Autobiography of Retta May Strickland

Autobiography of Retta May Strickland

Written Feb. 1983 in Emmett, Idaho

I, Retta May Hansen Strickland was born April 18 1915, the eighth child of John Hansen and Marvina Pearl Thornton at Tikura, near Carey, Idaho. Tikura no longer exits. I moved with my family from Carey to Jerome when I was three or four years old. I remember very little about it except that we were bedded down on a hay wagon in straw and many quilts and blankets and perhaps a few hot bricks or rocks to keep us warm as it was November and quite cold. I remember staying in a house where we huddled around a kerosene heater as it took two or three days to make the move. It was a very cold November.

We lived northwest of Jerome for three years or so. I started the first grade in the Jerome Public Schools at the age of six, riding a bus from the farm. My first teacher was Mrs. Grover. We then moved seven miles southeast of Jerome to the Barrymore district in February where I attended another year in the first and second grades. That school closed and we were sent to Canyonside where I started the third grade. We lived one mile south of Barrymore or three miles due east of Canyonside School on what we called the Wilson place. Here I attended the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. All the younger kids attended Canyonside and Iva and Sarah stayed in Jerome working for their board and attending High School.

Memories of that place are numerous. Our family increased to twelve with the addition of Elden, Raymond and Zella. Oliver and Verda were just younger than I. There were enough of us kids that we had lots of fun playing games such as Hide and Seek, Kick the Can, Run Wolf Run, We really loved to play after dark as long as mother would let us.

We kids herded cows along the roadways every day and entertained ourselves making mud pies, robbing birds’ nests and playing blind man’s bluff with the eggs or reading books. We'd line the eggs in a row, blindfold one and give them a long stick, then turn them around and around then see if they could hit the eggs with the stick and break them. That got quite gruesome at times especially if they were rotten eggs. If we let the cows get in the neighbors fields we sometimes got punished.

One fun thing we did was that the house had an upstairs and we'd get a lid off a chest mother stored things in and we'd slide down the stairs and hit the door, ka-bang. Mother would soon stop it but we'd do it again every chance we got. What kids won’t do!

Dad had an old bear overcoat that was in the attic part of the upstairs and it was always appearing as a bear to frighten the little ones. There were many, many things that happened in these years. I don't know that I had a favorite home but this one held the dearest memories.

One thing that happened: We had to walk two Barrymore to school about one and a quarter miles. Delbert who wasn't in school had a horse and sled and hauled us quite a bit in the winter, when it was bitter cold and the snow was deep. There were some sheep corrals where they lambed sheep about halfway. These people kept a Billy Goat there, as it was a leader for the sheep when they took them to the hills in the summers. For some reason whether it didn't stay in the pens or was just let run loose, it managed to be around when we kids walked back and forth to school. We had to be very cautious and always see where it was because for some reason it liked to chase us and butt us. We were really scared of it and would run to the neighbors on the other side of the road until someone chased it away or went with us until we were safely past. One morning in early spring as we were walking to school the goat came for us. There was a load of hay going along on the road and we all jumped on the wagon and rode to school but the goat followed. The teacher chased it off with the broom. We hated to go to school past that sheep corral and sometimes someone older walked with us until we were safely by.

Our transportation at this time of course was horse and buggy or wagon. But Dad got his first car, a new 1926 Ford Touring car, while we lived here. Boy that was a big thing in our lives. We went to visit some neighbors and of course we kids all piled in and I was next to a door and I fell out and got a good bruised hip.

We had to work along with our play. Dad raised carrots for stock feed, hay and grains. We had to weed carrots on our hands and knees and thin and hoe beets and-beans and help stack hay. I always had to drive the derrick team or horse, whichever we used.

Dad had an old gray horse named Nibbs. She could open all the gates if not wired shut and was always out of the corrals or pastures causing trouble. She was my derrick horse a lot. One day she got her foot over the tug and I kicked her to make her move and she kicked me right back. I had a black and blue foot mark on my left leg above the knee for a spell and have always had a lump there.

Some summers we hoed beets and beans for the neighbors and earned our 4th of July money. One summer I earned $6.00 hoeing beets and thought I was rich. I bought a dress and a pair of shoes and had money for the 4th of July celebration.

Jerome went all out to celebrate July 4th and Dad liked to go, so we always planned for the July 4th. Mother fixed a picnic which we ate in the park and we spent the day at the celebration and nearly always took in the fireworks. Before we had a car we all piled into the wagon for these trips to Jerome.

Tent plays called Chataquait used to come to town in the summers. Dad always like these plays, so we got to see quite a few of them, and needless to say, we kids loved them.

I finished the eighth grade and attended Jerome High School. I graduated in 1933. The folks had moved to Wendell in February of that year. I attended Wendell High School that last three months of school and went back to Jerome to graduate with my class there.

Delbert went to Montana where Uncle Charlie's children lived, Leo and Ordell. He worked there one summer. When he came home he brought the first radio we ever had. It was a battery operated one with ear phones and a speaker like a phonograph. We really thought listening to Amos and Andy a real big thing in our lives. I must have been about nine or ten years old. I can remember the radio sitting on a square stand table in the living room of the Wilson house and the battery on the lower shelf and how it leaked acid and was eating up the wood and I put soda on it to stop it and I remember how it fizzed.

In 1930 Dad bought into the Lewis place one half mile West of Canyonside School. I was a sophomore in High School and remember in the spring of 1931 a very nasty wind that blew two days and nights without letting up. It was in early spring and Dad had got his grain in in February and by this time it was up he also had radishes planted and up in the garden. This wind blew the grain out of the ground with the sand. In the southern part of Gooding County a lot of the soil was sandy and when the wind blew it drifted like snow. After that wind there were sand drifts two to four feet deep across many County roads. This was unusual because nearly always it was drifted the opposite direction by West winds.

The wind blew so hard that no matter how tight your house was you still had sand. The one night that it blew so hard the only way we could eat was to dip our food into our plates from the kettle on the stove and eat it or we would be eating sand. People spent days cleaning the sand from their homes. I remember us having to use shovels to carry it out as our house wasn't very tight. It drifted and lasted the longest and did more damage than any I recall. Dad’s crops didn't do well that year so he didn't make his place payments so had to look for another place to farm. This was also hard times and the depression had hit and prices weren't good.

Dad rented and moved to a place six miles south and three fourths miles East of Jerome known as the Adams place. I was a junior in High School. Glenn and I attended High School in Jerome.

While living there I recall a severe snowstorm and blizzard the 13th of February that drifted all the roads so they were impassable and the school buses couldn't run for two weeks. The younger kids had all their Valentines ready to take to school Valentine’s Day and were very disappointed that there was no school. There were drifts six feet deep and it took days to clear the main roads. Even after we started back to school the buses weren't able to use the north and South roads but were able to pick up kids on the East and West. We had to make up this two weeks later in the year by attending school six days a week for ten Saturdays. They were long weeks as I recall.

This place was about a half mile from the Snake River Canyon and was across the road from the Jerome County Golf Course. The younger boys especially Oliver and Elden spent lots of time hunting lost golf balls.

It was while living here that Grandpa Amos Thornton (Mother's Father) passed away at American Fork, Utah. Lawrence was home at the time and had a car and he drove Mother and Dad to Utah. Glenn and I were holding things together at home. I developed a sore throat that turned into Quinsy and then Zella got sick. She was just six. After the first day I decided she had measles, then Elden and Ray also got them I got out the old trusty Dr. Book and was following all rules, darkened room, hot lemonade and etc. but we also called or wrote Mother and Dad. I wasn't very sick with that Quinsy like I had been with before but Mother knew how sick I could be so she got worried and they drove home immediately arriving at 3:00 A.M. I have always regretted letting Mother know as she needed to stay with Grandma longer but she felt she had to be home. But Glenn and I were managing very well.

In February of 1933 Dad rented a farm one mile East of Wendell and moved. I didn't want to move in my Senior year so looked into the possibility of staying in Jerome to finish High School. The Principal who had previously been my eighth grade teacher had offered to let me stay with them. Sarah had worked for A. I. Suggs previous to her marriage so they knew the family, but I found out that to reside in one school District and attend in another cost $9.00 a month tuition. This may not sound like much now but at that time it was a lot of money and during the depression. Dad hardly had nickels to give us with which to buy paper. As I recall we got 40 sheets for a nickel. So I moved to Wendell to finish my Senior Year. I had enough credits that I only had to take two classes and only attended afternoons. I went to Jerome and spent the last week of school activities staying with a classmate and friend Doris Coupe. I received my diploma which has meant so much to me.

The folks couldn't buy me any new clothes so Lawrence was working on a Ranch at Sugar Loaf. He bought me my first formal dress and new shoes. My dress was pink with a pink net ruffled cape. I've always been very grateful to Lawrence for this.

Glenn was always my life saver as many times when he had any money he'd give me a quarter or fifty cents. It saved the day and I didn't have to ask Dad. Once I needed a haircut and got one for twenty five cents with money Glenn gave me.

The ranch at Wendell known as the Prince place was a large ranch, and Clyde and Sarah were having difficulty finding something to rent, so Dad let them move into two rooms of the house and share the farming. I worked for Leroy Shoewiller but quit right after in December. The next Spring Sarah and Clyde rented a place one half mile South and moved to it.

I worked out when jobs were available. I picked cherries and peaches at Niagara Springs that summer. Six or seven of us girls, Verda, myself, Anna Laura Peterson, Erma and Pearl Gold took a camping outfit and camped in a tent during cherry and peach harvest. We had lots of fun and of course a few boys were around occasionally. Several Strickland families had moved to Wendell from Kansas and one night some of the boys, Jim, Garnie, Frances. Lawrence and Mark came and we all piled in cars and went to Banbury Natatorium. This was when I met Jim and we dated occasionally going to dances at Shoe String, West Point and other places that summer and fall.

The next summer in June the same bunch of girls went to Hagerman and lived in a house and picked strawberries. While working at this job I met a lady from Bliss, Emma Potter that owned a cafe at Bliss. We finished the strawberries just before the 4th of July and I was home. On the morning of July 4th Mrs. Potter called me and offered me a job in the cafe. I went on the 5th and worked there three months. It was a Greyhound Bus Stop and catered two meals a day to the buses. It was hard work and long hours. Wages were fifty cents a day or $3.00 a week.

After I quit that, I picked potatoes, topped onions, picked turkeys or anything I could find to do to make little money.

Jim had dated me all summer, even walking eighteen miles to Bliss once to see me.

In November he thought we should get married. We went to Gooding and were married November 19, 1930, by W. F. Cochran. Ruth Buckles, Verda Hansen and Bert Strickland were witnesses.

Our first home was the house three and one half miles west of Wendell on the Fowler place where Jim had farmed that summer. It wasn't much of a house and we didn't have much to start out with but we made it.

In February of 1936 we were able to get a FHA loan and rent 80 acres. This was the Swearingen place three miles west and three quarters North of Wendell. We farmed there two years. We had dear neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Buckley who helped me out many times. Jim didn't settle down to farming like he should have and neglected things a lot. If anyone said go fishing, off he'd go. It was quite a struggle.

Lila Mae our first child was born at the Wendell Hospital

January 19, 1936. That Fall we moved to the West Point area where Jim farmed with his brother Garnie.

Our second daughter Wilma Ilene was born June 21, 1937 at home.

Farm prices weren't too good and Jim had a little gypsy blood so he got restless and we sold out and moved to Cottage Grove, Oregon in December in 1938. Jim was employed by J. H. Chambers sawmill. He tired of that in three years and back to Idaho we came in October of 1942. No jobs were available and he could see the mistake of leaving a good job so we were Oregon bound again in less than six weeks. But it was War time and tires were rationed and we blew a tire on the trailer between Gooding and Bliss so there was nothing to do but return to Wendell as no tires could be bought. The Good Lord didn't want us to go to Oregon again, I guess.

Jim found employment with Bob Edman on a Ranch as an irrigator, one mile South and two East of Wendell. We resided there when twin boys Larry James and Gary Lee joined our family on July 8, 1943.

In the fall of 1944 Jim once again had the wandering fever so we moved to Ashland, Oregon and in the Spring to Bedford. He was employed at a sawmill there. We bought our first place there. Lila and Wilma attended Howard School.

Victor Gene was born at Medford October 9, 1945.

In the spring wanderlust hit Jim again and back to Idaho we moved. At this time we purchased a garage from Jack Davidson in Wendell and split it and added to the middle and built a house. Employment was scarce so Jim hired out to Bob Edman again and we moved to Camas Prairie for the summer and worked on a Ranch, then to Hagerman that Fall then Jim was employed by Knudsen Construction on the Lower and Upper Malad Power Plants.

In 1948 we moved to Camas Prairie to work for Harrisons then back to Wendell and then to Cottage Grove, Oregon. We stayed there until June 1953 and moved to Payette, Idaho. Jim found employment at the Boise Cascade sawmill and in December 1953 we moved to Emmett. We bought a home Northwest of town and resided in it until after Jim retired in 1971. We then sold it in 1978 and moved into a new mobile home on .09 acre of the land we owned where we now reside. We've been at Emmett thirty and half years which is a record because we had moved twenty two times in the first twenty two years of our married lives.

Our children;

Lila Mae 19 January 1937, Wendell, Idaho Wilma Ilene 21 June 1938, Wendell, Idaho

Larry James 8 July 1943, Wendell, Idaho Gary Lee 8 July 1943, Wendell, Idaho

Victor Gene 9 October 1945, Medford, Oregon

Lila married Charles Hagma at Portland, Oregon, divorced then married Gayle Walker in the U. S. Air Force. They lived at Beloxi, Mississippi. They were sent to Dormstadt, Germany then to High Wycombe, England where William James Walker was born 11 March 1968.

In the fall of 1969 Gayle was sent to Minot, North Dakota, the next year Jonathan Wynn Walker was born 8 September 1971. Gayle was sent to Taiwan where they spent one year and ten months and then were stationed at Vandenberg A. F. Base in California. He completed his twenty years in the air Force and soon after moved to Boise. They were divorced in less than a year. Lila and the boys lived in Boise until they married and they all relocated to Eugene Oregon.

Wilma married Donald Standifer June 21, 1956 at Emmett, Idaho. Three children were born to this union: Robert Allen 3 February 1957 at Boise. Cheryl Lynn 28 February 1950 at Boise. Darci Marie 2 September 1963 at Biloxi, Mississippi. In January of 1963 Don signed up for National Guard Schooling at Biloxi for ten months. After he completed that they moved back to Portland. They were divorced a few years later.

Wilma remarried Leroy Levtzan March 1969. Lee Ann Levtzan was born 15 June 1972. They were divorced two years later at Redmond, Oregon. The next year Leroy died from a heart attack. Wilma had already moved back to Emmett then to Boise then Oregon. She never remarried. She was a Federal employee.

Cheryl Marie married William (Bill) Pugh. A son Christopher William 11 April 1982 was born to this union. Another expected in April 1984.

Larry James married Katherine Sutton 10 April 1955 at Emmett. Children: Christina Marie 24 December 1968. Janice Louise 26 August, 1972. Loretta June 24 January 1976. Larry and Kathy lived in Payette, Rupert and now in Emmett, Idaho. He farmed, raised cattle and ran a Power Line Construction crew.

Gary Lee married Linda Aldape. No children, divorced, Married Shirley Morrison at Boise 14 April 1972. Children: Tyler Jim 21 January 1973. Divorced, Gary lived at Star, Idaho and was self-employed building fences and barns and such.

Victor Gene married Nichole Newell at Emmett. No children, divorced, Married Janet Sweetman 21 July 1973. Children: Jason Victor 8 February 1975, Joseph Kreg 7 November 1977.

Victor served time in the Air Force and was schooled for Air Traffic control. He worked as such for four and one half years in Salt Lake City then quit and did numerous other jobs but got back into Air Traffic Control in Boise in September 1982 where he was self-employed. He relocated to Eugene Oregon.

As I remember my Parents, Dad believed in honest, hard work and not much nonsense. He was always able to grub out a living for his family of 14. During the depression years it was very hard but not a one of us could ever say we had a hungry day in our lives. My memories of Dad are few. We children all respected him and knew his word was law. He tried hard to give us an education and a religious back ground. His New Year’s resolution every year would be to get us to Sunday School more. He did pretty well for a few weeks or a month then when the farm work started he couldn't get us there. After Delbert was old enough to drive, he and Ethel took us a lot. Dad always worked hard but did take time for recreation. He loved to fish and play Pinochle.

Mother was a quiet, shy person. She never was a leader when it came to going to church. She was always afraid she'd be asked to do something and was too timid to do it. She raised turkeys to help clothe the family. She did lots of sewing and remodeling to keep the family clothed. I can probably remember my first store bought coat came from turkey money.

She was a good cook, even though she always said she couldn't taste or smell and the folks always had lots of company. It was nothing to have an eighteen inch by twenty four inch sheet cake consumed in one day. Mother had a recipe for a plain cake that not one of the daughters has ever been able to produce in comparison. Mother was also a hard worker. She liked to garden and always had a big flower garden. Some of the older ones at home did the cooking and house care. Raising a family of twelve was a big job but she did the best she could. She taught us to cook and sew and we were never neglected. We all had to help.

We had good parents and all can be very thankful for that. It's hard to think back now and recall too much of their characters but we loved them and they were a blessing to us.