LITTLE GRANDMA

LITTLE GRANDMA: Nora Beatrice Lattimer was born November 1888. I used to beg her to tell me stories about when she was young. She told me that when went to school she wrote on a slate, sat on wooden benches and probably read out of McGuffey's Reader. When she was older she caught Scarlet Fever, now known as rheumatic fever. There was not much treatment. She had her hair cut off because of the fever. She never grew it back. If there was aspirin she might have gotten that. If she was very lucky she was not given Laudenum which is opium and alcohol. I am certain one of her heart valves was effected as well. One of the side effects of the fever was that of softening of the joints. It was not known then that the fingers must be bound and kept straight. As soon as she was well enough to went back to work and her fingers became a crooked zig zag. Those were very talented fingers and I loved her hands. She met Riley when she was working in a store in Missouri. She was always a little embarrased that that she was about three years older than he. She was 27 and nearly an old maid. They married and lived in Missouri for a few years. While there all of her children were born, the first baby died shortly after birth from a broken neck, mostly likely face first. A second son died at age two and is buried in Missouri. Clayton, Ralph, Paul, Wilma and Virginia were born there as well. Riley decided to move the family to eastern Colorado and do dry farming. That means you plant seeds and pray for rain. They lived there through the dust bowl years. A family friend had moved to Emmett and wrote back to them raving about the crop yields. Riley decided after a very good crop to sell out and moved to Emmett, Idaho. They lived on a couple of different farms. They settled on the slope down the valley a few miles. The farm was small and they kept a dairy herd and planted corn. I loved the smell of the molasses poured on the feed that the cows ate while in the stall being milked. The earliest memory I have of Grandma Horn was her prompting me to jump so she could hold me on her lap. I loved her food, especially pies. She made a cherry pie one time and I kept begging to eat more and more. She asked me if I had enough. I kept eating cherry pie until I vomited. Never did like cherry pie much after that. She fried chicken in an electric skillet. Took about thirty minutes and it was just the best fried chicken. She had a gooseberry bush that grew on top of the fruit cellar. I would beg her to make me a pie. She would agree but shuddered when I ate it. Yum! I was well grown before I ever learned that Gooseberries could get ripe and were pretty delicious. She taught me how to emboider; a French knot and how to make daisies. If I was lucky I could emboider a printed pattern on a hoop. She taught me to divide the skein of thread into sets of two and three depending on what you wanted to emboider. I emboided a free style dish towel one time and it was ugly, she gave it back to me when I got older. She would occasionally take me to church with her. We attended the First Christian Church in Emmett. It is gone now that site is now occupied with a drive through bank station. Back to church. One time we were sitting in church it was communion Sunday. The elders passed the collection basket and later on they passed the communion tray. The tray was all shiny silver looking with doily's in the middle that held the Host wafers. There were two circles of little glasses that went around the edge of the tray filled with wine. The little glassed jiggled merrily as the tray was passed. Grandma took a sip of the wine. I asked if I could have some and she said no. The church baptismal was behind the alter hidden by a blue cloth. When open the baptismal was a large cement basin that held a couple hundred gallons of water. Above the baptismal hung a large wooden cross with light bulbs on it. It did worry about that cross falling in to the water at a critical moment. I was attending an evening service and the preacher called for sinner to come forward and be saved. I was having my period at the time and decided that the timing was just not right. Grandma always worse dresses and a little black hat. After Riley died, she moved into town by one of the canals. I would go stay with her every once in a while. One Christmas I decided to make doll blankets for my three sisters This was also a Home Economics project so I got credit. I would come over after school, back in front of her electric wall heater. The get up and sew for a while. She taught me how to use er Singer sewing machine. I loved using the rocker plate and pushing the wheel. It was a lovely thing. Grandma helped with the chicken. I would go with her to the coop where she was change the water in metal feeders. She would let me scatter chicken feed out in the yard. I always wanted to play in the coop but she said that there were mites and I could not play there. She churned butter when she was younger. She gave me her five gallon butter churn with paddle. She told me that she always felt like she was marking time when she churned. At the farm in the 50's she used a stand mixer to churn the butter, squeeze out the buttermilk and use a paddle to form one pound pats. So she had chicken and egg money. They would take the butter and eggs each week to sell to Albertsons store. I learned early on not to beg for anything. They would purchase two kinds of candy; horehound candy and chicken legs. The latter was a bit like Baby Ruth only smaller. The horehound candy tasted like cough drops and I did not care for them. Most of the milk went intp 25 gallon cans which were wheeled out to a cement tank by the road for the dairy truck to pick up. A couple of gallons of milk were brought in for the house. I remember Grandma Horn using her crooked finger to skim the cream off until the milk was nearly blue. She made bread. It smelled wonderful. My special job was to use a brush to pain the tops of the loaves with bacon grease. When the loaves had cooled, I would sometimes get an end piece. Heaven! She made pies and her pie crusts were so tender and flaky. I loved her pumpkin pie the best. Her recipe was from the last new wood stove she received while living in Colorado. A small recipe book came with the stove. Carla has the cookbook. There are other nice recipes in the booklet as well. She also made green tomato pickles. This is a sweet pickle and very crisp. Her favorite way of serving it was to fry up hamburgery patties, grill the bun in the frying pan, a smear of mayo, put on the burger and a couple of slices of pickle. Yummy! I have made many batches of green tomato pickles since. I have jars from last years batch. My neighbor across the street obtained seven pounds for me , which is exactly what the recipe calls for, so delicious. I moved back to Emmett to go to college and get a short degree in Medical Records. I worked at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in the medical records department doing transcription. While there Grandma Horn was admitted with ascending cholangitis. She was in ICU for a few days and died at age 93. Her funeral was held in the First Chrisitian Church in Emmett. It was a nice service. At the viewing I was a little dismayed. Someone at the funeral home had given her pink lipstick. She never wore makeup of any kind while alive. A few weeks later I was working medical records at St. Al's sorting reports. Among these reports was Grandma Horn's autopsy report. Well Hippa did not exist then, so I read the report. Her great vessels were clean and slick as a whistle. No organ damage anywhere. I prayed, “Please God let me have Grandma Horn's heart and vessels.” She had eaten bacon and pork and made pie crust out of lard all of her life. I was fairly certain that my cholesterol was perfect and it was. Yeah! Thank you genetics!