THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS GRANDMA LAVANN

It is high time that I set down all that I knew or ever learned from having met my first husband's grandmother Margaret Fashauer, Hagemann, Lavann. Quite a lady. I can safely claim that I had never met anyone as strong minded as she. She put the Boss in Bossy. In a group setting, such as with family, she reigned supreme. She told everyone how it was going to go and God Help you if it went different because you were surely going to do what ever it was over until it was right. In one on one situations she was a sweet as pie.

I met my first husband at my first job working at Fairchild Semiconductor. I was working on an assembly line putting together electronic components and he was a general fix it guy. His mother worked in another department. He started there because he had just returned from serving in Viet Nam and needed employment. His mother suggested he apply at her place of work and there you have it.

Eventually we drove to Grandma Lavann's ranch for a visit. Her ranch is located in Northern California one valley north of Ukiah. She owned about 500 acres of mostly timberland that had formerly been small Italian vineyards prior to prohibition. Anyway I learned bits and pieces of her history over the years and here is most of what I learned.

Margaret Fashauer was born about 1900 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a postmaster. She was the youngest of five children, she had all older brothers; Louie, Joseph, Anthony, Frances. Her father decided that St. Louis was not far west enough. They moved to Los Angeles.

Margaret remembers riding on a trolley car out into the country and the gentleman took pot shots ta rabbits off the back of the car. The family did not stay there long. Her father purchased land in Mendocino County. The roads were too rough and nearly impassable so they took a ship up the California coast and off loaded their possessions on the coast a few miles from their land. Her mother truly thought she had been dropped off in the worst wilderness. Eventually the ranch grew into a compound of houses for all of the boys. They stayed bachelors for a great deal of their lives. I have visited that ranch compound a few times. I went there once with Margaret to gather up fallen walnuts. There was a lovely grove of black walnuts growing there. Stomp on the fallen walnuts to break off the husk and wear gloves to pick them up unless you want permanently stained black fingers. Margaret grew up on the ranch doing for the boys. Her life was a bit like “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” only there were only four brothers and her parents.

She met Charles Hagemann when he and his father came to the compound to purchase a pig. He liked what he saw and began courting Margaret and they married and moved to a small farm about 20 miles further east of the main compound. He was a Navy veteran having served as a cook on a ship in the Philippines during the Spanish American war. She still had his favorite rolling pin when I was there. I was a long slender dowel with tapered ends. I loved that thing. I have seen similarly shaped dowels used on The Cooking Channel.

They had three children; Stanley, Phillip and Helen. Helen was my mother-in-law. Very tall lady whereas Margaret could look me straight in the eye. The ranch where they lived was located in what was then known as “Little Italy”. They were surrounded by four or five small farms/vineyards all owned by Italian families. I only remember a couple names; Fratti barn and Geovanetti.

They owned property on both sides of the county road and the property north of the road had an open area used as a dance hall Margaret would sit inside a large hollowed out redwood tree stump and collect admission and sold sausages. There was also a set up for an archery range for bow and arrow for those who wished to try their hand. This concern brought in a little extra money. She told me that she had her babies in Willits at a lying in hospital. The length of stay was about ten days. One of her confinements involved her taking the stage from her home to Willits, the journey took several hours. They stopped for lunch. She was in labor at the time and did not let out a peep.

Her people were German Catholic. I have seen the book entitled, “Father Knieppe's Water Cure”. He was very famous in Europe for this book. I know for a fact that Margaret used the water cure on herself. She also used it on Helen when she contracted pneumonia as a young girl. Remember, this was before antibiotics. The Water Cure consisted of wrapping oneself in wet flannels or towels, then wrapping the whole body in a large rubber sheet and staying in that all night long to sweat out the poisons. This was quite effective for fevers.

The local farms produced a lot of red wine. During prohibition, the local Italian farmers sold them off and Charlie bought them up as well as the left over wine. At one point the 500 gallon redwood vat now used for well water was full of wine. Charlie drank most of it. He also drank himself into kidney failure. Margaret took care of him until he died.

This left Margaret a widow with three young children. One of the neighbor, Victor Geovanetti began courting her and they eventually married. He proposed but she told him she would never marry a Geovanetti. So they changed his name to LaVann and they married. They kept sheep and had a large orchard below the house. The barn was large and when I visited it there was a small tear drop shaped trailer house used for over flow guests. The house itself had two bedrooms downstairs and a full attic upstairs with a couple full sized beds. That is where everyone slept during hunting season.

Yep, I had married into a hunting family. There was a fall dear season that I usually participated in. I was mostly along for the extra deer tags, but I was given a rifle, showed which end was the pointy end and sent off uphill to a feral orchard. Sure enough, a lovely coastal buck wandered into view and I shot and he dashed off. I walked down hill to check and found blood. Dammit! Now I had to track the deer. I kept walking to the bottom of the draw and found the buck resting there and I carefully finished him off through the neck, as I had been shown. I trudged back to the ranch to tell the boys of my kill. They hiked back with me and I learned how to field dress a deer. First thing I learned was that all the ticks on the deer start fleeing as the body temperature drops and there were hundreds of the disgusting thing. So they got the deer dragged back to the ranch. Margaret gave a lesson on how to properly skin a deer after it had hung a couple days. She had a method for carefully sectioning out the scent glands and the anus and wrapping all that business in some newspaper. The carcass was butchered. The heart and liver went into the house for cooking. There really is absolutely nothing better for breakfast than fresh fried venison liver in bacon grease. Seared very quickly and not cooked until dead, dead, DEAD. Yummy. I never did come to care for venison unless it was ground up and mixed with either pork or beef for burgers but the family loved cooking the damn thing up into steaks.

Margaret kept a small herd of sheep, about 20 or 30. She kept the hay in the barn and she had them fooled into thinking they would get a wonderful meal when she called. She would go out into the main parking area, close all the gates, open the field gate and called in a loud voice, “Come sheep! Come sheep!” and by God within 15 minutes the woolies would come trotting in to nibble on a very thin handful of the baled hay. She would count them and then when they were finished they went back out to pasture to other older barns and what not on the property.

She also sheared the sheep. She kept a very large bag of wool,the kind that farms routinely fill from a much larger herd. She hired some people to shear the sheep and got that bag full finally. Once it was full, she loaded it up into her pickup truck and took it to the sale barn in Ukiah.

She owned a Caterpillar tractor left over from her younger farming days. She had to hire a lowboy to haul it off to be serviced and tuned up. It came into use when she decided to log some timber. Now, logging in California required rather expensive environmental impact studies unless the logging operation is less than seven acres, I think. So Margaret selected seven acres worth of timber very carefully to be harvested. This helped pay the tax bill. She showed me the bill one time, it was about 50k for her 500 acre ranch. At one point she and Victor had set up a series of funds that paid interest every six months once they matured. This gave a set bit of money on the books at a time when Social Security had not even been thought of. I would see her get her notifications in the mail and she would dutifully enter it all into a lovely big accounting book.

One time we picked apples from a very large tree on one of the little Italian farms, the tree was what she called a Cooks Seedling. The apples made the most amazing apple sauce. Another fun fruit tree growing near the house was a couple fig trees. I had never tasted ripe figs. They are quite wonderful with cream on them. Also the fallen figs get ripe and fermented. Bees get drunk on ripe figs and cannot fly, just buzz drunkenly in circles on the ground.

The property had huckleberry bushes growing on it. We would go pick huckleberry's and keep an eye out for black bear who like the ripe fruit very much. A hand picked huckleberry pie is pretty darn good.

Margaret was more or less the entire Altar Society at the little Catholic Church in Philo. I attended many times with her. First thing I learned is that there is no such thing as Sunday School for kids, the kids attend the service with the adults and it got noisy. I tried to sit in the back row so I could take Charlie outside for a breather. I remember one Christmas, she cut several fir trees to decorate the altar. One time we went in and she was completely surprised to see the little church decorated for a Quincereana, uh if I got the spelling correct. It was a Mexican tradition to celebrate the 15 year old girls womanhood, the place was decorated for a wedding and the girls all wore what looked like wedding gowns It was very colorful. The priest was very busy, he had three parishes all total to cover for services.

One time, the services were being provided by a Priest who was on sabattical from seminary and he was spending the summer and living in a little cabin on the Navarro river. Father Kevin, told Margaret and I to come by, he had a small plastic wading pool that we could use for Charlie. So, we dropped by on a lovely sunny day. Called out at the house, no answer. We walked around back and spotted a couple people sitting by the river a few hundred yards away. We hollared and waved. Pretty soon Father Kevin started walking back. As we stood there watching, Margaret asked me what kind of swimming suit he was wearing. I peered and suggested that it might be a string and bag kind of thing. She suddenly gasped, grabbed my hand and hauled me back around to the front of he cabin, “He's naked! He is not wearing anything!”. We heard him call up if it was okay for him to come up as is, “No Father Kevin it is not!”, he laughed and said he would dress and be up in a minute. We managed to get the wading pool in the back of the truck and Margaret managed to drive us home laughing her head off.

When any grandchild visited her they would be routinely assigned chores.  One time, Pat was tasked with taking her gigantic cat food bag full of empty cans to the particular little farm where she dumped her garbage down the well.  Pat came back and announced proudly that he had dumped the cans down the well.  "Where is my cat food bag?", "Down the well" said Pat. "Go get my bag, I did not say to throw it away".  So Pat had to go back, get down into the well, not to far down fortunately and retrieve the empty cat food bag.  Yeah that happened 

She stayed as independent as long as possible. The last time I saw her was at Charlies wedding in Sonoma. She had gotten a little stringier looking and she told me that I had gotten fatter and younger. She told it like she saw it. She remained on the ranch and eventually had live in care and lived into her 90's.

God Bless Her.

GRANDMA HORNS KITCHEN

I wanted to describe my Grandma Horn's farm kitchen.  She had all of the mod/con's that a farm wife needed to feed her family and I enjoyed the benefit of her talents.

She baked all of the bread. Whenever I was there visiting my job was to help baste the loaves of bread once they had cooled a bit.  She kept the left over bacon grease for this task   I wielded my brush proudly.

There were two cupboards under the sink. They each hda a half round metal bin attached to the door that held 100 lb bags of flour and sugar.  There was just enough room for a small kid to hide behind them when the doors were closed.  Hide and seek was very fun.  All the giggles were a dead give-a-way. 

Grandma cooked on a wood stove most of her adult life.  The last new stove they owned in Colorado was a brand new Home Comfort Range.  It came with a small recipe book and from that book we gained the family recipe for pumpkin pie.  My sister Carla has that recipe book and there are some lovely recipes for pies in there.  The peach cream one is delicious.  

Pumpkin pie

1 cup pumpkin

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp allspice

1 tbsp. melted butter

mix well, bake in medium oven until toothpick comes out clean.

Recipe can be tripled nicely.

Since Grandma grew a truck garden, it was many times that I got to help snap beans and shell peas.  The corn was always obtained from the end rows of the field corn. Tomatoes grew like weeks.  Grandma had a wonderful wide brimmed hat that she wore to work in the garden.  

Her pie crust was a thing of beauty.  I tried to get amounts of ingredients from her once but she said she didn't measure, she did it by feel.  Pie crust was simply flour, lard, a bit of water and the trick was to blend this together quickly, do not work it to death and you would have wonderful pie crust every time without fail.

Grandma had zig zag fingers from a high fever when she was a girl, surprisingly these finger were very helpful in skimming cream and other items. 

Her best meat dish was fried chicken.  I got to help make mashed potatoes and the gravy.....Oh god, so good. 

She did a lot of canning mostly fruit and veggies.  She had an old treadle Singer sewing machine that she let me play around on but I do not actually remember ever seeing her use the thing, probably too busy with other stuff.

The washing machine was on the porch.  It was a standard three tub wringer washer. one tub for hot soapy water, one tub with clear rinse water and one tub to hold the wrung out clothes.  This was fascinating.  I was cautioned many times to keep my fingers away from the wringer. The clothes then went onto the clothes line with wooden clothes pins. We grandkids were NOT allowed to run around under the drying clothes. 

I know she ironed because I was fascinated with the black and red checked box that the electric iron was stored in.  I did learn how to iron a shirt properly growing up, so in a pinch, yeah I can take out your shameful wrinkles.

She did some hand work by which I mean some crochet and she did quilting and had a fine hand for seams.  She did some embroidery but that was usually confined to pillow cases. 

There was not much time to grow flowers. If I remember correctly I think there were lilac bushes around the yard.  I love lilac.  She did have a few plants in the house.  She loved fuschia but every plant she ever got for a birthday promptly died of aphid infestation.  They started out pretty though.  She gave me an Angle Wing Begonia and it took me FOREVER to kill.  There were always some red gardenia type flowers that smeller very stringent, probably kept insect life down in the house. 

Oh one last thing, in the summer she would prepare the ice cream machine.  Someone got the job of stirring the thing for about 30 minutes.  I remember a particular batch of strawberry that was fabulous. 

FARMIN'

A few farmers were standing around the Feed store waiting for their orders to be filled.  The topic of winning the lottery came up One man allowed as how he would fix up the house, get a new tractor, take a world cruise.  He asked a second farmer what he would do and his answer was about the same plus he had kids to get through college.  They finally turned to the third man who had been listening and asked him what he would do if he won the lottery, he shrugged and said, "I guess I'd keep farmin' until it's gone."

A small farm is usually a closed ecological system. My Grandma Horn's farm was fairly simple.  They had a hen house for egg production for the house and excess to be sold to the store.  Kids were not allowed to play in the chicken shed. There was usually chicken feed to be distributed for them to peck at. Grandma used to tell of baking corn meal into bricks to be used as chickenfeed, usually in the winter. 

Grandfather had a couple dozen milk cows.  They had a new cement block dairy barn that they kept sparkling clean.  The milk was collected in 25 gallon cans after the milk was separated; cream from milk.  They usually got four or five cans from each milking and the milk was taken to the tank full of water that the cans rested in until the Dairy Coop truck came to pick them up.

Grandma would take her half gallon of milk and skim the cream from it until it was blue.  She did make butter from time to time but she preferred to cook with lard. And it was good.

As the seasons turned they planted early hay or alfalfa and then corn.  They didn't have the big combines for the corn so they got on a list of at the Coop for when they got to use the harvesters.

Grandma kept a smallish garden for the house. There were all the usual vegetables and she always grew tomatoes.  At the end of the season she would use the green tomatoes to make green tomato pickles.  It is a crisp sweet pickle.  I have been hoarding my last jar for a few years now.  The worlds best way to eat the pickle is Grandma Horn's way.  She would fry up some hamburger patties and when they were almost done the buns would go into the pan until nicely fried up.  A little mayo, couple slices of green tomato pickle and CHOMP!  Still one of my very favorite burgers.  

These grandparents baled their hay because it was easier to feed cattle that way.  So we kids would climb the haystacks and play fort all day long.  There were farm cats all around but were much to fast to be captured by a little Farm Princess who wanted to dress them up as a dollie.  Nuh uh, not gonna happen. 

We did get to see the gritty bits of farm life.  When fried chicken was requested that usually meant that Grandpa would go catch a chicken and dispatch it by stepping on the head and yanking the feet.  Yep, chickens do run around without a head. 

It was heart breaking to go to the calf barn, the were all bawling for their ma-ma's and the cows were all bawling for the calves.  But they were cute.

They kept a couple horses to go irrigating.  Just a matter of saddle up, grab the shovel and walk about the farm, opening and closing drain ditches.  

NEW WORDS

Each year The Oxford Dictionary announces the new word for the year.  The new word for 2017 is youthquake.
Noun; youthquake, a significant social, societal event caused by young people.  
That is quite wonderful.

So, I also Googled a list of other new words and slang for 2017, there are several most of which I shall not list here because of my extreme removal from the young people who have actually used these words or abbreviations for their Iphones.  I did see one that I disagreed with, it was word salad. I am not sure what the two word phrase was defined as by the youth of America but I can tell you that the phrase word salad is a well established phrase used by physicians to describe a patient who has suffered an acute brain event and their language comes out scrambled.

Having said that I wish to nominate a new word.  I first saw it used in a book review on Amazon. The reviewer was describing the effect of sleight-of-hand and used the word handwavium.  All it takes is for the word to be adopted in casual usage.  Come on everyone it will be tedious at best but good new words always strike me as presumptuous yet inevitable.  I think handwavium meets that personal definition.  I shall continue to try to use the word in a sentence on a more or less daily basis.  Most of the time the sentence will not make any kind of sense.  Usage feedback is always appreciated.  

Ice skating

Every four years, it never fails. The Winter Olympics come along and I enjoy the ice skating.  There is a very long history of limited tricks that the skaters are allowed to perform.  The men have evolved to perform quad jumps routinely.  They rotate so fast I cannot count much beyond twice.  The pairs are a little more acrobatic.  The man throws the woman high up for triple flips and the jumps.  However anything new is very difficult to introduce into competition.  The lovely black ice skater Ms Bonaly used a one footed back flip and while it was an illegal move she used it any way.  All of the spectacular moves are dangerous to begin with but the athletes get better.  I have often wondered why more adventurous moves have not been sanctioned.  Why not allow teams skating, allow a team to consist of at least three skaters.  That would allow for two partners to throw the third much higher.  And why not allow the skaters to use modified blades on their hands so that a true cartwheel could be performed.  Short of looking like Cirque du Soleil on Ice I think such a competition would be fabulous.  I am also thinking that teams would allow all men, women and mixed.  And if little green men ever show up it will be Aliens marching in the opening ceremonies.

Waiting for stories

I regularly follow three or four authors and purchase their stories as soon as they are released.

My most regular lady writes a wonderful variety of short novellas mostly about snarky women set in shape shifter universes, universes based on an earth where aliens come to interview humans who might like to go into space. The author suffers from some sort of manic depressive diagnosis.  When she is manic the stories come and she has gradually cut back to a less insane schedule and has had periods where she is nearly incapacitated when she cycles depressive and she is on medication.

Another lady has rather crippling rheumatoid arthritis.  She has written about a future where a very isolated world has requested a language teacher.  The military industrial complex compels a young language teacher to go.  The story follow over three books of the years of the relationship between the teacher and the leader of the world.  Think of The King and I on Mars.  

A third woman seems to just be slow as her day job is as a nurse and that takes up gobs of her time.  She writes about a magical world where the Fae are the government and humans are servants.  One of the high Fae traveled about his lands administering to his lands and meets a human who has been turned out from her job.  She has a talent for reading books and she looks Fae, very white hair and is beautiful but has no magic.  She is hired by the Fae and becomes his librarian.  There is no High King in the land and there are plots by other Fae to usurp the crown.  The second book is set in the same story only some spell has been set that has destroyed a weather icon and it is raining, the world seems to be drowning, a human helps a high Fae with the evacuation and they discover that she has magic unlike anyone has ever seen.  I am waiting for a third book and the author has said that the editor has it.  Argggghhhhh!

A fourth author has been extremely prolific in the past, however she seems to be stuck getting to the third book of a projected trilogy the third one is due out in March.  we shall see.  This is the one who wrote about women kidnapped from a CIA base in Afghanistan.  The third book is about the CIA girl assassin who will most likely kick butt. However the author has blogged that she has been ill so......I have been blogging various scenarios and I will be very curious to see how close my "stories" come to her.  Drums fingers impatiently. 

In the meantime I troll Kindle Unlimited for free books and have a read a variety and then there are always contents of my Kindle library.  

SCI FI CLASSIC

Way WAY back in the mid to late 50's, I first read "Red Planet" by Robert A. Heinlein.  He and Isaac Asimov put the hard science into speculative fiction.  I remember reading a story by Asimov and he very carefully inserted pages of diagrams and mathematics to illustrate what ever science fact he was illustrating. Heinlein wrote extensively of the hard science.  He was particularly interested in the complicated math it would take to rotate a rocket ship to oriented to the planets surface.  In the interest of appreciation of the story, lack of interest in the hard science part, my mind edited all of that out.

I purchased a copy of Red Planet for my Kindle a few weeks ago (thank you scalable font) and re-read the thing.

Last night I re-read it and mentally stumbled across a couple of things in the story. 

At one point, Jim glances up to appreciate the view of Earth, the globe is clearly visible and the moon can been seen as a sparkling diamond as it orbits earth.  Um, I am virtually certain that RAH was exercising artistic license regarding the view.  Logic would have told him that since Mars looked like a star from Earth, a similar view would be the same from Mars. As a matter of fact the first picture of Earth from Mars was taken on 2014 and looks like a star twinkling away.

Later on Jim glanced up at dawn to appreciate the aurora.  Um a magnetic field was only detected in 1997, so again RAH was exercising artistic license and the field is so weak that no aurora would be forthcoming at any rate. 

The rest of the story was delightful with very large Martians, a small critter named Willis and a struggle between the Mars corporation and the people who were dealing with dangerous cutbacks to their safety.  And the bad guys were disappeared as is appropriate. If you have never read Red Planet, give it a try, it has held up very well over the decades.  Enjoy!

Dear Family I remembered some more stuff:

It is 4 am. I have been thinking about writing a book, it is about what I actually know best, my own family. My plan is to submit it to the Messenger Index in Emmett under the Opinion menu and we will see if anyone reads the thing.

My name is Royce Ilene Berglund, first daughter of Ralph and Virginia Berglund. I was born September 1947 in Emmett, Idaho at the old Mary Secor Hospital. The hospital was named after the mother of the doctor who built the hospital. The physician lived in quarters to the north of the lot and the remaining two story building was on the south part. It sat in what is now the Fire Hall. It had an elevator, pretty nifty for the times. There was a surgical suite and hospital beds upstairs and down. All medical records were filed by year and month. There was a very accurate file with names that noted the dates so retrieval was not completely impossible.

Immediate antecedents were Charlie Berglund and Nellie Rose Berglund, Uncle Albert Berglund and their sister Dorothy. They came to America in the late 1890's or so by way of Charlottenburg, Sweden. Charlie taught himself English by reading the Funny Papers. Great Grandpa came as well but returned to Sweden without being renamed Berglund by immigration. He had another whole family and whose descendents presentlylive in Sweden and who discovered us around 2008 via the internet. Cool beans. Dad was born in Minnesota. The family came to Emmett about 1920 or so. Charlie Berglund specialized in large heavy equipment and was a crane operator for Morrison Knudsen during the depression, usually part time work. The rest of the time he farmed and milked cows. He worked on some of the canals feeding from Black Canyon Dam. That is one of the reasons the road going past their place is called Berglund Road. It was misspelled for many years as Bergland, very common spelling. Grandpa Berglund, who we called Big Grandpa, milked a few dairy cows. Us kids were not allowed in to watch as he did not use hobbles on them. So we noisy bunch were banned from the barn. Another wonderful thing from which we were banned was the haystack. It was loosely stacked and had a small wooden derrick to move the hay. We would have totally destroyed that wonderful haystack by jumping all over it. Big Grandpa smelled wonderful. He chewed snoose and he kept some in his pocket, we never saw him chew or spit but oh that smell. He also kept a lovely old pocket watch in one his many pockets in his cover all's. We would beg to be allowed to listen to the tick of that pocket watch.

Big Grandma was not tall but built like the proverbial brick outhouse, well corseted. I remember she used a pressure cooker a lot for quick meals, the sound of that thing always rather terrified me. She was very social and she and Charlie enjoyed Canasta parties. When she died Mom cleaned out hundreds of party favors made of hand crocheted mini baskets that had been starched to hold mixed nuts and such. I really wanted one of those. Nelliee drove an old blue Studebaker, usually like a bat out of H E double hockey sticks because she was in a hurry. She passed the school bus once that I was riding in and her car was a blur of blue. She was Seventh Day Adventist and Charlie had been raised Lutheran in Sweden and swore off religion.

My mother, Virginia Horn Berglund was born in Brush, Colorado. One of the uncles bears a resemblance to Tom Horn, we do love us the occasional outlaw. Our further antecedents are documented in an old vanity press book that, if proved, links us through the women all the way back to John and Priscilla Alden. Then a bit further back we seem to have a Scottish cowboy helping out William Wallace. Grandma Horn (Little Grandma) and Riley (Little Grandpa) came to Colorado by way of Missouri. They dry land farmed until 1939 or so and sold out and moved to Emmett where the land was much more productive. They lived on several small farms and finally settled on a 40 acre farm out on the slope. There were orchards of prune trees (yes PRUNE trees), cherry trees, some nectarine and some fruit packing sheds. I loved staying at their farm when I was a kid because I was the first grandbaby and was SPOILED ROTTON Mom tells me I went around after my baby teeth fell out smiling widely and people would give me pennies. She wanted to smack me so bad. Grandma Horn made the worlds best pies. She had zig zag fingers from a very high fever when she was a young girl. I think it was rheumatic fever. At any rate they did not know to brace the fingers and the joints deformed but she used one of her fingers to skim the cream until it was blue. The eggs and butter money was hers. Riley was a nearly deaf old man when I knew him. And he was crabby. Grandma always called him “Daddy” which I thought sounded a little weird. They had a storm cellar in the yard that held the hot water tank and the canned goods and smelled of cool dirt. A gooseberry bush grew on top of the storm cellar and one of my favorite pies was gooseberry. I would pick a bunch, Grandma would bake and shudder and shake just watching me wolf down a piece of that pie. Grandma Horn attended First Christian Church and Grandpa Horn farmed. They would keep the occasional bummer lamb and we would get regularly butted onto our bottoms until the little darling went to the sale barn.

Dad first saw Mom be-bopping down main street in Emmett. He thought she was pretty. She just ignored him for a bit. They went to a lot of dances and were jitter bug diva's. I am told they cleared the dance floor regularly with an energetic boogie woogie.

Now, I need to backtrack a bit to tell a little history about my Dad, Shorty. He reached full growth right at 5 foot. He had a sunny disposition and joked with lots of folks and got along well with many people. He decided he had gotten along enough with Charlie Beglund and at age 13 he rode his bicycle to Ontario and sold it for some cash enough to purchase a train ticket that eventually got him back to Minnesota. He worked as a haying hand for some relatives. He wandered to New Orleans and got into some vagrancy trouble and had to work off some time with a local judge. He also wound up in Mexico with Uncle Al and there may have been a tramp steamer involved somewhere along the line.

Dad was a bit of an adventurer and a bit of a rascal. He came back to the farm after some time and worked. He got into some trouble when he and his brother accidentally set a farmers field on fire. As punishment Charlie made the boys work for the farmer. The boys decided to take revenge. The farmer owned a gentle old bull. The boys stacked hay bales up high enough to coax the bull up onto a barn. They put the hay bales back and skedaddled for home. The farmer found the bull and just knew those Berlund kids had done it. They steadily denied it for years as the Sheriff got involved.

When he was a little older age 30 or so he worked for the Little's on one of their houses. He cut his thumb rather badly and had to go to Mary Secor to get it stitched up. For years he teased us kids that that was what happened if you sucked your thumb. Years later while working for the local hospital I happened to come across those old records of his and the bill for then was something like $37.00. The Little's very kindly paid the bill.

During WWII he signed up and went into the Army. At one point he was being transferred from point A to point B somewhere on the West coast. He checked in at Point B, paid a buddy five bucks to answer to his name at Roll call and he came home for several weeks. Once he was through with his visit he went back to Point B, let his buddy know he was there, answered to “Berglund” the next morning and told the Sarge here were his transfer papers, he just forgot to turn them it. I believe he got a little stink eye for that. He eventually served in Alaska and learned all about cribbage in Kodiak.

In the mean time Mom was only sixteen or so when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She said she was painting her bedroom when they heard the news. About that time she decided she had had enough of high school and did not finish her sophomore year. She began rooming with a family in town and worked at various places. Her last place was at a bakery. She has told me that she never wanted to taste frosting again. So Dad was 10 years or so older than she. They met shortly after the war. They eloped, everyone they knew eloped and got married in 1945. Mom was very anemic and I did not come along for a couple of years.

They lived in a tiny little trailer house. I have seen pictures, it must have been all of 15 feet long and 6 feet wide. They traveled following jobs that dad took here and there. The moving theme held up pretty well until there were several more of us and we finally settled more or less permanently back in Emmett when I was in the fourth grade.

TECHNOLOGY: One day when I was four or five I was visiting Grandma Horn's Farm. I had learned most of my numbers. My Aunt Ollie decided that I was big enough to use the telephone. At that time the phone was a big old black thing made of Bakelite. She had me sit on her lap and held the speaker to my mouth and told me to say three numbers into the phone. First of all there was a voice on the phone that said, “Central, how may I help you?” Then I was prompted to repeated the number that I had been told. I repeatedly read the numbers on the dial which consisted of three number such as 6 5 4. The nice lady said that she could not connect to that number. I kept repeating the home number until my Aunt gave up and said the numbers correctly. In those days all phones were on party lines and if your number rang 2 times you could answer, all other rings were to be ignored. Um unless you wanted to listen in, which as I learned later on was considered extremely rude.

From time to time during summers we would get moved when Dad worked different places. One of the more interesting places was then Dad worked for Idaho Power on the Hell's Canyon Dam. It was a three or four year project. We started out living in Cambridge, Idaho. Richard and I would place doubled headed nails on the rail road tracks, wait for the train to run over them and gleefully pick up our miniature swords. We never told Mom, I think she would have screamed a lot.

We gradually moved closer into the canyon as the commute got further along. We loved Dagget's Creek. Twenty or so trailers parked along a creek, that once it was partially dammed by the men with some old doors, we could swim in it. You had to be careful where you dived there was a big fat rock just there so don't hit it. At one point some of us developed sores on our skin. Mom kept us out of the creek after that because the sewage from the trailers emptied into the creek. There were wild apricots and Elderberry bushes that grew in the canyon. We picked the fruit indiscriminately. Had to watch out for rattle snakes though.

The one thing we begged Dad for was a UKE inner tube. The giant trucks were from the UK and had massive tires. They were solid and had no inner tubes but we were sure that Dad could get one for us. Nope.

Richard and I spent part of the summer with friends who lived in Haines, OR, so we could take Red Cross approved swimming lessons. That was at Indian Springs hot springs, which has since been renamed with something more culturally sensitive, Medicine Springs I think. I got the worst sunburn of my life that year oh and a gnarly set of blisters from playing on monkey bars. Ugh. Yeah we got our certicate. That gave us tacit approval to use the pool in Emmett and no squealing if we swam in the canals.

Speaking of swimming, a year or so earlier we lived briefly in Cascade. There was a small swimming pool there. I remember Mom taking us and we used paddle boards and I am sure that is what prompted the later Oregon swimming lessons and probably prevented a drowning or two.

PICKING FRUIT: It isn't call Gem Valley for no reason, the fruit orchards were considered Gems. I remember bitter cold mornings in the Spring when the farmers had to keep the blossoms from freezing by burning oil in smudge pots. The dark clouds hung over the valley. When the fruit was ripe, my brother and I would pick various fruit. Cherries only lasted two weeks. I used to pick with girl friends for some many cents per pound and it was something like four or five cents per pound and the goal was to fill the lugs with about 35 pounds of fruit. Funny thing about cherries, they are a fabulous laxative. Finding that one needs the necessary at the top of a 12 foot ladder is very inconvenient. I was forced to walk home one time and wound up throwing a ruined pair of blue jeans down into the outhouse. The next fruit up for grabs were the prune harvest. One time Richard and I teamed up to pick prunes. The farmers placed large bins between four trees and we were expected to strip the trees and fill the bins. We managed to cover the bottom of the bin in the same time that a family of migrant workers, usually Mexican, merrily picked all four trees clean in about two hours and then they went onto the next bunch of trees. The apple crop came ripe right after school started. Mom would never let us go pick apples. That crop was mostly Golden and Red delicious. I can tell you from personal experience that the most delicious flavor I ever tasted was that from fruit picked from a tree after a heavy frost. The frost forced the juice to concentrate near the center of the apple. This made it extra crisp and dazzling sweet. Unfortunately it made the fruit unsuitable for the market. But oh the taste. The world is missing something magnificent by not having tasted these apples.

We came to know some of the fruit tramps that traveled to Emmett during harvest. One family in particular parked their snazzy new camper trailer in the same park where our larger home was parked. They were from Roswell, New Mexico. The family were a mom and pop and two kids, a boy and a girl. They liked to travel during the spring and summer when it was cooler than back home. One other small fruit picking adventure was when Richard and I picked prunes. We walked from the farm through a field that had a small drainage ditch and there was an electric fence that ran by to keep out the cows. We had to cross that fence and ditch. I attempted the jump and the electrified wire kissed the back of my thigh and I then made a galvanic leap to cross the ditch. Owchie! We also carried our lunch sack with us. Grandma had prepared sandwiches for us. We stopped about 9 am, mutually announced our hunger and decided to eat the sandwiches. We discovered to our dismay that the sandwiches consisted of two slices of white bread, mayonnaise and a couple of sliced up green onions. Ugh, but we ate them anyway. When I was a teenager I strawberries came on in early spring. I signed up to pick them. It involved filling berry baskets. It took twelve baskets to fill a lug and for that I made the magnificent sum of 25 cents. One summer I made 35 dollars and Mom allowed me to pick out what ever I wanted at JC Penny's. I chose a black and gray plaid skirt that was reversible. Mom asked me if I was sure and I said yes. The skirts were very popular and only the cool girls wore them. Ah, vanity.

During the summers we would travel to Petaluma, California to visit Uncle Carl and Aunt Rosalee. Due to the heat we crossed the desert at night. I remember counting ant hills one time and rabbits. Dad would tell us that we could watch TV at night. The TV at home went off in the early afternoon.

CHERRY FESTIVAL: Cherry Festival lasted for a week and was usually coordinated near the Cherry harvest. There would be a parade and a carnival would come to town and set up usually in the city park. It was the best and very exciting to attend and visit with kids I knew, ride on the rides, eat the food. One time Richard got into a fight with a carnie. I think I begged him not to beat the guy up but it was a guy thing.

COUNTY FAIR: I loved to attend the barns and look at the cattle, sheep, pigs, the various displays of home goods, garden goods. There was a rodeo held at the same time and the local girls would compete in barrel racing. There were bucking broncs but I do not remember any bull riding. The Sheriffs Association rode their horses in the parade. The clowns were local talent and always fun to watch. One time Mom guessed the correct number of jelly beans in a jar and won a waffle iron. She proudly made waffles for many years.

FOURTH OF JULY was usually marked with fire works. You had to pay admission at the fair grounds to watch up close but it was not at all unusual to park up along the canals for a splendid view and a good way to stay away from mosquitoes.

When I was a junior or so in high school we spent the summer in Riggins, Idaho. Mom enrolled us in Summer Bible School. The church had a bus that picked us up. That was six kids. I had the three girls. I dimly remember one of the teachers asking when I had all those babies. I was scandalized! I'm they're sister!!! There was a goodish sized river running in back of our cabin and the otters would play there. There was no TV reception so we learned how to play Nertz. It was a team of kids playing a reverse Solitaire. The goal was to get rid of all the cards you held and yell “Nertz!”. Noisy and fun.

One summer Dad took off from working for Idaho Power. He told us he got two-checked. What's that, Dad? He got layed off. Oh, so he hitched up a small camper trailer and we drove to Arizona by way of the Grand Canyon. We begged to stop, but no we had to get to where we were going. Rats! The summer was gloriously hot. We stayed in Mugoyan Rim country. Dad was a shade tree mechanic. We camped next to some Idaho friends and a local took us kids to a hidden swimming hole. We climbed up a cliff an down a cliff and the swimming hole was actually a gigantic boulder worn smooth from flood etc. We ran into a little trouble driving back. The steel leaf spring on the trailer came apart while we were driving on a back road. It was early in the day. He assured us that someone would be along soon. Mom panicked and bawled. I had never seen her so scared. About fifteen minutes later a truck came by, JUST happened to have a welding rig on it, Dad spot welded the spring and got us on our way. It broke again when we got to Flagstaff but that was okay, we were near repair places. And we sailed right by the Grand Canyon going back, didn't want to chance another breakdown. Rats!

When we were younger Dad showed us a weird piggy bank shaped like dodecahedron thing, it held dimes. He told us that when it was full we could go to Disneyland. This involved a bit more planning than the usual purely spontaneous Berglund family trip. We planned on staying with some family friends who lived in Orange County. I just the three oldest kids and the folks went to the Magic Kingdom that day. We walked down mainstream through the castle and oohed an ah-ed. At that time the House of the Future was there and we walked through. We went to the Pepsi-cola review at a saloon and drank Pepsi of course. Stood in line for a couple hours to ride Dumbo, it was broken. We rode the tea cups. We looked at the driving thing but we were too short! We went to Knox Berry Farm and it was pretty dull because the folks would not let us go on any of the rides. Crud. The next time I visited Disney it was with one of my work roomies. Some guy tried to pick me up and there was literally a fly in my soft drink. Reality SUCKED!!

SOCIAL STUFF: Social life at the time in a small town usually consisted of going to dances in Ola. THE WHOLE FAMILY went to the dances. When Mom baked a sheet pan of Raisin Spice cake with white icing it meant we were going out and that was dessert. There was usually a supper break. Music was a few people playing piano, guitar, violin. The dances consisted of the Waltz and the Schottiche. Everyone kept their liquor bottles outside in the vehicles. The one time there was an alcohol fueled fight, Dad stepped in between the men who were a foot taller. They exchanged three or four lightning fast face punches and then they were escorted out the door. After supper the hat was passed to pay the band and everyone went home about midnight. It was purely fun.

SCHOOL IN EMMETT: Both Richard and I attended grade school at Wardwell. It was a gigantic semi condemned school that sat on the block where the bank, credit union and library are now located. When Wardwell closed, the Catholic Church purchased the block, kept part for a parking lot and sold the rest. The school had fire escapes consisting of enclosed metal slides with a locked door at the bottom. We wanted to slide down those so bad. But the third floor was closed and we always walked down and outside for fire drills. The kitchen was in the basement. Parkview kids walked over to Wardwell for lunch. I worked for free lunch for a year or so.

PARKVIEW: Was the Junior High School. I went there fifth grade through eighth grade. It was located across from the city park. The lawns on the school on the West side were worn down usually from kids playing marbles. Steelies were considered superior. My Fifth grade teacher was Alice Brownfield, she taught art and read to us after lunch from Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe. We were also required to do book reports and one of her requirements was to be able to find the title of the book within the text. It is a habit that has gone unbroken. I wonder if teachers read books to students anymore. Parkview was actually the old High School. I looked at some old annuals from the 40' and 50's. They actually had a post grad year for seniors who wished to repeat or get extra credit. I thought it was the oddest thing. It was at my eighth grade graduation that I first noticed my five foot even father. He had always been a giant personality, just short in stature.

BUTTEVIEW: Grade school, my youngest siblings attended there.

There used to be country schools, the kids who went to those schools were very smart. When they showed up in the ninth grade they did very well compared to the townies. Better grades, better at sports. Sheesh. All those smaller class sizes.

COLLEGES: Most of us grew up and attended either two year programs or other higher education places. I once asked Carla what was the funniest joke she ever heard. She was attending Northwest Nazarene at the time and was studying in the library which had a pain of death policy regarding silence. She told me that a classmate sidled up to her and whispered, “What did the elephant say to the naked man?” “I don't know” she whispered back. He replied, “The elephant said, 'How to you breath through that thing?'”. She had to quickly walk down a flight of stairs and go outside before she could burst out laughing.

LETHA SCHOOL: Both Richard and I attended the grade school there in the first and third grade. There were four rooms with two classes in each room, first through eighth grade. I remember listening to some of the fourth grade English and thinking, hey I can do this. Letha was closed a few years ago and is now either empty or a museum or something.

There was no such thing as Home Schooling back in the day and while I am sure that my Mother was smart enough to teach the courses I shudder to think of the possibility. O The Humanity!!

Dear Family, I added a couple things: Antecedents and Social Stuff.

It is 4 am. I have been thinking about writing a book, it is about what I actually know best, my own family. My plan is to submit it to the Messenger Index in Emmett under the Opinion menu and we will see if anyone reads the thing.

My name is Royce Ilene Berglund, first daughter of Ralph and Virginia Berglund. I was born September 1947 in Emmett, Idaho at the old Mary Secor Hospital. The hospital was named after the mother of the doctor who built the hospital. The physician lived in quarters to the north of the lot and the remaining two story building was on the south part. It sat in what is now the Fire Hall. It had an elevator, pretty nifty for the times. There was a surgical suite and hospital beds upstairs and down. All medical records were filed by year and month. There was a very accurate file with names that noted the dates so retrieval was not completely impossible.

Immediate antecedents were Charlie Berglund and Nellie Rose Berglund, Uncle Albert Berglund and their sister Dorothy. They came to America in the late 1890's or so by way of Charlottenburg, Sweden. Charlie taught himself English by reading the Funny Papers. Great Grandpa came as well but returned to Sweden without being renamed Berglund by immigration. He had another whole family and whose descendents presentlylive in Sweden and who discovered us around 2008 via the internet. Cool beans. Dad was born in Minnesota. The family came to Emmett about 1920 or so. Charlie Berglund specialized in large heavy equipment and was a crane operator for Morrison Knudsen during the depression, usually part time work. The rest of the time he farmed and milked cows. He worked on some of the canals feeding from Black Canyon Dam. That is one of the reasons the road going past their place is called Berglund Road. It was misspelled for many years as Bergland, very common spelling. Grandpa Berglund, who we called Big Grandpa, milked a few dairy cows. Us kids were not allowed in to watch as he did not use hobbles on them. So we noisy bunch were banned from the barn. Another wonderful thing from which we were banned was the haystack. It was loosely stacked and had a small wooden derrick to move the hay. We would have totally destroyed that wonderful haystack by jumping all over it. Big Grandpa smelled wonderful. He chewed snoose and he kept some in his pocket, we never saw him chew or spit but oh that smell. He also kept a lovely old pocket watch in one his many pockets in his cover all's. We would beg to be allowed to listen to the tick of that pocket watch.

Big Grandma was not tall but built like the proverbial brick outhouse, well corseted. I remember she used a pressure cooker a lot for quick meals, the sound of that thing always rather terrified me. She was very social and she and Charlie enjoyed Canasta parties. When she died Mom cleaned out hundreds of party favors made of hand crocheted mini baskets that had been starched to hold mixed nuts and such. I really wanted one of those. Nelliee drove an old blue Studebaker, usually like a bat out of H E double hockey sticks because she was in a hurry. She passed the school bus once that I was riding in and her car was a blur of blue. She was Seventh Day Adventist and Charlie had been raised Lutheran in Sweden and swore off religion.

My mother, Virginia Horn Berglund was born in Brush, Colorado. One of the uncles bears a resemblance to Tom Horn, we do love us the occasional outlaw. Our further antecedents are documented in an old vanity press book that, if proved, links us through the women all the way back to John and Priscilla Alden. Then a bit further back we seem to have a Scottish cowboy helping out William Wallace. Grandma Horn (Little Grandma) and Riley (Little Grandpa) came to Colorado by way of Missouri. They dry land farmed until 1939 or so and sold out and moved to Emmett where the land was much more productive. They lived on several small farms and finally settled on a 40 acre farm out on the slope. There were orchards of prune trees (yes PRUNE trees), cherry trees, some nectarine and some fruit packing sheds. I loved staying at their farm when I was a kid because I was the first grandbaby and was SPOILED ROTTON Mom tells me I went around after my baby teeth fell out smiling widely and people would give me pennies. She wanted to smack me so bad. Grandma Horn made the worlds best pies. She had zig zag fingers from a very high fever when she was a young girl. I think it was rheumatic fever. At any rate they did not know to brace the fingers and the joints deformed but she used one of her fingers to skim the cream until it was blue. The eggs and butter money was hers. Riley was a nearly deaf old man when I knew him. And he was crabby. Grandma always called him “Daddy” which I thought sounded a little weird. They had a storm cellar in the yard that held the hot water tank and the canned goods and smelled of cool dirt. A gooseberry bush grew on top of the storm cellar and one of my favorite pies was gooseberry. I would pick a bunch, Grandma would bake and shudder and shake just watching me wolf down a piece of that pie. Grandma Horn attended First Christian Church and Grandpa Horn farmed. They would keep the occasional bummer lamb and we would get regularly butted onto our bottoms until the little darling went to the sale barn.

Dad first saw Mom be-bopping down main street in Emmett. He thought she was pretty. She just ignored him for a bit. They went to a lot of dances and were jitter bug diva's. I am told they cleared the dance floor regularly with an energetic boogie woogie.

Now, I need to backtrack a bit to tell a little history about my Dad, Shorty. He reached full growth right at 5 foot. He had a sunny disposition and joked with lots of folks and got along well with many people. He decided he had gotten along enough with Charlie Beglund and at age 13 he rode his bicycle to Ontario and sold it for some cash enough to purchase a train ticket that eventually got him back to Minnesota. He worked as a haying hand for some relatives. He wandered to New Orleans and got into some vagrancy trouble and had to work off some time with a local judge. He also wound up in Mexico with Uncle Al and there may have been a tramp steamer involved somewhere along the line.

Dad was a bit of an adventurer and a bit of a rascal. He came back to the farm after some time and worked. He got into some trouble when he and his brother accidentally set a farmers field on fire. As punishment Charlie made the boys work for the farmer. The boys decided to take revenge. The farmer owned a gentle old bull. The boys stacked hay bales up high enough to coax the bull up onto a barn. They put the hay bales back and skedaddled for home. The farmer found the bull and just knew those Berlund kids had done it. They steadily denied it for years as the Sheriff got involved.

When he was a little older age 30 or so he worked for the Little's on one of their houses. He cut his thumb rather badly and had to go to Mary Secor to get it stitched up. For years he teased us kids that that was what happened if you sucked your thumb. Years later while working for the local hospital I happened to come across those old records of his and the bill for then was something like $37.00. The Little's very kindly paid the bill.

During WWII he signed up and went into the Army. At one point he was being transferred from point A to point B somewhere on the West coast. He checked in at Point B, paid a buddy five bucks to answer to his name at Roll call and he came home for several weeks. Once he was through with his visit he went back to Point B, let his buddy know he was there, answered to “Berglund” the next morning and told the Sarge here were his transfer papers, he just forgot to turn them it. I believe he got a little stink eye for that. He eventually served in Alaska and learned all about cribbage in Kodiak.

In the mean time Mom was only sixteen or so when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She said she was painting her bedroom when they heard the news. About that time she decided she had had enough of high school and did not finish her sophomore year. She began rooming with a family in town and worked at various places. Her last place was at a bakery. She has told me that she never wanted to taste frosting again. So Dad was 10 years or so older than she. They met shortly after the war. They eloped, everyone they knew eloped and got married in 1945. Mom was very anemic and I did not come along for a couple of years.

They lived in a tiny little trailer house. I have seen pictures, it must have been all of 15 feet long and 6 feet wide. They traveled following jobs that dad took here and there. The moving theme held up pretty well until there were several more of us and we finally settled more or less permanently back in Emmett when I was in the fourth grade.

From time to time during summers we would get moved when Dad worked different places. One of the more interesting places was then Dad worked for Idaho Power on the Hell's Canyon Dam. It was a three or four year project. We started out living in Cambridge, Idaho. Richard and I would place doubled headed nails on the rail road tracks, wait for the train to run over them and gleefully pick up our miniature swords. We never told Mom, I think she would have screamed a lot.

We gradually moved closer into the canyon as the commute got further along. We loved Dagget's Creek. Twenty or so trailers parked along a creek, that once it was partially dammed by the men with some old doors, we could swim in it. You had to be careful where you dived there was a big fat rock just there so don't hit it. At one point some of us developed sores on our skin. Mom kept us out of the creek after that because the sewage from the trailers emptied into the creek. There were wild apricots and Elderberry bushes that grew in the canyon. We picked the fruit indiscriminately. Had to watch out for rattle snakes though.

The one thing we begged Dad for was a UKE inner tube. The giant trucks were from the UK and had massive tires. They were solid and had no inner tubes but we were sure that Dad could get one for us. Nope.

Richard and I spent part of the summer with friends who lived in Haines, OR, so we could take Red Cross approved swimming lessons. That was at Indian Springs hot springs, which has since been renamed with something more culturally sensitive, Medicine Springs I think. I got the worst sunburn of my life that year oh and a gnarly set of blisters from playing on monkey bars. Ugh. Yeah we got our certicate. That gave us tacit approval to use the pool in Emmett and no squealing if we swam in the canals.

Speaking of swimming, a year or so earlier we lived briefly in Cascade. There was a small swimming pool there. I remember Mom taking us and we used paddle boards and I am sure that is what prompted the later Oregon swimming lessons and probably prevented a drowning or two.

During the summers we would travel to Petaluma, California to visit Uncle Carl and Aunt Rosalee. Due to the heat we crossed the desert at night. I remember counting ant hills one time and rabbits. Dad would tell us that we could watch TV at night. The TV at home went off in the early afternoon.

When I was a junior or so in high school we spent the summer in Riggins, Idaho. Mom enrolled us in Summer Bible School. The church had a bus that picked us up. That was six kids. I had the three girls. I dimly remember one of the teachers asking when I had all those babies. I was scandalized! I'm they're sister!!! There was a goodish sized river running in back of our cabin and the otters would play there. There was no TV reception so we learned how to play Nertz. It was a team of kids playing a reverse Solitaire. The goal was to get rid of all the cards you held and yell “Nertz!”. Noisy and fun.

One summer Dad took off from working for Idaho Power. He told us he got two-checked. What's that, Dad? He got layed off. Oh, so he hitched up a small camper trailer and we drove to Arizona by way of the Grand Canyon. We begged to stop, but no we had to get to where we were going. Rats! The summer was gloriously hot. We stayed in Mugoyan Rim country. Dad was a shade tree mechanic. We camped next to some Idaho friends and a local took us kids to a hidden swimming hole. We climbed up a cliff an down a cliff and the swimming hole was actually a gigantic boulder worn smooth from flood etc. We ran into a little trouble driving back. The steel leaf spring on the trailer came apart while we were driving on a back road. It was early in the day. He assured us that someone would be along soon. Mom panicked and bawled. I had never seen her so scared. About fifteen minutes later a truck came by, JUST happened to have a welding rig on it, Dad spot welded the spring and got us on our way. It broke again when we got to Flagstaff but that was okay, we were near repair places. And we sailed right by the Grand Canyon going back, didn't want to chance another breakdown. Rats!

When we were younger Dad showed us a weird piggy bank shaped like dodecahedron thing, it held dimes. He told us that when it was full we could go to Disneyland. This involved a bit more planning than the usual purely spontaneous Berglund family trip. We planned on staying with some family friends who lived in Orange County. I just the three oldest kids and the folks went to the Magic Kingdom that day. We walked down mainstream through the castle and oohed an ah-ed. At that time the House of the Future was there and we walked through. We went to the Pepsi-cola review at a saloon and drank Pepsi of course. Stood in line for a couple hours to ride Dumbo, it was broken. We rode the tea cups. We looked at the driving thing but we were too short! We went to Knox Berry Farm and it was pretty dull because the folks would not let us go on any of the rides. Crud. The next time I visited Disney it was with one of my work roomies. Some guy tried to pick me up and there was literally a fly in my soft drink. Reality SUCKED!!

SOCIAL STUFF: Social life at the time in a small town usually consisted of going to dances in Ola. THE WHOLE FAMILY went to the dances. When Mom baked a sheet pan of Raisin Spice cake with white icing it meant we were going out and that was dessert. There was usually a supper break. Music was a few people playing piano, guitar, violin. The dances consisted of the Waltz and the Schottiche. Everyone kept their liquor bottles outside in the vehicles. The one time there was an alcohol fueled fight, Dad stepped in between the men who were a foot taller. They exchanged three or four lightning fast face punches and then they were escorted out the door. After supper the hat was passed to pay the band and everyone went home about midnight. It was purely fun.

SCHOOL IN EMMETT: Both Richard and I attended grade school at Wardwell. It was a gigantic semi condemned school that sat on the block where the bank, credit union and library are now located. When Wardwell closed, the Catholic Church purchased the block, kept part for a parking lot and sold the rest. The school had fire escapes consisting of enclosed metal slides with a locked door at the bottom. We wanted to slide down those so bad. But the third floor was closed and we always walked down and outside for fire drills. The kitchen was in the basement. Parkview kids walked over to Wardwell for lunch. I worked for free lunch for a year or so.

PARKVIEW: Was the Junior High School. I went there fifth grade through eighth grade. It was located across from the city park. The lawns on the school on the West side were worn down usually from kids playing marbles. Steelies were considered superior. My Fifth grade teacher was Alice Brownfield, she taught art and read to us after lunch from Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe. We were also required to do book reports and one of her requirements was to be able to find the title of the book within the text. It is a habit that has gone unbroken. I wonder if teachers read books to students anymore. Parkview was actually the old High School. I looked at some old annuals from the 40' and 50's. They actually had a post grad year for seniors who wished to repeat or get extra credit. I thought it was the oddest thing. It was at my eighth grade graduation that I first noticed my five foot even father. He had always been a giant personality, just short in stature.

BUTTEVIEW: Grade school, my youngest siblings attended there.

There used to be country schools, the kids who went to those schools were very smart. When they showed up in the ninth grade they did very well compared to the townies. Better grades, better at sports. Sheesh. All those smaller class sizes.

LETHA SCHOOL: Both Richard and I attended the grade school there in the first and third grade. There were four rooms with two classes in each room, first through eighth grade. I remember listening to some of the fourth grade English and thinking, hey I can do this. Letha was closed a few years ago and is now either empty or a museum or something.

There was no such thing as Home Schooling back in the day and while I am sure that my Mother was smart enough to teach the courses I shudder to think of the possibility. O The Humanity!!

Dear Family

It is 4 am. I have been thinking about writing a book or a brief biography, it is about what I actually know best, my own family. My plan is to submit it to the Messenger Index in Emmett under the Opinion menu and we will see if anyone reads the thing.

My name is Royce Ilene Berglund, first daughter of Ralph and Virginia Berglund. I was born September 1947 in Emmett, Idaho at the old Mary Secor Hospital. The hospital was named after the mother of the doctor who built the hospital. The physician lived in quarters to the north of the lot and the remaining two story building was on the south part. It sat in what is now the Fire Hall. It had an elevator, pretty nifty for the times. There was a surgical suite and hospital beds upstairs and down. All medical records were filed by year and month. There was a very accurate file with names that noted the dates so retrieval was not completely impossible.

Immediate antecedents were Charlie Berglund and Nellie Rose Berglund, Uncle Albert Berglund and their sister Dorothy. They came to America in the late 1890's or so by way of Charlottenburg, Sweden. Charlie taught himself English by reading the Funny Papers. Great Grandpa came as well but returned to Sweden without being renamed Berglund by immigration. He had another whole family and whose descendents presentlylive in Sweden and who discovered us around 2008 via the internet. Cool beans. Dad was born in Minnesota. The family came to Emmett about 1920 or so. Charlie Berglund specialized in large heavy equipment and was a crane operator for Morrison Knudsen during the depression, usually part time work. The rest of the time he farmed and milked cows. He worked on some of the canals feeding from Black Canyon Dam. That is one of the reasons the road going past their place is called Berglund Road. It was misspelled for many years as Bergland, very common spelling. Grandpa Berglund, who we called Big Grandpa, milked a few dairy cows. Us kids were not allowed in to watch as he did not use hobbles on them. So we noisy bunch were banned from the barn. Another wonderful thing from which we were banned was the haystack. It was loosely stacked and had a small wooden derrick to move the hay. We would have totally destroyed that wonderful haystack by jumping all over it. Big Grandpa smelled wonderful. He chewed snoose and he kept some in his pocket, we never saw him chew or spit but oh that smell. He also kept a lovely old pocket watch in one his many pockets in his cover all's. We would beg to be allowed to listen to the tick of that pocket watch.

Big Grandma was not tall but built like the proverbial brick outhouse, well corseted. I remember she used a pressure cooker a lot for quick meals, the sound of that thing always rather terrified me. She was very social and she and Charlie enjoyed Canasta parties. When she died Mom cleaned out hundreds of party favors made of hand crocheted mini baskets that had been starched to hold mixed nuts and such. I really wanted one of those. Nelliee drove an old blue Studebaker, usually like a bat out of H E double hockey sticks because she was in a hurry. She passed the school bus once that I was riding in and her car was a blur of blue. She was Seventh Day Adventist and Charlie had been raised Lutheran in Sweden and swore off religion.

My mother, Virginia Horn Berglund was born in Brush, Colorado. Grandma Horn (Little Grandma) and Riley (Little Grandpa) came to Colorado by way of Missouri. They dry land farmed until 1939 or so and sold out and moved to Emmett where the land was much more productive. They lived on several small farms and finally settled on a 40 acre farm out on the slope. There were orchards of prune trees (yes PRUNE trees), cherry trees, some nectarine and some fruit packing sheds. I loved staying at their farm when I was a kid because I was the first grandbaby and was SPOILED ROTTON Mom tells me I went around after my baby teeth fell out smiling widely and people would give me pennies. She wanted to smack me so bad. Grandma Horn made the worlds best pies. She had zig zag fingers from a very high fever when she was a young girl. I think it was rheumatic fever. At any rate they did not know to brace the fingers and the joints deformed but she used one of her fingers to skim the cream until it was blue. The eggs and butter money was hers. Riley was a nearly deaf old man when I knew him. And he was crabby. Grandma always called him “Daddy” which I thought sounded a little weird. They had a storm cellar in the yard that held the hot water tank and the canned goods and smelled of cool dirt. A gooseberry bush grew on top of the storm cellar and one of my favorite pies was gooseberry. I would pick a bunch, Grandma would bake and shudder and shake just watching me wolf down a piece of that pie. Grandma Horn attended First Christian Church and Grandpa Horn farmed. They would keep the occasional bummer lamb and we would get regularly butted onto our bottoms until the little darling went to the sale barn.

Dad first saw Mom be-bopping down main street in Emmett. He thought she was pretty. She just ignored him for a bit. They went to a lot of dances and were jitter bug diva's. I am told they cleared the dance floor regularly with an energetic boogie woogie.

Now, I need to backtrack a bit to tell a little history about my Dad, Shorty. He reached full growth right at 5 foot. He had a sunny disposition and joked with lots of folks and got along well with many people. He decided he had gotten along enough with Charlie Beglund and at age 13 he rode his bicycle to Ontario and sold it for some cash enough to purchase a train ticket that eventually got him back to Minnesota. He worked as a haying hand for some relatives. He wandered to New Orleans and got into some vagrancy trouble and had to work off some time with a local judge. He also wound up in Mexico with Uncle Al and there may have been a tramp steamer involved somewhere along the line.

Dad was a bit of an adventurer and a bit of a rascal. He came back to the farm after some time and worked. He got into some trouble when he and his brother accidentally set a farmers field on fire. As punishment Charlie made the boys work for the farmer. The boys decided to take revenge. The farmer owned a gentle old bull. The boys stacked hay bales up high enough to coax the bull up onto a barn. They put the hay bales back and skedaddled for home. The farmer found the bull and just knew those Berlund kids had done it. They steadily denied it for years as the Sheriff got involved.

When he was a little older age 30 or so he worked for the Little's on one of their houses. He cut his thumb rather badly and had to go to Mary Secor to get it stitched up. For years he teased us kids that that was what happened if you sucked your thumb. Years later while working for the local hospital I happened to come across those old records of his and the bill for then was something like $37.00. The Little's very kindly paid the bill.

During WWII he signed up and went into the Army. At one point he was being transferred from point A to point B somewhere on the West coast. He checked in at Point B, paid a buddy five bucks to answer to his name at Roll call and he came home for several weeks. Once he was through with his visit he went back to Point B, let his buddy know he was there, answered to “Berglund” the next morning and told the Sarge here were his transfer papers, he just forgot to turn them it. I believe he got a little stink eye for that. He eventually served in Alaska and learned all about cribbage in Kodiak.

In the mean time Mom was only sixteen or so when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She said she was painting her bedroom when they heard the news. About that time she decided she had had enough of high school and did not finish her sophomore year. She began rooming with a family in town and worked at various places. Her last place was at a bakery. She has told me that she never wanted to taste frosting again. So Dad was 10 years or so older than she. They met shortly after the war. They eloped, everyone they knew eloped and got married in 1945. Mom was very anemic and I did not come along for a couple of years.

They lived in a tiny little trailer house. I have seen pictures, it must have been all of 15 feet long and 6 feet wide. They traveled following jobs that dad took here and there. The moving theme held up pretty well until there were several more of us and we finally settled more or less permanently back in Emmett when I was in the fourth grade.

From time to time during summers we would get moved when Dad worked different places. One of the more interesting places was then Dad worked for Idaho Power on the Hell's Canyon Dam. It was a three or four year project. We started out living in Cambridge, Idaho. Richard and I would place doubled headed nails on the rail road tracks, wait for the train to run over them and gleefully pick up our miniature swords. We never told Mom, I think she would have screamed a lot.

We gradually moved closer into the canyon as the commute got further along. We loved Dagget's Creek. Twenty or so trailers parked along a creek, that once it was partially dammed by the men with some old doors, we could swim in it. You had to be careful where you dived there was a big fat rock just there so don't hit it. At one point some of us developed sores on our skin. Mom kept us out of the creek after that because the sewage from the trailers emptied into the creek. There were wild apricots and Elderberry bushes that grew in the canyon. We picked the fruit indiscriminately. Had to watch out for rattle snakes though.

The one thing we begged Dad for was a UKE inner tube. The giant trucks were from the UK and had massive tires. They were solid and had no inner tubes but we were sure that Dad could get one for us. Nope.

Richard and I spent part of the summer with friends who lived in Haines, OR, so we could take Red Cross approved swimming lessons. That was at Indian Springs hot springs, which has since been renamed with something more culturally sensitive, Medicine Springs I think. I got the worst sunburn of my life that year oh and a gnarly set of blisters from playing on monkey bars. Ugh. Yeah we got our certicate. That gave us tacit approval to use the pool in Emmett and no squealing if we swam in the canals.

Speaking of swimming, a year or so earlier we lived briefly in Cascade. There was a small swimming pool there. I remember Mom taking us and we used paddle boards and I am sure that is what prompted the later Oregon swimming lessons and probably prevented a drowning or two.

During the summers we would travel to Petaluma, California to visit Uncle Carl and Aunt Rosalee. Due to the heat we crossed the desert at night. I remember counting ant hills one time and rabbits. Dad would tell us that we could watch TV at night. The TV at home went off in the early afternoon.

When I was a junior or so in high school we spent the summer in Riggins, Idaho. Mom enrolled us in Summer Bible School. The church had a bus that picked us up. That was six kids. I had the three girls. I dimly remember one of the teachers asking when I had all those babies. I was scandalized! I'm they're sister!!! There was a goodish sized river running in back of our cabin and the otters would play there. There was no TV reception so we learned how to play Nertz. It was a team of kids playing a reverse Solitaire. The goal was to get rid of all the cards you held and yell “Nertz!”. Noisy and fun.

One summer Dad took off from working for Idaho Power. He told us he got two-checked. What's that, Dad? He got layed off. Oh, so he hitched up a small camper trailer and we drove to Arizona by way of the Grand Canyon. We begged to stop, but no we had to get to where we were going. Rats! The summer was gloriously hot. We stayed in Mugoyan Rim country. Dad was a shade tree mechanic. We camped next to some Idaho friends and a local took us kids to a hidden swimming hole. We climbed up a cliff an down a cliff and the swimming hole was actually a gigantic boulder worn smooth from flood etc. We ran into a little trouble driving back. The steel leaf spring on the trailer came apart while we were driving on a back road. It was early in the day. He assured us that someone would be along soon. Mom panicked and bawled. I had never seen her so scared. About fifteen minutes later a truck came by, JUST happened to have a welding rig on it, Dad spot welded the spring and got us on our way. It broke again when we got to Flagstaff but that was okay, we were near repair places. And we sailed right by the Grand Canyon going back, didn't want to chance another breakdown. Rats!

When we were younger Dad showed us a weird piggy bank shaped like dodecahedron thing, it held dimes. He told us that when it was full we could go to Disneyland. This involved a bit more planning than the usual purely spontaneous Berglund family trip. We planned on staying with some family friends who lived in Orange County. I just the three oldest kids and the folks went to the Magic Kingdom that day. We walked down mainstream through the castle and oohed an ah-ed. At that time the House of the Future was there and we walked through. We went to the Pepsi-cola review at a saloon and drank Pepsi of course. Stood in line for a couple hours to ride Dumbo, it was broken. We rode the tea cups. We looked at the driving thing but we were too short! We went to Knox Berry Farm and it was pretty dull because the folks would not let us go on any of the rides. Crud. The next time I visited Disney it was with one of my work roomies. Some guy tried to pick me up and there was literally a fly in my soft drink. Reality SUCKED!!

SCHOOL IN EMMETT: Both Richard and I attended grade school at Wardwell. It was a gigantic semi condemned school that sat on the block where the bank, credit union and library are now located. When Wardwell closed, the Catholic Church purchased the block, kept part for a parking lot and sold the rest. The school had fire escapes consisting of enclosed metal slides with a locked door at the bottom. We wanted to slide down those so bad. But the third floor was closed and we always walked down and outside for fire drills. The kitchen was in the basement. Parkview kids walked over to Wardwell for lunch. I worked for free lunch for a year or so.

PARKVIEW: Was the Junior High School. I went there fifth grade through eighth grade. It was located across from the city park. The lawns on the school on the West side were worn down usually from kids playing marbles. Steelies were considered superior. My Fifth grade teacher was Alice Brownfield, she taught art and read to us after lunch from Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe. We were also required to do book reports and one of her requirements was to be able to find the title of the book within the text. It is a habit that has gone unbroken. I wonder if teachers read books to students anymore. Parkview was actually the old High School. I looked at some old annuals from the 40' and 50's. They actually had a post grad year for seniors who wished to repeat or get extra credit. I thought it was the oddest thing. It was at my eighth grade graduation that I first noticed my five foot even father. He had always been a giant personality, just short in stature.

BUTTEVIEW: Grade school, my youngest siblings attended there.

There used to be country schools, the kids who went to those schools were very smart. When they showed up in the ninth grade they did very well compared to the townies. Better grades, better at sports. Sheesh. All those smaller class sizes.

LETHA SCHOOL: Both Richard and I attended the grade school there in the first and third grade. There were four rooms with two classes in each room, first through eighth grade. I remember listening to some of the fourth grade English and thinking, hey I can do this. Letha was closed a few years ago and is now either empty or a museum or something.

There was no such thing as Home Schooling back in the day and while I am sure that my Mother was smart enough to teach the courses I shudder to think of the possibility. O The Humanity!!