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A Child's Eye View--by Dixie LaRue Almond Smith | |
 (Dixie in front with bandaged arm)
 (Dixie on the left, Margaret and Ruth Olson) |
My earliest memory I have is when I was two, almost three. I was standing on a chair putting my doll clothes through the wringer on my mother's old Maytag washer when my whole hand started through, and before long my whole arm was going up the wringer. Perhaps my mother was hanging clothes, or just not looking, but when I started to scream, she was there in an instant, just before the wringer got to my shoulder, which would have really caused some serious injury. I wore a bandage for a long time which included my third birthday. The scab was thick and covered most of my arm. It kept getting smaller and smaller until today I have only a scar the shape of an eye on the inside of my left elbow. When I was five, my mother went to the hospital with a bad kidney infection. I stayed with my Uncle Kent Olson on his ranch at Manila, Utah. I had cousins my same age there–Margaret, age 6, Ruth age 5, Freddy age 3, and Leta, about 1. My Uncle Kent was always joking. One night he was driving me to my Grandma Olson's house, about a mile away. It seemed the full moon was following us, and he said, "Oh, we have to beat the moon!!!" He kept driving faster and faster, but we couldn't get ahead of the moon. Another time, in the morning, I couldn't find my socks and he said to me, a little gruffly, "If you'd always put your socks in your shoes at night, they'd never get lost." He could have even said it in his joking way, but I was very temperamental and home-sick and I cried and cried. My uncle Kent's house was made of logs, and had two large rooms on the ground floor (kitchen and living room) and up a very steep stairway, two bedrooms above. We kids always slept three to a double bed. There was no electricity or running water in the house, and toilet facilities consisted of a pot under each bed, and an outhouse in the back. In my Uncle Kent and Aunt Sadie's house, I have fond memories of my Aunt Sadie in blue jeans, a kerosene lamp hung from the ceiling at night, a large boiler on the wood cook stove to heat the water for the gas wringer washer, the smell of wet diapers, whole wheat pancakes for breakfast, a large heavy rectangular kitchen table painted red, home-made whole wheat bread that was a little crumbly, bees in the upstairs bedrooms, hooks by the back door for extra coats and blue jeans, and a cardboard box below the back door for extra coats and shoes and boots to fit anyone who needed some, lots of fun sleeping with my cousins, three to a double bed, sage brush, wild flowers in the dust, a group of large rocks in back of the corral called our "rock playhouse", prickly pear flowers on the end of sticks for fairy wands, the store with 1cent suckers seven miles away at Manila, mountains, and a dirt road that was hours long to the nearest civilization.
 (Dixie and Jim "Buddy") My grandma and grandpa Olson lived in the original house on the ranch, about a mile away at the base of Hog's Back, the family's favorite hiking mountain. This ranch was taken as a homestead by my grandfather soon after the turn of the century. Their house was small and made of logs. It had a large kitchen in which everyone lived. It had a large black wood cook stove, a round kitchen table covered with oil cloth that stood in the middle of the room, two free-standing kitchen cupboards for dishes, a cot in one corner, and a wash stand, with a wash basin by the door. The living room was not heated–everyone lived in the kitchen. It was actually a living room/bedroom with both a couch and a bed. It was so cold in there that they kept their butter, milk and other food there to keep them from spoiling. I can still hear my grandmother saying, "Put this milk in the other room." My grandmother had about three coal-oil lamps which were put in the center of the kitchen table each night. One of my choice childhood memories is that of sitting around my grandmother's table covered with slick oil cloth in a dim room, coal-oi8l lamp in the center of the table and eating bowls of bread and milk and home-made cottage cheese. The bread was always home-made and the milk from Uncle Kent's cow. Another memory is the aluminum dipper by the bucket of spring water sitting on one of the cupboards. Another memory is of two dish pans on the kitchen table to do the dishes. The hot water was dipped from the reservoir at the end of the wood stove. Another memory was that of sleeping between very cold sheets in the tiny room at the end of the front porch, hearing the sound of running water all night. The water was piped from the spring about one-half mile away, and fell from the end of the pipe into a large wash tub. The tub overflowed and made a ditch which flowed through the yard away from the house. The outhouse was way out in front of the house. My grandpa's black Chevrolet coup with a rumble seat is a special memory–also the hourly chime of the clock on a shelf on the wall and the loud tick tock in an otherwise quiet room all day, and flour sacks of dry beans harvested from their garden in the summer that hung from the peak of the pitched ceiling which was the underside of the log roof. I can remember lying on the cot in the kitchen looking up at those great logs in the ceiling, looking at the walls covered with plain green oilcloth and, in some places, newspaper. My grandmother's house was always meticulously clean, and abounded with love. I loved to be there as a change from the cities which were so much faster, and filled with modern conveniences such a s electricity and indoor plumbing. As I grew older I realized that my grandmother always said when she moved there that she hated the isolation, hated living down in a hole next to that mountain where she was the first to get snowed in in the winter and the last to dig out in the spring. But they couldn't afford to move and, when they grew older, they had a sentimental attachment to this home that represented their whole life. They lived there as long as the could, until they were too old to be by themselves. To me, as a child, it was the best place on earth. When I started the first grade in 1937, at age five, we lived in Green river, Wyoming. I remember being on pins and needles in anticipation of starting for weeks. It was close enough that I would walk. My teacher's name was Mrs. Smith. I also remember living in a house on the edge of town. Close to the back of the house was a small, steep bank on top of which was a sage-brush covered plateau through which a deep dry wash ran. This was probably small and of little significance, but as a five-year old, it was a large hill with high adventure with my brother "buddy", who was three. I can remember one time we took our new paddles with balls tied on with rubber string up on this hill. Buddy dropped his down the deep bank into the dry wash. It was so steep down that we didn't dare go and get it. Just then two young women came along this private hill of ours, wearing no clothes, only towels wrapped around themselves and telling us they had no home and they were so poor they had no clothes. They lived in the hills and built fires by rubbing two flints together. We took them to the edge of the hill, which I remember was about as high as our roof, and showed them our house. They said they wished they had a nice warm house like we had. I still remember that experience, although it was probably two teen-age girls in bathing suits just having a good time. In front of this house was a sidewalk and it was here I got my brand new baby buggy to wheel my dolls around in. My two best dolls were Betsy Lee, and baby Betsy Wetsy, and a Shirley Temple doll. At this house we had a Jersey family milk cow named "Pet". One day while my father was fixing the car, he drained the gasoline into a wash tub. Pet came along and drank several gallons of gas. In an effort to save her, he put a hose down her throat and siphoned out the gas. I can still taste the gasoline flavored milk she gave for days after. I went to the second grade in Rock Springs, Wyoming, seven miles from Green River. When I started school there, it was much larger that Green River, and I felt overwhelmed by the size of the school. The last hour on some days of the week we went to another room and another teacher for art. One day I forgot and left my pencil in the art room. After school I thought I should go back to find it, and I got lost. It seemed that every door I went in was the rest room, and each rest room had two doors, each of which went down a hall where the art room wasn't. Even after forty-five years, I should go back to that old school and see how that school really is! The climate in Wyoming was cold and I can remember one of my greatest achievements about then was when I got big enough to keep my long underwear down around my ankles and at the same time put on my long tan colored stockings and hook them up to my garters–all by myself! The teacher's name was Mrs. Black and she was a very heavy woman. She must have been an excellent teacher, because this is the only year all through Elementary School that I can remember what I learned. She taught a unit on Indians, and each child made a scrap book about Indians. I can remember a page with picture language and for years I could remember how to say, "Indian women came and stole white man's horse, and rode away." in Indian sign language. It's been forty-five years and I can still remember most of it. We brought a coffee can from home, put inner tube rubber on each end to make Indian drums. When the day came to take them home, everyone grabbed from the closet shelf; I was quiet and timid and I was the last to reach up. We were one short, so I didn't get one. What a disappointment! She also taught us a song about the rain, which I learned so well. I taught it to all my children as they grew up. Rainy Day Do you wear a pair of rubbers on a very rainy day on a very rainy day on a very rainy day? Does the mud upon the pavement make you slip the other way on a very rainy day? Oh don't get cross with the wind and the rain for the sun will shine again. It never will do to get cross, I say; so hurrah for a rainy day! Do you take an umbrella on a very rainy day on a very rainy day on a very rainy day? Do the wind and umbrella try to have a little play on a very rainy day? Oh, don't get cross with the wind and the rain for the sun will shine again. It never will do to get cross, I say; so hurrah for a rainy day! This teacher also got upset with all of us one day because we were all drawing pictures with blue skies, all at the very tip of the paper. She had the whole class walk over to the classroom window and look at the sky. Sure enough, the blue came clear down to the trees! When I was in the third grade, my father decided to quit engineering for the Wyoming State Highway Department and find a job that didn't require working out in forty degree below zero weather in winter and moving every few months in the dead of winter. How fun it was! I can remember the drift of snow came up about two thirds of the way on the large kitchen window most of the time we were there. Water for the house did not have to be brought from the spring during the winter. We simply walked out the kitchen door with a bucket and scooped up some of the clean snow lying everywhere. I can still taste that delicious snow water dipped from the bucket with the aluminum dipper as it sat on the cupboard. Buddy and I went to school at Manila with our cousins. The first step each morning was to put on our high-buckled boots and walk the mile or so through deep snow to my Uncle Kent's house. There my Aunt Sadie would have a lunch ready for us to take to school. It was the same every day all winter–peanut butter and honey sandwiches made from thick slices of her home made whole wheat bread and a pint canning jar filled with milk from their cow. We were the end of the line for the school bus, and we were the first ones on. In Manila the school had two rooms for ages six to high school, or until they quit. People who valued high-school education usually moved away. The teacher was very loving. I remember my first day at school when she gave me such a warm hug, I knew I was going to like her class. I fell in love with her immediately. The first day, she asked me if I knew how to borrow in arithmetic. Not wanting her to think I was dumb, I nodded my head yes. Then she said, "Okay, come up to the blackboard and work these problems." I went up to the blackboard and stood there for a time. Now the whole class knew that I didn't know how to borrow! During the recess, all the kids would play on tip of the frozen wash (creek). The teacher told everyone not to do it any more. The next recess, we all went on the ice again. I don't remember doing anything wrong; I was just following the other kids. Anyway, the teacher caught me and another child with an icicle in our hand when we came in. She made us stand over the waste basket and hold the ice until it melted. Oooooooh, so cold! Towards the spring (now 1940), my father, in an effort to settle down to a more permanent home life, moved us back to Downey, Idaho, where his family lived. He rented about 600 acres, and decided to try farming. We had hundreds of pigs–200 at the house and the rest in the pasture–, 17 milk cows, some white face cattle, work horses, and we raised some potatoes. The house was little more that a shack and I learned much later that my mother hated it there; but that farm is filled with great memories for me. Just over our property line was a hot spring where someone owned a public swimming pool. The hot water left the Downata Resort and ran through our yard in a hot canal. This hot canal ran through the whole length of our property and ended up in a small but deep lake in the middle of one of our fields. The temperature of the water in the canal was too hot to put your foot in comfortably; and so a line of stem followed the canal all down the countryside. In our yard, there was a footbridge over the canal, a bah house, an outhouse and by the kitchen door, a great place to make mud pies. We made mud logs and then log houses, mud dishes, but best of all, mud cakes. We would make a nice chocolate cake on a plate, and then mix white flour with beet juice from the kitchen to make pink frosting. The bath house straddled the canal, and had a door in the floor. When you lifted up the door, you could sit down in the hot water in the canal where someone had attached a wooden floor to the bottom of the canal. A great idea, but you sure had to work hard, one toe at a time to get used to that steaming hot water. One of my favorite things there was my little black kitten, Figaro. We played house with him all summer. Half the time he was wearing doll clothes. One day I was playing house with him all by myself and for lack of a better play house, I was playing in the outhouse. I made a mistake and dropped him down one of the holes. The outhouse was so close to the canal it was really sloppy down there, and the poor kitten was swimming as hard as he could to keep afloat. I ran to my mother in a panic: "My cat's down the toilet hole! My cat's down the toilet hole!" My mother came running with the broom as it was quite a ways down. The poor soggy kitten climbed onto the broom and my mother soon lowered him into the canal to have a good bath. Soon he was as good as new. We had another cat that was a huge tomcat with long golden hair; he was beautiful, but he didn't like to play with us. His name was Goldie. One day my mother brought out a big cast iron frying pan to wash in the canal. She emptied the left-over food into a dish for the cats on the canal bank, so she could wash the pan. Big Goldie came right over and started gobbling. My little black cat wanted to eat too, but Goldie was growling and refused to let Figaro have any. My mother thought: "I know what to do. I'll give that big cat a whack on the tail with this big frying pan and then he'll share!: Down came the frying pan, but not on Goldie's tail–right on Figaro's head! It knocked him clear out. He lay there limp on a little bed we made for him. After 20 minutes or so he came to. Another day we dressed Figaro up and made a picnic lunch. Buddy, Mary Lou and I walked down toward the fields to find a spot. When we found a tree to sit under, we set out the lunch. There was a little pile of dirt that I thought looked just right to sit on. As the ants started to climb all over my legs ad back, I realized I was sitting on an ant hill! My mother never let the cat on or in the beds, but in this wonderful house there was a broken window by our bed and we could sleep with our cat. In the back of the house was an old, unused root cellar. There was no door any more, so Buddy and I decided to dig down in the dirt to find the room below. We made quite a tunnel, then we took a gas lantern down there, lit it, and roasted marshmallows. What fun!! I'm sure our mother didn't know what we were doing. One day a mean cow got loose and a they were chasing her, she ran across the old cellar. It caved in and she fell into the pit below. (Sure glad we got our marshmallows out of there!) Buddy, Mary Lou and I slept in the same bed. In our bedroom there were no walls, only 2x4's so as a temporary measure, we had nailed paper on the walls and ceiling. In the fall we started hearing pitter-patter feet sounds in the ceiling, and we thought there was a rat up there. My father put a large trap up above the ceiling. One night after we had gone to bed, we heard a big flopping noise in the ceiling just above our bed. Mary Lou, who was five, tip-toed out of bed and went to the kitchen: "Mama there's something in our ceiling!" Now what would most mothers say to a little child who wanted an excuse to get out of bed? "Get back to bed, there's nothing in your ceiling!" Mary Lou went back to bed, but about then the flops were getting more vigorous and the ceiling paper started to tear just over our bed. Mary Lou hurried back out to the kitchen and with eyes as big as saucers said: "But mama! It's really there!!!" Mama came to look this time and saw there really was something "in our ceiling." She hurried out to get my father who was busy milking 17 cows by hand with some hired help. He came in and shined a flash-light up through the hole in the paper. He saw two big round eyes in the dark–and behind those eyes was a skunk! He wasn't smelling but he was sitting in the trap very much afraid. The next question was, "What do we do now?" My father decided he would shoot the skunk. My mother protested that shooting it would cause it to smell everything up. My father insisted that if you know right where to shoot them and they died quickly, they would not smell. We all huddled in the kitchen while my father went alone into the bedroom with his gun. He shot it, and guess what–we had to move out of the house for about two weeks. We went to my Grandma Almond's house in Downey and took baths in her nice bathtub with indoor plumbing. We bathed and bathed and bathed so we could go to school the next day. And the skunk? Well, no one touched him. My father dug a deep hole by the side of the house. He then cut a giant circle in the paper around the skunk, then, carrying the paper with the skunk inside, they lowered him into his grave–paper, trap and all. One day I was walking all by myself way down into the fields on the road (which was two trails where the car tires had run). I came to a place where there was a big mud puddle in the middle of the road. I looked and there was a snake stretched across the road so long that both ends were hidden in the grass on either side so I couldn't see how long he was. I almost stepped on him. He looked gigantic to me and I ran as fast as I could all the way home with my heart in my throat. Could it have been a bull snake to have been that huge? While we lived here, my father's sister Eunice, gave us our dog that we all grew up with. He was a Bull Terrier whom we named "Pup." He weighed 35 pounds and was a gray brindle color with a broad white chest and pug nose. He was a marvel, believe it or not, in helping herd pigs. I don't know if I've ever heard of herding pigs before–they're not noted for cooperating at all. But with Pup nipping at their heels, we took herds of them down to pasture. I can remember one time we were all driving a herd of pigs down to pasture (we were walking behind) and one little half-grown pg darted out from the group and ran toward home. My father said, "Dixie, go get that pig." I ran after him as hard as I could go but I never could catch up to him. I ran at least half a mile just two or three feet behind that pig, but every time I would put on a press to bet in front of him, he would speed up too. I never could quite get around him. I arrived at the barnyard at home all out of breath from running, crying sobs of tears and feeling like a complete failure. I remember watching the pigs being fed. I guess we used what we had–potatoes. We had huge piles of old tires to burn in huge bonfires. On tip of the fire were 55-gallon barrels on their sides with a large opening cut in the barrel to make an oversized cooking pot for the potatoes boiling in water. When the hot, cooked potatoes were put into the troughs, the pigs would burn their mouths trying to get more than their brothers. I remember riding a slow horse bareback, and when the apples were ripe I would stand on top of the horse to reach the apples. This also is the place where I was baptized into the church–at the church in Downey. One day when we were in our car driving on the gravel road toward the highway, I noticed that the car door wasn't all the way closed. I opened it to slam it harder. We were going about 40 miles per hour and as soon as the door came open, the wind caught it , forcing it open and taking me out with it. I remember reaching for the rope along the back of the front seat but my fingers just missed it and I felt a sensation that the rope and the whole car just flew away from me. I landed on the gravel road with my father stopping the car quickly. The car's tire rolled against my ankle, rubbing some skin off; but otherwise I was fine. My mother was so frightened that she made me lie down for a long time, but I really was fine. Several years after that they started making car doors open always from the back so the wind would not catch in open doors. My father wanted to buy this property in Downata but my mother hated it. It seemed we were losing money every month. By November he had another job as an engineer to help build the power house at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River in the state of Washington some forty miles east of Portland, Oregon. My father left to start work in Washington several weeks before the rest of us. My mother stayed behind to sell all the pigs; we practically gave them away because the prices were so low. She got very good at backing the trailer filled with pigs at the stock yard. And I remember spending hours sitting on a giant pile of potatoes, sorting and sorting so they could be sold. On November 26, 1940, we started our caravan to move to Washington. My father drove a truck piled high with all our furniture. My mother drove the car pulling the trailer with "Pet" the jersey milk cow, some chickens, the geese, Pup, Goldie and the three kids. They took big beautiful Goldie and left my sweet little companion, Figaro. We had another slick-coated black tomcat named Felix, but we left him because we couldn't find him. He was often gone because Goldie was the boss. Everything went fine until we got to the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon. In those days there were no freeways and it was a winding mountain road with a very high switch back down the northwest side into Pendleton. When we went through the Blue Mountains, the road was covered with solid ice. We were going very slow on the ice with my father being someplace ahead with the truck. Very slowly but surely our car and trailer started to veer off to the right and the car and trailer gently leaned over against the snowdrift at the edge of the rad. What tears and panic because the car, cow kids, chickens and all were sitting on about a 30 degree angle! Luckily we were to the right against the mountain and not to the left down the mountainside. We had little more time than to wonder what to do when my father cam creeping back in the truck to find out why we weren't coming. I remember how hard it was for him to stand on the slick ice as he surveyed the problem. However, with a lot of expertise gained in the Wyoming snow, he soon had our car back on the road. While my father was working with our car, the driver less truck started slowly to move toward the edge of the road toward the downward plunge. I was the one that saw it first and said: "Daddy, the truck is moving!" He skated quickly to it and soon had it stopped. I felt pretty proud to have perhaps prevented a disaster.
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