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!!!