Chapter 1.13 - Working with Grandma / My Aunts & Uncle Fred

When Sis and I grew big enough to work at Grandma Munker’s house, we had to regularly do the dishes, and I had to keep the wood box full. The outhouse was beyond the woodpile and every time Sis or I had to go we were expected to bring an armload of stove wood back. We kidded about this about having to have a payload both ways. As we got older, I had to spade the whole garden each spring, prune the fruit trees, and Sis and I had to shell peas, snap beans, peal apples and so on to help Grandma can food. When Sis and I first moved to Grandparents, three of Mom’s sisters were in Kalispell. Each of them worked for rich families as live-in housekeepers. They’d all have Thursday afternoons off and would come home. All of them were good to Lilly and me. Mattie and Louise worked for doctor’s families and Aunt Mayme worked for a furniture store owner. Uncle Fred, the youngest of Grandma’s kids and the only boy, was six years younger than Louise and six years older than me. He was eleven when Lilly and I moved in. He resented us a lot. His sisters fussed less over him and more over us two little kids. When Fred graduated from high school, Aunt Mattie and Art Birkholtz got married and moved to Bend, Oregon. I inherited Fred’s bicycle. It was way too big for me as I was only twelve years old but I learned how to ride it. Fred went with Mattie and Art on their honeymoon to live and work in Bend, Oregon. They all stayed there until they died. I should say here that later, just about four months before Fred died in 1989 in Bend, Minnie and I went over to visit him and our cousin Joyce and her family. Fred got me off to the side. He was old and feeble but he apologized for all the mean things he had done and how awful he had treated me when I was a little kid and he was so glad that I’d forgiven him and would come and visit him. That made me feel pretty good.

Chapter 1.13 - Working with Grandma / My Aunts & Uncle Fred (T1.15)