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Grandfather used to
ride the old Chisholm Trail on the stage coach as a guard. In his
younger days before he started ranching in Saratoga, Wyoming. One of
the fondest memories of my childhood is the time we traveled to Oregon
in the old touring car. We stopped at a filling g station for gas and
I went to the out- side bathroom they had, it was famous for the
thousand springs that flowed down the near-by Mountains. My parents
got all ready to go and didn’t know I was still in the bathroom. They
left without me and when I came out I started crying and the man from
the filling station came out and took my hand and walked down the road
a little ways with me. I looked up and saw the touring car with the
tents on the fender-running boards and I was really glad to see they
had come back for me.
Another memory I have
is of my sixth birthday. It was a rule that if you could hide out and
no one found you would not be spanked. We lived across the street from
an old man who had lots of bushes growing around his place. I hid back
under them but they found me anyway. We were always a little afraid
the old man would catch us around his bushes which were actually some
kind of berries.
One Christmas I
got a doll with a little trunk full of clothes. My sister and Dude
Stockwell twisted her legs around until they broke off. I always loved
skating and we skated with skates you had to fasten to your shoes. I
wanted a pair of shoe skates which were just being made but it took me
about four years before I finally got them. There was a small pond
near home that we skated on. We would clear the snow off of it with an
old coal shovel. We used to take mothers potatoes out and lay them in
the fire we built at the edge of the pond. One of our neighbors was
the Ramsey family and I remember little boy about five who used to
smoke cigars. When we didn’t have sleds to ride down the hills with we
would use old cardboard boxes or sometimes we would use the coal
shovel,
In recalling events in
the home we finally bought in very hard times. It was a struggle to
keep all us kids fed and clothed. Mother made many of us girls clothes
and sometimes other
People would give us
some very nice things and we really appreciated them.
There was a lot of
love in our family and we all went to church together and sang in the
choirs and attended young peoples meetings We learned as a family
unit to do many things together. We had an old victrola and Mother and
father taught to round dance and square dance and sometimes we even
had a little dancing at home with my brother Tom and Uncle Harry
playing the music. Tom played the guitar and moutharp and Uncle Harry
played the violin and Mother played the madaloin. Tom was a real good
singer and sang a lot of jimmy Rodgers songs. Mother had a beautiful
voice and sang Irish and folk songs and one song I liked springtime in
the Rockies. We also had a piano that we all got a chance at some
lessons because we let a Mrs. Allen teach others on it and she gave us
all lessons. Rose was the only one that ever really learned to play
well. Of course Tom played ever musical instrument by ear.
We had a Shetland
pony when we were all small and we rode it until all our legs got too
long and it finally died. In the summer we took long walks into the
countryside. Our town was small so we could go almost anywhere
walking. The Platte River divided the town and we had a special place
under the railroad bridge that we used for a swimming hole.
Every summer our
parents took us camping in the Snowy Range Mountains and we would
spend about two weeks there. We slept in tents and cooked over a
campfire and we smaller children would have a little pole with a
string and hook on it to fish with. We caught mostly trout in the
mountains.
When we had
parties they were usually at home and we would make taffy and have a
taffy pull and the older of us would play spin the bottle and post
office. And sometimes Tom would play an old trombone he got a hold of
and the older ones would dance.
We used to
sometimes spend some of the summer with; Dad’s sister Emma and her
husband Logan. At that time they had Logan’s son Teets and they ran a
dairy ranch and we used to help bring in the cows.
Tom and Gladys
were married first as he was the oldest and then Florence and Earl and
that left three of us girls at home. Since we were all close to the
same ages we did most things together and even dated in a kind of
group. We got to go to dances as most of the times our parents went
too.
There was a lodge at
the foot of the mountains that had dances and they would dance until
daylight. One of my very dearest friends Laura Purdin was always with
us three girls. She seemed more like a sister than a friend. She had a
nice singing voice and I loved to hear her sing Red Sails in the
Sunset.
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