Born at Port Hill, Idaho.
(at home). It was called a stump ranch where she lived. Her dad always
told her that he found her under a stump! It was 2 miles from the border of
Canada up at the top of Idaho. There was some land cleared when her parents
went there, but they cleared a lot of the land after that, especially after the
boys were big enough to help. Grammie lived there through the 5th grade.
She found joy going to school in a two room schoolhouse.
She thought her family
lived in a beautiful place and still thinks the same. In the winter there was
lots of snow. Lots more than they have now. One year she can
remember her brothers sliding off the roof off the house and on down. In the summers, the sky seemed to be blue and
a lot of sunshine. When it rained in the summer, she can remember running
outside and dancing around in the warm rain. There was a big rain barrel
at the corner of the house and the rain water was caught in it. It was
soft water and was good for washing hair.
There was a sistern that
was close to the house. It was lined with cement and seemed pretty deep,
but probably wasn't too deep. It caught the rain water and was a cool
place to hang the milk and other things to keep them cool. Just off the
kitchen was a porch where the separator was. The milk was brought here
and put in it. It would spin the milk really fast and the cream would go
in one container and the skim milk in the other. The cream was taken to
town and sold to the creamery. Sometimes when they took it in, her Dad
would get them ice cream bars and that was a real treat she explains.
Grammie can also remember milk being set out in pans so the cream would
rise to the top and then be skimmed off. Probably that was before they
got the separator. “Mother had to wash it after every milking and it
seemed like it had a lot of parts. My mother used to churn the cream into
butter about every other day. This was done in a big wooden churn and
that was a job I can remember doing. I didn't think it was fun! The
day she didn’t' churn butter she would bake 6 loaves of bread. They were
very big loaves and it was wonderful bread.”
In the winter especially,
the radio was an important thing. A big pan of popcorn would be popped
from the corn we grew. It was black on the outside, but the popcorn was
white, lots of butter was put on it and it has always been a favorite food of
the families. The corn would have to be twisted off the cob. It was
dried by now. So that had to be done before it could be popped. “We
would sit around eating popcorn and listen to the programs on the radio.
Some of the programs I remember were, I love a Mystery, Amos and Andy,
Fibber Mcgee and Molly, and Intersanctum. That was a scary one.”
Grammie explains that her mother spent most of her time
cooking. “Those picnics she would prepare were the best! I can
remember riding home from our other farm (the French place) on top of a big
load of hay. My dad would never let me do the farm work even when I
thought it would be fun to learn to milk the cows. He said that wasn't
the things that girls should do. But he would let me go with him and the
boys, rather than stay home and help mom. I would always rather go with
him if I could.
My Grandmother goes on to
explain that at first when she remembers Port Hill, there was just her mom and
dad, her 3 brothers, her and an old couple. They were the Byers and they
called them grandpa and grandma. They lived by a big pond and would cut
the ice out in the winter and store it in sawdust so that people would buy it
in the summer for their ice cream. The ice was quite a luxury then.
She talks about renting a
little white building between Bonners Ferry and Port Hill for their church.
It was by the Byers home.
“When my folks first
moved up there they used to go over to Creston in Canada (it was much closer
than Bonners Ferry) on Monday. That was when everyone did their
washing. They would look for garments hanging on the line and when they found
some would stop to visit as they knew they would be LDS.”
This brief history of my
grandmother’s life is very dear to my heart.
As you can see in the text she quotes much of what was written. She was an amazing woman and has influenced
many people. My Grammie was the rock of
our family. She was every single
child’s, grandchild’s, and great grandchild’s biggest hero. It has only been a
month since she has been gone and I miss her everyday. Her voice still rings in my ears as she would
say, “Do all the good things, Sawyer.” She was a light that guided me to every
accomplishment and feat I have experienced.
I do the things I do because of her and know that I will see her again
in a short time. Family is important and
it is everything to me.
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