Thanksgiving with the in-laws

Grandma W loved being with her family. Thanksgiving and Christmas were huge events on her calendar. She started her preparations in a week in advance of Thanksgiving. Grandma baked bread for her stuffing and then crumbled it in a huge bowl to dry. She baked her butternut squash that she raised in her garden in preparation for pie. The only fly in her ointment of unrestrained enjoyment of family time was Grandpa.



Grandma and Grandpa married during their thirtieth year. She imminently went into to production mode. In ten years time she had produced 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls.. Grandpa had bought the family farm from his mother, but with a large brood of children to provide for, income from the farm had proved insufficient. He took a job at the Nevada Test Site 3 hours away from home. He stayed at the test site during the week and farmed on the week-ends. For Grandpa the 4 day week-end was a great opportunity to catch up the farm work. Especially with his 4 boys there to help him. Grandma thought Grandpa ought to stay in the house Thanksgiving day and enjoy the company but Grandpa preferred to spend his time on the farm during the daylight.



Grandma's stratagem was to announce that Thanksgiving dinner would be at 1 pm. By the time the men folks had eaten, there would be no day light left to return to the field. The difficulty with this stratagem was that Grandma found it difficult to have Thanksgiving dinner ready by 1 pm. By the time I joined the family Grandma had trained all the men folk to ignore the 1 pm time and show up at dark for Thanksgiving dinner. As the family increased through marriage and the addition of 30 odd grand children Thanksgiving at Grandma became a challenge to the daughters-in-law. The horde of little people didn't understand why they had to wait for 4 hours to be fed. I lived 3 blocks down the street, so when my children were small I fed them lunch before we went to Grandma's house. As they got older they were out in the fields with their father or playing with their cousins so lunch wasn't as critical.

Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's was worth the wait. There was turkey and stuffing, ham, green beans, corn, green salad, fruit salad, mashed potatoes and gallons of gravy. For dessert there were pies of apple, cherry. squash, pumpkin, banana cream, and coconut cream. If you didn't leave the table as stuffed as the turkey it was your own fault.

Grandma didn't do all the cooking herself. As the family extended, we started bringing different dinner components according to our culinary talents. As a native Idahoan I detest instant mashed potatoes. I took over bringing the mashed potatoes and making the gravy. Gravy wasn't one of Grandma's culinary strengths. Various other daughters and daughters-in-law brought pies, salads and rolls. After dinner and cleanup the fun began. There were movies and games much visiting and story telling. Great time was had by all.

Grandma left us in 2007. Now Grandpa commutes to Thanksgiving dinner. It is easier for him to travel to his children. All that it is left now are a trail of memories.

The House That Dad Built

When my parents married in 1959 they bought a 2 bedroom trailer house. (Think the "Long Long Trailer" of Lucille Ball fame. When I was born, Dad added a room. When my sister was born a 13 months later he added another room that would described as a mud room. After another sister was born 3 years later, Dad became more ambitious and decided to add a log addition. He tore down an old log house and reassembled it to form a living room, 2 bedrooms and a storage room (pantry). We lived quite comfortably for about 9 years until my 2 brothers were born. Things were crowed. My youngest brother's crib was in the living room next to the piano. Dad decided he wanted a room to watch TV without having to compete with daughter practising the piano. This addition would include a loft bedroom for his three daughters over the TV room and a front porch. For this addition he would use cement and rock and then lumber framing. He also had a building crew in the form of his 3 daughters. The addition went up, was finished and life was less crowded.



Mean while the trailer was getting older. During the winter it was cold and drafty. When a blizzard raged outside a snow drift would appear in the bath tub. The kitchen was small and cramped. One day my father announced to my mother that he was going to tear off the trailer house and build another log addition. Her retort was that that she wasn't commuting to the bathroom or living without running water in the house. The next day he started moving the food out of the storage room. He converted the storage room into a bathroom. When school was done in the spring Dad hunted up rims and tires for the wheels under the trailer house. The day after school was out he hitched the tractor to the trailer house and pulled it away. When I arrived home I helped him build the foundation of rock and cement. This time Dad purchased the logs for an addition. When the foundation was ready Dad called his friend Ivan to help him put up logs. On the appointed day Ivan arrived with his son and they started building. While they were working one of the neighbors dropped by with something he wanted Dad to fix. When he saw what was going on the neighbor, Bill sent his son home to get his hammer. With everyone working the walls were up by the end of the day. Within the week the roof was on. We spent the rest of the summer and fall finishing the inside. By Thanksgiving it was finished enough to move the stove into the kitchen to cook the turkey for dinner.

My parents still live in the house that Dad built. We children are all grown up. Most of us are married with children of our own. We return to visit, not as often as I would like, but we do the best we can with what we have.

Deer Hunting

Deer hunting is a time honored tradition in the valley where I grew up. There has been more than one teenager embarassed when riding with parents in the car and came upon fresh road-kill. The parents stop and throw the deer in the trunk and take it home for breakfast. Waste not want not.

One fall I happened to be home for deer season. My brothers were teen-agers and wanted to go deer hunting. So Dad took us. Early Saturday morning at the crack of dawn we got up, caught and saddled the horses and rode across the fields to the Castle rocks at the foot of the mountain. We arrived at the rocks and Dad points to Stines canyon and said, "Let's ride up to that bunch of quakies (quaking aspen)." We rode up to the quakies and out bounded a deer. Dad unlimbers his rifle and it's dead on the ground. He field dresses it and puts it behind the saddle.

Dad points to a big rock across the face of the mountain. "Let's ride over to that big rock." We rode half way across the mountian and sure enough in the buck brush below the rock out bounded another deer. Boom another deer bit the dust was field dressed and put behind the saddle. Dad says, "Lets ride to the edge of Almo canyon." We rode over to the edge of the canyon and another deer bounded out of the brush. Another deer bit the dust was field dressed and tied behind the saddle.

"Let's head for home," Dad says. We pointed our ponies down hill and rode down the mountian. We were riding along a ravine behind the Castle rocks when Myron bailed off his horse with his rifle. Boom another deer bit the dust with a head shot no less.

We rode along home and hung the deer in the root cellar. Mom was somewhat dismayed at the prospect of processing 4 deer. We skinned them out and a few days later we cut and wrapped in the kitchen. We were in the midst of this project when my sister who was still at college called. She was calling to inquire if we could feed the soil judging team. They would be coming in a couple of days. Mom said sure. I cut a roast big enough and plopped it in the roaster and put the pan in the freezer. A couple of days later we cooked a ranch dinner with roast, potates. gravy, vegetables, salad and apple crisp for dessert. When we served dinner we let everyone guess about the meat. The soil team stuffed themselves with good home cooking. When everyone was stuffed to their satisfaction we told them they had been eating fresh venison. They didn't belive us.

Ghost Story

Roland Rose's grandfather built the victorian gingerbread ranch house during the early 1900s. Two generations later, the ranch fell on hard times so Roland sold the ranch with the house to Burke Heaton. The Heaton family consisted of 14 children 12 of whom were still at home. Burke had been a dairy farmer until development squeezed him out. He sold out and bought a cattle ranch.

Until the Heatons moved in, the house had been rented out to a long string tempory residents and was down at heel. The Heatons moved in and started restoring the house. All the activity raised the resident ghost. The ghost started wandering through the house looking for "James". When the house was relatively quiet, the ghost would go in and out of rooms and ask, "Is James here?" If someone replied that James was not there the ghost would excuse himself. The Heatons built addition to house. During construction they found a bottle with ashes in it. They kept the bottle in bathroom until the bottle broke. When the bottle broke the ghost left never to be heard from again.

Did he find James? There are those who claim that the spirit world is very close to our mortal physical world. There are those who can see. For some reason that young man did not rest easy in the spirit world. There must have been something left undone here that he felt was important enough to come back to do.

Summer vacation

Summer vacation? You mean we had a summer vacation??

Summer vacation started with Memorial day. We visited the dead relatives in the cemetery and met and visited with some of the living ones also. The kids played with their cousins who came to visit. The last weekend of May was the the first 4-H horse show in Alamo 60 miles away. I hauled 3 horses and 4 kids in a venerable 79 Dodge crew cab that once belonged to the US Forest Service. On the way we put-putted 2000 feet up Caliente summit. We are talking 2nd gear and a few steep stretches in granny. I suspect the Dodge tried to vapor lock but luckily didn't.


June arrived in all it's green glory and turned out to be one of the coolest June on record. June brought the 2nd 4-H horse show in Caliente the same week as the state high school rodeo. Number one son and his father went to Winnemucca to compete at the rodeo and mom stayed home to cover the horse show. This time it was 3 kids and 3 horses in the venerable Dodge 15 miles down the road. The horse show was remarkable for the number of horses and riders who parted ways. Leo who seldom bucks, crow hopped through the barrel pattern. Number 2 son stayed with him to win 1st place in the barrels. June was also the month we celebrated my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. This necessitated a trek to the ranch 8 hours away. My siblings and I did a surprise party for our parents. It was a fun time. I cooked peach cobbler in the dutch oven for the guests. We got to visit with people we don't get to see very often. My children met some cousins they had never seen. We left number 3 son at the ranch for an extended visit with his grandparents. He returned with one of his aunts in time for the family reunion.

We returned home in time for the 4th of July and the Farm bureau barbecue. Dutch oven chicken, potatoes, and cobbler. Next came Pioneer day (July 24th) and the family reunion. A couple of hundred people mostly children converged to visit and play and eat prodigious amounts of food. Pioneer day celebration consisted of a pancake breakfast, races, a pig scramble (number 3 son furnished some of the pigs) another sumptuous dutch oven dinner, lots of visiting, a parade ( the kids and their cousins rode horse back).

August arrived and the frantic scramble to produce the county fair. Months of planning culminated in the 2009 Lincoln Fair complete with amateur rodeo, exhibits, horse show and jack pot roping. No one got killed or maimed although there is permanent dent in the arena panels where the saddle bronc number one son was riding in the rodeo collided with the panels and ejected said son into the top rail. He walked away without a scratch and won the saddle bronc riding that night. Number 3 son won 2nd place in the steer riding. Mom collected a few more grey hairs. Once the fair was finished then came the annual peach canning festival. Eleven 20 pound boxes of peaches into quart bottles for winter consumption.

School has started and it is my opinion that school is a vacation.

Memorial Day

For those of us who live out at the end of a long winding road, Memorial is the day we go visit the dead relatives.

During my growing up years Memorial day meant a trip to the cemetary the day before to spruce up the graves before the out of town relatives arrived to decorate graves. The community cemetary was a fenced 10 acre plot of sagebrush and Indian rice grass littered with tombstones on the east facing slope of the Cemetary Hill. On the north boundary stood the white washed outhouse for the convinience of the low capacity bladder crowd.

We would load the back of the pick-up with rakes and shovels. Dad and Grandpa would ride in the cab, kids in the box. When we arrived at the cemetary custom dictated that we would start with the graves of our direct line. We would remove the rements of last year's flowers if any. We would take a shovel to the cheat grass growing on and around the mound then reform the mound with the rake. While we worked, Grandpa would tell stories about the people who were burried in the grave we were working on. When we finished with the direct line, we would branch out and start doing the extended family. Grandpa would explain the relationships and maybe a few of his memories about that person. Often times there would be other families at the cemetary doing what we were doing. This would be an excuse to exchange stories of common ancestors and maybe gossip about some members of the extended family. We would go home knowing a little bit more about who we were and how we got here.

I learned my family history. Some of my cousins envy the knowledge I have of the family and the relationships. I didn't work very hard for it. I just listened and tried to remember what I was told.

There are people from the city who are shocked and appalled at the condition of the cemetary. They are used to manicured greens with no effort on their part. They ignore the history staring them in face and don't recognize the opportunity to teach the rising generation about their roots. A lot of that rising generation is so busy playing with their electronic toys that they are cutting themselves off from their roots.

Now I'm working on teaching the rising generation about their roots. It's challenging. We don't have the excuse of going to the cemetary to clean graves. The school year doesn't end until after Memorial Day. So they don't have much opportunity to know the dead relatives on my side of the family. I do make sure they learn about the dead relatives that are buried here where we live.

The Thirty Year Reunion

Last fall I attended the 30 year reunion for the class of 1978. It was a hoot. We told stories and laughed until our sides ached.

I graduated from a small rural high school. There were 30 people in our class. I was related to about a quarter of the class and several of the teachers. Because we were a small high school everyone was involved in as many activities as they wanted or as their parents would permit. Every able bodied man that wanted to be part of the football team played on the team. If the football coach could have worked out separate showers there were several females he would have recruited also. Because we were so small people who played sports also participated in drama and music. When we went to speech and drama contests around the state we competed against the big schools. The speech and drama contestants from the large schools were much more flamboyant people than we ever met.

By the time we graduated we knew each other pretty well. It's fun to get together and vistit and find out what everyone is doing. Our last reunion alot of people who live close didn't bother to come but we managed to have a fun time.

The most memorable conversation involved Trudi, wing commander in the space cadet corps. You know her, the cheer leader who always dated upper class men. Who had to have the teacher's jokes explained to her. She's the one whose junior prom dress still fits her. She was there with husband #2. We were going down the list of people who weren't there and filling in where they were living and what they were doing. Someone mentioned that Kenyon was living with wife #2 in Santa Clara, near St George. Trudi speaks up and says, "I like St George. That's

where I'm going to find my third husband." We all laughed and laughed. Trudi was bewildered and then it dawned on her what she had said. As she fumbled around trying to extract her foot out of her mouth, June, one the more out spoken members told her, " I know I've said this to you before, JUST SHUT UP." We laughed some more.

Writing What You Know

I am not a writer by profession. My forays into writing fiction have ending up sinking into a mire of detail. On the other hand I've had alot of fun tellling stories (mostly true) about people and places I've seen and known. To communicate with a wider audience than found around the kitchen table I've written some of them down in letters or journal entries or Friday Challenge entries.

Writing what I know is the only way I know how to write. I enjoy reading a wide variety of fiction. Louis L'Amour is one of my favorite authors. I will agree that his plots are not the most original, but what a gold mine of information. My paternal grandfather was born in 1892. He left school at the age of 11 and went to work. He herded sheep, farmed, mined and eventually put together his own outfit. I grew up living next door. From an early age I remember sitting in the truck with my grandfather waiting for my father to finish what he was doing. To pass the time my grandfather told stories about his younger years. He told about his parents, siblings. grandparents, and assorted other relatives living and dead. When I started reading Louis L' Amour I recognized the characters. I think the reason Louis L' Amour was so successful was that he wrote what he knew. He had listened to the old-timers tell their stories, he had lived the life therefore his stories had a ring of authenticity.

We are all story tellers in one way or another. Story telling is how information has been passsed between humans for millenia. Some of us are good enough to get paid for it when we write it down.