The Mystery of Agnes - Solved

I know I posted this picture before. All Grandma wrote on the back of the photo was "Agnes." I asked my aunt who Agnes was, and she thought Agnes was a friend, but didn't know any more. Then tonight as I was typing the tape Grandma made for me in 1994, I heard her talk about Agnes McLean. You just wait.

This is the house on Diamond Ave in Hillyard, now part of Spokane, she describes in the tape. When we visited in May we drove all over trying to find the place, and I think we did. This is an old photo of the time it was one of the Smith undertaking parlors. There was a much larger one in downtown Spokane, but this one served Hillyard, which was more working class.

Here is what I typed.

Carol: Tell about when you were in the hospital when you had - what was it? Scarlet fever?

Or what was it? And about how they didn’t tell Grandma Smith what it was.

Well, I think that’s in my autobiography, but when I was going to school in Milwaukee, both DuRell and I came down with scarlet fever. I got it first. Probably I passed it on to him and being that we were in the hospital with a lot of other people, so they quarantined the whole house. If we stayed there, but we had to move to the isolation hospital. And, I never saw my mother again from the day I went in that hospital until eight weeks later when they finally let me come home.

My brother got better but I developed heart disease and they didn’t think I was going to live. I can barely remember being put down at the end of the long corridor where they put those who die, and having a sheet wrapped, turned around all of my bed so that nobody could see me. And of course we were not allowed visitors, but my father would come up with the doctor because he was a junior doctor,. I guess by then he was an intern, so they would allow him to come up once in a while. But all the time Mother was calling and asking about me they would tell her, “As good as can be expected, as good as can be expected.” And she thought that meant I was getting well.

Well, she went to the dime store one day and she met one of the doctors and he had met her socially with Dr. Smith, so he knew her. And he walked up to her and shook her hand, and she in the course of the conversation she very casually asked him how I was, because DuRell had gone home quite a while before this. He had gotten over it and went home. And he said, “Well,” and he put his hand on her arm, and he said, “We think maybe we can save her now. We have hopes that she will...”

and Mother said everything got black and she thought was going to hit the floor. She grabbed a hold of the nearest counter and she said “What are you talking about?”

And he said, “Well, it has been several weeks and we haven’t known if she was going to live or die.” But he said “Now she is getting better.” and that was the first she knew of it or heard of it. And I had wondered all this time why I never heard anything from her, in any way shape or manner. But of course we couldn’t get any word through either. And Dr. Smith wasn’t about to tell her.

But it all ended all right. I came out with a bad heart, and I’ve had one all my life, and I’m still here, so I guess it doesn’t matter. I have a pacemaker, and also a patch, a nitrogen patch,. But I’m still here. I think my long life is due to my ancestry, because I come from the Adams family on my father’s side, and his brothers all lived long long lives. My aunts and uncles were into their late 90s, some were over 100 before they died, which was very unusual in those days when there were no antibiotics or anything to keep people healthy. So I think I inherited some of those genes. I don’t know why else I’d be here today, at 92.

Carol: She asks here about jokes and tricks. I remember you telling about DuRell and some flowers. Didn’t DuRell paint some flowers or something?

Oh yes.

Carol: What was that?

When we were in Troy, we lived at the cherry orchard, that belonged to the Dewitt family. And they - the boys - had kind of a flower garden out in the front lawn. And it had lilies in it. Some kind of, variety of lilies that I didn’t know anything about. And over night they got painted. Beautiful colors, pink and red and green, every color there was. And the boys were not too appreciative of it. They were very upset because they were their prize lilies. And they found out that Durell had found some paint out in the barn, and had decided to liven them up a little bit, so he painted them. But he wasn’t very popular around the Dewitt place after a while.

Carol: I think DuRell was a little spoiled,

Yes, he always liked pretty things,

Speaking of jokes...

Carol: Go on, tell us some more.

Speaking of jokes. this practical joke I didn’t commit, but it was played on me when we lived in Hillyard in the undertaking parlor. My step grandparents owned a very large undertaking parlor in Spokane. Hillyard was a suburb of Spokane, and we had the Hillyard, suburb, undertaking parlor. Well, two things happened there that were very weird.

The first one was when we moved the fat man out of the embalming room. Mother called me from school and had me come home to help her because she had gotten a call, an emergency call, from Dr. Smith that the wife of the man, or the corpse, who was in the embalming room, was coming to visit him. And he was in no position to be visited. So we had to get him into the living room, out of the embalming room, and that was quite a chore. There was a step there, where you had to step up. And oh yes, I said I was equal to the occasion, I was strong, I was strong as mother was, and we could do it. So come to find out, he was quite a heavy man, and sort of round in the stomach. And we put a sheet over him, and we pulled him out as far as the porch, this was the back porch of course, not the front, and we had to turn him around, and lift one side of him so we could get him into the door that went to the undertaking parlor living room where they showed the caskets and had the funerals. So we started to lift him up and he started to roll. And we wanted to grab him, hold him, but it was terrible. We thought we were going to lose him for sure, over the sidel, and both of us somehow or other we managed and we got him back into the room. And then we tried to put the sheet over him, because we couldn’t dress him. It was impossible for us to lift him him and put clothes on him, so we improvised. We put the sheet over him and used his arms to hold the sheet down, because it kept sliding off his stomach. And then we improvised and we decided we had to put something around his neck and chin because his top part looked so bare. So we got a pillow case, and draped it around his top and tucked it under his shoulder blades, and then just his bare arms stuck out holding the sheet on. So we straightened everything all up, and we decided he didn’t look too bad, and we waited for his folks to come. And they were coming in the front door when we were putting the sheet around his shoulders, and we had to explain the reason he wasn’t dressed was because we couldn’t dress him, But they were very nice about it, and that ended. But I have never never forgotten moving that corpse.

Carol: Wasn’t there a story about a casket and the lining...

Oh yes, yes. That was my two best friends. One of them was two years older than I was, They were the McLeans, who had a little house in Hillyard when we were married to my father. When we were married to my father, that’s the way I always thought of it.

I had two best friends. And they were the McLean girls, that lived next door. So when we came back married to Dr. Smith and running the funeral parlor, they were delighted to come a visit me. And the first place they wanted to go was the casket room, So we showed the caskets, and they were very pretty all lined and soft looking, and the girls were very impressed. Well, Agnes was supposed to go home that night for supper, but Evelyn was going to spend the night with me. She was the one my age. So we had a very nice meal and we talked til late at night, and finally we turned the light out. And we hadn’t gotten to sleep,, and we heard this terrible - we were talking about the casket room, and Eveylyn said she would not like to sleep next to it. She wasn’t sorry that she lived in a big house because she would not like to live right next to a casket room.

“Oh,” I said, “there’s nothing to it.”

With that we commenced to hear moans and groans, horrible ones, from the casket room. I said, “Oh, that’s just the wind blowing.”

“No, no it isn’t, Evelyn said. “ That’s no wind. It doesn’t sound like wind to me.”

And they kept on going, and then she started to scream, And she screamed at the top of her life, and of course it woke up Mother and Dr. Smith. And they came in and said “Well we’ll see what’s going on next door.”

So they opened up the door and walked in and found Agnes in one of the caskets, roaring and groaning and moaning to beat the band. Well, she got out of there in a hurry, and she got sent home in a hurry. And she was told to never darken the door of that casket room again. But Agnes was always full of tricks. If you were around her very long you got yourself into trouble, or she got you into it, one or the other.

Grandma Smith's Mystery Teapot

Great Grandma Smith, married first in 1900, later in 1914, both times in Seattle. She is nineteen years old in this wedding portrait.

Hotel Butler, a formerly grand hotel in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle. The hotel has been torn down and is now a parking garage. Notice the insignia; it's the same as on the teapot below.

The teapot with the engraved insignia of the Hotel Butler

I was "up north" this week visiting my aunt, a woman I adore, and who has agreed to be my "substitute mom" since my mother died a few years ago. She was having a rummage sale, and asked me to help her get a few items down from high shelves for the sale. When she saw this 8 oz. silver teapot, she said that it had belonged to her grandmother, my great-grandmother.

I did a little online digging around. It turns out that this is a Reed and Barton teapot. They were produced between 1900 and 1940 for use in restaurants and hotels, and usually had the hotel's name engraved on the bottom. This one said "Hotel Butler." At first I thought that was a brand name, but then reconsidered. I knew she was married in Seattle, twice (two different men). Her second husband came from a well-to-do family, and the Hotel Butler was once one of Seattle most elegant hotels, catering to those returning successfully from the Yukon gold rush. It stood in the Pioneer Square Skid Road district, a place I visited in May. I also found an image of a postcard of the hotel, and the little symbol engraved on the teapot is also on the postcard.

I wonder if my oh-so-proper English grandmother walked off with a souvenir of her honeymoon?

Memories of Cars, Boys, the End of WWI

This is the first automobile Grandma remembered. It belonged to her step father's parents. Here she is inside the car. I am interested in the chains on the tires, which must have helped drive in the sand of southeastern Washington.

Here is my grandfather, Howard Tess, holding a puppy. He was ten years older than Grandma, a veteran of the first world war.

This is my grandmother before her marriage.

But I met my husband while we were in Troy. He even made meals with me. One time when he invited himself to supper all we had was boiled cabbage and potatoes, and I thought that nobody ever would sit down to a meal like that, and pretend they liked it, but he did. He sat down and said it was delicious, although I found out later that he didn’t like that. He didn’t like cabbage at all. He didn’t like chocolate cake either, and I made that for him for a long time.
 

Carol: He liked spice cake, I know.
 

Yes, he liked spice cake.
 

Well, all of a sudden out of the clear blue sky we got a letter saying Dr. Smith was coming home. And for many reasons that I haven’t mentioned here, I did not want to follow his plans for my life. He had plans that I would become his secretary, and he would be my teacher, he would tell me exactly what to do, and he would pick out who I should go with, and who I should marry. And I just couldn’t face the idea of that. So, everybody got together, Howard’s folks and my mother, and it was decided that we would get married. It was a very very hasty affair.
 

Carol: Where’d you go on your honeymoon?

We went to Chicago on our honeymoon. We were married in Milwaukee, by two ministers, because the one wasn’t, he wasn’t, what do you call it? Ordained. Yes, although he had been out in East Troy, and had been ministering at the church there. He was the one that gave us advice on the sense of matrimony. And he was very nice, and we liked him. So this older preacher was there when we went to be married, in his apartment in Milwaukee, and the older preacher pronounced us man and wife, so we’d be securely married. Which we were for forty-five years. And had two beautiful daughters.

Carol: You moved in, didn’t you, when you were first married, with your in-laws in the other side of the house?

Yes, we did. We lived in, well, it was the living room, two rooms, three rooms, a kitchen and a living room, and a bedroom. And -

Carol: An outhouse out back

Yes, oh yes, the outhouse was out in back. And actually, there was no bathroom, we had to use our in-laws’ bathroom, which was if we wanted to take a bath. Otherwise we went to the place outside. But if we took a bath we had to go next door, and use their bathtub, because we didn’t have such a thing. We had a coal stove for heat and we had a coal stove that we put in storage later and we lost because they sold it while it was in storage and we were young and green and didn’t know enough to make a fuss about it. So we lost that completely when we moved to Elkhorn. It was brand new and our prized possession.

They’re going got ask me some more questions.

Carol: Mother, you told me about how out at the ranch you got around. But I know that you and Grandma didn’t drive, so how did you get around while Grandpa was gone and you were alone?

Well there weren’t even any cars to drive back in those early days. The only car I ever saw was when my stepfather’s brother - I don’t know how he managed to get out there – he got out to the ranch in one of the first cars that was ever built. And it was a wonder on wheels to all of us. Nobody will believe this.
 

And the first time I rode in a car was in Grandpa Smith’s in Milwaukee, and he had a Pierce-Arrow, and he took us for a ride. It was a great big mammoth thing. When you set in the back seat you felt as if you were in the living room. And it was carpeting had had seats that folded down from the front seat so four people could set and face each other and converse. And there was room to put a table in between, if you wanted to. You could even eat a lunch or play cards there. And when he came to us he would get out and light the lights by hand, And we’d chug along at fifteen likes an hour, and Grandma would say, “Oh, you’re going much too fast, much too fast. Slow down, slow down.” Of course there weren’t any cement roads then, It seemed we were going a lot faster, probably, than we were. But we never went very fast. And there weren’t very many cars on the road, because very few people had them at that time.
 

Carol: Yeah, but how did you and Grandma get around?
 

When we got out of Troy we didn’t have any transportation of any kind, and we would go with the neighbors who had horses and buggies. And finally somebody lent us a buggy and we found an old broken down horse. And the horse and the buggy were united and we tried to ride that to East Troy. But it was a sad and sorry state and the old mare did not have a good disposition. She was very balky. And she was apt to balk in the middle of the road and we couldn’t move her one way or the other. And she also nipped people.

Carol: Well you didn’t have much luck, You weren’t any child when you learned how to drive a car.
 

Oh my no. 

Carol: How old were you?

Oh my heavens!

Carol: I guess maybe you weren’t that old.. You must have been sixty.

Well I didn’t drive, you know, I never drove. Howard didn’t want me to drive.

Carol: Oh I remember when we were little you trying to learn to drive.

I tried to one time, but he was glad that I didn’t learn because he really didn’t want me to learn how to drive. He liked to be king of the road. Well, I scared myself to death. I pretty near had an accident a couple of times. Howard always kidded me about trying to run the sheriff down in the middle of Elkhorn because he pushed on my radiator and tried to push me back in the intersection. 

Carol: I remember another story that was interesting was after the first world war, I guess you were uptown Milwaukee and it was being celebrated.
 

Oh yes, that was in grade school. Yeah – 

Carol: You were probably in high school. 

No, I don’t think I was even in high school yet. They threw the talcum power –

Carol: Yeah, tell them about that story.

Well we let out from school when the wonderful news came that the first world war had ended, so of course everyone was on Grand Avenue down Milwaukee , which is now Wisconsin Avenue, but at that time it was Grand Avenue. And the stores were all closed because people were going crazy. They’d go in and loot them and help themselves to anything they wanted. And the clerks couldn’t stop them. The police didn’t stop them. So finally they locked all the doors, nobody could get – so they just wandered up and down the middle of the street, and screamed and yelled and threw things at each other. We got a whole handful of talcum thrown at us, and most of landed in my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, and my eyes were smarting and burning and I had to go home finally. Which was probably a good thing because it went on and on ‘til nearly all night long. It was a tremendous celebration, but there was a lot of damage done. Lot of people hurt.

Sounds From the Past, part 2

Anna Bernice Adams, later Bernice Ann Smith

I've been continuing the slow process of transcribing the tape my mother helped my 92-year-old grandmother make back in December 1994. My husband says it's strange hearing their voices coming from the studio where I work; I guess it is. Like ghosts, almost. At the beginning she is still talking about living on the "Big B" ranch, which was in the southeastern part of Washington, not far from the Columbia River, and the Tri-Cities area today.

Bernice Tess interview pt 2

We had more horses than cows, because cows were purely for our own use. The horses were for sale and for breeding purposes. We had a lot of horses, and a lot of hired men and a great big lot of land. Four square quarters of wheat. I used to ride on my special mare all around the acres. It seemed like we’d go forever and still be on “our land” I called it, because to me it was our land. It eventually did become our land because my mother ended up marrying the manager of some of the land, the son of the man who owned it, and that was a turning point in my life.

It was my eleventh year. Everything seems to have happened in my eleventh year. My real father was shot and murdered when I was eleven years old, and six months after that my mother told me she was marrying again. The only son that was managing the ranch. Which was not particularly good news to my ears because I didn’t think he liked me, and I knew I was very much afraid of him, because I had been taught to be afraid of him. Because he didn’t like children. Well of course I would grow up. 

So, then I was sent away to school. To a Catholic school, and I was the only Protestant in the whole school. In the questions that my granddaughter Sherry asked, she wanted to know some of the people who had had a big influence on my life, and that I admired. And even though the girls were so hostile to me, there was one of the sisters. Because it was a Catholic school with sisters and priests, they went out of their way to be very very nice to me, and they really made up for it. – the coolness of the Catholic children. And this one sister, I think her name was sister Teresa, she encouraged me very much in my English and my composition. And I remember her telling me one time that she hoped some day to read an article or a novel or a piece of fiction, that I had written with my name on it because she was sure I would become a great author. Of course I would have disappointed her, because I never went on to college, and I never wrote anything that outstanding. I loved to read, but it was other people’s writings I enjoyed, not my own. That lasted, I was in the academy one full year, practically.

At the end of it they came and took me to Hillyard, no I think we went to Spokane first. I know that we lived very near the Jesu Church, and they told me there that next to that church was were there was a little house , not very big, and they said that was where - what was that singer? Bing Crosby was born, just a block from where we lived. And I always thought that was very exciting. Our house there was very small, not pretentious at all. But it was wonderful to me because I’d never had an inside toilet before, electric lights before. It was the first time in my life I’d ever had electricity or any of the nice things about living.

Carol: How old were you then, Mother?

Oh, I was eleven years old yet; that was my eleventh year. That’s my daughter, I’m glad they’re asking me questions, because that’s what I want .

My best friend died while I was still eleven. She was – I considered her my best friend. She lived next door, and she as a lovely sweet Catholic girl. But she didn’t hold my being a Protestant against me. She was, we were, very very close friends. And she played tennis with her brothers one morning and fell against the wire that was put up between the two poles. And I never understood how, but somehow she hit her head on the wire and died instantly. And that was a terrible shock to me. So I had lost two dear people that year, that I loved. 

Then I had the news given to me that I was to have a new baby brother or sister. Well, I was pleased about that, I guess. In the beginning it was such a shock to me I couldn’t hardly comprehend what was happening. But I was, later, it made me very happy, and I always enjoyed having a brother. It was wonderful, because I’d never had a sister or a brother. And I, I thought as much of him as I possibly could, of a real, full brother. And he never wanted me to call him a half brother. He was really angry with me if I said that he was my half brother. He always said, “There are no halves in our family, just wholes.” And that’s the way it was, all through our lives. 

I’m sorry for the interruption, one of my daughters just told me that I hadn’t told my brother’s name. His name was DuRell. And that was a family name from Dr. Smith’s side. His mother was a Durrell. She was French, French Dutch, or Dutch French; I don’t know which it would be. I always considered her more Dutch than French.

Carol: Is that the diamond that Sherry has?

Pardon me, Carol’s asking something.

Ellen: Is that her diamond that Sherry has?

Yes, Sherry has her diamond. And it was mine for a while, and before it was mine, I guess it was Dr. Smith’s mother’s. Yes. 

Carol: You never said who your stepfather was either.

Carol said I never said who my stepfather was. 

Carol: He wasn’t a doctor then.

He was not a doctor at that time. But that’s when we came back to Milwaukee he decided to become a doctor. And we had eleven long years ahead of us. And they were not easy years. We had DuRell to raise, and we had ourselves to take care of. Because his folks did not approve of him coming out there.

I wasn’t happy about leaving Hillyard, It seemed as though my life was just a series stops and starts m strange people, and losing friends, making friends and losing them. So I was very unhappy about the trip way “back East”, as we called it, although really it was only half way. But, we boarded the train. I couldn’t take any of my toys.

Speaking of favorite toys, Sherry once asked me which one was my favorite. And I did have a favorite doll? I had very few toys as a small child, because we moved so much and I never had a place to keep them. So, this doll was very special. The last time I ever saw my father, he brought the doll to me. Mother and I went to Seattle, no, we went to San Francisco, right after the fire, and the earthquake. And we went to a big hotel, ‘course most of the hotels were burned out then, and we could still see the black skeletons of them, and the ruins of bricks that were left, and the burned out houses. I can remember asking my mother what happened, and she said that they’d had a terrible fire after an earthquake. Anyways, afterwards we met my father at this hotel, and he had a big present for me. And it was a doll, a walking doll, and big, came up to my knees you know. And I treasured that doll more than anything I ever had, but I had to leave it behind with all the rest of my things when we started out for our new life in Milwaukee. 

Being on the train was an experience. We had a baby, of course, DuRell was very small, ten months old when we left. And we had to get our own meals. We had just what we could buy at stops. The train would stop and we could get off and buy things to cook on the stove, which was an old coal stove. The conductor put coal in, and some people heated up soup. And we heated up DuRell’s milk on it. And, the smell, of the coal smoke was not nice. We could, everything in the car smelled of oranges and coal smoke. Because so many of the people ate oranges to get the taste of coal out of their throats. And I always well remember that smell - coal smoke and oranges, mixed. To me, that’s train smell. And the conductors were very friendly, They’d come around very often, and set and talk, and play with the baby. But it was a very hard trip with a small child. And we had lost so much that we left behind that I was very sad.

I wasn’t happy about going to this new city. When we finally got there it was a long trip,, we slept in relays. We had just the chairs that we made into a bed at night, with a curtain that came round them. And we’d sleep for a little while, and then somebody else would get up and they would sleep, because we only had the two seats. Double seats. For the three of us. No, four of us, with the baby. So it was very cramped, very uncomfortable, And we were glad when we crossed the big muddy river, and finally landed in Milwaukee. The muddy river was the Mississippi. And I remember they got me up out of sleeping to go and look at it, and I was so anxious to see the Mississippi, all the things I heard about the mighty mighty Mississippi, and how beautiful it was. And I looked at it and was so disappointed. All it was, it looked like mud, like a river of mud. A big wide river of mud. And of course further on it looked much better, but that was near the big cities and it was very polluted. So I was disappointed in that.

Sounds From the Past

modified contour drawing of my great grandparents when first married

In 1994 when my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for a taped interview with my grandmother. I got the tape that year, listened to most of it, and put it in my tape caddy. Last week I got it out and listened for nearly an hour. There behind the hissing of the old cassette tape, were the voices of my mother, aunt, and grandmother. Grandma and Mom are gone now, and it makes me a little crazy that I cannot ask for more details on some of the stories. Now, after having put together memories with old photos, and having visited the places she lived as a young girl, I know what I would ask Grandma. In 1994 I didn't know, and was probably too busy with teaching to probe for more.

So, little by little I'm transcribing her taped answers to my questions, and when I finish I hope to have it transferred to a CD, and share it with my family. This is the first installment.

Transcript of Interview With Bernice Tess

December, 1994

This is Bernice Tess. We are gathered here with Ellen and Carol, my daughters, to celebrate Carol’s birthday, and while we are all here together we thought it would be a good time to answer some of my granddaughter Sherry’s questions. She has written down quite a few questions on paper that she would like to know about my past. And I think we should start more or less at the beginning, which is a long time ago, because I am ninety-two years old.

And I was born in the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington, the very very deepest part of the mountains in Leavenworth, Washington, where they cut the big pass for the railroad over the mountain. They had to put two engines on there because it was too steep for one engine. And my father, being an engineer, wanted to live there. So my first memories were of a little cottage, up on a hill, very high up, And all I could see when I was a toddler around the house was snow because the windows were all covered with snow, and we had to have lamps, oil lamps, to see by, even in the daytime. And gradually in the spring, we would see the snow go down, and we would watch it on the windows, because every day it’d be an inch or so when the sun melted, and it was very thrilling to watch the snow go down, inch by inch, until we finally could look out our windows. They were pretty dirty by then, but that didn’t bother me any at the time.

We lived there until I was about three years old and then there was trouble in the household. And my mother and father disagreed, or, agreed to disagree, I guess. Anyways, Mother got me up in the middle of the night one night and said we were going on a train journey. Which was very surprising to me because my father was still sleeping in bed. But we went to the neighbors and the neighbors took us down to a train, and we went to Hillyard, which was quite a few miles and on flatter land. It was a suburb of Spokane. And we went to a friend of Mother’s and stayed with her for a while. Eventually we bought a house there, or my father did; he came back to live with us for a while. But that didn’t last too long either. And this time when we left, we left for good. 

I wasn’t ready for school yet, so I must have been around four when we left the final time. And all I remember from those days were different people’s homes and faces where I stayed while Mother worked. She was a midwife, and she went to various homes and helped with babies being born, she told me. So I, being a very shy little girl, I wasn’t used to staying with all those people; I was very uncomfortable. Especially when I could hear them talking, whispering about my mother behind my back. I didn’t like it very well. So we were not too happy. Mother read ads in the paper, and finally decided the best place for us would be out on a ranch. There would be no people around to be talking about us, and we could live our own lives. So she answered an ad, for a man that wanted a housekeeper, out on a big ranch, in the east, northeastern part of Washington, right near the Columbia River. So she answered the ad, and he was not too happy. He didn’t know that she had a little girl, but he finally accepted me because there were very few people that wanted to go work on a ranch that was fifteen miles from the nearest town. Well, fifteen miles on land. If you crossed the Columbia River you could go to Hanford, and that was only six miles away, but it was hard to get across the big wide Columbia River. 

Eventually I had to cross the river to go to first grade, And then I was boarded out again. But, that year passed, and I was back to the ranch. Then we looked for a school teacher. We had a hard time getting one because nobody wanted to teach out there. It was very wild and woolly.

We had four big sections of land, and it was sand dunes and sage brush, and they grew dry wheat. It was an experimental thing with growing wheat, because it was bare, almost desert like country. Hardly ever rained. If it did rain we all ran out and tipped our heads and opened our mouths and let the rain run in. It was fun. We loved getting wet. We loved the rain.

But, school was not much of a success. We started out in a little one-room shack that had belonged to a homesteader that went broke, as they all did, most of them at least. And they had a woman teacher, but she didn’t stay with us long. When the left they got a man teacher and eventually built a one room school house, that was really a school house. We had an outdoor toilet, that had to do for both boys and girls, and we had a lean-to that did for the horses, because a lot of us rode horses to school. There were no cars of course, and no roads, really, just sand,. We went where there was room to go, there wasn’t a real road. And we thought we were very well off with the new school, though the teacher was rather - different. He taught us all that we didn’t really need to study, because the world was coming to an end, in just probably six months. So, we needn’t worry too much about our grades. He just taught religion to us. He said that was much more important than lessons. And of course we didn’t sleep very well at night, I had nightmares, Finally Mother asked me what was troubling me, and I told her. I said, “We are all going to die,”

“Oh no, “she said, “we’re not going to die.”

I said, “Yes we are, and it’s going to be real quick.”

And so, that was the end of the teacher. He left and we didn’t have any school that year at all, we just sort of took it easy and went without school. It pleased most people, but I was very hungry for companionship and the only companionship I had was at school. So I was pretty lonely. 

Then we got a hired man that was very very nice to me, so that helped a lot. He taught me how to dance, out in one of the hay lofts. It had a hard floor. It was over our jackass. And when we danced too hard he would bray, and make a terrible noise. You could hear him for miles away. But we laughed. That was just part of the fun. But I was never allowed to go near him. He was very vicious, wild. The farmers brought their mares there, but that was all. He had a very special yard of his own that was fenced in with high fences. That was just part of farm life. 

And we also had the only windmill in the country, and the only place that had a well big enough that they could dig down deep enough in the sand to get water. So all the farmers and the homesteaders would come to us for water. And they had water wagons in those days, made out of wood, and the slats twisted and turned like a barrel. Some of them leaked. Most of them leaked, and you could tell their trail, coming and going, by the water leaking out of the slats. But that’s all they had, apparently there was no way to seal the seams because they all leaked. But we never charged them for water. They got it for free. They just had to carry it. 

And we also had a huge big water tank, and that’s where I learned to swim, in the water tank. And then I also learned to swim in the Columbia River. But the current was so swift there that I had to have a big rope tied on me. Because the current would have carried me downstream, and that really wasn’t a very good place to learn to swim. So I really relied more on the water tank for the cattle and the horses.

Scenes from the Olympic Peninsula

I thought I'd just post a few more pictures from the recent trip to Washington state.  I  have not managed to draw or paint anything from the experience yet, though I haven't given up hope that I will.

We spent several days driving the Olympic Peninsula, a real contrast to the dry windy part of the state we saw east of the Cascades.  This area receives over 100 inches of rain a year, and it has enough greenery, rushing water and giant trees and ferns to prove it.  This photo was taken at Lake Quinault.  There is a lovely old lodge there, a lake, and fine hiking trails.  It was near here we saw a herd of elk in a meadow across from a golf course.

It seemed like there was fast running water everywhere.  In fact there was an article in the newspaper warning people not to go into the water yet, as it was fast, dangerously cold, and sometimes carried dangerous debris.  It certainly was beautiful.

Further north along the peninsula, at Kalaloch we found another lodge and cabins by the ocean.  We spent most of a day walking beaches and poking into tide pools.

This is me, standing under the roots of a giant tipped over tree.  The tremendous rainfall in Olympic National Park creates trees so huge I felt like a child, or maybe a hobbit.

Further north we headed up into the Olympic range, back into snow.  This is Hurricane Ridge, named for the ferocious winds that buffet the place.

Visiting Paradise

When my sister-in-law and I got off our Amtrak train in Spokane we stayed a couple nights in a perfectly respectable Travelodge.  The next night we had a rustic-at-best cabin at an RV camp in Cougar, Washington.  But the next night we stayed in Paradise.

We signed in at Paradise Inn at Mount Rainier National Park a few hours after it opened for the season.  On May 15th the snow around the inn was piled high, in many places obscuring windows. It was sixty-five degrees, and there was a lake of melted water by the doors. At 5,400 feet above sea level it looked like January, but felt like a balmy spring day.  

According to Great Lodges of the West, by Christine Barnes, the architectural firm for the inn was Heath and Gove of Tacoma, and for the annex (where we stayed) it was Harlan Thomas. The inn opened July 1, 1917, built for $100,000, and became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

My sister-in-law, dwarfed by the huge piles of snow at the hotel

Our room in the 1920 annex had a small private bath, and was pretty basic.

The view out the small windows was stunning. Although our window did not show Mt. Rainier, it did show the Tatoosh Range.  At night we saw a fox running across the snow in the moonlight.

A handful of well-equipped climbers start off for a day at Mt. Rainier.  Right after I took this picture I met a park ranger named Sarah Pigeon, a name that made me smile since I am a fan of ranger Anna Pigeon in Nevada Barr's national park themed murder mysteries.  I wonder if she has written one set here.

I've stayed at historic lodges before in places like Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, and the Grand Canyon.  This one, like the others, depends on its setting and rustic architecture for its appeal. The rooms aren't new or spacious; there is no telephone or television, but who wants to spend time in a room when natural splendor waits steps away?  The inn features cedar shingles and rock masonry that makes the building fit into its environment beautifully.  The great hall has a two and a half story ceiling, a features two massive stone fireplaces.  There is a huge cedar table that is supposed to weigh over a thousand pounds, six-foot throne chairs, a rustic grandfather clock and piano that was once played by Harry Truman. A man played piano that afternoon, taking requests for show tunes from guests lounging in the hall.  Light streams in through dormer windows high above a mezzanine where tea is served in the afternoon and coffee in the morning.  The second story balcony with its hickory tables and chairs is a good place to read, write a post card, or sip wine.  Large suspended light fixtures from the 1930s with drum shades hand painted with native wild flowers softly illuminate the room. There is also a large comfortable dining room, staffed by young men and women who were just learning their tables and how to operate the new computer system.  The food was delicious. 

I wish we could have seen the inn in summer when the wildflowers are in bloom, but I thought the snow covered mountains were stunning.  Plus this early in the season the area isn't as crowded as it can be when the weather is warmer.  We couldn't hike at this altitude without snowshoes, but we drove down the mountain, stopping for more views along the way, and hiked near the National Park Inn at Longmire.  There was no snow there, and we stretched our legs on a couple muddy fern-lined trails.  

Click on the link below to see more about Mt. Rainier National Park.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/mora/home.htm

Bringing the Past and Present Together

I had never heard of the Palouse region of Washington until a few months ago when I began planning for this trip, but here is where my maternal great grandfather, Edward Lemuel Adams,  and his family came from, and where descendants of that pioneer family live today. The Palouse is a large area of rolling hills in eastern Washington state, green in spring, golden in summer, dedicated to agriculture - primarily wheat. It's possible that the term comes from a French word, pelouse, "land with short thick grass", or "lawn."  It might be related to a Native American term.  Appaloosa horses first came from this region.

I knew the family had a farm in Fairfield, Washington, from the comments and notes my grandmother, Bernice Adams Tess, left behind.  Though her father and mother were divorced when she was small, and he was killed when she was eleven, she corresponded with her cousins, and spoke of the family he whole life.  I wanted to see the farm, walk the cemetery and meet the cousins living in the area now.

In a book Early History of Fairfield, edited by Glen Cameron Adams, teacher, printer and historian, there is a wonderful story related by a cousin I met that day, Gerald Holt.  Holt loves to tell family stories.  He contributed this anecdote about the Adams/Holt farm established by Civil War veteran Herman Heinrich Adams and his wife, Annie Lucretia Moore in the 1880s. Gerry Holt's grandfather, Arn,  built the barn; his mother Hermanie Adams Holt features importantly in the story.

The family lived at the foot of Mica Peak in a one-room cabin with a 40-foot tent while Grandpa Holt built the large sawmill for Jim and Emanuel Hansen.  After completing the sawmill he brought his family back to Fairfield, where they stayed with Herman and Annie Adams.  In December 1909, fire destroyed the ranch house.  All the neighbors came as they saw the smoke clouds rising.  Uncle Bert Adams had his rising horse in a pasture behind his house in town and never did catch it to get to the fire.  Everything was burned except a picture of the old buildings which Hermine Adams Holt threw out the door.  The picture with its broken glass still hangs in her home.

Hermanie is gone, but Gerald has the watercolor painting, a little water stained, but a fine representation by an itinerant painter from 1890 of the old ranch.  I was thrilled when Angie brought the picture to our luncheon get-together at Cutters Cafe, in Fairfield.

After the fire the ranch house was rebuilt in brick, and today is slowly being rebuilt by Evans Holt.  The barn still stands intact, pictured here surrounded by green grass.  We went into the house, which is bare of windows, and inhabited by pigeons, and looked out over the fields toward Fairfield.  I tried to imagine Annie's lilacs blooming, the barn filled with horses, and the old steam thresher that might have been a reason my great grandpa left home.  According to Gerald, Len wanted to run the steam thresher, but his older brother Will wouldn't let him.  Len was so angry that they fought, and Len burned a haystack and left to eventually become a railroad engineer.

I knew my great grandfather was buried at Fairview Cemetery, Rockford, Washington, not far from Fairfield.  It's a pretty place on a hill, looking out over the town and the surrounding countryside. Many of the Adams cousins, Gerry Holt and granddaughter Angie, Deral Adams, and Garry Adams, and Dona Adams Kochheiser were all there that cold and windy day to walk the cemetery, talk about who was who, and take photos.  Grandpa Adams is buried next to his grandmother's second husband, Lemuel Peele Moore (1812-1884), but no stone marks Adams' grave.  The superintendent of the cemetery took down what I knew: Edward Lemuel Adams, born July 22, 1872, died May 24, 1914.  Then the cousins discussed how to best mark his resting place.  My Grandma Tess would be so pleased.