Attacked by Wild Longhorn Cows

Sometimes at night, my mom would tell me stories about when she was a little girl, living in Texas. 

One of the stories she would tell me was about the wild Longhorn cattle chasing the buckboard when she went to school.

Since Mom was born in 1903, and lived in the backwoods of Texas, the children were taken to school with a horse and buckboard. 

They had to go through the cattle range to get to the schoolhouse, and sometimes, the longhorns would see the buckboard and chase after it.   The driver would then whip the horses into a headlong run; but the longhorns were very fast, too, and would race alongside of the buckboard, and try to attack it and turn it over.

All of the poor little children would of course be terrified, and hiding on the floor of the wagon, fearing for their very lives.

The driver carried a big bullwhip to fight off the longhorns with, but that usually just made them more angry and determined to tip the buckboard over. 

Eventually, they would get tired of chasing the wagon, and the children would make it safely to school; but this was an occurrence that could happen anytime, so the children were always on the watch for the longhorns.

Mom was an excellent storyteller, so  I could vividly imagine the herd of longhorn cattle, wild-eyed, and frothing at the mouth, chasing after the buckboard, while the driver bravely tried to fight them off with his bullwhip. 

Many years later, Robin confided to me that Grandma had told her the same stories when she was little; and that is why, to this very day; Robin and I are both terrified of cows ! ! 

Nyla and I Repair a Leaking Radiator Hose

Checking all your belts and hoses is a seriously good idea, especially if it is an older car. I have had those things go out, and in the middle of nowhere, and that is when you are sometimes least prepared. 

I was on a trip to California from Spokane to take my friend Nyla down to see her mom who lived in California. 

I had just replaced the head-gaskets on the 71 Datsun pickup engine we were driving, and the garage was supposed to have checked everything out before  I got it back.     They didn't.

We had made it into our second day, and were winding through the mountains of central Oregon when the radiator hose broke and started spurting everywhere.  Fortunately, we had brought along extra gallon jugs of water, so we let it cool down and refilled the radiator.

 

Now.... how to patch that hose ?? 

Imagine------ two little old ladies, out on a back highway, 20 miles to the next town. 

Then,  we dug through everything that was in the back of the Datsun pickup, looking for something, anything, that would work temporarily, so we could limp into a mechanic shop.  

Finally, we found an old shower curtain (to this day I have NO idea why that thing was in the back of my pickup ? ?), and we took scissors out of my knitting bag, and cut a nice piece of shower curtain off and wrapped it tightly around the radiator hose.

Next, I took some of my knitting yarn, and we wrapped that around and around the shower curtain and put some good "granny knots" in it. Away we went, praying we made it to the next town.

Yes, it worked, we made it to the next town, and you should have been there to see the look on that mechanic's face when he opened the hood and looked at our repair job.  

 I know that he must have chuckled about our shower curtain "fix-it" for the rest of the afternoon...

Why I started being a slow driver (when my kids were little)

Losing your brakes is NEVER a good thing !
I have not had brakes go out on me for many years, and hope it never ever happens again.
It is one of the scariest things that can happen with a mechanical malfunction, or, at least that is how I feel about it. I have had an angel looking out for me on the occasions that the brakes did go out, and it seriously made me reconsider speed when I was driving after that happened.


Way back when my kids were little, we had an old 1959 Pontiac Catalina station wagon. That wagon was built for power and speed, and it would easily pass 100 mph on the speedometer if I wasn't paying close attention. ( and even when I was paying attention. That old wagon was just plain FUN to drive ! )

This particular day, I had my kids in the back seat, and we were hurrying to Sandpoint from Bonners Ferry (about a 35 mile drive. ).  

I was pushing close to at least 80 most of the way (and we were all happily singing songs together as we sped along).
When I got to Sandpoint, I decided to take the back road into town, for some unknown reason, and turned off of the highway before I got to town. 
As I was doing that , and pulling up to the stop sign at Boyer to make a left turn, the brakes went out just as I got to the intersection of the two county roads !
Thank goodness, I was almost stopped, and we just slowly cruised through the intersection and gradually stopped since it was a flat gravel road.
When I could actually breathe again, we walked to a house nearby and called for help . (That's what people did before cell phones)


After that experience, I realized just how much I had jeopardized my children's lives by driving that irresponsibly; and how easily we could have all been dead if the brakes had gone out on one of the sharp corners that I had careened around on my trip down the highway.
I said a thankful prayer to God for looking after us, and made a promise to drive at a safe speed from then on.

Daddy's Wonderful Radio.

When I was a little girl, my dad had what I thought was the most amazing radio in the world.
 It had the regular AM stations, but it also had a shortwave band. Sometimes he would turn on the shortwave and we listened to what sounded like Chinese, and other strange and wonderful languages. 
Mostly, it wasn't anything that we could understand, but it was sure a lot of fun listening to it anyway.
The radio had a big bright green "eye" that would get wider and narrower as he tuned it in to the station. Sometimes, the radio made really weird sounds as he was finding the station and getting it tuned in.

My favorite singer was (of course) Roy Rogers, and I loved it when the announcer at KSPT, our local radio station, would say that they were "calling Roy Rogers up to the mic".
 I envisioned the radio station with all the singers just sitting around there in chairs, waiting to be "called up to the mic".

One day, my dad had to go to the station, and asked if I wanted to go along.    I was beside myself with joy !    Roy Rogers ! 
I was going to see Roy Rogers, and maybe even watch him sing.
I could hardly wait to get there ! ! 

When we got there, we walked inside, and I looked around, but there were NO singers, and NO Roy Rogers, anywhere. 
Finally, I tugged on Daddy's sleeve, and whispered "Where is Roy Rogers at ?"
He gave me a blank look, so I had to explain that I wanted to meet Roy Rogers and watch him sing. How disappointed I was when Watt Moreland ( the announcer)  gently explained to me that none of the singers were really there, and he was just playing records.

Radio was never the same for me again.....

How this is going to work...

My son, Tony (Ant'ny) asked me to write down some of the family history that I can remember being told by my parents (Floyd and Winnie Smith), and stories from when I was growing up in Sandpoint. 

I am also going to add stories from when my children were little . (Yes, Robin, the Firecracker Story will be in here somewhere...)

I want to be able to illustrate with photographs when we have some that will go along with the story, so I have asked my son Tony to set us up a website where we can all upload some of the old family pictures, and we can use those here in the blog. 

Stories will be in no particular order, just as things come to mind, I will write them down on here. Maybe even family recipes, like my Mom's wonderful potato salad (which I have passed off as mine for the last half-century). 

The reason for doing this as a blog is so that people can comment on the stories, and it will then become an interactive family history. 

Any suggestions for stories or other input would also be great, since I am pretty new at this whole thing.

A little family history , first...

I was born and raised in North Idaho. Well, almost born in Idaho. My mom was just about 40 when I was born, and she also had a tumor in her stomach, and it was growing right along with me; so the doctors didn't think she would be able to carry me and survive. She had the best doctor she could have, and that was in Spokane, WA; so I was actually born in Spokane, but my parents lived near Bonners  Ferry, in an old ranch house, at the time.

Mom and Daddy went through the  Great Depression while living at the ranch in Paradise Valley, and they would tell me stories of the hardships of the depression. They had a milk cow, and would carry the milk down an old back road (no longer used) that went into the town of Bonners Ferry, and came out near where the old Southside School was at.  They would either sell or trade the milk for other items that people were selling and they needed.
I remember they said that many days the only shared a little bit of bread between them for the day's food.
Both of my folks were excellent shots with a rifle, and hunted deer for meat, and shared it with other families who had none. They were considered such good hunters that the Game Warden would give them extra bullets to bring home deer for other hungry families in the area.

When I was almost three, my folks moved to Sandpoint because my dad worked for Northern Lights, Inc., and he was one of the very first linemen for the newly formed Rural Electrical Co-op. Our REA was one of the very first ones in northern Idaho, and Mom and Daddy had both worked together getting the rural farmers signed up for electric power.

My family owned a little grocery store, The Ella Avenue Grocery, and together with Bill Bailey (who was like a grandfather to me), they provided the people in the area with a convenient place to shop, for many years. We lived next door to the store, and the Baileys lived next door to us.
I attended schools in Sandpoint, belonged to the Bonner County Horseman's Association, and rode in the mounted Drill Team; and enjoyed trailriding , swimming, and fishing in the summer.

All in all, you could not ask for a much better childhood, and a nicer place to grow up at than Sandpoint.

This is my dad and I in the driveway of the old ranch at Paradise Valley.