INEZ
CATEGORY: GRASS VALLEYPHOTO: HARVEY AND INEZ--DO YOU THINK THEY ARE OLDER THAN FOURTEEN? After my Uncle Harvey died of tuberculosis at age twenty five, his wife, who had been Inez Jones, and her two year old daughter, Velma, remained important…
BAD TIMES
CATEGORY: GRASS VALLEYPHOTO: SELF PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER AS I REMEMBER HIM Mary and I were playing in the back yard. We heard the screen door bang open and slam shut. Gracie came running out of the house. She looked…
A COUGAR DREAM
CATEGORY: GRASS VALLEYPHOTO: COUGAR UP A TREE I cannot remember when I had this dream. The scene was my childhood home in Grass Valley. My father was in the process of building a play house for Mary and me out…
THE PARTY
CATEGORY: GRASS VALLEYPHOTO: A MAZE SIMILAR TO THE ONE MOTHER MADE Mother had a party for Gracie. It was not for her birthday which was in January. It was in the summer time. Maybe she did this because the rest…
SILENT SNOW
In the late summer of 1940, Mother, Mary and I moved to Camp Sherman, where mother had been able to get a job teaching in a one room school.
OWEN THOMPSON
CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOODPHOTO: CARVED KNOT(WRITTEN BY GRACIE) There was a man named Owen Thompson who owned a very nice cabin on the east side of the Metolius River. He was one of the Sherman County Thompsons and had been friends…
LETTER FROM GRACE AFTER SHE READ “OUR FATHER”
CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOODPHOTO: SAME SCARY SELF PORTRAIT, OIL PAINTING Dearest Jean, Your article is certainly expressive of your feelings about our father ignoring your existence. I know that Mother went to great lengths to make you feel wanted and loved.…
CHILDHOOD NUDGES
CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOOD FLOOR PLAN OF GRASS VALLEY HOUSE DRAWN AT AGE TEN Almost all the things I have done in my later life, I learned as a child. I had certain inherent inclinations. When I learned to sew at…
RIDING TO THE FAIR
CATEGORY: LATE CHILDHOOD PHOTO: TWO HORSES THAT LOOK LIKE DIXIE AND JOKER The summer after our school year in Camp Sherman, one of our Camp Sherman school mates visited us for a week in Grass Valley. Her name was Lou…
SHANIKO
In the late summer of 1941 we moved to Shaniko, a tiny town thirty miles south of Grass Valley in Wasco County. I was 12 and Mary was 13.
RUNNING AWAY IN SHANIKO
There was no church of any kind in Shaniko. Every two weeks a minister came from The Dalles and held church and Sunday school in the school house.
JOHN SILVERTOOTH
Something we children loved to do when we lived at Shaniko was to go to Antelope. Antelope was a tiny town only six miles from Shaniko, and it was older than Shaniko, going back to 1871. That was only six years after…
SHANIKO: THE REESE HOUSE
Mother taught in Shaniko for two years. The second year we moved into a different and larger house. I have noticed that almost every town, no matter how small, usually has at least one, and sometimes several primo houses in…
SHANIKO: MORE AMENITIES
It was in Shaniko that I learned to roller skate. The service station where Pat lived in back rooms had an addition off to one side that might have been a dance hall at one time, but had more recently…
MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES
The summer before my first year in high school was the last summer we spent In Grass Valley. It was the summer I helped My Uncle Wallace make hay.
THE STRANGE WOMAN
In the spring of 1944, I graduated from the eighth grade in Grass Valley. Mary had spent that year of her high school education in Lakeview living with our father. I missed her terribly, as did our mother. She was…
LANCASTER, USA
CATEGORY: HIGHSCHOOL PHOTO: MORO OREGON COURTHOUSE (This is the first part of a novel I was going to write when I was in high school, but only got this far. Later I turned it in as a descriptive assignment in…
HIGH SCHOOL BLUR
Moro High School was a very small high school even though the students came from three towns: Kent, Grass Valley and Moro.
HIGH SCHOOL ON THE SIDE
Most of the things I remember from my high school years are the things that happened outside of school.
BILL FLATT’S HALLOWEEN (As told to me by Bill in 2010)
CATEGORY: HIGH SCHOOL PHOTO: WOODEN FOOT BRIDGE In 1946 when Bill Flatt, one of my high school mates, was a Junior at Moro High School, he and about eight other boys went out on Halloween night and removed the foot…
HAROLD ARSTEL
In my Junior and Senior year of high school my boy friend was Harold Arstel. I always considered him an “older man” although he was only 21.
ROSS DOLLARHIDE
I met Ross Dollarhide at the Sherman County Fair Dance that I attended with Harold Arstel.
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MY TWO FRONT TEETH
All through childhood, all through adolescence, I had buck teeth.
MEETING PIETRO
A few years later, I saw a picture of Peitro Belluschi in a magazine accompanying an article about him. I recognized him. I realized he was the man I had met in that house!
PREDATOR
On most nights, the park and streets were deserted. But one night, when I was only a few blocks from home, I noticed, by the light of the street lamps, that there was a man behind me about half a…
WHAT’S IN A NAME ?
When I was living at the Martha Washington Hotel, I had two very good friends, Gerry (short for Geraldine) Yoder, and Mary Ellen MacDowell. One day, in a teen age fit of allegiance to each other, we decided that, when…
MEETING HOWARD
I met Howard Knudsen through someone who knew him at the Martha Washington Hotel. We didn’t go together very long before he asked me to marry him.
STARTER HOUSE, PART I
When I was first married in 1950, Howard’s father helped us buy, for $4,500.00, a very small house on an acre of land in Metzger near Tigard.
BARLEY FIELDS FOREVER
One day in the mid ’50’s, driving along Barbur Boulevard, I saw a new billboard. It was a Rainier Beer ad. The whole billboard was a picture of a golden grain field with Mt Rainier in the background rising above…
BEING AMAZING
I loved to use my strength (and I really had tremendous strength for someone my size) to do surprising, even amazing things. In my Walter Mitty secret life I was a combination of a magician and the strong man in…