More on Dad on St. Joseph Day.....

After Dad and Mom moved back to the Ranch in Wawawai, the Depression took it's toll on Dad, He couldn't keep the ranch more than a couple of years and so moved into one of his brother's ranches which was just, as they say, a bit up the road to Pullman from where we were. That we lived in for a couple of years and still couldn't make a go of it! It was another ranch that hadn't been taken care of and so with the prices that we got for what produce we did have, my Aunt had to let us go from there, I was in High school then and went for a year while we were still on the ranch to Spokane to an All-Girls school in Spokane, Wash. and then my sister was ready for High school the next fall and we had to move anyway and so went to Coeur d' Alene and moved in with my Grandfather Rabideau and my Aunt Jo and Dad went on Welfare or in those days F.D.R. (President Roosevelt was then elected and started all his programs (with initials, it seemed!) and so Dad went to work for the WPA, Works Project Administration which most of the people were being paid $44.00 a month and Dad because he had had some Carpentery experience was paid $60.00 a month! We got extra help which today would be called Welfare which consisted of some food allotments and clothing, etc. and since it was in Idaho, we did a load of wood about every few months in the winter!!! Times were tough but Dad struggled through it and he and Mother had 8 children and the last two in the family were born in Coeur d'Alene. A cousin of mine heard about a mill in California and so Dad and he came to Ca. and I wrote about that experience in one of my first blogs. (Like, we looked like the "Grapes of Wrath" a popular movie out at the time!) This mill was up at White Pines, Cal. in the Sierras and in a year or so, I met and married Cappy in Angels Camp, which was where the only Church was for miles. When that mill sold out, and was sold to someone who had a mill at Wilseyville and Dad moved the family over there. By this time besides me, Genevieve was married and Bob, and Laurence. Teresa was married when they lived in Wilseyville. That mill shut down and so Bob, Laurence and families moved to Torrance, Cal. and told Dad to come down and where he got work as a carpenter, building tract houses. He was there in Torrance till his death. A hard worker, and not very many vacations for Mom and Dad, except to visit their kids!!!! When he got the Alzheimer Disease and had to go to the Convalescent home, lived about a year after that. We, Genevieve and I made a cake for his birthday which was March 12th and we took ice Cream and got in touch with others that lived down in the Torrance area and had a great birthday party, and so we got a call on the 19th of March and Teresa, one of my sisters said that Dad had passed away. I always remember the date because of St. Joseph's Feastday!!!!! In the meantime Merry Maids, came, as I told you in my last blog except this time besides one of my favorites a young man came with her. He has been here before too, in fact Jennifer helped train him for the job!!!!! Bye for now. Got to figure out something for supper, (that's "old-fashioned" for dinner! In the meantime, I think I'll have an "Ensure" , and a couple of graham crackers!!! You haven't lived until you've tried Ensure!!!! Oh Yummy!!!!

Today's Feast Day...

Today is the date of my Father's death. He was 83 years old and as I told in another blog, was the Father of all ten of us!!!! It is, in the Catholic Church, the Feast Day of St. Joseph, the Foster father of Jesus. How appropriate that my father would pass away on this Feast Day! Dad was a good, hardworking man and like St. Joseph, was kind to all of us and we never went without a meal in our lives! And even though it wasn't (what, in these days, is called State of the Art), we always had a rood over out heads! He converted to the Faith shortly after marrying Mother and never let his Faith down. He was, in fact, the only one of his family that had any religious affiliation. I seem to remember, way back, when I was a very small child hearing the family talk about an Aunt Effie who would attend whenever a traveling preacher, or whatever came to the area. I don't even remember much about her except that she was very tall and had married, at that time, a second husband, who according to the "family Gossip" was a real loser!! Poor Aunt Effie! Her first husband, I understand had left her! I do remember the family telling how clean she was and the couple of times I saw her, she always had the whitest apron on!!! Enough about her! This is supposed to be about Dad! He was a farmer when he met Mother and had gone into partnership with an older brother to buy a big ten room house and after Mom and Dad were married 11 months I came along!!! My Uncle and his wife had two children, my cousin Cecil, who was 5 years older than I and he had a sister Eva. She got into a bottle of aspirin when she was a year or so and they couln't get her to the Dr. in time. My Uncle died also a little later on and my Aunt, to put it bluntly took over the house! So Dad and Mother went to Everett, Washington where he found work down on the docks on Puget Sound, loading and unloading ships!! Then, by this time he and Mom had six children, the youngest was born just outside of Everett in a small community when he got word that my Aunt wanted him to come back and take over the big 10 room house in Wawawai! (This incidently is where, my sister Genevieve, brother Bob, and even though we lived in Wawawai, my brother Laurence was born in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho more Mom's sisters and her father, my maternal Grandfather lived. Grandma had died shortly after, maybe two months, after we came back to Wawawai and she died in Coeur d' Alene!) But to get back to this and I may have to finish it after "Merry Maids" have gone. Bye. Continued in a few minutes!!!

More as promised.....

I got down to Teresa and told you about her and now comes Gerry or (Thomas Gerald, as he was named). Gerry was born in a little small town between Everett and Seattle, Washington. He was another happy-go-lucky kid and was a pleasure to be around!!! Seemed like he never got into trouble, (like Bob) and so it goes. We moved back to the big farm in Wawawai, Wa. (where I was born) and then along came Don. He was also a pretty good kid, (or maybe by this time I was just getting old enough to know that they were just little kids!) I will go more into detail at a later date and tell a few "stories" about each one of us!!!! Yes, me too! Eleven months later and by this time the Great Depression had started and Barbara was born!!! She also was a very cute baby and a pretty happy one. She was small in stature growing up but I guess she eventually got to the rest of us! We lost the farms, two of them to the Depression and so moved to Coeur d' Alene, Idaho where my Aunt Jo and Grandpa Rabideau had a small house but also Dad could find work with the W.P.A. and so at least feed us and clothe us!! Then along came my brother Joe. Joe wasn't much of a rebel either and a year or so later David was born! He is the youngest of the family. He was always a friendly, easy going sort of youngster. And there you have it!!!! Mother didn't have any more babies after him. She was getting up there in age and all too!!!! But we pretty much got along together!How I'll never tell you!!! But life was much slower and calmer in those days and one felt safer! It was nothing for my sister Genevieve and I to go to the movies alone about every other night, ((when we were teens!) We went to every change in programs in town and we had three movie houses!!!! We walked the mile or so to get there and were never afraid! (Or almost never! But that's another story!) Oh yes! the movies cost a quarter at the best theater and 1o cents at the cheapest and that one had all the Westerns! Tom Mix, etc. Fun! Fun! You'll have to read the blog before this one to get them all in order. I should have started with the youngest and end up with me! Oh well!!!!

A few more thoughts...

I was thinking in the night how families, though different, are still family. Take my Mother and Father's family. There were ten of us children, ( I am the oldest!) I have through the years watched them and their likes, dislikes, and whatever! I guess I'd better start with myself. I was spoiled no end by everybody, parents, grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, etc. I guess you could call me a "rebel". I had a mind of my own and even though I grew up as a pretty nowmal child, I still had a rebelious nature, or wanted my own "way" and usually got it!!! When my sister Genevieve came along, we had fun together as children but she grew up with a calmer, easier tempered nature. My brother Bob came along and he was adored by everybody!!! But he was not a "leader" either! He, even as a child, pretty much did whatever anyone told him to do and agreeably!!! He was like that all his life!!!! He was very neat, clean, and went about his own business of just "getting along!! Then came my brother Laurence. He was another "rebel"! I think that is why we fought so much, we were two "peas in a pod"! Nobody could tell him what to do!!! But I will go more into details later about some of my siblings doings! My sister Teresa was born, after two boys, so even though she was very sweet and sunny, (always!) she still was very tomboyish and tried to do everything her brothers did, (climb trees, etc .) I've gone halfway with the family and so will stop and get on later, maybe even later today! There is a lot to "tell" on my family!!!!

Some thoughts....

I was thinking the other day about my Aunt Pearl. She lived, from the time that I recognized her, which must have been when I was about two or three, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. What got me to thinking about her was that a very good friend of mine moved to St. Paul last fall. Aunt Pearl came out West quite often because our folks, most of them lived in the West!!!! She was married to my Uncle Ed Peltier who worked for the Great Northern Railroad and so was able to get pretty much discounts on her traveling, (if not free rides!) She and Uncle Ed had two girls, Eleanor and Helen, who grew up and married and lived in St. Paul too! After her girls were able to take care of themselves, Aunt Pearl started to do catering for the Cudahay Meat Packing Co. They were quite a large concern with plants all over. In order to sell their meat and meat products they would put on dinners,etc. for some of their business clients!!!! My Aunt was, I guess, a pretty good cook because she worked for them for years and I can remember as a teenager, her visits and how enthused I was about her cooking and used to ask her for all kinds of recipes!!!She always obliged and would even cook some of them with "my" help! My oldest Aunt, Jo, would tell me, "Sure, she can cook but do you see how many dishes she uses?!" (Aunt Jo usually cleaned up after one of our "cooking sessions!) After Cudahay shut down , or moved or whatever, she had quite a reputation of being a good cook and got invitation from lots of people to cook big dinners for them!!!! Maybe that's where I got my love for cooking! The last time that I saw Aunt Pearl was in the 1970's. She, of course, had retired and came out to California to see her Grandaughter who lived in Ventura County. She went home from that visit and passed away later that year. She was always quite a lady and of course had to keep herself well-dressed and "neatly-combed" as the saying goes. She was very pretty and had the most beautiful white hair for years!!!! Uncle Ed died before she decided to go to work. I saw Eleanor and Helen when they were young and that made me very young! Then I remember Eleanor and her family, (this grandaughter I mentioned was just a little girl and Eleanor and Bill had a boy, Billy too. Bill was an accountant for some big firm in St. Paul and he had a nervous breakdown and sometime after that he died! ) Helen didn't come out West too often and I didn't know too much about her family but some of them did move out when my folks still lived in Torrance. Anyway, God bless you Aunt Pearl for giving so many "wonderful" memories of you and as I said at the beginning, I think she gave me the real desire to cook!!!! I always helped my Mother cook when I was a young girl and we all had "tasks". My sister, Genevieve, liked to "baby-sit" and as I said in one of my earlier blogs, I liked to iron, cook, etc. I didn't mind doing the dishes either (as long as I could wash them! I hated drying them and putting them away!) Enough of this! Hope you are reading about this, Ann, and I do wish I could remember where my Aunt and her family lived in St. Paul, It would be interesting to know which Parish they belonged to, etc. Probably St. Paul Cathedral which wasn't I'm sure not a Cathedral in those days!!!!! Bye now!!!!!