Ole's Blog

After the strike of 1935, and the birth of Darlene, Lovell saved diligently for a trip back to his natal home in ND-MT with his new daughter. But at his wages of $0.50 per hour, it was not possible to drive there in the summer of 1936. Also, apparently, paid vacations were not yet a part of mill workers’ benefits. That must have come a few years later, possibly after another strike. So Dad insisted that Mother and Darlene go by train. The round trip, adult fare was $64.00 – quite a chunk of change in those days, but somehow they managed it.

At Dad’s insistence, Mother accomplished a reconciliation with her parents, and visited them at their home in Savage, MT.Pictured above are Reatha, sisters Esther and Leah, and Darlene.

Also according to Lovell’s wishes, Darlene was baptized in the little church at Skaar, ND.For the return trip to Longview, some more Larson’s participated. This detail is not too clear on the tapes, but it seems that Uncle Vernon, fresh out of high school, bought a new 1936 Chevrolet for $750, and drove to Longview with Reatha, Darlene, and Uncle Ivan. The vehicle may have looked something like the one below. Possibly, Vernon bought the car for Lovell, as it was also in a 1936 Chevy that Mom, Dad, and Darlene made their first road trip to the homelands three years later. It is unknown where the $750 came from; one may speculate that Lovell had some remaining livestock or other assets that were liquidated at that time.

1936 Chevrolet sedan

Once in Longview, both Vernon and Ivan stayed at Mom and Dad’s for an extended period. Vernon attended Lower Columbia Junior College (its first year in existence), while Ivan attended his freshman year of high school. Mind you, they all lived in a tiny mill-workers’ cabin. Vernon and Ivan shared the back bedroom, through which the others had to pass to use the outhouse! Note in the comments below that Uncle Ivan remembers this quite differently. After that one school year, Ivan returned to Sidney, and Vernon transferred to Willamette College in Salem, Oregon.

In 1937, the family moved to another rented house (owned by the mill), this one on 20th Ave. It was somewhat larger, but the big upgrade was that for the first time, their home had a bathroom. As Mom put it, they were really “coming up in the world!”House on 20th

Two years later (1939), Reatha and Lovell bought their own home on 15th Ave. What frugality it must have taken to save up a down payment, on a mill-worker’s wages! By this time, Uncle Walt and Aunt Irene had moved to Longview with their infant daughter, Lois.

It was not until about 1946 that Isaac sold his ND farm and moved to Longview. He bought a small dairy farm near the present site of Robert Gray school, but poor health soon forced him to retire to a smaller place with only one or two milk cows, a vegetable garden, and a small orchard, which he maintained almost until his death in 1969. Again, it seems that Mother was not remembering the events and dates quite correctly. In 1949, my parents moved to the familiar place at 4316 Pacific Way, where my sisters and I grew up, and where Mother lived until 2000.

I hope you have enjoyed this series, taken largely from those cassette tapes Bonnie made almost 15 years ago.

Next: The mystery of Philip Myers’ parents.

In 1934, another summer of drought and dust storms exacerbated the hardships of the Great Depression (although Mother never used the term, nor dwelt upon the tough times). Isaac Larson was forced to sell most of his cattle due to lack of fodder and the need for money. His dreams of moving the family to Washington state still had to wait, as he was now determined to stay put until the the three youngest boys finished high school, a luxury that the two elder brothers, including Lovell, had sacrificed.

Reatha and Lovell, however, pulled up stakes and headed for the Pacific Northwest. They traveled in a 1928 Chevy that Dad had swapped for some horses, and had altered the interior so the seat would fold down for sleeping. An small exterior trunk carried all their possessions. It must have looked something like the car pictured below.

1928 Chevy coupe

Almost as a sidelight, Mom mentioned that they got married at the courthouse in Miles City “on the way out.” It was a long journey, across the plains and over the mountains, on mostly unpaved roads. They slept in the car alongside the road, as did many other impoverished pilgrims they met along the way (think “The Grapes of Wrath,” a story set in the same time period).

They first went to Portland, Oregon, where Lovell found work through an employment agency, but stayed there only a short time. They then proceeded to Longview, Washington, where Mom’s close friend Dorothy and her husband Albert Bergquist had recently settled. Dad was soon working at the Long-Bell sawmill, at that time the world’s largest lumber mill. The timber industry was one of the most active at this time, while many other industries nationwide were still reeling from the Depression. Once settled in Longview, they took the time to be photographed in their “wedding clothes.”

The housing for mill workers consisted of tiny clapboard cabins near the mills. Lovell and Reatha first lived in one of these shacks on 10th Avenue, and a few months later, moved to another one on 17th. Neither of the two dwellings had indoor plumbing; sanitary facilities consisted of an outhouse in the tiny back yard.

As the birth of sister Darlene drew near, the mill workers went on strike. The rent for their cabin ($4.75 per month) was waived during the action. They had little furniture but cots to sleep on. They frequented soup kitchens, scraped together enough change for peanut butter at two pounds for a quarter, or ate at their friends’ who were working at other jobs. Walking was their only mode of travel, as there was no money for gasoline. When Lovell walked the picket line, the union provided sandwiches, which he brought home to share with Reatha.

On July 9, 1935, Darlene was born in the county hospital. Dad was “tickled” that their first child was a girl, having grown up with only four brothers and a widower father. Mother may have been less partial, having been raised mostly with her four sisters, and a usually absent brother.

The next day, July 10, the strike ended. Lovell returned to work, at the newly raised wage of $0.50 per hour. Life was good.

Next: First visit home.

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