As I mentioned, I’m working on an illustrated story of Grandma and Grandpa Brown and their lives.  But one much shorter document I have from Grandma Dorothy is one she wrote in 1992 that summarizes some of the stories she told. I thought those who love her like I do would enjoy reading it, so here it is.

“Grandma, tell has what it was like growing up on a farm in Montana.”

This is what I have been hearing over the years from my five granddaughters—who only know city life. They have an idea that it was like “Little House on the Prairie,” I think.

Kristi, our sixteen-year old, gave me a little blank, fabric-covered book for Christmas and asked me to jot down some of my memories. I have been doing that lately. As I was doing this, I came across my old autobiography written in 1935 for an English class. That helped, too.

They liked to hear about the big threshing machine, and what an event that was when it came to our place! They heard about all the cooking my mother had to do for the twenty or so threshers and the many pies and cakes that she baked.

I told them about what happened when my dad butchered a pig and the process that it takes to put pork chops on the table. I also told them how at an early age I would wring the necks of chickens and get them ready to cook; they say “Ugh!” to that.

They heard about our wonderful neighbors and how they helped each other. In the winter time, they would all go to the like and cut enough ice to last all summer and pack it away with saw dust in the ice house.

I told them what it was like to live without electricity and how we heated the irons on the wood stove to iron our clothes (REA changed that). Since she had to have a hot fire, that was the day my mother baked loaves of bread and always a few cinnamon rolls, and the good smells when we came home from school.

They learned about the little one-room school house where I went to grade school and how the Burton girls rode their Shetland ponies to school.

I told them about the new barn that my dad had built and the barn dances that he had before he filled the hay mow with hay. My dad played in a little dance band off and on over the years—so they provided the music. I told them about how we kids went out the next morning and found beer bottles all over the yard where the cars had parked. We hard that “old Lady Fordham” had been selling home brew while the dance was going on. My dad decided he would use those bottles and make a little brew for himself—to have after a hot day in the fields. I remember how scared we kids were since that was against the law!

I told them about my mother who graduated from Flathead High in 1913 and started teaching school when she was 18 for $50 a month. They learned of the fun we had at the country school house dances, where young and old came from miles around and we never missed a dance.

I told them about Lake Blaine and the big family picnics when we got together with my aunts and uncles and cousins and how some of my girl friends and I went camping there. That was where we all learned to swim and where I had my first boat ride. I told them about the depression.

Finally, I told them about their Grandpa Bill who died when our three sons were 8, 11, and 22. I told them how he traded our new 1939 Nash car for a commercial flying license or 200 hours of flying time. That was what gave us our start and led us out of Montana and eventually to the San Francisco Bay Area where he became an airline pilot and helped to start an airline.

What a fantastic time to have lived! I wonder what kind of stories my granddaughters can possibly tell to their little ones 50 or 60 years from now and what it will take to top this period of time.

I have been hard at work on a project for several weeks now–establishing a timeline of my grandparents’ lives based on my Grandma Dorothy’s journal. I finished transcribing the journal while I was in California this summer, and then began illustrating it with photos from their lives–which has also meant trying to establish when the various photos were taken.  My dad and I had a chuckle when we discovered that you could often date the photos by the cars in them–the Browns and Gortons did love their cars! My dad’s age is also a good indicator–Baby Jim in the photos in Phoenix or Redlands, a toddler in California, a little older back in Phoenix, a little older in Montana, then back to California. And then there is my grandmother’s writing on the backs of the photos–even a name and a date can place the photo so perfectly in the story.

I suppose that one of the driving factors in this project is the fact that I never knew my Grandpa Brown, who passed away a decade before I was born.  But thanks to this project, I feel like I am getting to know him more and more.

I love this photo of him with his basketball team when he was a senior in high school in Circle, Montana. I can’t get over how much my Uncle Jeff looked like him.

And then I look at this photo from my Grandma Dorothy’s senior yearbook (1936), which I found online–and realize that I take after her more and more every day.

Sweet treasures from the past.  Can’t wait to share more of my discoveries.