excerpts from Sage, Sand and Fortitude - part two

excerpts from Sage, Sand and Fortitude - part two

A book titled Sage, Sand and Fortitude: Columbia Basin Recollections was published in 2004. It is a compilation of memories of people who have lived in this area. Some of the chapters are included below.

Perkes, Robert W. and Betty B.
Unit 128 Block 14

On June 10, 1958 we chose Unit 128 Block 14 to be our future. It was a very hot day. It was our second choice from Block 14 and Lower 18.

In October I moved a truck load of equipment to our new farm. When I arrived I had to drive around the place and look at it. I drove on the ditch bank which was not stable and tipped the truck over with two tractors, plow, disk, fuel tank, tool bar, and all the little equipment I could put on. I crawled out the side of the truck and was looking toward Melvin and Delma McAffee’s place as the McAffees were the only people we knew here at the time. The ditch rider had seen the truck tip over and came over and gave me a ride. I bought a house in Moses Lake and had it moved and set on cinder blocks.

In November we brought our family, Susan, Rex and Brenda. My sister Joyce came to help Betty. They both cried because they thought we were moving to the end of the earth. When we left Arco, Idaho, it started to rain and rained to Baker, Oregon. Then it changed to snow. It was the first snow storm of the season and the road was not plowed and we got stuck on the pass. When we arrived at the farm we were wet and cold and Brenda was sick. We parked the truck load of our few belongings under the garage part of the house and went down to the McAffees. We don’t know what we would have done without them; they helped us so much.

We applied and received a loan from FHA to develop and operate our farm. We hired Keith Stock to level our farm in the spring. I helped to cut the cost. We had all the experiences with no water, no telephone, dirt and dust, ditch breaks and sink holes in the field. In the spring of 1959 we drilled our well which is 585 feet deep.

We lived in the house on cinder blocks till the middle of the summer of 1959. Then we built a daylight basement under it. In the winter we enclosed the garage and made our living room and kitchen bigger. One of the experiences we had while the house was on cinder blocks, one night juts after we went to bed and asleep, Betty woke me and said the cows must be out and rubbing on the house. I jumped out of bed and went outside. The cows were not out and it was very still and beautiful. I came back in and told Betty she said something happened because the light hanging in the middle of the room was swinging back and forth. The next morning on the radio, it was telling about an earthquake in Yellowstone Park and it was the same time that our house shook.

The first year we planted 13 acres of barley with alfalfa. The rest of the place was planted to red and pinto beans. On the first of September the pintos did not have any beans on them and I told Betty I wasn’t going to water them any more, it was too late to make any beans this year, but Betty said I should keep the water on them a little longer. About the 15th of September the field man came to look at the beans. It was a wet, rainy, cold day and there were little beans all over the vines. I was really happy. We did not finish harvesting them till Thanksgiving. They were rained on and we didn’t get a very good price, but we paid our operating loan that year. Over the years we have grown many different crops: potatoes, sugar beets, sweet and field corn, clover seed, seed peas, and cottonwood trees for Boise Cascade, which we enjoyed very much. It was a challenge as they had never been grown under rill irrigation before. We think we did a good job of growing them for Boise Cascade, but Boise Cascade did not take the option to grow them again.

March 23, 1960, Robert Asa was born to us and passed away March 24, 1960. We did not know why he did not live, but later learned after the autopsy that Betty had been exposed to an excessive amount of radiation. April 24, 1961, Shirliann was born. On July 30, 1964, Randall Scott was born.

In 1964 we bought Farm Unit 155 Block 19 from Glen Ward and finished developing it. We moved lots of dirt and picked up lots of rocks. We sold it in 1990.

After our son Randy was in school, Betty enrolled in the nursing program at Columbia Basin College and received her LPN license with the highest state score in her class. Betty worked at Othello Community Hospital, Kadlec Hospital, Option Care, and taught Life Care skills in the Kennewick schools. When Betty decided to stop teaching, the State and the mother of one of her students approached her about taking care of David Vandyke. We decided to make our home a Foster Home and have two clients, David Vandyke and Gary McDonald. They have been in our home for about eleven years.

When we moved here there were a couple of things we agreed on. One was that if we didn’t like it we could move back in five years. Two was that we would build a new house. After five years we couldn’t leave, and when we were going to build a new house there were too many memories and the house was structurally sound so we decided to remodel, which we did in 1978 and made a beautiful home for us.

Susan married Kim Pauley, Rex married Sharlyn Underwood, Brenda married Raymond Koehler, Shirliann married Michael Namcheck and Randy married Sharon Campbell. We have ten grandchildren, one great-grandson and one great-granddaughter.

The only regret we have is that our children have been radiated and some of them have very bad health problems.


Rigby, William F.
Rigby, Joyce
Units 149 and 150 Block 16

I read about the drawing in the paper. I lived in Newton, Utah, and was a school teacher. I had served in the U.S. Air Force. I had been raised on a farm. My wife and I both had mixed emotions when we found out we were selected. We came together the first time. I chose my unit because it was the best I had to choose from. I was very excited when I saw the area. My wife was anxious to do anything to get out of Utah. There were six in our family with our four kids. The kids were 8, 6, 5 and 4. We didn’t have any backing. We borrowed and traded for equipment. We lived in Pasco for three months, then in a shed for a year. Our first crops were beans and alfalfa. I don’t remember what the land cost per acre, but it wasn’t given to me.

It took about a year or so before I really felt at home here, until we got our house finished. I don’t know how long it took my wife to feel at home. Our nearest neighbors were Ron Steele and D. J. Dodson. I don’t remember the first neighbor I met. For entertainment, we had church activities and PTA. On the 4th of July I remember celebrating at Art Purser’s farm on the river. Our children didn’t show at the fair. The best part of this area is the people. I can’t think of any worst part.

A family saying or slogan was:
Early to bed,
Early to rise,
Work like hell
And fertilize.

One character trait we developed in the Basin was patience. If one of my children came to me and wanted to go somewhere and homestead, I would probably agree with them. However, I would not do it again, all things being as they were then. FHA was too domineering.

It was a very enjoyable period of my life. All six of the kids are married. They live in various places of the world.


Ririe, Howard and Bernice
Children: Randall, Janeene and Kathy
Units 110 and 111 Block 14

We have been farming for over 50 years. We first came to the Columbia Basin in 1954 from Lewiston, Utah. We rented a farm in the Quincy area for the first five years. Then we were able to draw the farm unit on Glade North Road where we have lived since 1959.

Our nearest neighbors were Maynard Bailie and John Winebarger. At first it was very discouraging because of the high winds, blowing dust, hot summers and crop failures. Two years in a row all our farm was in beans. One year we lost our crop when high winds thrashed the beans in the windrow. The next year we were unable to harvest our beans because of excessive rain. Because we stayed in there through thick and thin, we finally came out on top and were happy we came to this area.

Things have really changed since we first came. There is much less blowing dust, modern machinery, less hand labor and better ways to irrigate our crops. We no longer have to stack hay manually but it is picked up with a harrowbed and stacked without touching a bale. Some crops have planters that plant seeds and no longer need thinning. We now have potato harvesters and beet harvesters and chemicals to kill the weeds.

Also, instead of living in machine sheds, trailer houses or basement houses, we now live in a nice modern house with modern conveniences.

Instead of being surrounded by sagebrush and weeds, lush crops are grown. Trees have been planted and we have nearby companies where we can market our crops.

Howard passed away recently.


Withers, George and Jean
Block 16 Unit 84

I was raised on a farm near Rexburg, Idaho. After serving in Army, I worked for my uncle who farmed and raised sheep. One day I heard of farms opening up in the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. They were to be awarded to World War II veterans according to a draw system. I had served during World War II mostly in New Guinea and the Philippines.

We had visited Jean’s cousin Keith Stock and Elaine their girls Bonnie and Deon prior to moving here. I put my name in for a farm. Jean was all for it. In recalling our move, Jean said, “As I moved up here, probably the hardest thing for me was to leave my parents and my family. I never thought that moving up here was a hardship because I had been raised with hardships during the depression. They didn’t seem like hardships at the time, it was just the way it was. We were happy. I never thought that I was a poor child.”

My name was drawn and a farm was offered. It wasn’t a very good farm (poor soil), so I rejected it and put my name in for a second draw. I was drawn again and was allowed to have Unit 84, Block 16, located at Eltopia, Washington. I felt it was a good farm, as it has proved to be over the years.

My Uncle Oliver Lee had been very good to me so it was a difficult decision to leave Idaho. Uncle Oliver told me he would sell my sheep when he sold some of his sheep in the spring and send me the money. So Jean and I packed up and used all the money we had to move to the Columbia Basin. We had two children, JoAnn age 4 and Cary age 3. We came out here in 1956 and we brought every possession we owned on a two-ton International truck. We parked the truck at Reese and Verna Hope’s place and plugged the deep freeze in to keep it frozen until we could find a place to live. We lived in a motel in Pasco for a couple of weeks and commuted back and forth to the farm.

I remember the first year we moved, it was 113 degrees the day we arrived and the daytime temperature never went below 100 for three weeks.

There was no house or well on the land. I was so poor that the FHA wouldn’t loan me any money. At the time I felt bad that FHA had turned us down, but it proved to be a blessing in disguise. I saved back $50 hidden in a sock until I could find a job so that I’d have enough money to buy gas to get home (back to Idaho) on. I had moved my family into temporary housing in Eltopia for the time being until we could build the house, and I went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation. With the money I earned and the sheep money Uncle Lee sent, we began building the basement home.

I started out farming with an 8N Ford with a 14-inch, one-bottom, two-way plow. It didn’t take a very wide swath; you had to sit there quite awhile to get any amount of ground worked. But I farmed 100 acres with that little tractor and put in my eight hours a day at the Bureau on top of that.

I hauled water to the house for the family’s needs from the Bureau well in Eltopia. We finally saved enough to dig a well. We just had enough to dig 100 feet. So we started digging and finally hit water at 92’. What a blessing running water was. We didn’t have any indoor plumbing. They had backhoes in those days, but we didn’t have the money to hire one of them. So I started to dig a septic tank and before I got done I had a septic tank and a drywell dug by hand below the basement in my house. Those holes were about 14 foot deep and about 10 or 12 foot wide. We didn’t have to worry about whether our trousers would go around our waist in those days. We had plenty of exercise to keep in good shape.

We didn’t have harrowbeds. When we got our hay baled, we hauled it in by hand and stacked it by hand.

One of our biggest treats in those days was to hear June Bitton and Cecil Barrow perform or Gordon Mathews sing to us. We used to have socials down at the Purser orchard in Ringold. Nobody had much money so we made our own fun. We were all close because we were all in the same situation.

It was a struggle for many. We never had places to sell our crops. I can remember Reese and Verna Hope had planted a bunch of potatoes. There wasn’t a processing plant in the country. They had to ship those potatoes to Chicago on consignment – nobody would buy them, just ship them and say, “I’ll take what you can give me.” Well, there are lots of crooks between here and Chicago and they never got anything for their crop. This was one of the trials we had to face. Oh, we could raise beautiful crops. It was like the Garden of Eden. You could get by with one little cultivation on a patch of sugar beets. There weren’t any weeds, only a Russian thistle or two, so it was easy farming, but it was hard to market our crops after we raised them. In later years when Mitch was selling sweet corn at the Pasco Farmer’s Market, I looked around at all the fruit and produce and realized this really is like the Garden of Eden.

We planted trees around the house and worked as fast as we could to finish the house before the weather turned bad.

Jean gave piano lessons to many of our neighbors’ children. She saved her money to buy furnishings for the home. She also worked in the fields, particularly in the potatoes.

In the November 1964 while I was working in the field, Jean came rushing out to meet me. She said to me, “How would you like to buy my Christmas present early?” I thought that was a good idea, so I left off my work, and Jean and I traveled to Othello where we got our first glimpse of our adopted son, Mitchel. He brought great joy to our family.

Eventually we were able to purchase two other farms. This additional land and a lot of hard work by the family provided us with a good life. I will always be grateful for my decision to move to the Columbia Basin, for all of our good neighbors and their friendships over the years. I hope our children appreciate the hard work and sacrifice we made in this goodly land.



Family Update:
Jean died in January 1993. George died in 1999. They are both buried in the Eltopia Cemetery.
JoAnn and Chuck Edler live in Los Banos, California. They have three children.
Cary and Mary Withers live near Eltopia, Washington. They have three children.
Mitch and April Withers live near Eltopia, Washington. They have six children.


Woodard, Clarence and Inna
Eltopia residents from July 1957 to June 1969
Children: Betty Lee and La Rae
Farm Units 43 and 44 Block 13

Clarence & Inna Woodard were living in Provo, Utah, and Clarence was working in construction, repairing equipment. They had farmed for many years in Utah and he yearned for another farm so in July of 1957, Clarence and Inna and their two daughters, Betty Lee and La Rae, took a trip to visit relatives in the Columbia Basin. They were going to visit a nephew, Bill Casper and his wife Joan, who lived in Mesa, WA, and a cousin, Zona Giles and her husband Guy, who lived in Othello, WA. On July 6, 1957 while staying with the Giles family in Othello, Bill Casper took Clarence and they went looking at farms. It happened to be Clarence and Inna’s 20th wedding anniversary that day. When Bill and Clarence returned, Clarence presented Inna with a brand new raw farm for an anniversary present. Inna was expecting to finish their vacation visiting her parents in California but instead they began moving to Eltopia. That summer Inna watered HIS farm with HER tears. It was two years later when they finally finished their vacation and traveled to California to see Inna’s family.

Clarence and Inna bought two units, Farm Units 43 and 44 Irrigation Block 13. Unit 43 was purchased from Cai Nyby and his wife Geraldine Nyby and Unit 44 from Jim Myers and his wife Jean W. Myers. (Upon finding the contracts, it looks like Erle T. Churchman and Blanche, his wife, bought the land from the U.S. Government on October 16, 1945, and later sold it to Mr. Nyby and Mr. Myers.) Churchman Investment Co. was the Broker when Clarence purchased the place. Since Clarence hadn’t been farming for a couple of years, he needed new and used farm equipment, which he bought from the Pasco area.

Raw ground was a challenge to Clarence. The first thing they did was get the electricity there and then drill a well. They owned a small 12 foot camp trailer which they lived in for the next several months. He built a nice garage which served as additional living quarters during that first winter while they started building their home. The winter was mild and he scrubbed the brush off this raw land and plowed, getting the ground ready for spring planting. Some of the crops he raised were alfalfa and beans. They built a cinder block home which they enjoyed living in until they sold their place in April 1969.

That first winter Betty Lee went back to Provo, Utah, to college and La Rae attended Pasco High School, graduating in 1958. La Rae was a Primary teacher for the L.D.S. Church during that time. Some of the students she had were: Kathleen Bleazard, Kathy Baker, Nancy Liston, Buzzy Nielson, David Shelton, Alden Taylor, Janet Bitton, JoAnn Withers and Barbara Sharp. During the summers, both girls helped on the farm. Betty married Orrin Smith in June 1959 making their home in Othello, WA, and is currently living in Cheney, WA. They have four children. La Rae worked at Hanford sharing rides with Geri Gammon and Enid Coltrin, attended BYU for one quarter, then worked at Tri-City National Bank for a short time. She was in Utah and California for the next year or so, then returned home and married Gary Martin. They had a baby boy, David. They later divorced and La Rae and David moved back to Eltopia with her parents for three years. While living at home she worked at Battelle Northwest at Hanford in Richland, then worked for West Coast/Air West Airlines for a year. She married Jack Poe, had three more children, and Jack and La Rae are currently living in Boardman, Oregon. La Rae remembers being friends with Sharon Merrill, Kathy Liston, Edie Roylance, Vivian Howe, Anne and Dennis Barrows, Charlotte and Judy Prefontaine, Deanne and Luanna Hope, George Bacon, Stan Briggs, Willy Stredwick, Pam Ferguson, Kathy Baker, Dick Fox, Bob Coltrin, Louetta & Wayne Monson, Mary Gessel, Ed and Curt Lee, Sharon Noble and Jan Meyers. (I’m sure there were others, it has just been too many years.) La Rae loved the farm in Eltopia, the “wide open spaces,” the Northern Lights, the smell of the newly mown hay and dancing. La Rae and her friends would turn on the radio and dance anywhere.

Most of Clarence and Inna’s entertainment was with their membership in the L.D.S. Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). When they first moved to Eltopia, the Church was meeting in the Eltopia School House. There were community dances held at the School building almost every Saturday night and some of the members would go early Sunday morning to clean it up and get it ready to hold Church meetings in. The Church then bought an old barracks building, moved it to the current location, and fixed it up until they built their new building. Betty Woodard and her husband, Orrin Smith, were the first to hold a wedding reception in the barracks building. Sharon Merrill and her husband, Al Collins, were the first to hold a wedding reception in the new building.

Clarence and Inna came to love Eltopia and the people there. George and Jean Withers were a great help and blessing to them. They had many wonderful neighbors during the twelve years they lived there. Boyd and Gayle Mackay, Ernie and Merle Baker, Hal and Ditto Kniveton, Winfred and Elaine Merrill of Merrill’s Corner Market, Howard and Bernice Ririe, Reese and Joan Risenmay, were just some of their wonderful neighbors. Clarence’s dad William Woodard and Clarence’s brother Lee and his wife Juanita lived in Eltopia for a short time. Clarence and Inna loved developing their new farm, the beautiful sunsets and the friendly neighbors in Eltopia.

It was while living in Eltopia that Clarence finally decided to make another dream come true – he wanted to fly! Since he didn’t believe in using anything that belonged to someone else, he first bought an airplane, THEN asked Wayne Mitchell to teach him how to fly. Did he ever love soaring around the skies! One night when he was returning from a flight the wind was blowing so hard that Inna tried to persuade him to stay where he was until morning. Like the obedient husband he was, he headed straight for home. When Inna saw him coming she ran out and turned on the air strip lights in time to watch him land crosswise on the strip and come to an abrupt halt the instant the plane touched down. Flying was not Inna’s favorite thing to do.

In 1969, Clarence had developed his farm, learned to fly, and wanted a new adventure, so they put their place up for sale. Hal and Ditto Kniveton bought the farm. Clarence and Inna moved back to Myton, Utah, for a few years, then bought a place in Ibapah, Utah, where they lived for seventeen years. After Clarence had a stroke and Inna had problems with her diabetes, they sold their farm in Ibapah, Utah, and bought a small farm next to their daughter, La Rae Poe, and her husband Jack, in Boardman, Oregon. Clarence passed away 5 January 1993 and Inna passed away 3 September 1998.

I, Betty, have great memories of Mom and Dad’s place in Eltopia. Since we lived in Othello, I would travel to Eltopia almost every week with my children to see my parents. I also remember the first time I saw the soil in the Columbia Basin, I thought it was bleached. The soil in the Uintah Basin, Utah, was quite red. I thought the Columbia River must be part of the ocean, it was so big. The canals here were much bigger than the rivers in the Uintah Basin. La Rae remembers the spectacular sunsets, the wonderful people and the exciting times in Eltopia.

Mom and Dad loved people. Nearly always, someone would be at their place, visiting, needing something repaired or bringing something to share with them. Dad loved helping his neighbors and it seemed Mom was always cooking. Anyone who came to their home was usually fed a big meal or at least goodies. Living in the Columbia Basin during those exciting formative years was truly a remarkable experience.



Woodbury, Bob and Claudia
Unit 274 Block 16

January 2001

I had been putting in for drawings in Idaho, Wyoming and Washington for two or three years before my name was drawn. Claudia and I and Dad and Mom came up in February 1955. My brother-in-law from Tulelake, California, came to look at the land with us. There were 12 to 15 farm units to pick from. I, Claudia, Dad, and Bill took a day with the Bureau of Reclamation representative showing us the farms to choose from. It was number four on the list for choice. The first three of our choices were taken so I took the number four unit of 120 acres, which is Farm Unit 76, Block 16. We met some of the people that became neighbors: Ira Hammons, Walt and Mable Mauseth, and Earl and Bert Halverson.

Claudia and I were interviewed by a panel consisting of a Bureau representative and two local farmers to see if we were eligible. We had to have some farm experience and assets of about $7,500 in cash and machinery.

I remember we had some very slick roads to drive going back home. We had about a month to make our down payment. Shortly after, Dad was killed in a tractor accident.

We moved from a small dairy farm in Granger, Utah. JoLynn was about three and a half years old when Claudia and I came here. Claudia was glad to move so we could get something of our own.

That fall, 1955, Claudia and I brought a tractor up to Washington. We had bought a 1946 Ford two-ton truck and a John Deere G tractor. We built a small building 14’x 20’ (the “black shack”) while we were up here. The spring of 1956 Mom sold her cows and no longer needed my help with the dairy. I was able to leave and we moved here. We brought a cow and a steer with us. Sure should have left them at home for they got away! I was scared to look for them because I didn’t know the laws up here. I looked for two or three days. A county deputy came by about two weeks later to let me know where they were. With no fences here they had got as far as Pasco – about 15 miles.

We staked the farm at 100 foot squares. A man from Soil Conservation Service took shots of it and figured the cut and fill for each field to balance the soil to fit. He gave us the cut-fill map and we put the ribbons on the stakes. A red ribbon marked the cut from the top of the stake; white ribbon was for the fill and measured from the ground up. As we leveled, we filled to the white ribbon.

I got a job with Stan Forest and leveled most of our farm and leveled a few others. It cost about $85.00 per acre to level plus the cost of water, seed, fertilizer, and other supplies like siphon tubes. So it didn’t take long to use up our money.

I think we got about 35 acres planted the first year: 10 acres in alfalfa, 25 acres in red beans. We came up with some pretty good hay and 32 bags of beans per acre.

It took about eight weeks to get electricity. We hauled water in ten-gallon cans for drinking and washing. Summer time was not too bad. We could go to the ditches and canals for baths. 1956 and 1957 we were either freezing in winter or roasting in summer. We had the water freeze in the middle of the room. I and Claudia had an electric blanket and JoLynn had a heating pad. We took rides in the car to get warm and used a coal stove for heat.

The second year we put in some beans and potatoes. Sold the potatoes on consignment, but only got a bill from the shed. It took most of the bean money to pay that. Hay was selling for $10.00 a ton so there wasn’t anything from that either. I remember getting down to a dollar and a half in the bank and was on my way to the bank for a loan so we could eat. We passed a hay buyer who paid us $800.00 for hay he had bought. We were so far behind that it sure did not take long before that was gone.

We started driving the school bus so we could eat. It paid $125.00 per month for nine months. I worked watering on a couple of farms and did some land leveling. That meant Claudia did a lot of the watering at home. JoLynn learned to set tubes very young and drove the tractor and truck, as did Jeff at a very young age.

Joe Schmidt came up for a visit in 1957. He helped me build a 16’x20’ room and a bathroom on the back of the room we had. Then we got water! Seven of us drilled a community well. So now we had a living room and a kitchen with heat in them. (Hog Heaven!)

In 1958 we got a loan from the Farmers Home Administration to add on to the house. We came up with three bedrooms and two baths—as it is now. When Jeff was first born he slept in his basket in the kitchen living room area until we finished. I think we moved into the rest of the house about Christmas time 1958, then finished up where we had been living as it had been just getting us by. I bought 30 more acres and some sprinklers.

Claudia started having health problems. We had no health insurance or life insurance because if you need it, no one will sell it to you. Open heart surgery was very costly. Friends and neighbors had some dinners and raised quite a lot of money for us. The surgeon knocked a lot off his bill. We were very thankful for all the help and support. It took three years to get the hospital bill paid. She passed away eleven months after the surgery.

Dorothy Ann and I were married in 1973. Jeff was about fifteen and JoLynn was going to college. Dorothy Ann’s daughter, Patty, married about three weeks after we did. She and Bill have two boys and two girls, and have a granddaughter and two grandsons.

JoLynn is a dental hygienist. Jeff and Sharon have a little girl, Nicole, who will be three years old in February.

We took out our old irrigation systems and put in two circles. It was hard to remove those concrete ditches as they took a long time and a lot of money to put them in.

We retired ten years ago and have leased the farm out since then. We have a very good renter.

In those early years we visited a lot with neighbors and had a lot of block meetings, dances, and picnics together. Merle Hornbaker and I refereed ball games at the Eltopia School and Little League baseball games. I drove the school bus when the kids played at other schools. Merle and Wayne Ehresman drove bus to the games, too.

Would I do this again? Yes. It was hard work and very dusty the first few years: light, sandy soil; planting and leveling; and the ditch breaks.

I am sure I have missed some very important things that happened, and a lot of funny things like chasing little pigs with no place to corner them.

Bob Woodbury


By JoLynn Woodbury


Life on the Farm

I was just over three years old when we moved to the farm from Grandfather’s dairy farm in Utah. I believe most important to me from farm life is the work ethics, values and just plain hard work. It was about 15 years ago when I was in Seattle and the realization that I am a country girl hit me. Currently, we are living on Samish Island, a rural neighborhood. Each trip to town is through farmland in Skagit County. It took a few years to educate Gary Storm (housemate of 14 years and a Seattle boy) about all the different farm implements and crops. Gary is now retired. He worked as a radio officer on ships – tankers traveling to ports all over the world. I am still working part time as a dental hygienist in Mount Vernon.

I had forgotten about the Bookmobile, until reading the Block 15 book, but what a pleasant memory, and a great source for summer reading. I was in the 4-H club, Country Cousins, which was started by Jan Messenger. It was a sewing club and some knitting, too. I still do some sewing, but more on a sock knitting kick now. Most of my grade school years were in Eltopia, with sixth grade in Mesa, then off to Connell for junior high and high school. I worked at Lamb-Weston in Connell during the summers of college years, the first year at Columbia Basin College, then the two-year program for dental hygiene at Yakima Valley College.

I have always lived in a windy place, and still get tired of the wind. The winter Valdez, Alaska, winds with blowing snow and cold seemed worse than the Eltopia winds. One winter morning in Valdez, all the people were tired, had not slept at all, as it was too quiet because the wind had stopped. Many nights, the garbage cans were rolling down the street. No farming in Valdez so no crops were blown out of the ground.

I would get so embarrassed when Dad had me hauling manure out to the fields. At times, returning from the fields, we would race the tractors on the road to the house. Greg Mauseth and I would ride our bikes looking for beer bottles to turn in for candy money.

I am very thankful for all the help, from the neighborhood, when my Mother was ill and medical insurance would not cover her genetic heart condition.