who came at once and gave David sulfapyradine – one of the first times he’d used it.  We closed off a room, tented a bed, and used steam for 24 hours.  It was an anxious time, but the sulfa worked.  Dr. Barber said he hadn’t wanted to alarm us, but David had a beginning pneumonia and sulfa had cured it.  It was like a miracle to us. 

 

On December 7^th, our world was changed forever when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  Eventually my three brothers were enlisted, and two of Dick’s.  Public Service Company insisted Dick’s work was essential, so he did not get drafted.  We had no more children during the war.

 

After his illness, David flourished.  At 5 ½ months, he amazed us by pulling himself up in his bed and starting to walk around to bed.  He was so young, but he was ready – no one helped him.  He was crawling up stairs at seven months.  Finally, Dick borrowed some tools and made a nice baby pen, one we could take apart and put in the car.  David didn’t climb out of it until he was about a year old.  We had a wonderful summer in `42, spending lots of time at Island Grove Park [north end of town] playing tennis and croquet.  With David safely in his pen, and Dickie and Billy well trained not to run off, we had a great time.

 

David would walk around the pen, pulling up the blanket that covered the bottom, and trying to eat grass or dandelions.  My brother George and his wife Evelyn thought it was hilarious – they had no children yet.  Then in the fall, George was drafted, and we had no more games at Island Grove.

 

David graduated in 1959 from Greeley High.  He got a full basketball scholarship to the University of New Mexico.  After a term there, he discovered he was being left no time to study.  He went another quarter, then had to drop out.  After a few months in Greeley, he left again, ending up in California at Aerojet General.  He soon discovered he needed more education, came home and married, went back and made up grades in a two year college, then started at Calpoly in Pomona, where he made the Dean’s list for most of his semesters.  He graduated in `70 in engineering, and took a job at Hewlett-Packard in Loveland, CO.  He and Bev had a boy and a girl, then Bev got colon and liver cancer and died in 1981 – a great loss to us all.  He re-married in 1984, and they are a family again.  [Dave has since been divorced (in 1991?).]”

 

 

 

Wayne Steven Brown

 

“We thought I family was complete.  How naïve we were!  The older boys were doing well in school, and David was four and looking to Kindergarten in a year.  The war was on our minds all the time.  My three brothers had joined p, and Bob was in Algeria.  Dick’s brother Max, a Marine, had survived Iwo Jima, but the youngest, Wayne, had died in Italy – February 24, 1945.

 

Now it was summer and we had word that two of Dick’s cousins were in Boulder and would come to see us in Greeley.  One was Lloyd, an Army Lieutenant, the other his sister Martha.  When they arrived, we had a big dinner and a nice visit.  Martha seemed strangely chubby, but I thought nothing of it.  After they had gone, Dick told me his dad said she was pregnant, and not married.  She was going t the Crittendon home in Denver.  I was shocked and hurt.  Her mother had no grandchildren – how could anyone let her own grand child go?  We went to Denver to see Martha.  She is a sweet, kind person, but she made a mistake, and even in the forties, how narrow minded we were.

 

We decided we would try to adopt her baby.  We went through proper channels.  They said it was up to Martha.  She had a darling baby girl a few weeks later.  We saw it once, and then we were informed by letter that Martha felt it should be adopted outside the family.  We felt awful, but knew she wouldn’t change her mind. 

 

Thus, our only planned baby was on his way.  As usual, I had a pleasant, happy pregnancy.  This time I preferred not to be caught at home, as I had before.  At the first twinge, I went to the hospital.  Dr. Barber said I had more babies than he had, so I should know how it felt.  I was there three days – no luck, so I went home again, and waited a week.  Once again, I took castor oil, and sure enough, Wayne Steven was born about 5:30 p.m.  Dr. Barber was scheduled for a vacation, so Dr. Madler, his older partner, officiated.  We had really planned for a girl this time, but again, when we were told he was big, we knew it would be a boy.

 

What a beautiful boy – good natured, happy, and a good 9-8 at birth.  He did not walk till he was 10 months, but by then we had moved again, and the pen was so handy.  At a year, Wayne had black curls and gorgeous brown eyes with long curly lashes.  He had gained weight fast, but soon walked it off.  Now our family was complete.

 

Wayne had a hard time in school – seemed to need a lot of pushing.  When the draft board called in `65, he joined the Marines.  He had just met Jane, a peppy, happy, artistic girl.  They sort of became engaged.  He was sure, but she was not.  He was sent to Okinawa, and though we had signed papers to keep him from VN while Dick was there, he did go there in a CIT [counterintelligence team] capacity.

 

He came home in `69 and married Jane.  When he got out of the service, he and Jane moved to Ft. Collins and he and Jane [not very much Jane work] worked his way through four years of school.  He graduated in Social Studies [actually it was History/education].

 

They have two girls and one boy, and when Jessica was under a year, Jane had breast surgery for cancer in 1979.  In 1982 she had re-construction, but in 1983 they discovered cancer had started again and covered [spread to] her bones [and most other organs].  A year of miser and agony followed, with her folks driving from Littleton often [almost every week].  She died in December 1984.  Wayne has worked so hard to keep things going.  Now he has just opened a popcorn and candy store in downtown Greeley and hope to keep his little family together.”

 

Randall Gilbert Brown 

 

I had grown discouraged working at Greeley Dry Goods.  Mr. Fisher was pleasant, but very fussy about some things.  Two summers I had to quit work so I could be with Wayne and David.  Thus, I was put to work on a part time basis, and it was so hard to learn where all the stock was, and know how to handle it to make sales.  I never was good enough at selling to get a bonus, and salaries were so low then.

 

In `54, when son Dick was 18, we decided to make a family trip to California –our first.  We knew our boys were soon going to be leaving for school or jobs.  Someday I will write about that trip – all six of us tented all the way!  I knew when we left that I was PG; we were gone almost four weeks.  Coming home, we brought a small niece with us – she would visit a grandmother.  I started to miscarry, and we drove all night to get home to my doctor.

 

I was so unhappy to lose a child.  My mother said it was the first miscarriage in the whole family. 

 

I went back to work, but after about six months, I knew I was PG again.  Once more, family members were outraged.  I was 40 – a dangerous age.  Could we afford another baby just now?  Surely this one would be a girl. 

 

On August 12, I was getting supper in the evening, when I knew it was time to rush to the hospital again, and again, Dr. Barber was out of town.

 

Dr. Artist delivered Randall about 2:30 a.m.  He was a blonde, a beautiful boy, born August 13, 1956.  August 13 was the day my best friend had planned a baby shower for me.  Everyone arrived, had the party, and next day, my friend brought the gifts all to the hospital.  It was lots of fun.

 

Randy has been a source of great love and pleasure to us, and because we were older, we probably spoiled him a little.  But, we know why babies are usually born to young people!”

 

 

 

FAMILY

 

“I did not go to work while the older children were small.  Salaries were low, but most people demanded so little – the Depression had ended, thanks not to a President’s scheming, but more to the war.  When salaries were frozen, so were prices, and during this period we were even able to save through war bonds.

 

By the time Dick, Jr., was 16, we finally found a big old house to buy.  I went to work at Greeley Dry Goods in 1951, and was placed in the domestics department.  It was hard to adjust, for I had not worked away from home for 17 years.  Those were the times when every customer was waited on, and ‘the customer is always right’ was the definite policy of Mr. Fisher, our boss.  We had always gone to the mountains on vacations; hiking, fishing, seeing Colorado’s scenery.  We had an old tent, some sleeping bags, and always cooked on a hand constructed grill area.

 

When our fourth son, Wayne, was born, Dick, Jr., became our ‘baby sitter’.  At ten, he was dependable, if a little bossy, and seemed to handle his brothers well.  He always could be in touch with us, if necessary.

 

He [Dick] was our first Boy Scout, and how he enjoyed it, doing well as a Cub and ending in Explorers.

 

In 1954, the year Dick graduated from high school – Greeley High – we decided to take the family to California, as we knew our boys would not all be with us much longer.  That trip is a story in itself.

 

Dick and Mitzi were married in the Methodist Church in Pueblo in December 1957.  She was a Pueblo girl.

 

How were our boys different?  One mother could have thousands of babies, and each in no way would be the same as the others.

 

Dick, Jr., was smart, generally quick with definite opinions.  He worked his way through school, but did live at home until he married, at 21.  He and his wife Mitzi graduated from CSC [UNC] in 1958, as man and wife.  He as an USAF-ROTC grad, and immediately went into that branch of the service.  He progressed well, and in 1968, when Vietnam loomed, he was required to go.  At that time, he was considered too tall to be a flyer (6-4), so he was mostly in services.  In VN he was in charge of chapel buildings, and saw a lot of action.  At one time, while he was stationed in Alabama, he studied for his Master’s degree, and also for Staff Officer’s School, graduating from both with honors.  He retired in 1981 with 23 years of service.  Dick and Mitzi have three sons and one daughter. 

 

George William chose to be called by his first name.  His steadiness and dependability were noticeable.  He and Dick went to Cub Scouts together, usually riding bikes.  As one could imagine, their dad was cub master or assistant several times.

 

George graduated from Greeley High in `55, and because he planned to go to Aggies [CSU] and study forestry, he was given a job spraying for pine beetles in southern Colorado.  As we had thought, once he left home, he was gone for good, except on occasion.  In his junior year, George found the girl he wanted to marry.  The girl was named Rosalie, and she was planning to help him through school.  A month later, she was pregnant, and was confined to bed frequently.  George also worked to stay in school.  Safeway gave him a job, and he worked and studied all four years.

 

George Steven was born on December 30 that year [1958] – our first grandchild.  When George graduated in 1959, he was given a job with game management in New Mexico, first in Carlsbad, then in Silver City.  He wasn’t satisfied with his work, and felt perhaps he was in the wrong field.  Two years later, they moved to Greeley.  George surprised everyone by announcing that he was going to CSC and get his Master’s – in Math.  He has studied, analyzed, figured, and decided teaching math would be more to his liking.  Again he worked at Safeway – and although it was hard work and sometimes discouraging, it was the store that gave him work.  Son Dan was born n Silver City, so now there were two babies.”

 

 

 

SOME NOTES WRITTEN BY HELEN:

 

Arrive in Model-T, Came to Colorado January 1, 1917, father ran ice plant in Kansas and electricity shops in railroad yards, moved to Colo. to ‘fish’ and to farm, ‘Harvey’ place – 1917 – farm – Longmont Colorado late 1918 – Meadow Park fruit farm 1919 1 mile south of Lyons, Colo., ‘Freeman Place’ – 1921 (fall) till 1924, Lyons – near old ‘Gilger’ house by North St. Vrain till 1925 – went to Boulder 2 or 3 blocks south of Main street – five older children attended school in Lyons – youngest, Robert, wasn’t old enough – Mother Daisy B. Osthoff – Secretary of first PTA – Lyons – had a dedicated and hard worker for the good of the school and children – besides farming G. Osthoff was an excellent electrician – won also many prizes at Boulder County Fair (for fruit, corn, hogs, millet)…

 

THE OLD SQUARE TUB

(By Helen Osthoff Reid Youngblood)

 

‘Twas bought for a dollar and twenty cents,

For washing clothes alone.

But what a life it has had since,

Counted one by one.

First came bath tub Saturday night,

The water’s hot; the kids took flight,

Then coaxed into submission.

A tub for ice, the pop to cool,

Cold water for a melon.

A place to mix up chicken feed,

There must have been a million.

One cold spring night, old mama hog,

Had seven piglets wheezing,

Put in the tub beside the stove,

To keep them all from freezing!

A water trough, a sailing pond

For small boys boats;

A container for seed corn. 

A rain water barrel,

A compost heap – a cement mixer,

A big flower pot, and then –

Retirement to the basement.

What a sad day – till glory be

Came Harvey Larkin and John Markey!

They fixed up that old tub to stand,

A soothing solid place to land,

In our Wesley Senior’s Kitchen Band!

 

 

 

RATTLESNAKE

 

“Living in the foothills as we did, there was danger of rattlesnakes.  My mother continually cautioned us about snakes.  We saw lots of harmless water or garter snakes, but we learned to watch for rattlesnakes and listen for a ‘rattling sound like dry peas in a pod’.  I remember the first one I ever saw.  It was in the afternoon, and the cows had come in from the pasture.  Mother was with several of us at the pasture gate when suddenly we saw on the ground at the foot of the cows a big snake.  It was crawling around at the feet of the cows and was a rattlesnake.  We all backed away and stood horrified, watching it and fearing it would bite one of the cows.  My mother sent me running to the neighbors for help.  Luckily a man was visiting there and came to our aid.  He found a long, heavy stick, and cautiously walked toward the snake.  First he made a jab, then snapped the snake away from the cows.  There was some pretty fast action for a while.  First it seemed like the snake was in the air – then the man, but he did finally kill it.  What a relief it was to have that snake killed.  He pulled off the rattles, and I kept them for years.”

 

 

 

SPOT

 

 

 

“Spot was a big Holstein cow.  As white as snow with a few black spot scattered over her.  If I remember right, on the day we saw the rattlesnake, Spot was expecting a calf.  The cow pasture was a wooded place such as you don’t see much any more.  The trees were very thick with wild clematis climbing in them – lots of chokecherries and wild current bushes.  Under foot was thick grass and wild flowers.  Underground springs seemed to ‘sprout’ up every place.  Quite often the cows were hard to find in all of this. 

 

When we saw Spot come in alone, we knew she had hidden her calf – which cows sometimes do.  She seemed anxious, though, about being in alone.  She was restless and mooing.  When my father came in from the field, he decided she didn’t remember where her calf was, and that he would have to go help her find it.  Of course, my brother and I wanted to go too, but Mama was still very nervous about that rattlesnake, but we did talk her into letting us go.

 

So we started off – Spot in the lead.  She would walk real fast for a ways – look quickly around, then look back at us and moo.  This went on for some time, and we were getting pretty deep in the woods, when sure enough, Spot walked right past the place where her calf was.  We saw it there within a few feet of the path – curled up and comfortably asleep.  My father called ‘Spot here – come back here’.  She whirled like a faithful dog and came back to her baby.  So we roused the calf and drove Spot and her calf back to the farm.

 

Spot had been quite a baby and a favorite of my father’s for a long time.  There was a good reason.  We pastured the cows in different fields – depending on the season.  A very old couple lived near us, about ¼ mile ‘down the lane’.  One day, poor old Mrs. Montgomery came rushing up the lane – staggering with fatigue and practically speechless.  She gasped something about one of her cows – drowning in the ditch or something.  Someone rushed after my father and they hurried to the scene of the trouble to find Mr. Montgomery crouching half in and half out of the ditch, desperately trying to keep Spot’s head out of the water.  They didn’t know at first what was the trouble, but decided Spot had broken her front leg when she had fallen down the bank into the ditch.  The old folks had heard her moaning and were trying to save her.  Word was quickly sent around to the neighbors and even in town.  A short time later, several men were gathered around to see what could be done.  All the old timers said ‘shoot her – you can’t save her when she’s in that shape’.  But my father just wouldn’t give up.  Spot was a valuable cow to us and a wonderful milk cow, so he decided to try to save her.  They got a team of horses hitched to an old sled, which was like a platform attached to two smooth logs.  After some struggling and some hard work, they hauled Spot out of the ditch and onto the sled.  To everyone’s surprise, she laid quietly on the sled while they hauled her home to a long, low barn.  There they made a hug ‘sling’ – suspended from the roof – out of rope, heavy canvas, and burlap.  They put heavy splints on Spot’s broken leg, and hung her up in that huge hammock-like affair by passing it under her and leaving her hanging so her feet just didn’t quite touch the floor.  Spot did get well – it took weeks.  We babied her terribly during that time.  I think she was very grateful, and after that, whenever she saw my father any place, she would just open her mouth and bawl.  Just her way of saying ‘hello’, I guess.  It wasn’t just a ‘moo’ – it was loud and sounded like a fog horn.”

 

 

 

NELLIE

 

“And then there was Nellie.  All the other horses I rode were just plain farm workhorses.  To me they were wonderful, but just harmless horses I took over when I wanted to ride.  Our landlord brought Nellie to our farm to have her there to break so his wife could ride.  She was gray and a real saddle horse.  Slim legs and body, alert, pretty head – but she definitely was not ‘lady-broke’.  She was afraid of women, and very skittish if any women or girls came near her.  But of course, I just wanted more than anything to ride him.  They finally did let me ride her once.  Such a nice creature to ride!  She would turn quickly – ‘on a dime – if you wanted her to, and could run like nothing I’d ever seen.  I tied her to a tree while I dismounted and went into the house.  Immediately, she broke away and went running off across my father’s beautiful live onion patch.  He had the irrigation water running on the field, and when she ran, every footprint was a great jagged hole in that soft mud.  She sure tore up that onion field, and my father was very unhappy.  So she was turned out to pasture for the summer.  I tried in vain to become friends with her, but only once would she let me near her.  I had taken a pan of oats up onto the side of the hills to see if I could catch her.  She acted as wild as a deer.  I followed her back and forth for miles, I think, talking to her and calling all the time.

 

At last, I did get close enough to her to let her smell the oats.  Then she was standing still and ZI very slowly walked up to her.  Cautiously she started eating and I very slowly petted her nose.  Then with a very quick little movement, I grabbed he halter.  Impatience was my mistake.  I had that halter very firmly in my hands and she reared up suddenly.  The next thing I knew I was lying on my back on a big flat rock.  I don’t believe I was knocked out, but things sure were hazy for a while.  I sat up and looked for Nellie.  She was galloping away – off in the distance.  I just sat there and cried, and finally went home.  I was surely sore and stiff for a few days after that – but I never did get to ride Nellie again or make friends with her.”

 

 

 

“Deck was another of my pet loves – horses.  He didn’t belong to us but to our landlord.  He was young, big, frisky, and just as cute as a great big kitten.  He was a sorrel with a white face.  He had a nice flat back like the horses they perform tricks on in a circus.  I wanted to ride him, but our landlord said that he was wild and hadn’t been broken to a saddle, though he was very gentle in harness.  I just couldn’t imagine how any animal so pretty could be mean.  My mouth just literally watered to ride that horse!

 

My folks quite often took a ride in our old Ford on a Sunday afternoon.  One Sunday they planned a little trip, and somehow I begged off and they left me home alone.  Now was my chance!  I got a halter and a bucket of oats out of the barn and headed for the pasture where Deck was with the other horses.  He was very easy to catch and to halter.  I couldn’t get on, so I led him to a high gate made of poles.  I held him tightly against the gate while I climbed up on it.  My heart beat furiously while I talked to him and petted his nose and neck.  Finally, I started petting his back.  I leaned on him – nothing happened.  Then I slowly slid one leg over his back and then I was on his back.  Do you know what happened?  Nothing!  He just turned and trotted gently away.  I did get scolded afterward, but I didn’t care.  I got to ride him once in a while!”

 

 

 

“When we lived up the North St. Vrain, the Longmont power plant was about ½ mile west of us.  The water, which ran through it for power, came past our house as a nice little stream.  We had a lot of fun fishing and wading in the stream.  One day the water in it suddenly stopped running, and we found out the plant was closed for a day for necessary repairs.  That left a few fish in the pools and along under the banks of our stream.  We children became interested and figured the fish would soon die anyway, so we went out and tried to catch them.  Of course it had to be by hand, so we children would wade cautiously out to their hiding places and try to grab one.  This didn’t do much good, so we hunted up an old fishing net my father had had for years.  My brother said this wasn’t legal, so we prepared to use it with a sense of guilt.  We were close to the road, so when a car came by someone would yell a signal and we would frantically wad up the net and hide it.  This went on for several hours.  What a sight we must have been to anyone going past on the road – a bunch of youngsters sitting or sprawling or kneeling in a nearly dry creek bed, with guilt on our faces. We did end up with quite a batch of fish – I think two trout and the rest suckers.  My father didn’t think they’d be worth cooking, but we thought they tasted pretty good.

 

 

 

MAY VS. MAY

 

My best friend, Fern, and her family lived about ½ mile from us.  I was always ‘horse crazy’, as her family said, but she didn’t care much for horses.  However, her older sister rode a lot – and the horse that she rode was named May.  She was always challenging me to a race on our mounts.  I was riding my May whenever I could then, and nearly always rode bareback, without a saddle.  But because we sometimes used May in the fields, I couldn’t ride her very often or very fast.  Besides, I guess my folks thought I was to young to be riding fast or racing.  I was 13 then.  Well, one day my friend’s sister, Hazel, said, ‘come on Helen – let’s race.  I’ll bet my May can beat your May.’  It was too much of a temptation.  We rode our mounts back off the main road about a half a mile – up a rough, rocky road.  Fern gave me the signal, and we were off – down the hill and over the rocks, me on a horse that I was not supposed to race.  My horse won the race – easy – and Hazel was mad. 

 

That night at supper, my father said, ‘well, how did your race come out?  I didn’t see the finish.’

 

Startled, I replied ‘Oh, I won’.

 

He had been watching from the field the whole thing.  All he said was, ‘good for you, but you shouldn’t have run May over that rough ground’.”

 

 

 

BRONCO BUSTER

 

I guess I must have been a ‘harem-scarem’ tomboy!  One of the farmers near us bought and sold stock of all kinds.  One time, he brought in a herd of what we called wild horses.  I honestly don’t know what they were, except that they were larger than ponies, smaller than horses, and very wiry wild.  He had quite a time keeping them in a fenced pasture, and one or more of them was always roaming loose in the road.  So it was only natural for some of the kids to be always be trying to catch them.

 

About noon one day, several of our neighbor boys came leading one of those little horses.  He was fighting and mad, but as long as they kept their distance, he wasn’t too bad.  I don’t know yet how they had got their bridle on him.  I rushed out all excited and wanted to know who was going to ride him.  Why, no one was – they were afraid.  Now he looked tame, I thought, and about that time someone challenged me to ride him.  ‘That should be easy – he is so little’, I said.  I never could mount a horse alone, so someone held his head and someone else boosted me up.  He was off like a shot – first just running, then bucking.  It seemed like I rode him a long, long ways, and I felt like he bucked and twisted on every jump, but I guess I was just scared.  I couldn’t ‘pull leather’ because he didn’t have a saddle on – but I sure grabbed his mane and held on!  Finally, he cut sharply across the road and I simply couldn’t stay on any longer.  I landed on my back, and for a few seconds couldn’t breathe.  The horse ran on down the road and up the steps to someone’s front terrace.  I limped back home – I think the most injury had been to my pride and dignity!  And the boys had to catch ‘my horse’ again to recover their bridle.”

 

“May was a big horse –for years I wasn’t allowed to ride he; she was just too big.  There were two women who lived up in the big hills west of us who used to drive by sometimes with a big black horse hitched to a wagon.  My folks became acquainted with them.  These two ladies ate dinner at our house one day, and the youngest one – Dollie – took a liking to me, I guess because I loved horses.  She gave me a pretty ring with opals in it, and I thought her harness horse – Dick – was just super.  Not too long after that, father bought Dick.  I always called him mine, though I knew he was not.  He was old and gentle and I could ride him safely.  I could ride him anyplace, but I could never get him to go faster than a trot or a slow lope.  The children in town called him my ‘old nag’, and made endless fun of my beloved old Dick.  One winter morning, we could see old Dick lying off across the field, by the road.  My father said he was dead – of old age.  I was just heart broken, and fought to keep back the tears.  We had to walk past the place on our way to school.  I couldn’t bring myself to more than glance at poor old Dick.  Some of the boys made wise cracks about my ‘poor ol' nag’, but some of them kept still in sympathy.  That night after school, the body was gone.”

 

 

 

UTTER NONSENSE

(Using names from a senior citizens roster)

 

“Planning the reunions at ‘Olsens Woods’.  Oh ‘Shaw’!  I have such a ‘Toothacker’ and feel so ‘Zick’.  I need ‘Console’ation and help in these plans!  While the children are hearing a ‘Larkin’ in the pool to-‘Dey’, please go ‘Sopp’ up that water on the edge.  ‘Barry’, go through the ‘Greenfields’ to the ‘Barnes’ and bring back some ‘Frash’ milk.  Let ‘Elli’get that ‘Eg’-‘Bert’ wants for breakfast.  It’s also good for ‘Jack-son’, ‘John-son’, and ‘Erick-son’.  I ‘Wish-art’ would have the ‘Gardeniers’ bring in a ‘Peck’ of celery ‘Harts’ from the garden before they ‘Wiltse’.  Have the ‘Bassett’ catch and ‘Holt’ of those ‘Cranes’ ‘Streed’ in the  ‘Small’ Wood’.  ’Mabel’, please get those ‘Mason’ jars of ‘Burberrys’ from the cellar and make some pies.  Then go lengthen your skirt to ‘Medcalf’ before your ‘Swain’ gets here.  ’Watts’ keeping ‘Margaret’ so long at the ‘Schumakers’?  If the dinner doesn’t ‘Souter’, please add ‘Curry’ to the ‘Coxe’ ‘Browning’ in the oven.  ‘Ring’ up ‘Clara’ and ‘Warner’ ‘Watts’ ‘Blum’-ing on ‘Berggren’ ‘Drive’.  Keep you ‘Chinn’ up and get some ‘Youngblood’ into the activities.  Let’s have a ‘Fasching’ show!  We need ‘Fuller’ ‘Hooper’ skirts to get a ‘Longwell’ with the ‘Bunch’, and please the ‘Commander’.  Tell ‘O`Brien’ to ‘Fitch’ a ‘Casbeer’ from ‘Franklin’, and later we’ll play ‘Pinney’ ante.  Tell ‘Edson’ to watch ‘E-step’.

 

Signed An Nonymous

 

 

 

The following was written separately from the main body of information (according to the date(s), most of it was written long before the above information).  Anyway, there is enough new information or thoughts that I decided to transcribe it as well…there will be some gaps in the text, but that is because I found some information which was strictly repetitive and I decided to omit it and go on.  It will be indicated by ………  Wayne

 

“It is always easy to ‘think’ things to write, but more difficult to put them on paper.  Because our boys are so widely separated in age, each will remember a different home.

 

Our first ‘home’ alone was a little one-room cabin in Glenwood Springs… … …

 

[on to Ft Collins, after Glenwood…]  …I remember especially a Saturday in October when Herbert and a girl friend had come to Ft. Collins for homecoming.  We had planned an inexpensive meal – fish, which Herbert bought.  About eleven in the morning we heard a racket outside and here came the Browns – five of them, plus two friends.  They wanted to go to the game.  Herbert obligingly got more fish; Grandma had brought squash and other things.  We borrowed a few dishes and tools and some way got through the meal... … …

 

Apartments/houses in Greeley, 526 9^th Avenue; 1015 5^th Street; 1116 4^th Street; 1608 7^th Street; 1402 7^th Street; 2169 Buena Vista Drive.

 

In October we took the bus home [Boulder] for a visit.  While we were there, Grandma and Grandpa Osthoff had a call from Helen.  Lawrence was in the hospital with a ruptured stomach ulcer.  Grandma took a bus at once, to help.  Two days later, Lawrence died.  Dick had to go back to work, so we left Dickie with Grandma Brown, took Bill and Grandpa Osthoff and I drove to Lamar.  Things were in a terrible turmoil, of course.  We all loved Lawrence so much.  Their baby, Clayton, was only 6 ½ months old.  The others were Duane, 3, Donna, 5, and Darrel, 7.  Two days after the funeral, we came back to Boulder, bringing Darrel and Donna with us.  Later, Helen and the others moved up, and with Lawrence’s insurance put a down payment on a house at 15^th and Bluff in Boulder.  Dick came over and got the boys and me and we were in Greeley till mid-November when the sub-station was finished.  We came back to Boulder and rented the basement apartment in Brown’s house at 2120 Bluff.  Dick went to work for the forest service to fill in between jobs.  We lived there until November 1938.  It wasn’t a very interesting place, but it was nice in the back yard in the summer.  It was while we were here that Bob and Connie came to on their honeymoon.  Here, too, I learned about vinegarones (inch long, tan, many legged bugs like a centipede) and silverfish, which were around the toilet.

 

Once again, I was left during the week with Grandma Brown, and her ways were so different than any I had known.  Max and Wayne were in High School and Jr. High now, and were really ‘raising Cain’ all the time.  Max had quite a time, always getting into some scrape, but he could get around his mother with just a smile and kiss.  Poor Wayne was no apple polisher.  If he got into trouble, he just had to get out again.  He was almost uncontrollable at times, but Grandma fussed day and night.  She had the problem of trying to raise the boys alone, as Grandpa was home only every month or two.  Wayne was a fighter, and many a time got into trouble that way.  Once, he took John’s Model-A and tried to run away, but got only a few blocks.  John was so busy n school I almost never saw him.  He had several hobbies and a small ‘shop’ in the chicken house.  (Grandma and I bought about four-dozen cockerels that summer and shared feed.  I soon learned to dress a chicken, but couldn’t kill one.). 

 

We had company a few weekends, Jock and Bertie Breach, Frank and Betty DeVoss, Rodney Sheridan and his first wife.  Also joined a little sewing club made up of old school friends.

 

I will never forget Grandma Brown’s illnesses.  Sometimes she was in bed for a week, sometimes only a day or two.  It was hard to keep up with them, these ‘ female troubles’ that plagued her.  She had some blue douche medicine she kept and re-used, in a wash pan.  Later then pan was used to wash lettuce!  Also here, Max stepped on a pie.  Grandma always put pies and cakes on the floor to cool, and Max didn’t see it.  That’s the one he had to eat!  While here, too, Dickie had his second birthday, Billie his first.  We have some good pictures taken in the yard that summer.  Once, Wayne choked on a piece f raw potato.  Grandma was so mad that she grabbed him and shoved him down the back stairs to go to the doctor.  He stumbled, and out came the potato.

 

In November [1938], we had the good news that Dick could go to Greeley and start operating in the old sub-station.  We still had no car, so once again we got help moving.  My brother George was usually the one to help, with my folk’s car.  We rented a nice upstairs apartment – 1015 5^th Street (Jacobson’s).  There was a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bath.  At first, everything went well, but we didn’t have enough heat and it was a bitterly cold winter.  Finally in January, we found a cozy but big basement apartment at 2002 9^th Street (Styer’s).  They were reluctant to take children, but the boys behaved so well.  Here we had a big living room (about 15x30), bedroom, shower, and kitchen.  Everything went well until June, when Dickie took his tricycle out to ride on the sidewalk.  As soon as Mrs. Styer saw him, she said he would run off the walk and ruin her grapevines.  I said he would be careful, but the next day we were asked to move.  It was so sudden we didn’t have much time to look around.  In January we had bought a 1934 Ford two-door.  It was such a nice little car and we really needed one, but it was a little hard on finances.  Dick had gone to the new sub-station shortly after we moved to Greeley, but starting salary was only $90 – and we had two babies.

 

We moved to 1116 4^th Street – our last apartment.  Ethel and Charlie Howard rented the house.  Once again it was two rooms, upstairs to the bath.  We soon knew we were in for bed bugs again.  The Howard’s were most kind about helping fight the bugs, but how we stood it for a year, I’ll never know.  The boys slept foot-to-foot in a cot in the kitchen.  We slept in the bedroom – living room.  Except for the bugs, it wasn’t too bad.  The Howard’s were so good to us.  Charlie was a philosopher and ran a junkyard – and if better known, he would have done quite well.

 

Dick worked 12-8 most of this year, and it was so hard to keep the boys quiet while he slept. 

 

During this period I remember and appreciate especially Grandpa Osthoff visiting us whenever he was in Greeley.  He seemed to like the boys and always was so interesting to visit with.

 

We cooked on a little kerosene stove here, and had few conveniences, but we had several family dinners.  In November, before Thanksgiving, Grandpa Osthoff had some chest pains that were diagnosed as possibly being caused by flu.  I don’t know what all the doctor did, whether they had heart tests then or not.  At Christmas, he was just lying around taking it easy.  Bill seemed to have a special feeling for him, and a special sympathy.

 

Janice and Harold were there, too, with Joann and Ronald, and Helen with the four children.  Also Herb, George, and Bob.  George and Bob were in school, off and on.

 

Shortly after Christmas, Grandpa went to the hospital with another attack.  We went over, came back, went over again.  He died January 20, 1940.  It was all so hard on Grandma.  I’ve never known a more devoted couple.  Each thought the other was nearly perfect, and Grandma’s adjustment was slow.  The boys and I stayed about 10 days, then went back to Greeley.  It was a gloomy spring, but we did finally go to Chlanda’s and get some furniture on layaway.  Dick was working part time at Mike Rickett’s Service Station (10th Street and 8^th Avenue), and met many businessmen who liked him.  Then we started looking for a cheap house where the boys would be welcome.  We hunted until June, when 1608 7^th Street, having been remodeled and painted, was available, and Mr. Harlow didn’t mind children.  It was, in a way, a new era in our life in Greeley.

 

We had bought a new studio couch and chair in cinnamon color, an occasional chair in gold, a blue rug, a rubbed oak dinette set, a waterfall design bedroom set (with long bed!), a double bed for boys, a new gas range, and a metal cabinet.  We paid nothing down and $10 a month.

 

The house was an interesting one, and probably the first one the older boys will remember.  We had three bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and bath.  We had bought a new Thor washer in the spring, which my folks had given us the down payment for.  This went on the back porch.  There was a room in the basement for fruit and furnace and coal.

 

[1940] There was an old garage too, and a nice yard.  We planted a few flowers, and fudged over into the next lot (vacant) for vegetable garden.

 

There were nice hardwood floors downstairs, and I bought beige curtains and fixed things up so it looked real nice.  The dining area had once been a kitchen, and the cupboards were all there, as well as drawers and two pull-out bins, which probably had once been used for 100-pound sacks of sugar or flour.  It was an old little house, but homey and nice.  We paid $25 a month rent, and lived there almost seven years.

 

In 1940, we met Carl and Georgia Benson, Lois and Harold Curtis (Bob and Mary Runnells – 1945).  The Benson’s were good friends for a while, then moved.  The Curtis’ and Runnells later became good friends, and the Curtis’ are now among our best friends.

 

When Grandpa died, the PSCo, following its usual policy, gave George a job here in the sub-station, so he came to Greeley, rented a room, and we gave him meals, so we saw him quite often.

 

In December, just after Christmas, Grandma [Osthoff, I assume] fell off a chair and broke a bone in her foot.  The boys and I stayed with her about 10 days, then Dickie showed symptoms of mumps, so Dick came and got us.  Wayne had had them, and Max was so sure that he couldn’t give them to the boys, so Dick had taken them into the house to visit, in spite of my warnings.  The next day, both Dick and Dickie were ill, both very bad cases of mumps.  Bill never did get them.  (Grandma Brown laughed about that.)

 

Grandma’s foot bothered her for a good many months, and she was still limping for a year.

 

On September 30, 1941, David was born – a big 9 ½ pounds.  Grandma Osthoff came to help, and we had so many nice visits.  George became serious about Evelyn Short, and they were married in November.

 

December 7^th was the day that was to change all our lives.  I was nursing David when the news came – I’ll never forget, Grandma was there and we were all stunned.

 

We went to Boulder again that Christmas, and David, who already had a cold, came home quite ill.  A new kind of drug saved him – sulfapyradine.  Thank God for the sulfa’s and penicillin! 

 

This was also the year that Dick went hunting.  David was only eight days old, and it was very hard for me.

 

Dickie had started to kindergarten in September.  He went to Washington, which was three blocks east, one north.  His teacher was Miss Ila Jeary, who was to teach kindergarten to all our boys but Randy.

 

George and Bob were drafted some time in 1942, but Max and Wayne were a little young yet.  In January, Grandma Osthoff went back to Holyrood, and was with Janice and Harold when Marilyn was born (February 12, 1942).  At one time this winter, unofficial thermometers dropped to minus 40 degrees.  Several water pipes froze, and it was a long,  hard winter.

 

In August, the older boys went to visit Grandma Brown on the farm.  They had a good time, but both of them came home sick.  Dickie had stomach cramps, Billy, and ear ache.  The next day we rushed Dickie to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.  Once again, sulfa saved the life of one of our children.  He was out of school (1^st grade) for nearly a month.  Meanwhile, Billy started to school and liked it so much.

 

David was on his feet at 5 ½ months, walking at 7 months, a big, husky boy destined to become, at 22, a 6 ft. 9 in. 220 pound boy.

 

Our dearest neighbors while we lived here were the Barton’s, an elderly couple west of us, and the Grunkemeyers, a couple near our age who lived across the street.  The G’s had a baby, Dennis, in July of `41.  Next door to them were the Gillettes, Jack and Florence.  Later a brother bought the place, Lois and Miles.  They all live near Grover now, and we see them about twice a year. 

 

The G’s had a girl, Patty, and later Kenneth and Tom.  They live In Grand Junction now.  We see them every few years [Pat died in 1974]. 

 

Dick was never drafted because of his work and family.  George spent most of his war years in Texas.  Bob was overseas in Algeria and Italy.  Max went into the Marines in 1942 and Wayne tried paratroopers in 1943.  Max was in several bad campaigns, including Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima [I believe it was only Iwo Jima and, later, Korea], but came home safely.

 

Our little black haired Wayne, never quite getting into what he wanted, was killed [February 1945] in that last German drive in the Italian Mountains [Mt. Della Torraccia], and lies buried near Florence.  Max was married in June 1946, and in September, our Wayne was born – another 9-½ pounder.

 

The house had undergone several changes during the years.  First, Mr. H. installed gas in the furnace, but when the basement kept flooding, due to we know not what cause, he installed a wall furnace, about the time Wayne was born.  Having been ‘trapped’ at home with three babies (the water sack breaking early), I was over anxious and at the first twinge, went to the hospital about September 15. 

 

While I was there, Mr. H. started the work on the house, making an awful mess.  When I had to go home and wait another week, the house was in such a mess that I went to Curtis’ for a day and a night.  Dick spent hours cleaning up dust and plaster, which was in everything.  They had taken out a big chimney, and it was a mess.  Curtis’ were so good to us.  A few weeks later, Lois had a miscarriage (3 months), and we felt very bad about that.  Wayne finally arrived, and he was a big one – and a happy one. 

 

Now the veterans were coming back, and their priority on homes, apartments, etc., was quite strong.  Our house was up for sale, and we should have bought it, but didn’t.  We thought it was too old – too tumbled down.  It sold to a veteran for $4500.  We were given a short time to move, but didn’t know what way to go.

 

We finally settled on building our own – a Quonset hut, west of town.  It was new, but small and unbeautiful.  We bought ¼ acre, the Quonset, and finishings for $3600.  Harold Copeland lent us the money, and we started building.  In April 1947, we moved, with Grandpa Brown helping.  Never in all my life have I seen – or hope to see – such a mess.  The Quonset was fairly airtight, but no room partitions were in, and the furniture was dumped just anyplace.  It must have been at least a year before we found anything!  It was a very windy spring, and the dust rolled around us.  We had green-board doors that constantly warped, and no plaster on the wallboard yet.  We planned the living room/kitchen area as one, with an island divider – eventually.  We still had the little gas stove for cooking, but not even any shelves at first.  The heating was my folk’s old circulating heater, which did a good job, but the Quonset was long and hard to heat.

 

I have yet to find an answer to the chaotic dumping of furniture – boxes, though labeled, dumped into the bedroom areas whether they contained dishes, pans, or clot