Chapter 1.5 - Mom & Dad Reunited

Some many years before this time, Dad had bought a 32 acre place across the river from the Soldier’s Home where he worked. He cleared the land and in later years in summer’s I helped him some. When I got out of high school I lived one year in a cabin there and my friend Paul Christensen, whom I grew up with as a neighbor kid in Kalispell, came and stayed with me for a while. He was my best friend–my buddy–from about the fifth grade on. He was Minnie’s first husband from 1940 when they got married until January 1981 when he died in Beaverton, Oregon. Any how, Dad later bought a ready-cut three room house and put it on the farm. He also built a henhouse, a hog house and all that. He was planning a year later to resign or retire from his job and live on the place. Anyway, a year before he was ready to go, the state had another upheaval in the Soldier’s Home deal and came up with a ruling that only veterans could work at the Soldier’s Home. Dad, not being a veteran, was fired. He had to go over there a year ahead of time and had no money to operate on. Sis and I had to help him out quite a bit to help get him started in the chicken business. Anyway, when Mayme and Edna got Mom out from Warm Springs, she and Dad finally got together on this small farm raising chickens and gardening. This was a very skimpy existence. There was no electricity. They had outdoor plumbing and a water well. They used horses, an old team to do the farming, but they did have and old ’37 Chevy pickup that they could get to town and take eggs to town. When Mom got to be back with Dad on the farm in 1950, they had very little money and lots of hard work. Mom loved cats and they had several around the place. They gardened and canned and put up a lot of food in this small root cellar that Dad and I had built some years earlier. They both appeared to be happy to be together again. Dad had an occasional beer which upset Mom quite a bit. When Dad would have a drink he would get funny and laugh a lot. This bothered Mom. They lived there until Dad died in 1962.

Chapter 1.5 - Mom & Dad Reunited [part 1] (T1.06)

Chapter 1.5 - Mom & Dad Reunited [part 2] (T1.13)

NOTE: Although "part 2" is from later in the tape (track 13), I have included it here since it is a continuation. I mention this in case you want to make CDs in the proper order.