Ole's Blog

We are continuing with my mother’s story, as told to sister Bonnie and recorded in 1995. In Part I, Reatha finished 8th grade in Wibaux, Montana, in 1928. As they had every summer, Dan, Lillian, and the five girls traveled widely in the “Gospel Truck,” holding revival meetings throughout the Upper Midwest and the northern Rockies. By this time, Dan had a new “Buddy Stewart” truck, which he fitted with the same primitive canvas canopy. That fall, weeks after the school term started, they settled in Miles City, where Reatha attended her freshman year of high school. Using the skills learned earlier in Dan’s “Praise Combo,” she played trumpet in the band. The facade of the school was still recognizable on my visit there in 2003.After another summer in the truck, holding meetings, and picking fruit (all the girls worked along with their parents), they settled for Reatha’s sophomore year in their westernmost locale, Ontario, Oregon. Ontario is a farming and mining community at the eastern edge of the state, across the Snake River from Payette, Idaho. Here is a rather blurry photo of Reatha’s Latin class.

I think Mom is the in the center rear, with the wavy bangs. On the tapes, she spoke of a  “first boyfriend” named George Taylor. That may be the name of the “mystery boy” in the photo I posted in Dan Myers, part V.

For her junior year, their residence was in Marmarth, North Dakota. This fact was unknown to me until I listened to the tapes. Here is Reatha’s description of Marmarth, and of her trumpet solo at the high school junior banquet.Marmarth

Marmarth (population 140 in the 2000 census) is in the SW corner of North Dakota, on US highway 12 between Thunder Hawk and Miles City, in the midst of some spectacular badlands. Thiel and I were passing through on our 2003 “pilgrimage,” without knowing of any family connection, when I took this photo of the decrepit railway station.

Marmarth station

It had apparently been moved, as the railroad tracks were at least a quarter-mile away. The building had obviously seen better days (as had the town itself).

The next season (1931-32), which would have been Mom’s senior year, they returned to Thunder Hawk. Dan was employed to manage a farm near there while the owner (Karl Peterson) was visiting Sweden. Both Reatha and her sister Helen stayed out of school, because they “didn’t have enough money to graduate.”

Interestingly, nowhere on the tapes does Mother ever mention “The Depression.” As I pointed out in Dan’s story, poverty was the lifestyle of the Myers family long before the crash of 1929. Even the crop failures in the “dust bowl” years of the early 30′s are only a minor sidebar in her anecdotes.

During their stay in Thunder Hawk, Reatha worked as a live-in domestic for two consecutive families whose mother gave birth during her employment. The first family was the Petersons, for whom her father was also employed. The second was that of E.A. Mock, an acquaintance from their earlier residence there, and who later opened a long-standing car dealership in Eugene, Oregon. Another surprise to me was her dream of becoming an OB nurse. Although she did not say so, she must have been a close helper to the midwives on those two occasions, and perhaps others.

Next: Rejection

“A voice from beyond”

I have now reviewed and taken notes on the cassette tapes of Bonnie’s 1995 interviews with our mother, Reatha “Meme” Larson, née Myers (1914-2008). They were recorded on a road trip the two took together to find the grave of Reatha’s sister Leah Myers in Boulder, Montana. It took some considerable work to arrange the anecdotes in roughly chronological order, so as to present them in a coherent way. Besides the normal tendency to ramble and skip around, Mother’s dementia was already a significant factor, although none of us recognized it at the time. Nevertheless, her recollection of some events, even very early in her life, seem remarkably clear, and I believe to some extent reliable. Out of the several hours, I picked out a few one-minute excerpts to post in audio form, as a “voice from beyond.”  There is a lot of background noise, as the tapes were recorded in a vehicle at highway speed, but the voice and the words are quite recognizable.

Mom even related a story from before her own birth, told her no doubt by her mother, of how her parents met, in Frankfort, SD: Dan Myers drove a horse and wagon from farm to farm, peddling certain products, and butchering and plucking chickens, which he brought to the meat market in Frankfort. The proprietor of the market was William Drayer, father of Lillian Drayer (later Myers), Reatha’s mother. Here is part of the story in Mom’s own voice:1908 Dan

Dan and Lillian probably first met at the meat market. Reatha went on to describe the courtship. It seems that most of their dates involved roller skating, which was about the only pastime available in Frankfort.

Fast-forward to Reatha’s birth in 1914:  She was born in the living quarters at the rear of the general store and post office in Thunder Hawk, South Dakota, where Dan was the proprietor.

Thunder Hawk Store

For the six-part story of Dan Myers, click here. By the time Reatha was three years old, the family moved from the rear of the store to a small house they built nearby. Around this time, her younger sister Velma was born. Dan’s parents, Stephen and Helen, came to help out, as Helen was a midwife. This portrait must have been taken about then; Stephen died later that year. The earliest personal memory Mom related on the tapes was of their visit to Thunder Hawk. Here is her own narrative:1917 Stephen and Helen

In 1920, after Dan’s “conversion,” the family moved to Zion, Illinois, after spending part of the summer in Wisconsin. In Zion, Reatha attended first, second and third grade.  On Sundays, she went with her father to inner-city Chicago, where she sang hymns with him, and he preached, at a store-front Gospel mission. Then, in 1923, they set out in the “Gospel truck,” a primitive canvas “motor home” Dan had built from an old Model-T farm truck.

The Gospel Truck

I described some of these travels in “Dan Myers, Part III.” Here is Reatha’s story of that summer, including the well-known “apple box” anecdote:1923 Truck

Reatha attended fourth grade in Miles City, and the next four grades in Wibaux, Montana (about 50 miles south of Sidney). They traveled all summer, holding revival meetings across Montana and the Dakotas, then settled in a different rented house for a late start to each school year. As I told you in Dan’s story, they were extremely poor. Even so, meetings were sometimes held at their home, and Reatha played trumpet in Dan’s “praise band.”

The Band

Next: High School and Rejection