Early years part 5

Early years part 5

 

When  school time came  around and I was 6 years old I walked down the  old country road  about 2 miles  to this farmhouse  and  here I started the 1st grade. The husband had grades 5 through 8 and his wife had grades 1 through 4. I loved it and the kids. One day they had this big jig dance going on at the Big Bend Ho Down. There was this big circular shaped one story building. I went there one night and they had this big Thing dance going on. People and kids  were dancing all over the place . They had a live Band  Country Western style music. I just hung around outside for a while and than walked home it wasn't my thing I just like to listen not dance .
In the meantime, my Dear Old Dad was gathering all of this information about a place up in the Yakima valley in the state of Washington.    The area was called the Banana=Belt.  It was    kind of  famous, because of all the fruit grown in that area, starting with cherries in the spring, and ending with apples in the fall, and it was easy to make a living, by going around to the orchards, and picking the fruit and getting paid for it.  Money=money=money…,,, Any-way, he made a few special connections, and then came back “home”. And== he decided, we were going to move up there.  He hooked our old 1940 Ford car onto our little 19ft. camp trailer, I quit school just before mass. And we left for Zillah, WA. The year was 1946. We ended up in the front yard of Oscar Strands  home, and that’s where we pitched our “HOME”….Cherries  came ripe for  picking in the first part of June, so we had time to kill before Oscars cherries would be ready to pick.  We spent a lot of time in Oscars big old house, and got to be really good friends with him and his wife, and I   started back into school, right there in Zillah, in a big old, 3 story, brick building, with all the grades, and a large gymnasium in the bottom.  I quickly made friends, with a lot of terrific kids in my class. The 1^st. grade.   Our teacher was a chubby, white, haired old lady by the name of Mrs.   Harkima, she was terrific, and she made school fun, fun, fun. I loved her.    I still remember A lot of my old classmates, by name   Harlan McCoy, Roger Page, Donny Scott, Barbara Brown, Paula Carrol, Gloria Notman, Gloria  Nelson, Sharon Butler (I had a crush on her) Robert Linker,  Patty Ermey Thomas Duncan  Victoria Rodriquez, Tommy Sainsbury, there were    others whose names pop into my head periodically===ah—Rodney (Butch)   Hall they were just beyond Oscar Strands place on the highway, and they had a lumber  yard, and right across the road from them lived 2 old sisters and they had this old  circular stone wheel that was made to turn by foot pedals, and you could sharpen knives, and axes and shovels and hoes, etc.  It was quite an invention for farmers, and etc. to use.  All this while, my dear old Dad was doing a lot of research. He connected with these people out on the other side of Zillah on old highway 410.  They were farmers, and they had this huge patch of raspberries right on the highway just out of the city limits. The highway followed the railroad tracks. We didn’t know at the time how he managed to do so, but he purchased a big hunk out of their berry patch and had in mind to build us a home and a gas station right there in the corner of this berry patch. He had connected with the Signal Gas Company over in Toppenish, Washington===just across the Yakima River, 4 miles from Zillah (boy-O-boy was he a wheeler_deeler….. He got this gas company to purchase the land and finance the structure of a house and a gas station.. They would supply the gasoline, and then he would automatically repay them at so much a gallon out of his profit on each gallon of gas sold. He had done this setup 2or 3 times previously with gas  companies and it had worked. And it worked again…these people with the berry patch turned out to be VERY good friends.  Their names were Vandersluis, and this berry patch was a REAL blessing. They were as good, or better than the tree, fruit, and they were ours, to eat. They grew on vines, like grapes. They came on once a year.

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early years part 4

Early years part 4

 

Where my parents lived when they were growing up ,they used to have winters 30 to 40 below 0, and the snow was like 8 to 10 feet deep and I use to hear a lot of stories about their weather  and what all that they had to live through. We had some of this kind of weather down  at Adrian when I was a little kid of 3-4-5-6 years old, and than the old Snake river would freeze over and then get jammed up later with Big chunks of ice. Eventually when the time came that Uncle Dale  needed his house again we found new lodging in some old cabins on the edge of the river just across from Adrian on the highway going towards Parma, Idaho. They were known as Holley's cabins. So now we were right next to some of these big ice jams. I also experienced at age 6 my first girlfriend here . She must of have been3 or 4 years older than me, we had fun a lot playing together.   





 

 



Early years continued

Part 3 

About 3 miles south on this little country highway going towards Homedale ,Oregon, lived my Uncle Odis on a farm with horses and cows and chickens and all the different crops raised on a farm. One day he comes up with an old dead corn cob he hollowed it out from one end, dug a small hole in one side, and then come up with a strong hollow reed about 5 inches long, stuck it in this little hole, and presto" we had a "Corn cob pipe", and then some dead weeds for tobacco. When I got home, I showed my Dear Old Dad my new  wondrous "toy" and boy was he " MAD".I didn't get to go back out to Uncle Odes again for a long while. Uncle Ode Aunt  Thora. They had 4 kids that I really liked  a lot .I spent a lot of time out there I really loved it .Aunt Thora was a terrific cook and I remember hanging around to eat her food .I was out there one day, and Uncle Ode  came up with a pony a Shetland pony  I loved animals, especially horses, I was on his back in no time at all. He wouldn't go . So I tried to nudge him a little with my feet . He didn't like that at all and boy he let me know it next I knew I was head first over his head he let me know who was the boss, so that was the end of that venture . Somewhere about this time about 5 years old still, my Dad decided to sell his business  venture. So up we moved all our stuff out into a large old empty shed on some friends place next to Uncle Odes.Their names were Eastman's, and they had  some smart alecky kids and when 4thy of July came along, they were out in the yard playing around with all their fun fireworks and the big old shed went up in flames . The fireman came and could only save some of it, and some of our stuff. At this time we were living in a small house out on my Uncle Dales farm out on the other side of Adrian, He kept this house for his hired help to live in when they were helping him on his property. But now it was empty so he let us live there. Among the stuff saved at Eastman's was an old treadle wheel sewing machine and a old standup Victrolla record player with a hand crank on the side. These were real antiques, even for that day and time. Some of what I remember around this time at Uncle Dale and Aunt Agnes was havin these antiques and fiddling around with them . Uncle Dale had a big old, ferocious Tom turkey and he had the run of the place and he had me scared a lot of him .He sounded terrible and he knew  I was scared of him . I didn't want to even want to go out of the house. Uncle Dale was another of my Dads brothers. my Dad and Mom both came from, large farm families, like 10 and 11kids. They both came from eastern Idaho, from small farming towns north of Pocatello, Idaho.     

Early years continued

 Part 2

Actually my story begins in Adrian Oregon a small historical town near the Oregon Idaho border . My dear old Dad set up a situation there with the gas company where by he purchased this old three or four story hotel and turned it into a gas station with lunch at a old eating facilities at a old bar complete with bar stools and facilities for sandwiches milkshakes and all the trimmings . Also in this one large old room were 3 or 4 old pool tables complete with billiard balls and cue sticks. Wow what a great place to live for a little kid .Also in a front corner of this large room my Dad sanctioned off space to build a small room to repair flat tires which at the time had inner tubes which you had to patch nail holes or whatever  was  causing it to go flat .For whatever reason  there was a hole in one wall and like the busy minded mischievous little kid. I liked to explore and I played with matches so I started lighting matches and began dropping them in this hole which was about the size of a persons hand .Shortly smoke started coming out of the hole. I think my Dad saw what I was doing because I was very soon in a mess of trouble and than he tossed a bunch of water in the hole and put out the smoke. Also in this little town was my Uncle Bill whom I loved dearly .He had a small grocery store with all the good stuff to eat and he gave me free reign to whatever pleased my little taste buds. Today they call it junk food anything and everything that tastes good .Boy he spoiled me rotten in all ways possible. My Uncle Bill and Aunt Sue . My Dads family was all over this country. .They called it Big Bend Country.

My early years

Those were my days





I was growing up in the Yakima valley in the 1940s by a small railroad town by the name of Zillah .My dear old dad had a Knack for setting up a system with a gas company whereby they set up the financial money to build the business and get it started and then he paid them back by giving them so much a gallon out of his profits .Because of this setup we had a house to live in and our gas station set up that was kind of a precursor to 7/11s before they ever came to be . We had a few minor essential groceries and candy and ice cream stuff and soda pop and potato chips and all the  junk food
stuff . At that time my Dad was doing a lot of credit so when we finally sold the place and moved we had some 7 to 8,000 dollars of credit owed us by people and friends all over country .We had enough money to buy us a vacant lot in another small town about 7 miles away named Granger Wash. I went all the way through grade school in Zillah  in the second grade with Mrs. . Evans I experienced fairytale Pinocchio . I was fascinated and fairy tales became a big part of my life. When I was in the third grade around the age of 7 the movie The Wizard of Oz  came out and our teacher 
Mrs.. Thompson took the entire class to see the movie. There was a small indoor theater right there in Zillah Roza Theater and they premiered the new movie. That was a incredible experience.