IT’S MY STORY
I’ll TELL IT ANY WAY I WANT TO!
(Always, Of Course, Slanted to Make Me Look Good!)
by Neona May Brand Owen

I was born in Farwell, Parmer County, Texas on 21 September 1937. My parents were Marvin Benjamin Brand, born 2 Feb. 1912, and Hazel Alene Standridge, born 13 Jan 1910. My two older brothers are Marvin Clinton, born 28 Apr 1933 and Nathan Clayton, born 13 June 1935. In March 1942, my parents, having left Texas planning to go to Oregon, arrived in California. Mother’s uncle, Robert Riley lived in the Lodi area, so that is where we lived for a few months.

While we lived in the Lodi area my mother had a friend who had a little boy just my age whose name was Sammy.

Mother said that her friend’s little boy Sammy would come over and ask if Neona May could come out and play with his doll. Apparently he had a doll that was better than any that I had, and I liked to play with it. I have no memory of this. Just what Mother told me.

We then moved to a ranch between Walnut Grove and Courtland. At the time this country was in the midst of World War II. The people who had lived in the house prior to us moving there were Japanese people, and they had been sent to a concentration camp for the duration of the war. We were living here when my youngest brother, George Wayne was born, 26 June 1944 in Sacramento, California. Wayne was the only one of us kids who was born in a hospital.

We enjoyed living on this ranch. I remember lots of good times while living there. There were lots of places for us to play. There were trees to climb, fruit to pick and eat. There were cherry trees, and pear orchards; we grew tomatoes, cantaloupes, and asparagus. I remember watching Daddy make the boxes in the evening that the workers would use to pack the asparagus in the next day. I thought he was so clever! Just take a few small pieces of wood, a few nails and soon there was a packing box! Some of the workers in the fields were convicts, brought out by the Sheriff’s department.

My brothers were good at carving cars and other toys out of green pears. We used the hoe to scrape roads in the yard. (we didn’t have lawn, just dirt!) I remember that every afternoon on the summer days, Mother or Grandmother would sprinkle the yard to keep the dust down and make it feel cooler as we sat in the shade. I loved the smell of the damp dirt.

Daddy showed the boys how to make guns that shot large rubber bands cut from old inner tubes. We played with ‘button tops’ made by threading string through the holes of a large button, ‘winding’ it up by twisting the strings and then keeping it going by the movement of our hands, first together and then apart. There were times the boys put the button top into my hair and it had to be cut out! We played cat’s cradle with string. There were so many ways for us to have a lot of fun. There were very few purchased toys and no TV. We had to use our imagination and we did.

The boys learned how to walk on stilts. (I don’t think I did. I usually tried to do all the things the boys did, but I don’t remember walking on stilts.) The first stilts had their feet about a foot off the ground. Then as they became more skilled in walking on them, they made them higher and higher until they were, it seemed to me, ‘very high’ up in the air. One day one of them lost their balance and fell. As he fell the stilt came down and hit me across the nose. I had a very sever nosebleed, and for years after that just the slightest bump to my nose caused heavy bleeding.

There was also on this ranch, a forbidden place, a locked shed about the size of a two-car garage. Of course, since it was forbidden we kids just had to know what was in there. The boys found a way, and we found TREASURE!! It was the belongings of the Japanese people. We took a couple of things out and took them to Mother. She told us, in no uncertain terms, that those things did not belong to us and we were NOT to go there again. I don’t think we did, either.

Mother took care of our cousin, Dolores Riley while her parents were working in the naval shipyard at Mare Island, near Vallejo, California. They lived in Sacramento, so they would bring her to our house very early on Monday morning on their way to work. They stayed in Vallejo during the week as there was gas rationing at that time. They picked her up on their way home on Friday evening. She was nine months younger than I was, so it was almost like I had a sister! Her name was Dolores, but we called her Dot or Dotsie, or even sometimes Dotsie-Watsie. She had very long thick blonde hair. She was beautiful…I always wished I had hair like hers, but mine was thin, straight and stringy…never growing longer than just below my shoulders. Her braids were about an inch or more thick, mine were pencil thin.

One day I was sitting on the back porch with my head hanging over the edge, spitting out what my brother, Clayton thought was blood. He ran in to tell Mother, “Come quick, Neona May is spitting up blood!” My mother ran out to see what was the matter with me. It wasn’t blood. I just remember I was trying to get the nasty taste out of my mouth. My Great-grandmother Riley, mother of my mother’s mother, visited with us while we lived here. Grandma Riley dipped snuff. Snuff is a fine tobacco powder. Some people would take a small pinch and hold it to the nostril and sniff it into their nose. My Great-grandmother took a dip and put it between her lower lip and her teeth. As it moistened, she would spit out the juice. I thought this looked like fun and I wanted to try it. I found out what nasty tasting stuff snuff was! Mother was glad it was only snuff. I don’t remember what if any punishment was meted out…maybe the nasty taste was enough of a punishment.

We had a radio, on which we listened to programs like folks watch sit-coms now. My two older brothers were in school, and I was home alone with Mother. She was out in the shed washing clothes. I wanted to listen to the radio but the on-off switch was broken and to use the radio it had to be plugged into an extension cord. Houses in those days had no electrical outlets on the walls as we have today. The only source of electricity in most rooms was the cord that hung from the ceiling with a light socket on the end into which one would screw the light bulb. To turn the light on and off there was a pull chain on the side of the socket. Usually there was a string tied to the end of the chain to make it easier to reach.

In order to use an extension cord to plug in another electrical appliance you had to have some sort of an adapter. The adapter screwed into the light socket where the bulb would normally go. It had two plug-ins on the sides of it and the socket for the light bulb at the bottom. It, too, had a pull chain to turn the power on and off. In our case, we had the extension cord plugged into the adapter, strung across the ceiling and down the wall behind the radio.

I had seen Mother and Daddy plug in the radio and we would greatly enjoy listening to whatever program was on. I picked up the cord and plugged it into the extension cord. I must have pinched the palm of my hand in between the plug and the plug-in on the extension cord. I received a very sever shock. I couldn’t let go of the cord. I was screaming something fierce, and Mother came running into the house. She saw what was happening and pulled the chain on the light socket above the adapter. That turned off the power to the extension cord and it released me. I still have four scars on my hand to remind me of that incident, and to this day, I don’t like to fool with any kind of wiring.

There was, in the same shed that the washing machine was in, what we called the ‘Japanese Bathtub’. It was a big rectangular steel tub probably about 3-4 feet deep, which you filled with water. (It seems to my memory it was that deep…however, I was small then and everything seemed big to me!) Outside under the ‘bathtub’ was a fire pit, for building a fire to heat the water. We couldn’t fathom a whole family bathing in the tub at the same time, but that is what we were told the tub was used for. Just think, that many years ago, we had a hot tub and didn’t even know it!!

One day as we were loading up into the Model A to go out to the field to work. (I think it must have been the pear orchard; Mother, Grandma and Ruby worked grading the pears for shipping to market…the smaller ones were rejected) As we were all piling into the car, my brother Clayton said he had seen a polar bear come into the back yard. Of course everyone told him there was no such thing as a polar bear in our area. When we came back to the house for dinner Clayton, still insisting that a polar bear had visited our yard, jumped out of the car and said, “I’ll show you his tracks!” He ran around to the back yard where he had seen the ‘polar bear’. Before any of the rest of us could even get out of the car he came running back around the house and jumped upon the top of the car. Running right behind him was a big white bulldog! He was a friendly dog, and did allow us to get out of the car.

Some time later that same bulldog showed up again at our house. This time he had a small girl with him. She was so young she couldn’t tell us who she was or where she lived. Mother stayed out in the yard with them, thinking her parents would come looking for her. They did. They lived about a mile away. The child and dog had wandered to our place through the fields and orchards. They were glad to get the two of them back. I don’t know if the little girl was following the dog, or the dog was tagging along to protect his little girl.

One year, before I had started to school, one of the neighbor’s teen aged girls wanted to take me to school for the last-day-of-school picnic. Mother let me go with her. I don’t remember much about the day, except the tables were loaded with food. The girl helped me put the food on my plate. She put some olives on it. I tasted the olives and didn’t like them, but she made me eat all that was on my plate. I became sick that evening and was sure it was the olives that made me sick. I haven’t liked olives since that time. However, it wasn’t the olives that caused my sickness. I had the mumps! I wonder if that girl got them too?

I remember the day we learned the War was over. Mother was hanging out the laundry on the clothesline. We kids were playing in the yard. A car full of people went by on the levy with their horn honking and they were hollering “The War is over! The War is over!” I remember Mother saying, “Praise the Lord” and being so happy, but I didn’t know what all the rejoicing was about. As a 7 year old, I knew very little of what was going on in the world.

Someone gave me a white rabbit for a pet. I named her Molly. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was expecting, and a few weeks later Molly became a mother. From my pet we raised a lot of rabbits some we sold and some of which we ate. Of course, we didn’t eat Molly!

Dot and I slept on the couch in the Living room when she was there. One night I fell off and I remember trying to reach as far as I could in each direction trying to find the couch and get back on it. It was a really dark night and I could see nothing. I felt this direction…no couch. I felt it that direction…no couch. I crawled the other way and reached all directions from me as far as I could…no couch. Finally, I just let out a screech, saying, “I can’t find the couch!” Mother got up and turned on the light for me…I was out in the middle of the room! She put me back to bed and I went back to sleep.

Several years later, Dot took tap-dancing lessons. When she came to visit us she would teach me the steps. I didn’t learn very much, but it was fun helping her practice.

One year the three of us older children got bicycles. I don’t remember if it was for Christmas or if Daddy just had an opportunity to get them for us.

I remember learning to ride by pushing myself between the two big cottonwood trees in the yard. They were probably 30 feet apart. I would get on the bike by balancing against one tree and ride to the other tree and catch myself on it, then do a return trip.

I remember when Wayne was just learning to crawl, we older kids would put him in the middle of the room, and then get into a circle around the room and try to coax him to us…the contest being to see who he would crawl to. Then the person who was the lucky one that time would crow that Wayne ‘likes me best!’ We sure loved that little guy.

We had a dog that we named Blacky. I suppose it was because she was completely black! She was a small dog, I don’t remember the breed, probably “Heinz 57”. But we loved her dearly. She was always there to play with us.

One day Blacky became a Hero! Someone had left the back door open and Wayne crawled out of the house onto the back porch. This back porch had no rail or banister on it. Blacky stayed between him and the edge of the porch so he wouldn’t fall off. I remember we all thought she was so smart when we found her taking care of Wayne.

One day she had followed us to the neighbor’s house and when we left to go home, we didn’t notice that she wasn’t with us. After we got home we called and called for her, but she didn’t come. We walked back to the neighbors’ house and we found her body on the road. She had been run over by a car. I remember the sadness we felt as we walked home, Clinton carrying Blacky’s body on his bike as he pushed it home. We were all heartbroken. It was the first time I can remember loosing a friend to death.

I started to school and went through first and second grades in Courtland. I don’t remember much about my school years there. I do remember having to wait up on the levy for the school bus. I remember one day while waiting for the bus, Clayton was playing with his fifty-cent piece. That was our weekly lunch money. He was trying to get it to roll on its edge along the pavement. He had tried several times, then with the last try he said, “Ah, shucks, half dollars won’t roll.” Well, it did roll; it rolled right off the pavement into the grasses on the side of the road. We never did find that half-dollar.

I also remember standing in the line to get our lunch in the cafeteria. The football field separated the Grade school and the High School. The cafeteria was at the High School. The Grade school kids had to walk the length of the football field to get to the Cafeteria. One day while waiting in line to get to the lunch counter, a boy in front of me was playing with the cord from the venetian blinds. It had a bell-shaped weight on the end of the cord, probably made of wood. Now they are made of plastic. He was throwing it around and it hit me in the eye. When I yelled and started to cry, I got “shushed” from the teacher in charge of keeping us all moving in an orderly fashion. I remember feeling that I had been unjustly scolded.

I remember that I liked one boy in the class as my ‘boyfriend’. I don’t know now if he knew he was my boyfriend or not! There were two girls I had as friends that I remember their names. I’m not sure of the spelling of the first one, but they were Dorels Ann and Melba. I believe they were sisters. My ‘boyfriend’ was Jay.

When we went anywhere in the car we three older kids were always in the back seat. And at that time there were no seat belts and no law that said kids had to be belted in. (but they could be belted!!) J Most of the time we were in a kneeling position, with our feet on the seat, leaning on our arms on the back of the front seat. This bothered Daddy as he was driving, and he constantly had to tell us to get our feet out of the seat and sit down. One day he was especially exasperated with us and he said if we didn’t stay seated he would take the back seat out of the car and we would have to stand up.

Well, needless to say, we didn’t stay seated, and true to his word, he took the back seat out and left it home the next time we took a drive. Now, kneeling on the seat to lean on the back of the front seat was, in our opinion, quite comfortable; but having to stand up all the way was very uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it cured us of that habit.

Daddy worked for George Wilson, the owner of the ranch on which we were living. Mr. Wilson had lots of other properties and Daddy worked wherever he was needed. He was usually gone before we got up in the mornings, and it would be dark when he got home. We used to watch out the window to see the headlights of the car coming. When one of us saw the car, we would shout, “I saw him first! I saw him first!” to a little sing-song tune. What little things give great pleasure when you are young!!

Daddy very seldom had to punish us, Mother took care of any discipline that was needed in a timely fashion, not threatening us to “wait until your Father gets home”. When Daddy spoke, we listened. The best spanking we never got was one that was promised, and never administered. We went to Courtland to do the shopping and we kids were being kids, probably arguing and fighting, and Daddy told us we were going to get a “good” spanking when we got home. Well, we quieted down and were very, very good on the rest of the trip. (We might even have been sitting on the seat instead of hanging over the back of the front seat!) When we got home, Mother and Daddy had to carry in the groceries and other purchases and get them put away. We kids were so very good, you would have thought Santa was in the house, making his list! As I think back on it, I can just imagine our parents smiling, maybe even winking at each other, and just enjoying how good we were being. We were tiptoeing around, doing everything we were told with lightning speed. We were the best kids…for at least a week…hoping not to remind Daddy he had forgotten to give us the promised spanking!

I remember the old telephone we had. It was a brown box that hung on the wall. There was a large round ‘pipe’-like mouth piece one would speak into, and another round piece about five inches long and maybe two inches in diameter with holes in the loose end. The other end was hooked to a cord, hooked to the Telephone. One would hold this piece to the ear. There was a crank on the side of the telephone which one turned to make it ring at ‘Telephone Central’ where the operator answered the ring. You would tell the operator who you wanted to speak to and she would connect you to the party you wanted. It was a marvelous invention! I remember someone ‘ringing’ up the operator and asking her the time. Then I remember that we kids would call her up and ask for the time just to be able to use the telephone. Of course we did this when there were no adults in the room…we were not allowed to use the telephone, but kids usually do some things they are not ‘allowed’ to do when the parents are not looking! (All Kids: you are not to read this part….you should not know that we did things we weren’t allowed to do!).

Grandma and Grandpa Brand, Raymond, and Ruby were living with us for a time. They had moved out to California from Texas, and had not found themselves a home yet. We had an old wind-up Victrola. (Record player, to those of the younger generation) It was sitting in front of a window in the living room. In order to play it, you had to wind it up, raise the lid, put on one of the old wax records, and put the needle on the record and listen. There was no speaker, no volume control. You just listened to the sound coming from the vibrations of the needle.

Raymond who was 5 years older than Clinton, would sit for hours with his chin resting on his hands on the edge of the Victrola, listening to and watching the record go ‘round and ‘round. Clayton and Clinton (and maybe me, but I was quite short) would reach their hand through the window from the outside, and push the lid of the Victrola down, which would then clonk Raymond on the head! I guess He just thought the lid wouldn’t stay up and he would push it back up and keep listening. Soon the lid would fall on him again! He would push it back up again and keep on listening. We culprits ran like crazy to the other side of the house after each drop of the lid, so we wouldn’t get caught, laughing and giggling all the while. We kids got a great kick out of that. I don’t know if Raymond ever did find out what was going on!

Daddy bought a house in Lockford and two side-by-side empty lots in Thornton. Daddy gave the house in Lockford to Grandpa and Grandma Brand, and Grandpa helped Daddy move two cabins onto the lots in Thornton and make a house out of them. I remember my first sight of the lots in Thornton. The thistles were as tall as Daddy was. We would go over there and Daddy and Mother would chop thistles while we kids were in the car watching them. (at least Wayne and I. Maybe the older boys had to chop thistles as well. I don’t remember that.) They finally got the lots cleared and the house on it and we moved to Thornton before school started and I went to New Hope School through the third and fourth grades. Now we had to start walking to school…no more school bus rides! (It was uphill both ways, and always a foot of snow…Oops. that was someone else’s story about another place and time!! Sorry.)

While we were there in Thornton, Mother worked one season at the cannery. We kids stayed with our grandparents in Lockford. I don’t know why, but at one point they didn’t have any milk for us to drink, and we were used to having all the milk we wanted, as we had a cow. On day, Clayton said to Grandma Brand, “I’m just getting weaker and weaker.” Grandma asked what was the matter with him, and he said, “I need some milk!” We had milk very soon! I believe she sent us to the store to get it.

Grandma Brand had very long hair, which she wore braided and wrapped around her head. She would sit in the yard in the afternoon sun, take the braids out and comb and re-braid her hair. I wanted to braid her hair. My mother let me comb her hair all the time, and she enjoyed the combing. Grandma was so very tender headed that she couldn’t let me comb that long hair. She would say, to my pleading, “Just let me get the braids started for you.” She would ‘start’ the braid until there were only about 5 inches left to braid, then she would let me finish braiding it. She thought that satisfied me, but it never really did. I wanted to really get my hands into her hair! But you take what you can get!

In our small living room there was one overstuffed easy chair that sat next to Daddy’s desk. The desk was a roll top desk. To me that roll top was magic. I couldn’t figure out where the top went as it disappeared into the top of the desk. (As a matter of fact, I still don’t!) It had several ‘pigeon holes’ to put papers or mail, and drawers under the desk top on both sides of the opening for your feet and legs as you sat at the desk. On the top of the desk was the radio, over which we heard our afternoon serial radio programs. (This was before TV and the sit-com or cartoons, you remember.) Each of us wanted the coveted chair to sit in and listen to the radio…we had to be very close, you know! The radio did have a volume control, but we just thought we had to be very close! Better concentration that way, you see.)

On this particular day, I had the chair, and the boys were trying every conceivable way to talk me into getting up so one of them could beat me back to the chair. “Oh, look out the window, thus and so is happening!” But it didn’t work. One of them said, “Oh, she wouldn’t even get up to go meet Grandmother if she came through the gate!!” A little bit later, Clinton looked out of the door window and shouted to us, “Grandmother Robards is coming through the gate!!” Clayton ran to the door and by this time they had the door open and were running out as if to meet her. Not going to fool this kid!! Well, they were both out of the house, and I got up to go take a quick peek out the door. Sure enough, Grandmother was walking up the path from the gate!! I yelled and ran out the door, and around the house to get Mother, who was washing clothes on the scrub board out behind the house. I had to be the one to let Mother know that Grandmother was coming. After all the greetings were done, and Grandmother had the easy chair, the boys reminded me that they had said that I wouldn’t go meet Grandmother and I didn’t!! They wouldn’t let me forget it either!

Mother had a big heavy mirror sitting on the top of the desk. It was as wide as the desk was, and probably two thirds that high. It had no frame around it. It was a very good, heavy glass. (I would love to have that mirror now; it would be worth quite a bit of money. They don’t make mirrors like that anymore). One day as I was trying to get closer to the radio, I reached up and used the mirror as a handle….Yep, seven long years later….

The mirror came down with a crash, right over my head and to the floor. It broke into a million (more or less) pieces. I would have loved to have seen the look on my face as that mirror came crashing down on top of me, but I didn’t think to look in the mirror!!

Daddy always had a big garden, all kinds of vegetables, melons and always a big corn patch. I remember the corn on the cob—oh, it was so good. We had a couple of missionaries visiting our church there in Thornton. We didn’t have much, but we had corn and other food from our garden. Mother boiled up a cold-pack canner full of ‘roasting ears’ as we called them, and we took them to a church picnic. I remember one of the missionaries just eating and eating that corn, and commenting how good it was.

We had a big strawberry patch. One day one of our parents’ acquaintances came to the door and asked if he could have some strawberries. As Mother had harvested berries and put up jam the day before and we kids had been grazing out there most of the morning, Mother told him there probably weren’t any to be picked that day. I was standing there listening to the conversation, and I piped up, “Oh, yes there are, Mother, we’ve been picking them all morning!” Mother said later, “And I was so glad when she learned to talk!” I had made it look like she was telling a fib, and just didn’t want him to have any berries. She explained to him, that that was the reason there weren’t enough to pick but he could go check for himself. Of course, there weren’t even a handful of ripe ones.

We had peach trees, plum trees, and nectarine trees. We also had almond trees. We raised chickens and rabbits for meat and eggs.

I remember one day several of the chickens had escaped from the chicken yard. When this happened, as it did occasionally, it was our job to chase them and get them back into the pen. This particular day Clayton and I were the chasers. There was one hen that we were having a lot of trouble catching or shooing back into the pen. After chasing her for quite a while, Clayton said to the hen, “When I catch you, I’m going to wring your neck!” Of course I thought he was just talking. He wouldn’t kill a chicken just because he was having trouble catching her to put back into the pen. Well, when we finally had her cornered and he caught her, he did indeed, wring her neck. I was standing there with my mouth wide open and I’m sure my eyes were as wide open as my mouth. Then he started laughing and he told Mother had told him to kill one of them for Sunday dinner which was the next day! He sure had me going!!

We had a cow, so we had all the milk and butter we wanted. We had enough fruit, vegetables and milk to share with some of our friends who weren’t blessed with the space to have those things. Many years later, when I was in California taking care of my parents after Daddy’s heart attack, one of the younger children of one of those families came by to see him. As we were talking, Freddie as he was called when he was little, told me he had, as a child, thought our family was wealthy. I laughed and asked him why would he think such a thing. He said that because we owned our own house and had such a big yard and had all the food we wanted and could give so much of it away.

He even remembered the ‘penny loafers’ I wore as a teen-ager that actually had dimes in the slots! (He didn’t know that the dimes very seldom stayed there more than a day or so! I usually had pennies in them, and even pennies didn’t stay there very long, as you could buy things with a penny in those days.) He said he recalled going by the restaurant there and seeing me and one of my friends sitting in there drinking milkshakes! He wished he could have a milkshake!! The ‘friend’ was Dick, and I would not have had the money to buy a milkshake for myself at that time.

The summer between my fourth grade and fifth grade years we moved to Ryer Island, where Daddy worked at the Alfalfa mill. (Actually he drove the chopper that harvested the alfalfa for the mill to process) Mother ran the boarding house and cooked for the men who worked at the mill. Daddy worked in the Alfalfa fields for many years, even after we left Ryer Island and moved back to Thornton. I remember one time as we were traveling; (you know how bored kids get riding in a car? Are we there yet? Etc.) Well we started singing songs to keep us occupied. All went well until about the fifteenth verse of “Alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay..” to the tune of “How Dry I Am” (there were no other words to the song!) Then Daddy told us we had to either be quiet or sing another song!

Daddy did get out of the alfalfa field for a while. (Or maybe that is what he did when we first moved there, before he went to work for the mill.) He purchased the garage-gas station there at the mill community. 

One day I asked my mother if I could walk with a friend named Paula to her house across the river. Mother thought about it for a minute or two, and I guess, couldn’t find a good reason to say no, so she gave her permission for me to go. It was probably about ¾ of a mile to her house from mine. We were about 2/3 of the way there when Daddy drove up and told me to get into the car. I said, “Mother told me I could go to Paula’s house.” Daddy said that he knew that, but that he had something he wanted me to do at home. So I got into the car and went home with him. 

I don’t remember what chore, if any, he gave me to do, but sometime later he told me that he was under a customer’s car, doing some repair work, and he heard a voice, plain as day, say “Go get Neona May.” Daddy checked to see if I was home, and Mother told him where I was going. We have no idea why the Spirit would tell him to go get me, but there must have been a reason, and Daddy did what he was told, as quickly as he could. Had he not listened to the Spirit, we may have found out why he was told to go get me. I personally, am glad he listened, since it was I who may have been hurt. Thank you, Daddy, for listening to and obeying the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Paula lived in a home that had no mother, just a dad and several brothers.

We had a little dog, named Cubby. She was a small dog, part some kind of terrier and part Pekinese, just enough to give a bit of pug to her nose. When she was a little puppy, Mother picked her up, turned her over and looked at her cute little face, and said she looked like a bear cub. This is how she got her name. 

She would sit up and beg, ‘say’ please, etc. She was our very good friend and she was a very smart dog. She would go over to the mill, sit in front of the candy machine, sit up and beg until one of the men would buy her a candy bar, or at least buy one and share it with her. Then she would sit in front of the coke machine and some one would buy a coke, drink most of it then hold it up and let her drink the last few drops out of the bottle. 

We kids wished it would work for us like that. But it never did. Years later, when I was going with Dick, Cubby had crossed the main street and was in someone else’s yard. Mother called her to come home. After she called her, she saw the car coming but it was too late. Cubby was just trying to get to Mother, because she had been called. The driver of the car saw and heard Mother crying out to Cubby to go back, he was looking at Mother instead of the road. He never saw the dog. Cubby never knew what had hit her. We were all devastated.

Some time before we moved to Ryer Island, Daddy was called into the ministry. After we moved to Ryer Island, Daddy started a Sunday School at our house. As I said, we lived in the Boarding House. It was a big two-story house. There were about 7 small rooms upstairs, which we used as bedrooms, office, and Sunday School rooms, around three of the outside walls; and a big open area into which all the rooms opened in the middle. This room we used as the ‘chapel’.

While we lived on Ryer Island, I joined the 4-H club and learned how to sew. I made scarves, blouses, a full circle skirt, and I even made a suit for Wayne. I was so proud of that suit. Pants and jacket. He looked so cute in it.

We lived in the Boarding House until it burned in June 1950. At the time of the fire, I believe the older boys were away at Bible camp and I was staying the week with my Uncle Robert and Aunt Ruby Hendergart. Aunt Ruby is Daddy’s youngest sister. It was the summer between my seventh and eight grades. After learning of the loss of the house and everything we owned, I was most upset at the loss of the suit I had worked so hard to make.

At this time we moved back to Thornton, to the house Daddy and Grandpa built. Daddy still owned it, and had been renting it to some friends, the Melvin Cain family. As I recall, we all lived in that little house for a few weeks until the Cain family could find another place to live. Let’s see now, we had a family of six, and they had a family of six. I cannot imagine all twelve of us living there!

I graduated from New Hope School in Thornton (eighth grade) and started to High School in Galt. I went to 9th and 10th grades there. 

When I was in the 9th grade the Social Studies teacher was a brand-new-just-out-of-school teacher. He was a real doll! His name was Don Natolli and all the girls had crushes on him, and I was no exception! Over the summer he got married, and broke a lot of hearts. But he married a girl who was a senior the year before. They had kept their romance extremely quiet, as it would have been reason for his dismissal from teaching at that school if it were found out. 

When Mother was in the convalescent hospital in Lodi in 1996, I talked on the phone to a Mr. Don Natolli, who was calling to talk to one of Mother’s roommates. I asked him if he had been a teacher at Galt High and he said no, but his father had taught there for many years. It’s a small world!

After we left Ryer Island, Daddy was called to be Pastor of a small church in Rio Vista, and we drove to Rio Vista in the morning for Sunday School and Morning Worship. We would have our mid-day meal there at the building where we held the church, then after the evening services we would go back home to Thornton. 

During the afternoon while Mother and Daddy rested and studied, I kind of taught myself to plunk out tunes on the piano. I could read music, as I had taken band at school, and had a friend who was taking piano lessons, and would share her knowledge with me. I loved to practice, and she didn’t. So while I was learning from her, she was also practicing to show me what she had been taught. 

This friend was Donna Patton, who was our neighbor when we lived on Ryer Island. Over the years, as my children and others have taken up a musical instrument and have to practice for many hours, I remember my own practicing of the piano and the trumpet. What patience my parents had. Never once did they complain of my ‘music’. One of the boarders at the boarding house said to me one day as I was practicing, “Do you know ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’?” I said that I didn’t and he said, “That’s where I wish you would play!”

Velma Shands was the pianist for our little church group. She had two children still at home. Clarence was her son, who was Clayton’s age, and Fay, her daughter was a year younger than I was. Quite frequently, I got to go home with Fay for the afternoon. Some times we would go watch the baseball games. Rio Vista had a town team. This was the days when a lot of small towns had their own teams and when it was a home game we would try to go see it. When there were no games and the weather was nice, we would walk all over town after our lunch. 

It was on one of these walks that I met Richard Owen, or Dickie, as he was called then. Fay knew him from school, so he stopped and talked to us for a while, then asked if we wanted a ride. Of course we wanted to ride with this cute guy! Fay jumped into the middle and I was by the passenger side window. This became a regular Sunday afternoon happening, and Fay always sat in the middle. Dick would put his right arm across the back of the seat behind Fay and hold my hand! One day Dick talked to her brother, Clarence and mentioned her always getting into the middle. Clarence told Fay to let me sit in the middle. So she did. That was 48 years ago, and we are still ‘riding around’ together!

Daddy bought a house in Rio Vista and we moved there the summer between 10th and 11th grades. That same summer I moved to Rio Vista, Dick and his family moved to Fairfield, twenty-two miles west of us.

I went to 11th and half of the 12th grades in Rio Vista. Dick and I saw each other on weekends when he would hitchhike from Fairfield to Rio Vista. We became engaged in November, 1954. My family moved to Berkley in January 1955, to be close to where Daddy was attending the Southern Baptist Seminary and working. He was coming home on weekends to be with us and take care of his Church. 

I graduated from Berkley High School in 1955 in a class of about 600 seniors! We didn’t march in to Pomp and Circumstances, as had been the case at every graduation I had ever attended. We marched in to the Theme from Quo Vaduz! They were calling our names as fast as they could say them. About 8 of us were walking across the stage to receive our diplomas at the same time!

Dick and I were married a week after graduation, on June 25th. My Dad, an ordained Baptist minister performed the ceremony. We only had a weekend for a “honeymoon” as Dick was working for a company called Evans & Pyle in Fairfield. We went to San Francisco, visited the zoo, park, the ocean beaches, etc.

We lived with Dick’s folks for a month in Fairfield, then moved to Rio Vista and rented my folks’ home there. They were living in the Bay area at this time. We moved to Fairfield in Jan 1956. Jamie was born there on Jan. 30, 1956. In March that year we moved to Vacaville. Dick was by this time working for the Vaca Valley Creamery. The house we moved into belonged to one of the owners of the Creamery. It was a duplex on Lovers Lane.

It was while we were living here that David was born on Feb 20, 1957. The people who lived in the other half of the duplex had a little boy named Danny. I was working in Primary, and we were having a special program put on by the children of the Primary. I invited Danny and his mother to go to this program. Danny’s mother put on a skirt and blouse, getting ready to go to the program. Danny was playing on the floor, and looking up at his mother, commented, “Mom, why do you have your curtains on?”

From this question, you can surmise that she didn’t wear dresses or skirts very often.

I started working with the children in Primary in the music department when David was just a tiny baby. I loved it. I then worked as teacher in the Rainbow Class. Someone realized I was not a member of the Church, and I was moved back to the music department. The Missionaries, Elder John Bea and others visited us and in June 1957, I was Baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by my husband, Dick.

One Primary day, I got David, who was just a few months old, ready to take to the church, and put him in his crib. He went to sleep right away. Then I got Jamie dressed and ready, then myself. I put Jamie into the car, carried out all of the books, and other things I needed for whatever job it was that I had in Primary at that time, and headed to the church. I unloaded everything, including Jamie, and took it into the church building. Someone asked me where is the baby? Oops! I left him home in his crib. He was asleep and I just completely forgot about him! What a good mother I was! (I’m still forgetful, but now I blame it on age. At that time I didn’t have that excuse!)

We moved out into the country on Pleasant Valley Road, 7 miles from Vacaville, in December 1958. Keith was born while we lived here on Oct 24, 1959. This ranch we lived on belonged to the other owner of the Vaca Valley Creamery. They raised pigs, sheep, ran a few cattle, and had fruit orchards. Dick worked on the ranch after his shift driving the milk truck for the Creamery, to pay the rent. So we didn’t pay cash rent, and he also earned a little extra income. I also worked on the ranch during the fruit season. Sometimes grading the fruit, taking out the small plums and getting the nicest, largest ones ready for shipping to the Eastern Market. At other times we were cutting apricots and putting them on the trays for drying. I loved the dried apricots, and we got to take some home with us for our own use. We also were allowed to take the small plums home for our use.

Randall was born to us while we lived on this ranch also, on Aug 7, 1961. While we lived on this ranch, and before Randall was born I went to a Primary Stake Meeting with several other ladies from the Church. At that time we were part of the Santa Rosa Stake, and had to go there for the Stake Meetings each month. It was about 2-2 ½ hour drive from Vacaville. We were in my car, and Keith was the only child we had with us. He was probably only a little over a year old. We had been to the meeting and were on the way home. We stopped at a little restaurant for lunch. After lunch we all piled into the car for the remainder of the trip home. About an hour down the road, (I was driving, you remember) someone says, “Where is Keith?” I just about had a heart attack!

Can you imagine, 5 grown up ladies, mothers all, forgetting a small child? (Lets see, now, this is the second child I have forgotten. What IS wrong with me???) We were on the freeway by this time, about an hour from Vacaville. The ladies were looking all over the car, under their feet, in purses, under the carpet. I turned the car around as soon as I could, and Sister Betty Hatch took over the driving chore. We fairly flew back to the restaurant. When we got there, he was sitting on the counter, eating a sucker, all the waitresses fawning over him!

The next month when we went to our meeting, I left Keith with a baby sitter. (I wonder why??) We stopped at the same restaurant. They didn’t say anything to us about the previous month, but you could see all the waitresses, whispering and pointing to our table, then laughing!

When Randall was not quite a year old, we moved to the Pippo Ranch on Browns Valley Road—4 miles from Vacaville. While we lived on this place, I went to work as waitress at the Nut Tree Restaurant on what is now Interstate 80 near Vacaville. Our neighbor, Sister Ozetha Clanton watched the children for me until Dick came home from work, usually only a couple of hours.

I enjoyed working there, it gave me some time away from the little children, and I made some extra money to help out with the expenses of our growing family. All of the employees at the Nut Tree wore name-tags. One day one of my customers asked me who gave the servers their names. I replied that my Mom and Dad game me mine, and why would he ask such a question. He said that he had been reading all the names of the workers and hadn’t seen a common name yet. There were names such as Ozma, Earlene, Giselle, Alma, and a lot of others I can’t think of at this time. There were a lot of different names, and this customer thought that maybe the managers assigned names to the workers.

I worked in Primary until Keith was born. Over the years I held the following positions: pianist, chorister, first and second councilor. I worked in Relief Society as Work Counselor for about a year, then went back to Primary as chorister, and as Junior Sunday School chorister at the same time. I held the Stake Junior Sunday School Chorister position for about 3 months, but had too many other jobs so was released. I was a member of the Relief Society Singing Mothers, and Visiting Teacher.

One day David, who was about 4 or 5 years old, and I walked up the hill to our landlady’s house to pay the rent. Her name was, of course, Mrs. Pippo. We were talking, and she looked at David and asked him something, but he wouldn’t answer her. She asked him something else, but he still wouldn’t answer her. We visited a few minutes longer, and she would ask him something every once in a while, to see if he would ever come out of his shell. He didn’t. While we were walking down the hill, I asked him why he wouldn’t talk to Mrs. Pippo. He said, “ I’m not supposed to talk to strangers!”

With the extra money coming in from my job at the Nut Tree, we were able to save enough the following year to put a down payment on our own place. We purchased a five-acre parcel of land with a small double-wide trailer. This double wide was nothing like our ‘double-wide manufactured home’ of today! It was 3 rooms and a path! Dick promptly built an addition to it-two large bedrooms and a bathroom.

It was at this home that the kids saved up their money and we purchased a horse for them. His name was Rusty, and on hot days he would roll in the dirt to try to keep the flies away, so the kids called him Rusty Dusty. We also had a Doughboy Swimming pool. The kids lived in the swimming pool, and they all learned to swim in that pool. Keith swam mostly underwater. He would take a deep breath, dive under the water and swim as far as he could go until he needed another breath, then he would repeat the process. 

One weekend we went to “Hidden Valley Lake Ranch Club with Dick’s sister, Lois and her hubby, Erny Jorgensen and their family. Erny was watching the lifeguard, as the lifeguard was watching Keith. Keith was only about 4 years old. He would do his thing with the breath, dive underwater and go. The Lifeguard would rise up off his seat, preparing to jump in to pull Keith out, when Keith came up for air. As Keith resurfaced, the lifeguard sat back down, only to get back up as Keith repeated his process of swimming. Down Keith would go. Up came the lifeguard, up came Keith, down went the lifeguard, down went Keith, and up came the lifeguard. Erny was just laughing out loud by now. The lifeguard looked at him, and Erny told him not to worry about Keith, he could swim very well.

During the summer, I worked longer shifts, and had a teenage girl who was a member of the church as our baby-sitter. Sometimes I would take the kids to her house and she would watch them there and sometimes she would come to our house to watch the kids at home. This day she was coming to our house. She was supposed to be at our house at 1:30, so I could be to work at 2pm. She was late, so I tried to call her house to ask if she were coming, or to remind her what time she was supposed to be there. 

The line was busy...still busy....still busy. 

Finally, about 10 minutes till two, I loaded the kids into the truck to take them to her house. I was driving way too fast, ‘cause I was late, y’know. Jamie was in the front seat, Randy was in the little jump seat on the engine, the other two boys behind each of the front seats. Just before we went over the little hill, Randy climbed into the back with the other two boys. As I crested the hill I met the baby-sitter, being driven by her brother, coming up the hill from the other direction, also driving way to fast, ‘cause they were late, y’know.

Well, I moved over to the right too fast, got off the road, caught my rear right bumper on the fence, and I guess I must have jerked on the steering wheel at the same time, and we shot across the road, up the embankment (the cut in the hill where two roads intersected). I thought I was on the brake, but I just kept going so fast, we went down the other side of the embankment and ended up between the telephone pole and the guy wire where we came to a stop. I don’t think anyone was really hurt, maybe a few bumps and bruises, but no damage, even to the truck, except the bumper which was bent out on that side.

The baby-sitter and her brother (Their last name was Jenson but I can’t remember their first names) were scared to death...all they saw as they went over the hill was a cloud of dust...and didn’t know what else had happened. My legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t even push in the clutch to put it into neutral to restart the engine. It is a good thing we kept going instead of stopping on top of that embankment. I don’t know how I would have gotten it down from there!!

Dick had bought a Honda ‘50’ to ride back and forth to work. We lived 7 miles from town and had only one vehicle, which I drove to work in the afternoons. He liked it so well he got another Honda, a ‘90’. Then we would put 2 kids on each ‘bike’ and go for rides. We lived very happily there until 1964 when Dick bought the Crystal Valley Dairy in Rio Vista and we moved that year as soon as a house was purchased.

We rented out our house and left the horse on the property, and visited him almost every weekend on the way home from church. One Sunday as we were traveling home to Rio Vista from our visit with Rusty Dusty it was very foggy. 

When we came to the junction between the road to Dixon and Highway 12 we stopped at the stop sign. We couldn’t see anything! Highway 12 is usually a very busy road. We rolled down our windows to listen to hear if any traffic was coming. We could hear nothing. We waited for awhile and still hearing nothing ventured out and entered the highway. 

We didn’t meet or come upon any other vehicle all the way from that intersection until we came to Rio Vista. Strange! When we got home, we found out that a ship had hit the bridge, knocking out a 180 foot section of the bridge. Traffic was stopped on Highway 12 to the west, and at Fairfield traffic was re-routed. That is why there was no traffic!

The house we bought in Rio Vista was on Fourth Street, just across the street from the Police and Fire stations. Rio Vista had a volunteer fire department. When a fire happened the fire sirens across the street, (sirens that could be heard all across town,) would go off. Three blasts for a fire in town, and three blasts, pause, and a forth blast for out of town. When the sirens would go off in the middle of the night, it would just about blast us out of bed! Someone told us we would become used to it and it wouldn’t bother us anymore. Fat Chance, we thought.

One day Dick came home for breakfast, after the first part of his long day, and said to me, “I found out what the sirens were about last night.” I looked at him and asked, “What sirens?” I had, indeed, became used to them and didn’t hear it.

After moving to Rio Vista I worked part time at the Point Restaurant as a waitress and kept the Books for our business. Working at this restaurant was my first experience with any liquor other than beer. I had to serve cocktails to my dinner guests if they ordered them. I knew nothing about cocktails so even the names threw me. I just wrote down what they ordered and went and ask the bartender if there was such a thing as a ‘beefeater’ or ‘rusty nail’ and was assured that there was!

I quit working at the Point on Mother’s Day 1967. In May 1967 Dick and I got our Temple Recommends and went to the House of the Lord to be sealed for all eternity on June 24, in the Oakland temple. This was one day before out 12th wedding anniversary.

The three older kids worked with Dick on the early morning milk delivery. Jamie worked on Monday morning, David on Wednesday, and Keith on Friday. Dick drove the truck and the kids delivered the milk to the houses. They each worked about two hours a day before they went to school and were paid the going rate at the time. When we gave them their money, we insisted they save half of it and put it into a bank saving account. We suggested they pay tithing which they did, and then they could spend the rest of it anyway they wanted to, or save it up for something special that would cost more than they got each payday. 

One time they saved it all up for a trip to Disneyland that we gave the family for Christmas one year. We asked the kids if they would rather have Christmas presents, or the gift of an airplane trip to LA and the trip to Disneyland, and they chose Disneyland. We took the trip during the spring vacation the next year. How excited everyone was to be getting on an airplane and flying to LA. 

Jamie was allowed to take a girlfriend with her, as the boys had each other and she had no sister. Her name was Yvonne Disney. We joked that she should get in free, as she was a Disney! However, that wasn’t the case. She and her parents had to pay for her portion of the trip and entrance to Disneyland. We stayed in a motel several blocks from Disneyland, and the motel provided a shuttle bus to and from Disneyland. The boys really enjoyed the Frontier Land and purchased toy rifles and union hats. They climbed up into the forts and ‘shot’ the enemy. They traveled home on the airplane with their rifles in full view of all. Can you imagine traveling like that nowadays?

We spent a lot of our ‘vacation’ time at Yosemite National Park, which was about a 4 hour drive from Rio Vista. We went up there as often as our schedules would permit us to spend a few days there. We have visited Yosemite almost every season; when there was an abundance of water, when it was so dry the falls only had a trickle of water, and Dick even went in the winter when there was snow on the ground. Every season is beautiful. We sometimes took Grandma Owen and sometimes Lois and Family went with us. Once we went with the Dean family, members of the church from Fairfield.

Whenever we went to Yosemite, we had a good time. When Elaine was about two months old we went to Yosemite Valley. We had a baby-back-pack to carry Elaine in. As we hiked around the Valley we all took turns carrying her around in the back-pack. One day while it was Randy’s turn to carry Elaine, he was walking around in the store. Two women in the store looked at him and then looked into the back-pack. The one of them said to the other, “There is a REAL baby in there!” Randy was very proud of his baby.

While living in Rio Vista, we had to travel to Fairfield to go church. It was 22 miles from our house to the church. In those days we had morning and evening services so we either had to take this trip twice a day or stay at Dick’s parent’s house during the afternoon. We opted for the latter about twice or three times a month. Fast Sunday all the meetings were in the morning so there were no evening services. His folks were so gracious. We had a family of 6 and just as often Betty and her 2 were there as they lived in Rio Vista as well, and most of the time rode over with us. 

Grandma Owen never seemed to mind how many of us were there. Sometimes, after a couple of other families moved to Rio Vista, on nice days we would go get KFC and go to the park to spend the afternoon. We didn’t think it would be fair to have the other family to go over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, too.

One day we took a trip to the San Francisco Zoo. I know, I know, the name of the zoo is something like Flaschackers Zoo, but I can’t spell that, so, we went to the San Francisco Zoo. Seems to me like there were other people with us, but I can’t at this time remember who they may have been, but it seems as if there were more people than just our family there, and I believe it was the Symmons family that went with us. 

The first place we stopped was by a pond with seals or something in it. We were all watching them when all of a sudden the Lions in the Lion House, which was quite close by to where we were, started roaring like crazy! We all quickly went into the Lion house to see what was going on. I think they must have been feeding them or something. When all was quiet and we looked around we couldn’t find Jamie. 

We went as quickly as the crowd permitted to the place we were all together last. She was not there. We looked all around for her for quite a while, then just as I was about to go get the security guards involved in looking for her, Dick came back to where I was. He had gone to check the pickup to see if she may have gone back there, and there she was. She couldn’t find us, so, knowing where the truck was, she just went there and climbed in. She knew that we would eventually have come back there, after all our lunch was in there!! (OK, here is another child lost!) I don’t remember anything else about the day at the zoo. I guess loosing a child in that large a place was kind of traumatic!

I’m back to Primary again. Or still. I was the Merrihand teacher (11 – 12 year old girls) for a year and a half; 2nd counselor for a year and a half; President for almost a year. Also was Jr. S.S. and Primary chorister at the same time for 3 years. I was released from the presidency after Elaine was born in 1969. I was the Trekker leader for the last year of that program, and was Cub Scout leader for Randy’s den. It was a town Cub Scout Pack, not one through the Church. We were too far from the Church to be involved in that Pack. At this same time I was Room Mother for Keith’s class at school. So, I had a lot on my plate at that time, but I enjoyed it.

We purchased a movie camera just after Keith was born, and took movies of every thing! We had, by this time several 400-foot reels of film and several dozen 50-ft. rolls that we had not yet spliced together. One Sunday we had several of our family members who were sick and we all stayed home from church. As the morning wore on, we decided to get out the projector and look at some of the “old” movies. We started with the earliest film and progressed through to the end. It took several hours of viewing to see all of the film we had shot over the last 8-10 years. As we watched, we (Dick and I) explained who the people were on the screen. As each new baby showed up on the screen, Randall asked, “Is that me?” Our standard answer became, “No, that is ______. You haven’t been born yet.” After several hours of “not born yet” answers, Randall, got up, stamped his foot, and said, to all in attendance, “Oh, shucks! I’ll NEVER be born!!” and stomped out of the room. We had to assure him, that he, indeed, would be born, and that there were pictures of him.

We now had four children, the youngest was seven and things were going very well. I was ‘happy’ with a family of four children…a nice number. There were six of us in the family and if we bought a six-pack of pop (which was very seldom) there were just enough to go around.

One Sunday we were sitting behind a family who had a brand new baby. Randall was sitting between Dick and I and the rest of the children were on the other side of Dick. Dick whispered something to Randall that made him grin and nod. Keith, sitting on the other side of Dick wanted to know what was going on, Dick whispered it to him. Keith grinned and nodded, he whispered it to Jamie, sitting next to him…she grinned and nodded, then passed it on to David, whose reaction was the same. By this time I wanted to know what the commotion was. Dick said that the family had just taken a vote and it was unanimous …they wanted one of those, as he pointed to the new baby. I, thereupon, vigorously shook my head ‘no’. Guess who won?

Elaine was born while we lived in the house across from the fire department. We purchased a new house and moved when Elaine was just over a year old. It was a brand-new-never-been-lived-in-before house! It was a two-story house that had 4 bedrooms, two bathrooms, a huge living room, a formal dining room, and a family room. It was our dream house! It had hardwood floors through out. We went and visited the house with all the kids about a week before we were to move in. It had a fireplace, so we built a fire in the fireplace and watched it, sitting on the floor in front of it. But, every where the boys ran, and there is no way you are going to keep boys from running through the house, there were scuff marks on the hardwood floors. The next day we went shopping for carpet, and I had it carpeted, throughout! I just didn’t have the time or energy to deal with hardwood floors!

We had always joked that if the house across the street from the fire department ever caught on fire, the fire trucks wouldn’t be able to get to the house. Because all of the volunteer firemen parked their vehicles in front of our house as they were coming to the fire station to go to the fire there was never a place to park another vehicle anywhere around there. When we moved to the house on Drouin Drive we rented out the one there on Fourth Street. One night, we were awakened by sound of the fire sirens. It was an in-town fire. We looked out the window, but didn’t see any smoke or fire, so we turned over and went back to sleep. About an hour later we received a call. It was the dispatcher from the fire department. She asked Dick if he was the owner of the house at 28 N. Fourth St. He said that he was. She then told him that our house had just burned. And, sure enough they did have trouble with parking the cars.

Dick’s mother passed away about six weeks before Greg was born on October 17, 1970. She had a stroke and was paralyzed on her left side and couldn’t speak. She was coming out of it pretty well, when she had another stroke. She lived only a short time after the second stroke. Lois was down, and we had all been spending as much time with Mom as we could. School was just about to begin, so we took the day off to go school shopping. When we come back to Fairfield we went straight to the hospital to see Mom. There was a lady in there washing her striped bed. The room was empty of everything that had been Mom’s. We knew without asking, that she had passed away. We went to their house and Dad told us this story:

He had been sitting with her and she said, as best she could, that she wanted to go home. He very kindly told her he couldn’t take her home because he couldn’t give her the care she needed. She said, “No, I want to go Home. I want to be released.” So he knelt down by her bed and asked Heavenly Father to release her from this sick, pain filled body. He then went home. About a half-hour after he returned home he got a phone call from the hospital telling him she had passed away. She passed away on September 2, 1970.

We moved into our new home at 330 Drouin Drive the first part of October 1970 and Greg was born just few days after the move on 17 Oct 1970.

One day when the boys were out in the field behind our house on Drouin Drive, they found a couple of big gopher snakes. They brought them home and housed them in a big container in their room. They had a lot of fun playing with them, but after a week or so, I was quite tired of snakes in the house, so had them turn the snakes loose.

The weekend after they turned the snakes loose, we had Scout outings. Dick and David at a boy scout outing and Keith at a Cub Scout event. The Cub Scout event had been an all day thing in the hills near Napa, and their parents and families were supposed to come up for dinner and program after the day’s events were finished. I brought Randall, Elaine and Greg with me. After I got up there, I found out that I was supposed to bring the dinner! So I took Elaine and left the boys with the other adults who were there, and went to town to buy some KFC. On the way back up the hill, I met someone from the scout camp coming down. They stopped long enough to say to me through their open window, “Follow us, your son got bit by a rattlesnake! We are taking him to the hospital.” So I followed them back down. (It didn’t occur to me to ask which son! Everything always was happening to Keith: Lost on Half Dome trail, cut finger at a scout event. etc.)

All this time Elaine, who was very prone to car-sickness, was gagging, and I thought sure she would heave anytime. You must remember, no car-seats, yet, for little kids, so she is standing by my right shoulder and my right arm is her ‘seat-belt’.

Later, Keith’s story was that he was chasing a lizard that ran under a rock. He turned over the rock and picked up what he thought was the lizard. It was a baby rattlesnake. (personally, I think he was chasing a little snake that turned out to be a rattler! Before the event we had cautioned him not to catch snakes up there, as there were rattlesnakes in that area. I think he just didn’t want his Mom to say, “I told you not to catch snakes up there!” J )

I had never had the experience of taking one of my children to the hospital prior to this snakebite. We took him to the emergency room, where they tested him for allergy to the anti-venom, which is made from horse serum. After what seemed like an hour, but probably wasn’t he was taken up to pediatrics and put in a bed. We waited, and waited for the doctor to get there. Ted Dean was standing in the doorway where he could see into the room and also see the hallway and nurses station. When, after an eternity, the doctor arrived, Ted told me he had come and was at the nurses station. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, I asked Ted, in an exasperated voice, “What’s he doing now, reading the instructions?” Ted slowly nodded his head ‘yes’. I just about came unglued!

When the doctor came in he started the anti-venom. They put a shunt into Keith’s vein for injecting into. Every fifteen minutes Keith got two shots, one intramuscularly and one into the shunt. This went on for about 24 hours. Before this was through, Keith said to me, “Mom, they’re making a pin-cushion out of me!”

He was in the hospital in Napa for 3 days. His hand was quite sore for a while. It was swollen up like a rubber glove filled with water! It did give him something for “show and tell” at school. He healed quite nicely, although he sure doesn’t care much for snakes now.

Dick’s Dad had another bout with cancer, and so while he was in the hospital recuperating from the latest surgery, we moved him to our home on Drouin Drive. He had the downstairs bedroom. It was big enough for his bed, chest of drawers, a small desk for his typewriter, his stereo system and a rocking chair. He was quite comfortable there. When he got tired of the noise of the kids, he just went into his room and shut the door. While he lived with us he wrote his personal history. He often sat and told the kids stories of things that happened when he was young, so we asked him to write it down and he did.

Dick’s dad lived with us for the last year of his life. During the same year that Grandpa Owen lived with us, we also enrolled in the Indian Student Placement Program through the Church. Indian students from the reservations were placed in LDS homes for the school year. We had a 13-year-old girl named Angie Ashue live with us. She shared Jamie’s’ room. We had 10 people in our household at this time.

On December 30, 1971, I was sitting on the landing of the staircase. Elaine brought me a suit-coat hanger she had found on the floor. I was holding it in my hands as she was playing around me. She bumped either my arm, hand, or the hanger, I don’t know which. When she bumped me the hook of the hanger went into my eye. I pulled it out, probably with some yelling, and thought I had pulled my eyeball out! It really did hurt! I was, of course, bare-footed, as usual, and couldn’t locate my shoes right away. (maybe Elaine had been wearing them…she loved to wear grownup’s shoes!) 

Grandpa, fortunately was home at the time. He loaded me into the car and took me to Fairfield to my family doctor. He checked the eye and said he didn’t think there would be any damage to my vision, but suggested Dad take me to an ophthalmologist in Napa. Of course by this time most of the pain has gone, either because of the time passing, or something the Doctor put in my eye. Now I am really embarrassed because I have no shoes on! We got to the Eye Doctor and when he examined my eyes he said Elaine should have poked the hanger into my left eye. (It isn’t any good at all. Of course the one the hanger went into was the right eye, the better of the two. Neither is very good!)

One of David’s friends, Stanley Jones was at our house when all this was going on and when his mother, Barbara, came to pick him up she learned that I had been taken to Napa, and, she thought, to a hospital. Merle Dean, another of our friends heard, through the ‘grapevine’, that Grandpa had taken me to the Hospital in Napa. (The Mental Institution is in Napa) and Merle thought that was where Grandpa had taken me. She called our house to get the straight story.

On February 24, 1972, while Grandpa Owen was on his way to the Temple in Oakland, where he spent two days a week as an officiator, he was killed in an automobile accident. He was buried next to his beloved wife on Feb 28, 1972. We missed him terribly.

I “rested” a few months after Greg was born, and then started as Blazer B leader in Primary—the first year of this new program. I was very pleased to have all of my active boy’s leave Primary as 2nd class scouts.

Angie, our Indian Placement student was from Yakima, Washington. Her family stopped by our house for a visit about a month after Grandpa passed away. They were on their way to California and our house was just at the right distance for an overnight stop. There were four of them, the parents and her two older brothers. The boys, with long hair as was the style at that time, came tumbling out of the car, all disheveled from traveling all day and the first thing Angie said to them was, “You look like a bunch of wild Indians!”

We sold our home and business in June 1972 and took a month vacation through Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Canada, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada.

Then we moved, lock, stock and barrel to Oregon. We stayed with Dick’s sister, Betty, in Westlake, near Florence while we looked for a house. We went to Reedsport, found a Realtor who had just listed a house on Holly Court, then viewed and bought it.

We were in our new home within the month. It was a three-bedroom-one-bath-no family-room house. We had just come from a four-bedroom-two-bath-family and dining-room house! Plus, we had two house-fulls of furniture, ours and Grandpa Owen’s!

By the time we had been there a year Dick had built on a family room and another bedroom. But we still had to make do with only one bathroom. That was hard!

About three weeks before Christmas that first year we were there, it got really cold and snowed! We had almost 6 inches of snow that stayed for almost two weeks. Betty’s husband, Doug Knight had a “Ski-doo” snowmobile and Dick and the kids went up there and they went snowmobiling on the sand dunes! All of the beautiful rolling sand hills were covered with six inches of fresh snow. They had a ball, a snowball, as it were!

At church, I taught the MIA Maids for one year, then took the Blazer B boys again. I took an Art class taught by Doris Knight, (Betty’s Mother-in-law.) for about 6 months. I really enjoyed the class and did a few nice paintings.

Along about February, we were growing weary of the rain and dreary weather, when we happened to get a couple of nice, fairly warm, days. Dick and I loaded up the two little ones and headed to Winchester Bay for a day at the beach. Of course the weather is always different in Winchester Bay than it is in Reedsport, only 4 miles away. It was cool, and windy. It was also High Tide. 

We were looking for something to build a small campfire out of. We found some wood, but nothing would catch fire as everything was wet. Dick suggested I go get some newspaper that was in the car. Greg was sitting by where Dick was trying to get the fire going. Elaine went with me to find the paper. We were walking through the tall beach grasses. (The beach was under water. We were on the dunes above the beach) We found the newspapers and headed back to where Dick was working on the fire. I looked for Greg and he wasn’t there. I got up and looked around a little, and called for him. I got no answer. Dick suggested that maybe he followed me to the car. I didn’t think he was with me, but went back to the car looking along the way and calling to him. I didn’t find him. I sat Elaine down by the fire and told her to STAY THERE. And she did!

Dick and I hunted all over and couldn’t find Greg anywhere. We looked over the cliff down on to the beach, and the big logs were churning in the surf. At this time Dick suggested that I drive up to the Coast Guard Station and get help. When he said that I fell apart. I always worry about things that may never happen, but when Dick gets worried, I know there IS something to worry about! I took Elaine and ran to the car. I put her into the car and backed the car out of the parking space.

As I started across the parking lot I looked at the high grasses across the parking lot, toward the lighthouse, and could see the red pompom on top of Greg’s little blue and red stripped knit cap. He was crying at the top of his lungs when I got to him. The surf and wind were making so much noise we couldn’t hear him, and he couldn’t hear us calling to him. If he had not had that knit hat on, I don’t know if I would have seen him. He was shorter than the grasses he was wandering around in. (Here is another one I’ve lost!! Something going on here???)

I worked as an Avon lady for a year then went back to waitress work. I worked at the Fox Hole in Gardener for 6 weeks, the Pier Point Inn for about 4 months. I liked working at the Pier Point, but they closed up and left me without a job. Keith, Dick’s sister, Betty and her son David also worked there. So when it went down, it left all four of us out of work! I went to work at Nobel Drug as a cashier, and worked there about 2 weeks. I went to work at the Oasis Cafe in Winchester Bay and worked there for a year. I went to work at the Sea Cliff Restaurant and worked there for two and a half years.

During the time I worked at the Oasis, we lost both Elaine and Greg. At this time, Elaine was in Kindergarten and Greg had not yet started to school. I worked Swing shift at the restaurant, and Dick worked days in Elkton at the State Forestry Nursery. Jamie had some sort of meeting this evening and Dick had a scout meeting he had to go to in Coos Bay. David was put in charge of the kids. I had already gone to work by the time Dick got home from work, and then Jamie left to do her thing. When it was time for Dick to go to his meeting, David was there at the house, playing his music or visiting with friends. (our kids always had friends over)

When Jamie came home from her meeting, about 10 P.M., she saw that Elaine wasn’t in her bed (Elaine shared a bedroom with Jamie). She asked David where the kids were. He said, “I guess Dad took them with him, they haven’t been here since he left.” At about the time Jamie was at home looking for the kids, Dick stopped in at the restaurant on the way home from his meeting. It was almost time for me to go home as well. Jamie called me at work, to ask if Dad had taken the kids with him. I said, “no, he is sitting right here, and the kids aren’t with him. Why, aren’t they there?” Well, Dick hurried on home to check out the situation, I was just about finished with my shift and very shortly followed him home. By the time I got home, the police had been called, and there were search parties everywhere looking for these two kids.

They searched all over the neighborhood. We called everyone we knew whose house the kids had ever been to, even someone who lived way uptown, too far for them to possibly walk to. I called Elaine’s friends from school, although she had never been to their homes. The police and the volunteer searchers, who included most of our neighbors, knocked on every door in the neighborhood, asking everyone if they had seen these two kids. The police were just about to order a search of the river, one street over from us. It was about midnight when a man came walking down the road carrying both of the kids. Tom Campbell, one of our neighbors, was just about ready to tear this guy apart. The kids had been playing with this man’s daughter, Kim. His house was in the ally behind some other houses, and was missed in the door-to-door search.

Elaine always asked me if she could go play at Kim’s house but I never let her go over there. I would suggest that Kim come and play with her. There was no mother in this household, she had died a couple of years before this time. She decided to take advantage of the fact that David wasn’t paying any attention to them and just go without asking. Kim’s dad had fallen asleep on the couch, and the kids must have played until they went to sleep on the floor. When he woke up, he picked them up to bring them home! All’s well that ends well.

(Let’s see, now, didn’t I loose two other children at different times?? hmmmm. Is there a pattern here?)

One year I took Elaine and Greg and went to California to visit with Mom and Dad. While I was gone, David, who was living away from home at this time, came and borrowed Dick’s big deer rifle to go hunting. He had returned from the day of hunting, and was sitting on the couch reading the paper, the gun lying on the floor in front of him. Randall was in his room, which was next to the living room. He was lying on his bed with one knee up and the other leg crossed on that knee. Keith came into the house, saw the rifle lying there, and ‘knowing’ that the rule was, no loaded guns in the house, picked up the gun and aimed it at the wall, and said “pow” while pulling the trigger. It was loaded. The bullet went through the wall, through an apothecary jar full of thumb tacks, through Randall’s leg, and little toe and lodged in the other wall. The glass and thumbtacks were all over the room, there were tacks and bits of glass embedded in the opposite wall. Randall saw that his toe was hurt, didn’t realize he had a bullet wound in his leg, came out of his room, madder than a hornet.

Dick was in the Family Room, sleeping on the couch to a war movie. He took Randall to the local hospital, where they dressed the wound and sent him to the hospital in Coos Bay for surgery on the leg. On the way to Coos Bay, Dick was driving a little faster than the speed limit and he got pulled over by a State Trooper. He explained why he was driving a little faster than he ordinarily would be driving. He had a son with a bullet wound in his leg in the back seat, and they were on the way to the hospital in Coos Bay. The officer was very thoughtful of the situation as he said, “I’ll write the ticket in a hurry!”

When Dick went to court to fight the ticket, the officer didn’t show up. The Judge ask Dick to tell the story, he wanted to hear Dick’s side of it. After he told the story the Judge said, “No wonder he didn’t show up!” He asked how Randall was doing, and dismissed the case.

(Wait a minute now, if you can’t loose them, you shoot them??)

The next morning Dick called me at Mother’s house and told me about it. I said I would leave right away to come home, but he said, that I might just as well stay for the family-get-together we had planned for that afternoon. He said that I wouldn’t get home before visiting hours were over that day anyway, and that I may as well drive over night, so the kids would be asleep while traveling. I would be home in time to see Randall at visiting hours the next day. So I decided to do that. It took some time, but he did heal eventually.

Dick was driving back and forth to work at Elkton, and saw a house there that had been for sale for quite awhile. He contacted the name on the sign and made an offer on the house, about half of what the asking price was. They accepted his offer, so we bought it and moved to Elkton in June 1977. At this time we became members of the Sutherlin Ward. I was Junior Sunday School coordinator for quite a while. Then the Church instituted the 3-hour “block” program, with Primary taking the place of Junior Sunday School. I taught the 4-year old class for a while then the 5-year old class. Then they put me in the Young Women program with the 14 - 15 year old girls. (I cried when they took me away from my 5-year-olds) But I soon learned to love the teens as well.

I worked for one season at the State Forestry Nursery grading little trees. It was the first time I ever had a job where you had to wash your hands BEFORE you could go to the bathroom! I also was the Cub Scout Den Leader in Elkton for the boys in that school. I did that for a year.

In October 1978, I went to work as waitress at the Ponderosa Inn in Sutherlin. I became the “supervising waitress” about 3 years later, and took on the duties of doing the payroll preparation, and the daily books. A couple of years later I had to start making up the schedules for the waitresses, and was “In Charge” when the owners took off for vacations.

We moved to Union Gap in 1979, living there a year and a half. At this time we started building our hillside retreat! We had purchased almost 11 acres several years before, and had just got the finances to start building our home. So we put both the Union Gap and the Elkton houses up for rent. We were living at Union Gap. We planned to live in which ever was the last to rent. Of course the one we were in was the first to rent. So we moved back to Elkton. We were there about 2 months when that house rented. We had built the garage first and moved our travel trailer up there. We lived in the garage and travel trailer while building the house. We moved the kids into the house first, and we stayed in the garage. There were no interior walls, just the studs up where the walls would one day be. We hung black plastic between the two bedrooms so they would have some privacy. There was just sub flooring on the floors and the basement where our bedroom would one day be, was only a deep-dark hole.

Just before Thanksgiving, we had a lot of rain. One morning we woke up to about an inch of water surrounding our bed, and we were sleeping under an electric blanket!!

We moved our bed into the basement that day. By this time we did have a concrete floor in the part of the basement that was our bedroom, but the rest of it was dirt. We had a door on our bedroom, but there was no outside door to what would eventually be the family room. The chickens made their nest and were laying eggs there. The chickens actually roosted in their own house, not ours, but they liked the coolness of the basement in the hot afternoons, to lay their eggs.

One evening we heard some noise down there, and upon investigating found that a skunk had found the hens’ nest, and was raiding it. I slept on the couch, upstairs that night and informed Dick I wouldn’t sleep down there again until there was an outside door. The door was on the next day!

While we were building the house and living in the garage and travel trailer it was summer, one of the hottest summers we had had since moving to Oregon. I was working days and Dick was working on the house. I think at that time he was between jobs for the Union. He and Elaine and Greg worked until it got to hot to work, and they went to the old swimming hole on the river. When I got home from work, around 3 pm, I would stop in there and enjoy the afternoon with them.

We had inherited David’s dog, Toke and he was a very smart dog. Only he thought he didn’t have to obey anyone at our house. David was his master, and he wasn’t there. He felt that he was the chief dog of the pack. Dick finally got his attention, with a big stick, and then he was a very good dog. He loved Dick’s truck, and whenever it started up he thought he must get into the back and go for a ride. When he did he barked at everyone, as if to tell them all that now the road was his, get off of it!!

He could understand everything that was said to him. We always thought that dogs just understood the tone of voice, but we could say in a scolding type voice, “do you want to go jump off of the rock?” And he would get very excited and jump up and down and around. He loved to go to the river and jump in with the kids off the rocks. He hated baths. We could say to him in a very excited, lets go have fun type voice, “Hey, Toke, want a bath?” and he would tuck his tail in and go try to find a place to hide.

We had lots of fun times with him.

In time we finished the house, and lived there until 1995.

In May 1995 I went to California to take care of Dad and Mom after Dad had a heart attack. He passed away on May 26, 1995.

About two or three years prior to this, Daddy had started rebuilding the little house across the street, (the one I grew up in) and doing some work inside the mobile home. He was getting it ready for their eventual move back ‘home’ when he could no longer be the pastor of the Thornton Bible Church. After his death, Mother would have to leave the parsonage, so Dick and Robert Hendergart, with a little help from me and help from Wayne, Clayton and crew, finished rebuilding the house we grew up in so Mother could move back into it. Robert was over there every day, from early morning till late in the afternoon.

We moved her into her little house in August. The Friday before the move, she fell, and broke her hip. She didn’t feel any real pain, she was in constant pain from her arthritis, she just thought she had sore muscles from the fall. She wouldn’t let anyone take her to the doctor.

The boys and Robert moved her things across the street on Saturday and Mother went to stay with her friends Mary and Bob Murphy. I came down on Sunday evening, planning to stay a week or two to help get things in and arranged for her. When I picked her up at Mary’s that evening after I got there, they told me about her fall. I took her to the Doctor the next day. Sure enough, she had broken her hip. They put her right into the hospital and did the hip replacement surgery that day. They moved her into a convalescent hospital for therapy and she would be there for about two weeks.

I went home to Oregon and went back to California when she was released, I thought, to stay for a couple of weeks till she was on her feet again. Her health continued to deteriorate, one thing led to another, and we knew she would never be able to be on her own. I knew I would be there with her until she was gone.

Dick would come down for several days at a time and continue to work on the mobile home, so I could live in there. Mother’s house, although we all lived in it as we were growing up, was now only big enough for one and I was sleeping on the floor of the living room.

Mother and I decided to drive up to Oregon for Thanksgiving that year. We have always had Thanksgiving at our house, and we wanted to do it this one last time in that house, as we knew we would be selling it very soon.

All the kids came to Thanksgiving Dinner, except Randall and Keith. Keith did drive down and got there on Friday. He had came with a friend pulling a trailer to haul the Model A back to Utah on. His dad told him he could have the Model A if he would restore it, and that he had to get it soon, as the place would no longer be ours and we would have no place to store it. It was all in pieces. While we were there that weekend we decided that Dick should move down to California with us and we would rent the house. We had 2 days to clear out the house!! Actually I had 2 days…Dick came at a later date, but in that 2 days, we packed up everything, labeled it as to stay in storage, go to California, go with Greg, go with Elaine or go to the dumps!!

So we moved down bag and baggage in November 1995. We stayed there until, as Mom’s health and physical condition continued to worsen and I could no longer take care of her, we had to put her in a Nursing home in Lodi. We did this in Sept. 1996.

We then moved back to Oregon and our hillside home. We put it up for sale to help pay off the bills we had accumulated while taking care of Mother. After I came home, and we had put the house up for sale, Dick suggested we go look at double wide ‘trailers’. I said, “No way am I going to live in another trailer!!” We lived in Mother’s 12 foot wide 1960 model trailer house while we were in California and I had had enough of “Trailers”.

However, we did go look at them, and was I surprised! They aren’t ‘trailers’ anymore! They are houses! Beautiful houses. Manufactured Homes! So when the house sold in October of that year, we bought a lot in Sutherlin and put a Manufactured home on it. We moved in on the day after Christmas 1996.

On the morning of January 6, 1997, Mother passed away quietly in her sleep. She was buried next to her beloved husband at Cherokee Memorial Park, Lodi.

During the time we were in Sutherlin Ward, I had callings in Primary as Nursery Leader, Star A teacher, Nursery Leader, President of the Primary, Young Women’s’ President, Nursery Leader, Mia Maid leader, Beehive leader and Relief Society President. (I liked being the Nursery Leader!! Children in the nursery are age 18 months to 3 years.) As of this writing I am back in Primary teaching the Valiant 12 class, boys and girls who are 11 and turning 12 in this calendar year.

When Greg and Elaine were old enough for Seminary, I had home Seminary for them, every morning before school and work. When Elaine was a Junior she transferred from Elkton High School to Sutherlin High School. As I drove to town every day anyway to my job as waitress at the Ponderosa Inn, I had Seminary for Greg while Elaine was getting ready for school, then we drove to Sutherlin, where Elaine attended Seminary at the church before going to School.

Elaine and Greg went to Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho. Elaine for 1 year and one semester of the second year. Greg for the one semester. Then they had to come home and earn more money. Elaine moved to Eugene, and Greg worked for a year then went on a mission to the Seoul Korea Mission.

Dick and I were alone!

(“Hello, there, my name is Neona.” “Hi, my name is Dick. Haven’t I met you somewhere before?”)

The first time in 35 years!!

(Except when Elaine and Greg were at school, but that didn’t count, ‘cause they came home between semesters and holidays!)

I worked at the Ponderosa Inn for 17 years, as waitress, supervising waitress, desk clerk, doing the books and payroll preparation. After moving back to Sutherlin and getting the house built I went to work at the International House of Pancakes or IHOP, as it is commonly known. I worked as cashier / hostess. The Ponderosa Inn no longer was in business. They had closed down the year we were gone. (I guess we were the ones keeping it open all those years, for just a few months after we left it went broke!!)

Dick has been retired for these last several years, and works at keeping our house, yard and garden up, helping Greg build his home, working for his nephew, Mike Swick, when Mike needs some help. He even helped build a Habitat for Humanity house in Roseburg.

I worked at IHOP almost full time until October 1999 at which time I ‘retired’. Dick and I took our first after retirement trip going to Denver, Bullfrog, New Mexico, Arizona, California and home. I guess that was enough traveling, as we have only gone to visit the kids since then. I did go back to work, one day a week after the holidays were over. Just to keep my foot in the door, ya know, just in case Social Security doesn’t cut it!!

There was this house just down the street from us, and it was a lonely old house. It had been empty for over a year and a half and for sale that long. No one seemed to want it. It had a big yard, and lots of trees, flowers, bushes etc. that were being terribly neglected!

To make a long story short, Dick made a ridiculously low offer on it and it was accepted! The house was in disrepair and needed a lot of repair work to be done on it. Dick purchased the house near the end of March 2000, and worked on it about 15 hours a day until the end of August. (Actually, he is still working on it, but that probably will never end. He can always come up with some new project.) We moved into it the last week of August.

In Mid-September we had our family reunion here in Oregon at Loon Lake. We were privileged to have all six kids and all of the younger grandkids there. David’s grown up kids, Chris and Conway and his family wasn’t there. We had a very good time and would like to repeat this another time, with everyone there.

Our son, Randall works for Colorado Business Computer Systems. He builds computers and works with companies, teaching them to use their computers, and the software. When we were together the fall of ’97 he said he was planning on upgrading his own system. After we got home, Dick suggested that we see if we could purchase his old computer system from him when he upgraded.

About this time, my cousin, Ken Huber sent me a disk with our genealogy on it. I couldn’t wait to find out what was on it, so I went to Staples to see if they would put it into one of their PC’s to look at it. They did. It was a beautifully written history of the Brand Family. I had them print it out for me. Soon after I had it printed, the computer came from Randall.

While working with the information from Ken, I decided that I needed to upgrade Grandpa Owen’s Story. He had written his own history while he lived with us. But he used an old typewriter as computers and word processors were not available at that time. He would sit and write down things as he remembered them, so they were not in chronological order. I retyped it into the computer, moving the stories around so they were in the proper time frame. Then we bought a scanner, and I scanned the old pictures we had into the computer, and put them into the story, as they fit. I printed up one for each of his kids and one for each of my kids.

After I finished his story, I started working on one for my folks. Neither of them had written their own story, although I had asked them to several times. They were keeping a daily diary, and I thought I would have a lot of information from them. NOT!! They had written stuff like “Neona called today” or “I called Clinton” or “carried Hazel to town today” or “ran the troy built for two hours today” No real information there, but he kept a real good account of how much rainfall they had!

So, in order to make a story for them, I had to make it a Pictorial History. When I started that project, I was just making copies of the old pictures of Mom, Dad, the uncles, aunts and grandparents for my brother, Clinton. Then the project just expanded, and got more elaborate as the time went on. It took me a year and a half to complete, partly because my scanner went on the blink and I had to get it replaced, but that is another story! But then I was at a stand still as to how to end the story. Since they were both gone, I had to find some way to present it, not just say “and so they died”! I guess I wasn’t emotionally ready to let them go, and it took some time to decide just how to finish it.

I did, finally, get it finished and made copies for each of my brothers and each of my children.

Then I decided I needed to write my own story, and that is why you have been subjected to all of this!! Believe it or not this is

THE END

But, I’m not gone yet. There could (will) be more!!!

- Neona Owen

7/31/01