Return to Previous Page

*** THIS I REMEMBER ***

By

Elizabeth Adams Stowe

(1949) 

Mother was born in Missouri, Chillicothe I believe, in 1869.  Her family came from Ohio.  Father was born in Mississippi.  I believe they lived near Jackson.  He remembered hearing the guns of the Civil War… He also remembered being named, when he was three or four years old.  They talked about calling him Jefferson Davis.  He didn’t like that, so they named him Francis.  Before that he had been called Pud, short for Puddin.  There were nine or ten children in his family, and most of them died very young.  Mother’s family had about the same number and at least half of them were octogenarians. 

Mother and Father each lost one parent while they were still small, Mother’s mother and Father’s father.  Both families moved to Erath County, Texas, and they met there.  Neither of them had much school.  Father’s family was a little more refined, while Mother’s were the hardy, frontier type, but with more horse sense.  David Crockett was a good example of this.  He was Mother’s great uncle on her mother’s side, her mother being Lauretta Crockett.  David was elected to his state (Tenn.) legislature for a couple of terms, but he was not very popular being too outspoken and set in his ways.  He was green, loud and uncouth (see encyclopedia).  Mother was a great reader, mostly of fiction, but Father objected to fiction as a “pack of lies.”  He wanted facts.  She read fiction. 

Father’s family were rather small and inclined to sickness, while Mother’s were the big, hardy type with all of the men being over six feet tall.  Mother’s were clever at figuring things out.  She loved to work puzzles, solve riddles, etc.  They both became quite well educated, self-educated, that is. 

They had ten children, raised seven besides an orphan girl, whose mother died at her birth.  In addition to this, they lost two before birth.  One Mother had carried for six months, when she was critically injured in a horse and buggy accident.  She had taken berries to town and sold them and was returning home when the horse was probably stung by a bee and started to run away.  People who saw it said she was trying so hard to keep the horse from making a turn they were approaching that she had his head pulled clear around against his side, but he turned anyway, and the buggy turned over, throwing her out on the pavement.  Her head hit a stone, fracturing her skull at the base of the brain.  She died three days later. 

Mother and Father were married October 25^th, 1885. When Mother was sixteen and Father was twenty-four.  Soon after they moved to Navajo, Oklahoma and filed on government land.  As they were traveling via covered wagon to Oklahoma, they were both having chills and fever every other day, but on alternate days so that one drove while the other chilled.  They said it was hectic. 

Mother’s mother was Lauretta Crockett, her father Samuel Wintermoot Snell.  Father’s father was William Chambers Adams and his mother was Zemuella Adaline Means. 

My Earliest remembrance is of walking in hot sand screaming, not knowing what to do until it suddenly dawned on me to climb up on the fence which was beside me, and continuing to scream until Mama came and rescued me.  I was two years old, because they tell me that was the only time we ever lived where there was sand.  It was Uncle Emery’s place, down on the river.  We lived there only one year.  Clara was born there.  After that we moved back to our own place, into our one room log house, complete with hard dirt floor and everything.  There were Father, Mother, Nannie, Willie, Clara, and I.  Eddie had died of membranous croup (Diphtheria) while Father was away working on the railroad when I was the baby.  He was two years older than I.  There were just two years between each two children, except the two who died in infancy, Lillie Georgian and Rosa Laura.  The following child came in just about a year. 

I remember the log house well.  The door was in one corner, the cast iron cook stove on its four squatty legs with a hearth that swung out and around, the ashes underneath and the blaze of fire showing through the row of little square windows in front, sat in the back corner facing the door, with the table between.  Two double beds were across the room in the other two corners, and family all in between.  I never knew it if we were crowded. 

There was a red ant bed in front of the house.  We children were to keep away from it.  I didn’t.  Now I know why… We hauled water in a barrel on a little square sled from Grandma’s house half a mile away.  I did it alone when I was only nine or ten years old.  Wells were a problem, as they were apt to be either salty or have oil in them, but Grandma had a good one on her place.  When it rained there were little knee-deep ponds all over the prairie, which filled with water and were fine for washing clothes, dishes, and children.  We called them puddle holes.  They were buffalo wallows.  The bottom was covered with grass, so the water was clean.  The land was originally all covered with buffalo grass, which was short and just like a beautiful lawn in the spring.  In winter it snowed and we melted snow in the dishpan and pails on the stove for water for kitchen use. 

Grandpa Snell and Aunt Susan, Mother’s stepmother, lived on the farm adjoining ours on the East.  Grandpa had given Mother a sorrel mare when he was married.  We called her Old Nell.  Mama had a sidesaddle and a long, black riding skirt that came way down over her feet.  She would take two of us children on the horse with her, one in her lap and the other on the horse behind the saddle, and ride down to Grandpa’s.  He had a mulberry patch, which we loved when the berries were ripe.  We would pick big pails of them.  He also had the nicest well, all lined with stone and with a real moss covered Oaken Bucket, and water so cold it made our teeth ache.  We loved to look down in the well and talk so the echo would come back to us.  He later moved away after selling his fame and lived in a small town not far from us. 

For fun Mother and Father would sit around the fire and sing.  They had song books and could read the music.  They would start a piece by singing Do, Sol, Mi, Do to get the right pitch, then they were off.  As we children were old enough to carry a tune we would join in, the children singing the air, Mother singing alto, and Father singing bass.  They hoped to make a tenor of Will, but he wasn’t a tenor.  They sang hymns and folk songs, “Shall We Gather At the River,” “The Old Folks At Home,” etc.  One time I went to sleep on Father’s lap while they were singing.  Nannie and Will got sleepy and went to bed.  When Father got up to put me in bed with them, he tossed me over behind them and I landed on the floor behind the bed.  I woke up enough to hear Mama scolding him (one of the two times I ever heard her scold him).  She said, “Frank, you shouldn’t do that, you’ll hurt her.”  So then I thought I was hurt and really whooped it up.  We played dominoes too, all who were old enough to count, mostly on Sunday afternoons or when it was raining.  Sometimes in summer, Mama would boil potatoes in their jackets, in the iron teakettle over a fire in the yard, and we would have a picnic.  We children loved that. 

Going down to Grandma’s was fun.  I would coax and coax ‘till Mama got tired of saying “No.”  Then in a weak moment she would say “Yes,” and I was off.  I had to walk across the pasture past the cows and bull.  I would imagine they were about to chase me and get so scared I would almost run, but Will had told me never to run or they would chase me.  The cows would just look at me and sometimes they would shake their heads, but none ever bothered me.  When I’d get to Grandma’s, she and Aunt Mal would ask me about the folks and talk a little while, then they would go on about their work and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.  I’d think, “Why did I want to come down here?”  Grandma had a smokehouse with hams and bacons hanging in it.  It had some very good smells in it and I liked to go in and look around.  She always had some slippery elm bark hanging there, and I’d get a piece and chew it.  Then I dreaded to say I was going, so I’d just sit and think how I would say it, then I’d say to myself,  “Now I’ll just say it,” but I couldn’t get up enough courage and would just keep going over, “Now I’ll say it.”  Finally I’d make the grade and be gone like a shot. 

The land was all covered with grass, which made a thick sod.  I liked to lie on the grass and watch the clouds make patterns in the sky.  When they cleared the land for farming, they had to turn the sod and leave it for a year.  Then the grass and roots would decay and the ground became tillable.  The soil wasn’t very good, but if there was enough rain, it would grow a fair cotton or grain crop.  Otherwise we had hard times, but most were good.  We got up at four o’clock in the morning, so as to get the milking and chores done before time to get ready for school.  Nannie, Will, and I did the milking while Mama cooked breakfast.  When we would go in after milking in the winter, our hands would be stiff with cold.  We would get warm by the fire and pile into the breakfast of hot biscuits, ham, bacon, eggs, honey and what have you.  Everyone who was big enough worked.  We children hoed and picked cotton.  We had long canvas sacks with a strap over the shoulder to pick in.  The size of the sack fit the size of the child. 

There was a steelyard scale, hung on a tripod of poles, to weigh the cotton.  It was then either in a wagon or on a canvas on the ground if the wagon had gone to the gin.  I believe it took two thousand pounds to make a five hundred-pound bale after ginning.  The gin took out the seeds and left the fiber fluffy. 

In winter, when we had to spend a great deal of time around the heating stove, Mother would piece quilts.  She would make up several tops, then bring in some of the ginned cotton and make batting for them.  She had a pair of cotton cards, wire-like brushes six by ten inches.  By spreading the cotton over the brushes and then combing them together, it made perfect cotton batting.  She piled these on a chair, covering the seat, then piling them ‘till they reached the top of the chair back.  That was enough for one quilt.  She would then sew the lining for the quilt onto the big frame, spread the little batts of cotton over the lining, and then put one of the pieced tops over the cotton, pinning it into place.  She was then ready to start quilting.  It took weeks to do one quilt.  The quilting frames hung from the ceiling by cords, and at night she would wind the cord around the frames raising them up out of the way, over our heads.  With all of the children around when she was working, someone was always bumping the quilt and making her jab her fingers with the needle. 

Mother had many chores besides the housework and taking care of the family.  She had a way of making yeast cakes, by starting with a pan of green peach tree leaves.  She would boil them and strain the water off, then cook corn meal in the water to thicken it.  Then she would shape it into a long roll and slice it into little cakes, which she dried in the sun.  They would keep indefinitely, and make as good bread as the yeast cakes we now buy.  We grew our own corn and would take a sack of dry corn to the mill and have it ground when we needed cornmeal.  Mother also made our laundry soap from the excess pork fat, which we always had in abundance.  She would make lye from ashes, then use the lye and fat to make soap.  She molded it in big pans and cut it into bars, which we dried out, making a strong, brown soap.  It was very good for washing clothes and dishes. 

We always had three or four hogs to butcher.  We made hams and bacon, which were first salted, then hung in the smokehouse to cure.  We then ground the sausage.  Some of it we used fresh, the rest we smoked.  Last of all came the headcheese.  None of us liked it very much, but we wasted nothing.  It seemed about the only meat we used fresh was the liver, the first day or two, then the spare ribs, a few chops, and last we boiled the backbones.  That was just about as long as we could keep the meat fresh. 

When they harvested the grain, the mothers of the community all got together at the house where the men were working and cooked for the threshers.  Each would have several children, besides the men to feed, but it was a big day and they all seemed to have fun.  They would move the big dining table onto the porch, where it was cooler, and eat out there.  After threshing, the men would haul the grain to market, which was quite a distance.  I don’t know how that was handled. 

We always had a garden, which was Mama’s and Will’s chore.  We also had chickens.  Mama sent away some place and got a setting of Silver Laced Wyandotte eggs for setting.  We thought we really had something then.  Grandma sent for Plymouth Rocks.  There was a kind of rivalry proving which was best. 

We had the only orchard in the country.  It was small, with five plum trees (two kinds), apricots, four, I believe, two pear and several kinds of peaches, both yellow and white, freestone and clings, early and late.  There was a row of currants and some Concord grapes.  There was a row of Catalpa trees on one side of the yard and Cedar trees at the back.  They sheltered the house from the wind.  

The men used to take the wagons across the river into the Indian Territory and get wood for fuel.  They called it Post Oak.  I don’t believe they were supposed to do that, as I would hear Mother ask if they saw the Marshall.  I thought the Marshall was the big Indian with the feathers.  Or Father would say they had to watch out for the Marshall.  There were wild plums growing down on the river and there were pecans growing wild some place.  We didn’t have them often but at times we had some.  I don’t know where they got them. 

After a few years, Papa bought a three-roomed house from away someplace and moved it home on wagons.  It was old, so he took the old siding off and put on new weatherboarding.  It was finished inside with what we called “ceiling” that had little grooves running horizontally.  Papa let the children choose the paint for the outside.  It was pink.  The house was ell shaped, with two rooms across the front and the kitchen at the back.  The rooms must have been about twelve by fourteen feet.  The living room had Mama and Papa’s bed in it, a heating stove, a square homemade stand table, the sewing machine, and chairs.  We had a small wooden box nailed on the wall, papered with wrapping paper, and paper cut with a scalloped edge covering the shelf of it to hold our treasures, pretty dishes and such.  Later they bought an old organ, which we loved.  We learned to pick out tunes and chords with the left hand.  The organ was very pretty walnut wood, high top with a music rack in the middle and little shelves at the sides.

The east room was our bedroom.  We had three beds, some trunks, and a curtained corner for clothes.  Sometimes they stored cotton in one corner to wait for a better market.  Will slept on the cotton.  How I would have loved to sleep on the cotton.  Later they screened one end of the back porch with binder canvas and made Will a bedroom. 

The kitchen had a shelf for the water bucket and wash pan, just inside the door.  Then the long homemade table, a bench and chairs and a big fancy cast iron stove, which we sent to Sears Roebuck for.  We went all out for it.  It had a warming oven at the top and a reservoir at the back for hot water.  It was all trimmed with nickel and had little fancy shelves at the sides. 

Papa built an outhouse out of some of the lumber he took off the house, and the path around behind the cedars gradually faded out.  He dug several wells on our place, but never could find one with good drinking water, so he made a cistern at the back of the house.  It was a jug shaped affair, all cemented to hold water.  Then he made a drain to run the water off the house into the cistern when it rained.  The drain was made so we could turn it away from the cistern and let the first dirty water run off the house, and then swing it back to the cistern. 

Twice we made trips to visit relatives, once when I was five and again when I was ten.  My birthday came each time while we were away.  Papa made an extension on the sides of the wagon bed, making it wide enough to hold a bedspring.  Mama and Papa and one or two of the smallest children slept there.  Clara and I slept on the floor at the front after the spring seat was removed, and Will slept on the ground under the wagon. 

Papa made a chuck box for the back of the wagon.  It was really a cupboard with a lid that let down on hinges to make a table.  Here Mother fixed our meals and we also ate.  When we were travelling, one or two of us sat on the seat with Father and the rest rode on the bed.  We took turns riding up front.  It was very comfortable in both places.  Papa bought two harmonicas, we called them French harps, and someone was always trying to play them.  He played quite well and so did Mama.  Papa had his rifle and sometimes Mama would drive and he would walk along a creek and try to find game to eat.  He only found quail and prairie chickens, which were very acceptable.  There were lots of antelope and deer to be seen in the distance, but the terrain was so level and we could see so far, the game would be long gone before we were near enough for him to get a shot.  He could find cottontail rabbits most any time.  There were wild grapes along the creeks and we would pick some and Mama would make jelly of them.  The trips took days.  Of course the visits were the highlights, but we were glad to get home again and everything, even the most trivial seemed new and wonderful. 

One summer a cyclone passed a short distance south of where we lived.  It demolished the town of Snyder.  After a few days, when the dead and injured were all taken care of, the folks took us on a trip to see the havoc.  It was really terrific.  What had been buildings were just kindling wood and rolled up corrugated roofing.  We picked up some souvenirs, a child’s metal drinking cup that was just a mass of metal. It looked like it had been melted.  

One time some of the kids found a big bull snake in the chicken house.  They killed it and then decided it would be fun to scare me with it, as I had a horror of snakes.  They coiled it up at the end of the porch and then called me to come quick.  I went running so fast I couldn’t stop and jumped off the porch right into the middle of it.  I was barefoot, too.  I can still feel that snake.  

We had a storm cellar at the back of the house.  Many times when it was storming and the folks were afraid of a tornado coming in the night, and maybe not knowing it until too late, we would go to the cellar and sleep there at least part of the night until the storm passed over.  The cellar was entirely below the surface of the ground and the roof was covered with dirt.  Most everyone had one. 

We lived about three miles from Navajo, where we went to school at first.  Sometimes we walked and sometimes we drove a horse and cart.  I also remember riding horseback.  Nannie rode one horse and Will and I rode another, me behind.  I remember walking when it was awfully cold.  I’d want to get in the shelter of a bank and try to get warm, but Nannie and Will said we must never stop or we would freeze to death.  One time when we got to town I was so cold Will took me to the drug store, which was run by our family doctor, to get warm.  The doctor rubbed my hands and feet with snow.  I thought that was a funny way to get warm, but Will told me that was to avoid frostbite. 

Aunt Mal was one of the two teachers, and one year Grandma, Aunt Mal, Nannie, Will, and I moved to town for the school season.  We lived in a one-room dugout.  Will combed my hair to get me ready for school.  Another year Grandma, Aunt Mal, Clara, and I had a two-room apartment in town for the school year.  That year I combed and braided Clara’s and my hair.  Mother almost died that year.  She lost a child she was carrying.  Papa came into town and got Clara and me in the middle of the night.  They thought she was dying.  When we got home, I threw myself across her and just cried and cried.  They left me for a few minutes and then took me away.  After a while they came and told me she was better and she had wanted them to tell me. 

The railroad came through about three miles to the south of us and they moved the town of Navajo bodily to the railroad.  They named the new town Headrick for the man they bought the land from.  All that was left of Navajo was the cemetery.  They built a big new schoolhouse at Headrick, two stories, yet.  It had eight rooms, four on each floor.  It was square like a box.  We went to school there.  We had gone to two little country schools, which were nearer home, to which we walked, but now we drove the horse and cart all the time.  My chum’s sister taught in my room.  We had a lot of fun that year.  

We always went to church and Sunday school when there was a Sunday school.  We all went in the wagon, Mama and Papa riding on the spring seat and the older children on chairs sitting in the back, and the little ones on a quilt on the floor.  There was a Christmas tree each year, sometimes at the schoolhouse, and other times at the church.  We were always in the programs.  We belonged to the Christian Church, called Cambellites by the other denominations.  Papa’s people were Methodists, but he joined Mama’s church when he was courting her.  His folks didn’t approve of the change.  After church, friends would greet each other and someone would say, “Come and go home with us for dinner.”  Then the women would cook a big dinner, for perhaps fifteen people.  Probably kill and fry chickens, make hot biscuits, and pies or a fruit cobbler.  While this was going on the men would be discussing the sermon, arguing loud and long, with the women joining in from the kitchen from time to time.  They were all familiar with the Bible and could quote freely from it, knowing right where to find the passage in question. 

Sometimes on Sunday afternoon the folks would let us older ones go to the mountains.  We thought they were big mountains, but when I saw them after we grew up, I was surprised at how they had shrunk.  There were cedar trees growing on them.  It was a good trip by the time we climbed to the top and back.  One Sunday, just as we were starting up, we heard the train whistle just blowing and blowing.  We looked and could see the train lying on its side.  We got too excited to go on and rushed home to tell the folks.  Everyone knew about it.  Papa and Will went to see it.  The whistle was stuck was why it blew so long. 

Papa was sick a lot of the time.  They called it Catarrh.  The folks decided to try to find a better climate in which to live.  One year Papa went down into Old Mexico to see what that was like.  Some of the family had gone there to live.  The climate was fine, but Papa said he didn’t want to raise his family the way they were living there, on dirt floors again and cooking on open fires.  Another year he went to Phoenix, Arizona, but it was too hot there in summer.  So then he tried California.  Our doctor had moved there for his daughter’s health and liked it fine.  It was summer when Papa went.  He thought it was O.K. so we rented the farm, threw away our red flannels and got ready to move to California.  

The folks thought, since we were moving so far away, that Mama should visit her folks in Texas before we left.  So she took Velma and Frank and went for the visit.  Her father lived at Mt. View, Oklahoma, a short distance from where we lived, so he went with her.  I can’t remember if they went on the train or drove a horse and buggy and stopped at hotels.  The thing I remember most was how we children who were left at home pitched in and did the work while Mother was away.  We had the dishes washed and the house in order much faster than we did when she was home.  We wanted to show her that we could do it without being told. 

A group of acquaintances got together and came to California in a body.  There were five or six families, and most were as big as ours.  We had a passenger coach all to ourselves.  We carried big lunch baskets of food and added to it on the way.  Mama and Papa got coffee on the train.  We all slept in the chairs.  We had a day in San Francisco and went to the Cliff House and saw the ocean.  We went wading in the surf.  Had a lunch on the beach.  It was a big day for all of us.  We landed in Gridley in the night and stayed at the depot until morning, then the real estate agent who had helped with the arrangements for getting us out here took the men out to find houses to rent.  They found houses in town for all of us.  I’ll bet it was a happy day for him. 

We arrived in Gridley in the dead of winter, in the rain.  It rained constantly for weeks, it seemed to us.  By the end of two months we had had enough.  We liked the warm weather, but we couldn’t take the constant rain.  So two or three of the families, including us, packed up and went back to Texas.  We went to Uvalde because the folks had some school friends there with whom they had kept in touch through the years.  We rented an apartment in town.  The folks visited their old friends and Will got a job and worked on the ranch for them.  Frank was the baby then, about eighteen months old.  He was a sickly baby and never walked until he was almost two years old.  I heard the doctor, in whose house we lived, tell Mama that Frank had water on the brain, but they never took stock in that.  Later we moved to a house on the outskirts of town.  There, Jessie had diphtheria, which she contracted from playing with some old magazines which were in the house.  She was the only one who had played with them.  We almost lost her there.  Mama and Papa isolated themselves in one room with her and nursed her through.  Nannie, Clara, and I did the work and took care of the little ones, Velma and Frank.  

By the time Jessie recovered, we were getting letters from the friends who had stayed in California, saying we had made the mistake of our lives.  The rains had stopped, the weather was wonderful, and it was spring.  Papa said that if we had made a mistake we would correct it.  So we returned to Gridley.  Papa went up to Oklahoma to sell the place there, and Mama made the trip back with all we children alone.  Before we left Uvalde Mama had let Nannie go to help a woman who was expecting a baby.  The woman said if Mama would let Nannie stay until the baby came, she would send her on to Gridley, so Mama let her stay, but she never came to Gridley.  As soon as we left she wrote to her brother in Oklahoma and told him that we had gone off and left her there, so he had her come to live with them.  It hurt Mama and Papa very much, as they had taken her when she was three weeks old, and she was just like a child of their own.  Nannie had been a sickly baby and they despaired of raising her.  Mama was carrying Will at the same time, and she would become so exhausted that she would tie a cord around Nanny’s arm and tie it to her own so that when the baby moved it would awaken Mama. 

When we got back to Gridley, Mama picked out a place and bought it, with the help of friends who had remained there.  The men built a one-room house, which we would need later for a woodshed, and helped us fix a camp under the big oak tree, and we moved into it.  Papa sold the Oklahoma farm and came on in a few weeks.  When he got there they built a five-room house with a big attic, which was later to be made into a room for we girls.  They planted peaches and prunes, some alfalfa, and a berry patch.  We had horses, a cow, and lots of chickens. 

The second year the grasshoppers were so bad in the orchard, Papa built a cage of chicken wire on runners and hauled the chickens to the orchard.  It worked quite well.  After they brought them back, they left the cage sitting in the barn lot under the liveoak tree.  One day Mama went to town in the spring wagon.  She had Frank with her, and as they neared home, the horses started to run away and she couldn’t stop them.  When they made the turn around the big oak tree, the wheels ran over a protruding root, and it threw Frank out on the ground.  The horses were still running, so she steered them into the barnyard and into the chicken cage.  That stopped them but good.  She left them all tangled up in the wire and ran back to see what had happened to Frank.  He wasn’t hurt much, mostly scared stiff. 

Lauretta was born after we were at Gridley about two years.  She is our only native Californian.  She was a very pretty baby.  Everyone said she looked like a big doll, she had so much dark hair.

She was very cute and smart and we all loved her to death.  We who were old enough were in school.  We went to Manzanita, a little country school.  Sometimes it was so foggy we couldn’t see each other as we walked along.  I was one of the big girls, the only one in the seventh grade, in fact.  There were several in the eighth grade and three in the ninth.  Velma started to school there.  She was a very shy youngster and wouldn’t leave me.  She sat in the same seat with me and would just hang onto me and cry.  Finally after a few days like that she was all right, or at least too scared to do anything about it.  The classes were arranged so the little ones were out at play a good part of the time.  I sat near a window and one day I saw some little boys playing with a snake.  They were whirling it around by the tail and finally one let it fly and it hit on the pencil Velma was holding in her hand.  I just about had hysterics, but she just gave it a little flip and it slid down over her hand and off onto the ground. 

Will didn’t go back to school when we came to California.  He wanted to get a job and the folks let him.  He, Clara, and I picked berries and worked in the cutting shed and Will hauled fruit and worked in the field. 

There were nine grades in grammar school.  The eighth and ninth had to take county exams at the end of the terms.  When I was in the ninth, the folks arranged for me to go to school in town.  I drove a horse and buggy when the weather was good, and they arranged for me to stay in town with an elderly couple in winter.  On Fridays someone would come into town and take me home for the weekend.  That was the last year there was a ninth grade.  When it was time for Clara to take her county exams, she had to go to Gridley for them.  I was going to high school then, and we had bicycles to ride.  We were short of teachers, and one of the girls held forth in study hall.  We played that period, mostly.  One day my chum and I were fooling around.  We had both left the room at the same time, which we were not supposed to do.  We were giggling and trying to slip back into the room without being noticed.  As we came up the back stairway, the United Brethren minister came up the front stairs.  I felt that he was looking at me strangely.  We laughed and ran into the cloakroom.  He went to the study hall door and talked to the senior in charge.  We waited for him to go away, but he didn’t go away, so finally we came out and the girl at the door said, “Mr. Fisher wants to see you.”  He said, “Your mother has been hurt in a runaway accident.  Go to Mr. Marshall’s house right away.”  I thought of Clara taking her exams at the grammar school and went over and got her.  We rode out there as fast as we could.  When we got there the doctor was working over Mother.  They had brought a mattress onto the side porch and she was lying there, unconscious, making a kind of snoring sound.  They all looked very serious, but no one said anything to us.  We were both crying.  Someone had gone for the rest of the family and when they came, the doctor told Papa that it was critical.  Her skull was fractured at the base of the brain and she was threatened with a miscarriage. 

The neighbors made room for all of us, fixed beds and meals for us, and we stayed for the three days as she hovered between life and death.  Then, on the morning of the fourth day, she passed away, never regaining consciousness so far as we could tell.  Once, as I was holding Lauretta near, she opened her eyes, and I thought she tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t be sure.  Lauretta was only eighteen months old.  It seemed strange to me that she seemed to know that something was terribly wrong.  She never once called for Mother afterward, but would awaken in the night and call me. 

Papa thought we should take Mama back home to Oklahoma to bury her, as we didn’t plan to stay in California after that.  He turned out to be wrong, as we did stay and he had to leave us children alone while he made the trip, and none of us except Will and I have ever seen her grave.  We used to send flowers from our yard every year and have a friend who lived there place them on her grave. 

The berries were ripe, in fact Mama had taken berries to town and sold them and was returning home when the accident happened.  So we children stayed out of school and kept the berries picked and sold ‘till Papa got back.  Then we finished the school term.  I had to drop Latin.  I was having a struggle with it before, so by dropping it I was able to pass my exams.  I took it over the next year and was the smartest one in class.  Hah. 

One day I made soup for dinner and Lauretta toddled in and tipped the plate up to see what was in it.  She spilled the hot soup all over her mouth, chin, and chest and was burned quite badly.  We had a terrific time with her.  She cried for hours on end.  Finally Will succeeded in getting her quiet.  He took her to bed with him and finally got her to sleep.  About a month after Mama died, the annual cannery picnic was held.  Everyone went to the cannery picnic and everyone had new clothes, so we made new dresses for all of we girls and went.  Clara and I carried Lauretta all day.  We had a picnic lunch for all of us and ate on the ground.  We had Lauretta’s picture taken and bought ice cream and everything. 

Frank started to school the next year, so then we were all in school except Lauretta.  We took her to a neighbor’s house each morning and stopped and picked her up on our way home from school.  Clara and I were both going to Gridley to school then.  We washed and ironed on Saturdays.  I washed and Clara and Jessie ironed.  We also baked our own bread and churned butter twice a week.  In summer we canned fruit for winter and worked in the orchard.  We took turns staying at the house mornings to cook dinner.  We all finished high school.  I graduated one year before Clara.  When they discontinued the ninth grade she gained a year on me.  We were both engaged to be married by that time.  When Roy first proposed to me, I said, “No, I can’t leave the kids.”  When I told my chum Louise about it, and she said I had my own life to live and Jessie and Velma were as old by that time as Clara and I had been when Mama died, I changed my answer.  Clara and I planned that I would stay at home until she graduated, and then she would stay until Jessie graduated.  Lauretta started to school the year I stayed home.  It was easy then, with one at home and the baby in school.  I was filling my hope chest that winter, too. 

The following year after Clara graduated in June, Roy and I were married.  Papa wanted us to be married at home, so we were married at ten o’clock and had a wedding breakfast.  We then left on the noon train for Sacramento, where his folks were living.  They had been unable to attend the wedding on account of the store and lunchroom they were operating.  Clark (Roy’s brother) came up for the wedding and Mother Stowe had a wedding dinner for us after we arrived in Sacramento.  There was a big crowd at the train to see us off, with tin cans, old shoes, rice and everything. 

When we arrived in Sacramento, the streets were all decorated with flags.  We didn’t know until then that it was Flag Day.  After our dinner in Sacramento, we took the train for Stockton, to spend our three-day honeymoon with my chum and her husband who were living on Hunt Bros. Ranch near Linden.  We then returned to Sacramento and found a small apartment near Roy’s folks, and he continued to work in the store with them for several months until we found we couldn’t make ends meet on what they could pay him.  So he then got a job at Griffith’s Creamery and Clark went to work in the store to help them out.  He had been doing carpentry work until then. 

I went home for a week every two or three months and helped the children gather up the loose ends.  The various ones visited us from time to time.  Lauretta and Frank came together, via the Northern Electric train.  When I took them to the train to go home, I went home and cried.  They seemed so little to be going alone.  A year or so later, they came and had their tonsils out.  Lauretta and I planned that she would squeeze my hand to let me know she was still awake while she was taking the ether.  The squeezing grew weaker and weaker ‘till I almost collapsed when it stopped.  I stayed with them in the hospital until they came back gurgling and choking, after going away so happy.  It was tough. 

Jessie and Velma both came and stayed with us when they were older and got jobs, first at the orphanage, then at the telephone office.  Then they got jobs with Ruby Blakesley, a friend of mine, and worked for awhile.  Frank stayed home with Papa, and Lauretta went to live with Clara and Oscar, where she lived for several years.  She later came to live with us and graduated from high school in Sacramento.  We loved to have them all, but the strain on our finances made it a little difficult, since we had a sick baby now, who was constantly under the doctor’s care for the whole six years of her life.  We were expecting another when she died, but that is another story.