Lunch time at School

Living in the country there were limited opportunities for near-by friends. Play dates were unheard of at that time.

Lois Goldsmith was in my same grade at school and lived about half a mile from our house. He grandfather, father, and uncles ran the dairy right next to Pleasant Valley School.

Every day two children were selected to go next door to the dairy and pick up some milk. The teacher would collect nickels at the beginning of the day for the orders for milk at lunch. At recess the one of the teachers would take over the money and the Order to the dairy so the milk would be ready at lunch time.

Just before lunch the two selected children would go next door to Goldsmith's and pick up the order. They would walk side by side carrying a metal basket filled with small pint sized milk bottles sealed with waxy paper tops. Some days we had chocolate milk. That was a treat. It seems like the empty bottles were returned the next day when a new order was picked up. This was in the early 1950's. Some of the little milk bottles can still be found in antique shops today.

There was no such thing as a hot lunch, except for once a month the eight graders boiled some hot dogs and sold them to the rest of the school. I think they used the money for the eight grade sneak day when they all went off to the mountains right before graduation. Regular days kids had brown paper bags for their lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were the staple with an apple or an orange. I do remember balona sandwiches on white extra soft Wonder bread spread thick with bright yellow mustard.

Uncle Daryle took a look at this photo and provided the following comments:
This is a picture Daryle, Viola with Sharyl, Frances and Alan. Looking at Sharyl - it must have been taken in San Francisco! It's one of my Chief Petty Officer uniform.



Alan knew this was him in the photo. He said this was during the war and no one had new shoes. Even though they had tried to glue his shoe to his sole, one of his shoes flapped in the front. It was very embarrassing to hear the flap, flap, flap to the cadence of his walk.

My parents visiting California in a time when gasoline was tightly rationed must have been a something that they sacraficed for month to have enough gas coupons

Queenie

My parents bought the original Frank O. Swanson 80 arce farm from Uncle Ben Swanson about 1957 when I was eleven or twelve.

I remember on my eleventh birthday that my Dad bought me a horse. It was tied up the fence by the back door at the Tipton farm when I came home from school. She was a perky quarter horse I named Queenie. She was jet black with one white stocking on the back left leg. I rode her after school every day. She was a little onery and always wanted to go back to the correl after I had her out for a while. Noone really taught me how to ride or manage a horse.

My sister, Nancy, was mostly inside doing lady things like cooking, cleaning and playing the piano. My brother Alan had to pitch in and help with the farm work and milking of the cows.

I learned how to saddle Queenie up and take her out for a ride. The neighbors a half mile away were real horseman. Joe and Gary Howard especially knew their way around horses. They gave me some hints how to manage the horse, but she was a little spoiled. They were always busy farming too.

Sometimes my cousins, Pam and Corky, came out to ride my horse. Pam was really in love with horses. She drew pictures of them and read books about them. She couldn't wait to get on a ride. I would get on the front in the saddle and then one of them would ride on the back. Queenie was none to comfortable with this arrangement and would reach her head around to take a nip. I could handle her pretty well. We didn't really let them ride much alone.

Dogs

Sally was my dog when I was a little girl living at Tipton's farm. She was a shaggy shephard collie mix who spent a good number of hours soaking up the sun on our back porch. The porch was only a little bigger than the doorway. Mom would stand at the edge of the steps wearing one her housedresses, white cotten socks and brown tie shoes with a big ole kerchep tied around her hair. She talked to Dad as he leaned his arm out the pick-up window. I would pet old Sally.

Dad had his dog Snipper in the pick-up next to him on the seat. If he went out to the field on a tractor, Snipper would stay back at the house. Snipper was a black cocker spanial with a horrible disposition. My Dad loved him.

When someone drove by the farm on the dirt road, Sally and Snipper were high tail it out of the yard barking their brains out to chase the cars. All the calling by us to come back fell on deaf ears. These dogs loved to chase cars.

Snipper would have nothing to do with any of us except my father. He would growl and snip at the least disruption in his life. Petting him was out of the question, unless Dad was holding him. The more he didn't want petted the more I wanted to pet him. The dog always won.

Somehow ole Snipper contracted rabies. This made him even worse. One day soon after Snipper started foaming at the mouth, Uncle Swede came out to the farm with his 22 shotgun. Dad and Uncle Swede loaded Snipper in the the back of the pick-up and went up to the right-of-way by the railroad tracks. They didn't come back with the dog. Dad was distraught for a long while.

Sally lived a nice long leisurly life. When it was her turn, Uncle Swede came out again. I was excorted into the house while they loaded Sally into the truck and didn't come back with her. I must have been really little. All I remember is when they came back, Uncle Swede asked if I wanted to keep the 22 shell. I didn't put two and two together until many years later.

We moved to the Swanson Farms across the road when I was about 11 or 12 in 1958. The County extension agent would come around to talk to Dad. They were good friends. They would sit out on the patio and drink Pepsi and eat sweet rolls. He went from farm to farm making his rounds checking the crops and chewing the fat.

One day the extension agent brought a golden brown Boxer with him and asked Dad if we wanted to give him a good home. We named her Maggie. She was the love of my life. That dog could play ball with me for hours. She would run after that ball and bring it back quicker than lightening. She loved the rubber balls that she could chew up. At Christmas we would wrap up a couple of balls for her and hid them in the tree branches. She would sniff around looking for the ball until we would finally give it to her. Maggie was a big drooler. My Mom would not let the dog in the living room. She would wait at the kitchen doorway drooling away until I or my Dad would excort her across the living room to the family room. Generally, she was tied up with a chain in the back yard by the door house when we weren't playing with her.

Somehow Maggie ran away or someone saw her on the road and picked her up. My Dad really liked this dog too. He kept his eye out and talked to the neighbors about the fact that she was missing. One neighbor alerted him that they had seen a dog that looked like her close to the bend in the road when you first go out to the country where we lived. One day on our way home from town, Dad pulled into that yard. I could see the dog that looked just like Maggie wiggling here body in a curve with the little stubby tail going likity split. The man at the house quickly put the dog into the house so we couldn't she her.

My Dad was big of stature and had the strong will of a Swede to makes things right. He infatically told me to stay in the car. I knew that tone of Dad's voice. Even though I was eager to find our favorite dog again, I knew better than to disobey him. I saw him stomp over to the man. I couldn't hear the words very well with the window of the pick-up rolled up, but I could see the gestures. My Dad raised his voice and I did hear him say, "You can't take another man's dog. You know that dog belongs to that little girl." The man finally gave in, got the dog from inside the house and brought her out. Maggie was so delighted to see my Dad again. My Dad handed the man a bill (probably five bucks) for his trouble and brought to jump into the seat beside me. I was so happy to put my arms around Maggie again. She licked me profusely as if we had never been apart.

One morning a terrible thing happened that touched my feelings to the core. Maggie was loose in the yard and lite out to chase a pickup. She got caught between another car coming the other way. She was killed instantly. That was the first death I encountered that meant so much to me. I was distraught for days.

Other dogs came and went in my life during those young days, but none compared to my love for Maggie. We had a boxer mutt that was to replace Maggie. But nothihng can replace the dog you love.

Mark, the County Extension Agent found us a big old Collie we called Don. I was in high school at the time. Don was OK, but never really became the love of my life. He didn't know how to play ball and barked a lot. It is good on a farm to have a dog who barks so you know if strangers are coming in your yard. When I went off to college, my Mom decided enough of Don the Collie and gave him away. I found out when I came home for Thanksgiving. I was surprised she hadn't even talked to me about it. But when she made up her mind about something, nothing stopped her.

Farm Cats

My favorite cat was a grey and white tabby we named Gota. My sister Nancy named her as she was taking Spanish in High School. Gota must mean cat in Spanish.

Gota had many litters of kittens. Many became farral and ran to hid into the buildings when they were approached. I would chase them into bins with my red pig tails flying trying to catch them to play with them. My dad liked the cats as they kept the mice down that had scuried into the grainry to have a big feast or came in from the fields to the buildings when the weather was cold. In the house we always had mousetraps in the cellar and utility room to catch the mice. My Mom would say "Ick" and then stick out her tongue in disgust if one was caught and she had to remove it from the trap. She hated the mouse dirt with a passion.

My Uncle Swede was my Dad's designated manager of the over population of cats. This seems cruel, but not very different from the way we euthanize excess animals today at local animal shelters. It accomplishes the same purpose (controling the cat population) in a quick efficient fashion. Skip to the next paragragh if this subject makes you squirmy. We would capture Gota and maybe a few other favorite cats and put them in the barn with the door shut. All the children were ushered into the house away from the killing. My Uncle Swede was standing by with his 22 shotgun. A bowl of milk was placed in the middle of the yard for the cats. They all ran to the bowl to have some milk. Bang. Bang. Bang. The end of the over population. By the time the kids were let out of the house, all the mess was cleaned up and buried some place. I'm sure my brother has a different view of what happened as he was probably included in the clean up. He told me one time when I questioned him about this, that this was a more human way to manage over population of cats than what my grandmother and grandfather did. They put litters of baby kittens into a burlap bag and then placed them in the running ditch water to drown.

It would make sense to neuter or spay the cats to control the problem. However, veteranian usage was for only emergencies or to remove the horns from the calves, not for cats due to limited funds.

I ended up as an adult raising a few persian and himilayian cats for a while. I named them game names like Bingo, Domino, Checkers. Others were named like their color such as Panda Bear, Rusty, Valentine or just cat names such as Cooper or Nelli Bell. I finally outgrew my need to own cats, spay or neutered them all and found them good homes. Now we have a couple of neutered dogs from the animal shelter.

We had a big irrigation ditch running adjacent to our front yard. My sister, Nancy, was the champ at finding snakes that had scooted out of the ditch onto the grass in front of our house. She would take a shovel and chop off their heads. She ended up living on a farm in Nebraska and has been trapped more then once by a rattle snake in her yard or barn. She had a deathly fear of snakes because of that. I didn't have the same experience with snakes and can't really remember seeing them up close enough to use a shovel on them. I'm not really afraid of snakes, but I probably wouldn't pick one up on purpose.

Coal Room

Our two story farm house was heated by two propane furnace burners; one in the kitchen and one in the back guest bedroom. At once time there must have been a furnace fired up by coal as there was a long skinny room off the utility room that at one time is were the coal was loaded. There was an opening about a yard square where a wooden door unlatched to the outside that was used to shovel the coal from the truck into the room.

Now that we didn't need the room for coal when the furnace was replaced, this room was given to me as a play room. It had a rough wooden floor and walls with only a light hanging from a bulb in the middle of the room. It was about eight foot long by four feet wide. I never once thought about how dingy this room was, all covered with coal dust. I'm sure my Mom would have mopped it down before I moved in my toys.

I had an old rectangular oak china closet for my books and some dolls. The glass had long ago been removed and one door was partially off. This cabinent came from my Mom's house where she grew up in Greeley at 529 5th Street. It seemed to mean a lot to her, so it meant a lot to me. I was happy to arrange my things on the dark stained oak shelves.

This cabinent moved from that farm house around the corner to Swanson's basement in the 50's when my Dad bought the old Frank Swanson farm from his Uncle Ben. It was never used at that place with the same affection as when I had it as a kid. One time I remember painting some project with aluminum spray paint in the basement. I needed to test the spray so I used the top left corner of that old cabient. The corners have some ornant carving typical of furniture from the 40's.

My parents moved the cabinent to town when they grew too old to scale the steps in the Swanson farm house. When Mom moved to a retirement community in Lakewood, I brought the old cabinent home still with the almuninum paint on the corner. I considered stripping down the cabient, but opt'd instead for the shabby shiek look and painted it an off-white. I gave it to my daughter to hold her treasures some fifty years after I had used it as a child.

One of my favorite toys was a chalk board on an V shaped easel. It had pictures that I could view by rolling two knobs to scroll through the ideas. I took great care with my colored chalk as supplies came at a premium in the late forties early fifties. I spent hours trying to copy the pictures, drawing in the details and shading. This chalk board would filp down to make a flat surface like a desk. The board was green on that side. Later, my first grade teacher, Mrs Read, gave me come encouragement when I drew giraffes and colored in their spots on large construction paper with colorcrayons. We didn't have Pre-Schoot or Kindergarden at that time.

I had a few dolls, but wasn't much of a doll child. I like a boy doll I had named Cecil. He had a soft rubber body and kind of a hard head with a pensive smile. His hair painted on his round head. He wore a red checked shirt with blue overalls.

Another doll I had and still have in our attic is a saucy walker. She was really special as you could hold her shoulders and move her side-to-side to make her legs swing out to take a step. Her body was rock hard plastic with golden yellow synthetic hair. I think I called her Brenda. My mom must have liked her too as she made several little dresses and bonnets for her. The doll had rubber shoes with a Mary Jane strap that slipped on her riggid feet.

My sister Nancy, had an old baby doll with a composite head and a cotton stuffed cloth body. Nancy, being 10 years older than me, of course would not let me play with her doll.

We did this crazy thing on our beds. We had bumpy Martha Washington type bedspreads. Each morning we had to make our beds smooth as silk with the pillows tucked into the bedspread. Then we put a yarn octopus in the middle of the bed and spread out the braided legs. When you think about it the octopus was the simpliest, silly thing to put on a bed. Hours were spent making this thing. Yarn was cut into long strips. The middle wrapped around something round (wade of cotton) and tied off with a bow at the neck. Then the legs were divided into eight units and brained into octopus arms. A scrap of yarn tied off each leg. I remember black octopus' but maybe we had other colors too.