SO THAT HAPPENED

I was unable to import my picture of the lovely shiner now well developed into purple hues and has expanded down my jaw. Monday started well. Parked at Davita, got out of the car and noticed that it was rolling backward. Instead of waiting for it to stop rolling I decided to chase after it. Got the car unlocked but tripped abd fall on my left hand, left face and left ribs. Car rolled to a stop. I lay on the pavement caling for help A lady parked her truck and asked me if I needed help. Um, yes please. The ladies came out and got me into a wheelchair and into the lobby. They thought they should call EMT , they came and decided that I needed to be seen in ER at BAY. So after CT they found a subarrachnoid hemorrhage. None of the neurololgists wanted to deal with a brain bleed. Si I was transferred to OHSU. What fun! Nice bunch on the plane. We bonded over favorite books, Dies The Fire, recipes and corny jokes. Got to Portland in 40 minutes, landed a Hillsborough and 18 miles later at OHSU trama ICU. I was put in a neck collar and sent for C spine and CT. Once the radiologist read the film, I would get food. I was given a lovely turkey sandwish about 8 pm. Yum! Next day I had dialysis. Tim called about 3 pm he was in Albany. I said they would discharge me as soon as he got there. So he got there and was horribly lost, the nice nurse took us down to the elevator right to our car! Thanks was stopped in Albany to overnight and then home! Rest of the week was get caught up and everything went well.

THE OTHER FARM

THE OTHER FARM: Charlie Berglund came to America from Charlottenburg, Sweden around turn of the century. He and his brother Uncle Al and Pere Anderson, their father moved to Minnesota. The elder family member decided he did not want to stay and returned to Sweden, and we recently met our cousin at a family reunion. Charlie taught himself English by reading the funny papers. And the boys were given the name Berglund by some official. Charlie would have originally been called Charles Pierson etc. I do not know when he met Nellie Rose but according to brother Phil, who has been ancestry.com, she worked as a school marm. At any rate they met and married and lived in Minnesota for a few years. Carl and Dad were born there in Bimiji. Charlie worked for Morrison Knudsen as a heavy equipment operator. During the depression he helped his neighbors quite a lot. They lived in Boise for a while and then he purchased a small farm near Letha, Idaho. He kept a very small dairy herd, about five cows. He did not hobble them and I think he hand milked them. We were not allowed inside the milk barn. The only crop he planted was hay, I remember a bib old haystay and a derrick. We were not allowed to play on that either. They did have a dog, Frosty, large white. I remember stealing dog biscuits to nibble on, not that tasty. Grandma Beglund cooked with a pressure cooker all the time. She never reallt sat down to eat at the table because she was busy running around, adding to plates and sampling from those same plates. Her dentures were loose and clacked when she spoke. She wore a fubulous undergarment with all sorts of closings. She was a large women with breasts the size of di She and Charlie were very social and attended lots of local card games. There were always knitted and starched nut holders. I loved those things. Mom tossed out about fifty of them. I always thought they would be terrific Christmas tree decorations. Nellie had raspberry bushes and she canned them. I remember being served the berries in little depression glass berry dishes. Loved them. When she died, the tossed out dozen of jars ofraggedy looking raspberries. She was Seventh Day Adventist. Grandpa B was a happily lapsed Lutheran as that was the State Religion of Sweden. His philosophy was life a good life. And he did. He helped dig the first irrigation canals in the Emmett valley. I remember that they had a party line and when the phone rang, you would answer to the ring combination that was yours. Grandpa B had a lovely pocket watch that he would let us listen to. He chewed snoose but was very clean aboutit. Nellie drove a 50's Studebaker and fast! The front seat was huge, large enough to hold several grandchildren. The starter was on the floor. Uncle Carl was stationed in Japan after WWII and brought a beautiful picture of Mount Fuji. He gave Uncle Paul a bautiful Kimono doll,pink Kimono to Dad. Mom made it into a pink dress. We both wish she had kept the original. I have many fond memories of the other farm.

THE FARM

THE FARM Around the turn of the century, my grandmother, Beatrice Nora Lattimer was working in a store in the small town where she lived in Missouri. Riley Horn came in and they became acquainted. He must have had hair then, because when I met him he was in his fifties, bald, wore a hearing aid and was very grouchy. They married and lived in Missouri for a couple o years. She was always a little ashamed that she was about four yeas older than Riley and a bit taller. They had a son, Lauren, who died at about age two. Grandma told me that her first baby was born face first with a broken neck, She was pregnant a total of seven times. All of the sons and daughters died with a full head of hair. The recessive gene for baldness must have come from further back. They moved to eastern Colorado and settled near Brush on a quarter section of land. I think that is 640 acres but I could be wrong. They dry land farmed, no irrigation, what ever grew was harvested. Mom remembers dust storms that blew farms from one side of the road to the other. A friend of the family, Mr. Beers moved to Idaho and wrote back about the rich farmland. So about 1939 after a good harvent, they sold out moved to Idaho. A couple of the boys went on the freight train with horses and some goods. Riley drove the brand spanking new car to Idaho. They lived on various small farms looking around for a better place. Mom was a teenager painting the bedroom when the radio announced the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I think it was not until after the war that Riley purchased the farm on the slope. It was a small farm, about 40 acres. They kept a small dairy herd of about 30 40 cows. They were milked electronically twice a day. Ollie ran the seperator and a few gallons went to the house for Grandma Horn to skim and turn into butter. She had a chicken coop and kept a bunch of chickens I got to help scatter chicken feed and grandma gathered the eggs. Every week Riley drove them to town and she turned in her eggs and butter, that was her money. On those trips to Albertson's, we learned not to ask for toys or candy. The only candy ever purchased was hore hound (cough drop ugh) and chicken wings, sort of a babe Ruth without chocolate. I remember two horses, one was Buttermilk, a mare from Colorado. Mom got on her once and she controlled the fractious mare beautifully. I never got to ride her but Sandy Cutbirth did, I was so jealous. Richard rode Dutch mostly for irrigation purposes if I have that right. There were no dogs allowed but there were wild barn cats. I had designs of catching one and dressing it in doll clothes. Pretty sure that effort would have ended badly. The milk was put in 25 gallon milk cans and about six of them would be trundled out to near the road and stored in a cement container filled with cold irrigation water. The dairy truck would come and pick them up once in the morning, so two milkings would be sitting there. This was a Co-op dairy and I remember Richard getting paid a little it for years after Corn harvest was a big deal. The harvest ran 24/7 until done. All the corn was hauled to the cannery in Emmett. I hitched a ride one night looking for Uncle Paul, never did find him but it was a small adventure. Riley purchased an entire bin of prunes for cow feed. Mom found a recipe for prune conserve and used some of them for preserves. I think there were walnuts in it the it was tasty. Grandma Horn always had a garden, my favorite veg was green tomatoes, which she pickled. Favorite way to eat them was grilled burger, shcmear of Mayo, a pickle and chomp! I love them. The farm house was small, one bed, one bath, living room, bathroom, kitchen and porch. Paul and Ollie slept on the porch for years until they added on another bedroom. Grandma kept a feather bed. I remember the grey and white ticking and I would “help” her make the bed. It looked so fluffy and huge when first made, but when I got to sleep with her, it deflated almost immediately. She had an old manual Singer sewing mahchine. I learned to sew on it and eventually made doll quilts for my sisters one Christmas. They had a storm cellar not to far from the house that contained the hot water heater and all of her jarred canning. I loved the smell of the dirt. There was a gooseberry bush growing on top of the cellar and I would beg her for a pie. She would shudder and make it. My favorite was always pumpkin, the recipe from her last Home Comfort wood burning stove cookbook. A family classic. Occasionally there would be a bummer lamb. They were always fun to play with until they got the better of me at butting. I am not sure they were ever eaten and lamb was not a dish that appeared on the Horn table. Grandma taugt me to emboider all the standard stitches, I went rogue and stitched some truly ugly disclothes. I always watched her cook, she used no recipes and I would try to guess quantity but there is nothing like experience. I love that woman with her crooked fingers1!!