My Childhood Memories Of Life On The Family Farm

First, I will give you a little background about out family. My Grandfather, William Harrison Padham and my Grandmother, Mary Morice Saunders were married in Barnes, North Dakota August 24the, 1882.

Mary and her family came to America as immigrants from Scotland on one of the first ships to come to this country. The name of the ship was the Pursue.

William Padam came from Maine. He was of Scotch-Irish Decent.

William and Mary had four children. Harry Padham was married to Mae Marvin and they had three daughters. Wilson Padham married Mabel Skinner and they had five children. Bella Padham Married Frank Valentine and they had one son, Robert. Frank died when Robert was three years old. Aunt Bella then met and married Fred Sargent, who was a widower with six children to raise. Bella helped raise three of Fred's children. My mother, Alice Padham, was the youngest of the children and married my father Philip Hilpert and they had the three of us: Fred, Evelyn and Beulah.

Grandma Mary had one son, Bob, who was born out of wedlock. He took the family name of Saunders. He married Grace and they had two sons, Bobby and Jackie.

In those days the youngest daughter was expected to live at home and take care of her parents.

I really didn't know that Bob was my real Uncle until I was about 16 years old.

When Grandma Mary and her parents immigrated to America, Grandma Mary was engaged to be married and very pregnant before they left Scotland. She protested loudly about going with them, but her father insisted not knowing she was pregnant. Later, her father felt very bad about making her come with them. She had Robert and he was raised by her parents as their own for in those days it was considered a big sin to have a baby out of wedlock. So, people never knew about it.

Grandmother Mary Saunders family settled in Centrailia, Wa. I know that she had two brothers and a sister who died young from T.B. and were buried at Mt. View Cemetery just out side of Centrailia. Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of the family are all buried there.

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When Grandma and Grandpa padham moved to Centralia from Lincoln Creek, Harry and Mae stayed and worked the land that had belonged to his folks. Harry and Mae had three children and when the youngest one was in Jr. High and the two older girls were in High School, Harry bought some land down the road from the old farm. He built a new home and the old farm was sold.

Grandma and Grandpa gave Wilson a farm on Lincoln Creek, which was Farther up from them.

The brothers, Harry and Wilson, jointly owned a threshing machine and went from farm to farm to cut hay. After the hay was dry, the threshing machine would pick up the dry grain and separate the stalks from the seeds which would then be put in gunny sacks. Then a baling machine would come next and pick up the hay, which could be wheat or oats, and the hay would be made into bales.

Aunt Bella graduated from Centrailia High School and in those days you only needed a high school diploma to be a teacher. She taught at the first school at Lincoln Creek.

She later gave up teaching to become the first Post Mistress of the little town of Satsop, Wa. She was still Post Mistress at the time of her death from breast cancer, at age forty eight

My Grandma Padham lived to be ninty and Grandpa Padham lived to be eighty four.

My mother, Alice Padham, also graduated from Centrailia High School and at the age of nine teen married Philip Hilpert.

My Parents built a good sized farm house on forty acres, twenty of which was farm land and twenty hill timber land, in Bircoda, Wa.. They leased some more land from his folks who originally home steaded the land.

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Between our house and the neighbor's house was a wooded area. Dad built us kids a little log house with a dirt floor. Fred would build a fire in a circle of rocks and we would bake and eat potatoes.

My sister and I would take walks with our mother who would pick mushrooms and wild nettles for greens. The nettles were different, but quite tasty and would also give you a pleasant stinging feeling. Mother would trim them with scissors.

When my mother and father got married they had $800.00 and some acreage on which to build a house. This was given to him by his father.

The house they built was quite large. A big front room with a fire place and French doors going to the dining room. In the dining room below the big window was a dowry box which contained table linens and other nice things. Mother had a beautiful china closet with glass doors. In it she kept her cut glass and other things. There was also a drawer for silver and one for other things.

The kitchen had a small breakfast area and a big iron stove. The top held pots, pans and lids. Mother would put the bread dough pan on the top part where the bread would rise very nicely.

From the kitchen you could go directly into the bathroom, pretty much like the ones of today. Next to the bathroom was the guest bed room and a very large closet Mother used for storage.

You got upstairs from the dining room. There were three bedrooms up stairs The largest one was for my mother and father, one for us girls and one for our brother. There was also a large attic where my sister and I played with our toys.

Every year, Mother and Dad, would take us to the Caulets river, up by Kelso Wa., where they had a run of smelt. These were small fish that they would scoop up in buckets. Mother fried them up and we had a good feed and what was left over Dad would salt down and put on paper up in the attic rafters to dry. They were very good, like eating jerky.

Our house had a covered leeway at the back with a woodshed attached. On the left side of the shed was the cellar which held all the canned fruits, vegetables, jellies, jams, relishes, etc. and a big barrel of pickles. At the far end was the root house where potatoes and other vegetables were stored.

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All three of us kids went to the Oakview School on the prairie just north of Centrailia. When we first started to go to school we had to walk a mile to catch the bus. Sometimes we walked the railroad tracks because our neighbors, the Godreons, had a mean bull who was always breaking through the fence and if he spotted us he would come after us. Dad would get pretty upset with the neighbors and their bull.

The second year I went to school, the bus came further our way and would pick us up in front of the house. The bus would be filled up by the time it picked us up and I always ended up sitting on someone's lap. Since I was the youngest at that time and my name was Beulah, the kids would all sing Bula, Bula. I had a sense of humor and thought this was funny. You probably never heard about this before.

My sister was called fatty because she was a little chunky and very shy. My brother smacked more than one kid for picking on her.

The bus driver dropped off the younger kids at the country store, which was a short walk to school, and took the older ones into Centrailia to the high school.

With the money we earned, we could buy cookies and candy at the store. The cookies we really liked were the pink and white marshmallow ones. They had marshmallow and coconut on the top and cookie on the bottom. Bet I've made you hungry for one.

Waiting for the bus after school, us girls would pick violets, Indian onion flowers and jenny jumpup's from a big meadow by the store and present them to our Mother when we got home.

I remember many good times with my mother and father. There were family picnic's and taking trips to the Pacific ocean, where we would dig for clams and gooy-ducks and would always bring home some crabs.

I have especially good memories of Christmas and Easter. At Christmas time, Dad would take us up on the hill across the railroad tracks, where we picked out a six foot Christmas tree. It would go to the ceiling in the front room. Us girls would help decorate it with beautiful ornaments. Some were angels which came from Germany.

I still had a lot of the ornament's until we moved to California. We left them upstairs in our old house and was never able to recover them.

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One Christmas, Dad dressed up like Santa Clause. My sister and I were still young enough to believe in Santa Claus, but our brother was convinced there was no real Santa. So without anyone knowing it, he set out to prove it was Dad under the disguise. While Dad was no doubt getting ready to play Santa, Mother had us children stand around the piano and sing Christmas songs while she played the piano.

Pretty soon the door bell rang. (Sorry, no door bell.) He knocked on the door. Mother opened the door and with a big Ho! Ho! Ho! Dad came in with a bag of goodies for each of us.

Then Fred almost ruined it by grabbing Santa's beard and saying "I knew it was you, Dad!" I'm sure he knew better but just had to prove it to himself.

Dad was a very gentle man, so he didn't get angry. We had a wonderful Christmas as usual, with lots of gifts, candy, nuts and oranges.

On my fifth birthday my folks gave me a tricycle. It was the delight of my young life.

On Easter our folks would take us on a hike through the woods and up the hill where all the timber was. It was quite a hike for us kids. I could hardly make it over the logs that were on the path and had to be helped over. We saw a large wild cat up a tree. He was more scared of us than we were of him.

Finally, we came to a large gully. It wasn't quite a valley so this is as close as I can come to describing it. It was full of wild white Easter lilies. It was such a pretty and peaceful spot. I think it may have been Mother and Dad's special place. Mother had made a picnic basket and we all had a nice lunch.

Every year as long as I can remember the Padham's had family reunions out at Borest Park just west of Centrailia. It was a gala affair. Everyone brought picnic food. There were lots of cousins, so we had lots of fun.

There was a little store in the middle of the park where we bought pop, candy and ice-cream. I always had a dixie cup half vanilla and half orange sherbet. My favorite pop, which only came in glass bottles in those days, was Root Beer or Orange Crush.

The Hilpert family also had some family reunions at Schafer's Park, which only had a few tables and a swimming hole.

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The park was about a mile from where we lived. My Aunt Helen and Uncle Herbert owned the land. Many years later when they were in their eighties they came from Denver, where they then lived, back to Washington and gave the park either to Centrailia or to the County. I'm not sure which one. My Aunt Helen had arthritis and was in a wheel chair It was dedicated in their name and there was quite a ceremony.

In 1932 when I was nine years old, our mother passed away. She was only thirty-six. She had an operation in May of that year and six months later, some time in November, Mother came around our square dining room table and hit her side on the corner.

My sister and I had already gone to bed when we heard a loud scream. We knew that something bad had happened. She was in such pain that Dad didn't know what to do. The Dr. who had operated on her was in Seattle. By morning she was bleeding so bad that Dad called an ambulance to take her to the hospital.

They sent two motorcycle cops to go in front and lead the ambulance to the hospital with sirens going. One of the cops's was a good friend of the folks.

They packed Mother in ice but she bled to death. She had adhesions that had torn when she hit the table.

My Aunt Bella had put us girls down in our guest room to sleep that night, and when they came home from the hospital, Dad came to our room and threw himself down between us girls and cried his heart out, telling us our Mother had passed away. It makes me cry to think about it and it's something I'll never forget, how heart-broken he was.

She had one of the largest funerals in Centrailia up until that time. I don't know about since then. The mortuary was filled and people were standing in the street.

After Mother died, we had a couple of housekeepers. The first one had a six year old child that was very spoiled. She would bite and scratch us girls. So Dad let her go. Then he hired eighty year old Mrs. Connel. She was so nice, we just loved her. She gave me a beautiful engraved silver bracelet. When I was in high school I wore it one time and it was stolen. If I hadn't been fooling around on the bus it wouldn't have happened. I regretted wearing it to school. Since it was silver who ever took it wasn't about to give it back.

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Dad would make apple cider vinegar to use for making pickles. Just outside our house between the woodshed and cellar, we had a grape arbor. Dad would pick the grape leaves and line the bottom of a wooden barrel, then add a layer of cucumbers and rock salt and dill weed. This was done in layers all the way to the top. He added some alum and vinegar to cover it all. This was left to stand until the pickles were made. He made the best dill pickles I have ever tasted. Now you know how to make dill pickles.

We had every kind of animal imaginable on the farm. Fred had rabbits for F.F.A., Regular turkeys and white turkeys, banty hens and roasters, white and brown chickens and Somme guinea hens, sheep, cows, horses and pigs.

Dad bought five ganders, but that didn't last very long, thanks to me. I was about five years old, my brother and sister were in school, so I had the run of the yard. Mother told me not to go out the back gate because the ganders would chase me! So, of course, I had to see what would happen if I did. Well, I found out. I opened the gate and all of them came after me and I was yelling and screaming which brought Mother running with the broom to chase them away! I got a good scolding and was sent to the house. That was the end of the geese. Dad got rid of them.

We had cherry trees down both sides of the front yard and along side if the house. I could climb every tree on the place. Mother was always afraid I was going to fall and break something, but I never did. I was a typical tomboy. Mother called me Skeeter.

Down behind the big barn was a very large orchard with all kinds of fruit. A couple of the trees were always loaded with small very sweet green gage plums. Dad would let the pigs out to run when the fruit was ripe. I can remember my brother running out the barn door to shake the trees and running back to the barn before the pigs got there. When they were hungry they could be mean, especially the Bore pigs. Dad had two that were very mean.

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Sometimes Bums would come down from the rail road tracks for a hand out. When the came begging Dad would have them chop wood and Mother would make them sandwiches.

One day when I was very young Mother and I were alone in the house when a man came banging on the door. She always kept the doors locked when we were alone. He almost knocked the door down. Mother called the Sheriff and he asked if she knew how to shoot a gun. She said she had a shotgun and knew how to shoot it. He told her to shoot to kill if he broke the door down. Finally he gave up and left and went back to the road. A short time later the police came and picked him up. They told Mother that he had escaped from a mental Institution.

When I was four or five my Father would take me to the fields with him while Mother went to town. I would either ride on the seeder box beside him or ride on the back of the horse. Dad had two workhorses, Nig and Dick. One was black and the other was brown. Bet you can guess what name went with which horse.

Our garden was down by the river and as soon as my sister and I were old enough to know the difference between a weed and a veggie we were hired to do the weeding for ten cents a row and those were some long rows. It did keep us out of Mothers hair and out of mischief. Ten Cents a row seemed like a lot of money in those days. My brother Fred did the hoeing between the rows after they were weeded. We also picked up potatoes after Dad plowed them up. Fred picked up the big ones, my sister Evelyn picked up the medium sized ones and I picked up the little ones, which were fed to the pigs.

This always took place in the summer, so after we were through for the day, Dad would take us to the river for a swim. Mother would fix a picnic lunch and we would all have a great time. My Father was a good swimmer. Dad taught my brother to swim by telling my brother to get on the diving board and then pushed him in! Seems like a hard way to learn to swim! Fred learned to swim in a hurry because the water was very deep. I'm sure Dad would have rescued him had he failed to swim. After that Fred never had any trouble swimming.

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Us girls had water wings that kept us afloat. Grandma Padham had us take lessons years later but neither one of us was very good at swimming, just good enough to keep from drowning.

One of my cousins drowned in the same Scukumchuck river that we swam in. Aunt Selma's youngest daughter, Lenore, who was very pretty got caught in a whirlpool and they couldn't pull her out. It was just down from where we all went swimming. Dad cautioned us never to go near it. It was also the spot where my father drowned. [Note]

Our Mother was a very good seamstress. She made most of our dresses and under skirts. She also did a lot of hand embroidery.

Our Folks had many friends. There are two couples that come to mind. The men were cousins and both owned Portrait Studios. The prices had their studio in Chehalis and the Fickles had theirs in Centrailia. Us kid called the Prices, who were childless, Auntie and Uncle Every time they came to see us, they brought us kids a bag of candy bars and gum.

Every Saturday night when the weather was good, they came to play cards with Mother and Dad. Mrs. Fickle was high strung and usually ended up getting in a fight with her husband after a little bit of wine.

Dad made his own grape wine which was only drunk on special occasions, and then sparingly. Unfortunately, my mother was allergic to grape juice and couldn't drink it.

Sometime after Mother passed away, Mrs. Fickle committed suicide. She shot herself.

Dad belonged to the Odd Fellows and Mother belonged to the Rebecca's. Dad also belonged to the Eagles Lodge. They had a band that would march in parades. They had uniforms and caps. Mother marched with the Women's Auxiliary and they wore blue and white uniforms

Dad played the french horn when he marched in the parades with the Eagles Lodge. Some years later when Fred was about fourteen Dad wanted him to take lessons on the french horn, but it had disappeared and Dad figured it had been stolen. Fred ended up playing the coronet.

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My sister took lessons on the piano and I took violin lessons. My cousin Lona and her husband who lived in Olympia, Wa taught us. Lona was Aunt Selmas oldest daughter.

Every year Centrailia had Pioneer Days where everyone dressed in old time clothes. There were horses and hay wagons for the kids to ride. They had floats and live bands. I was in it a couple of times.

Grandma and Grandpa Hilpert lived near us out by Bucoda, Wa. They were early settlers and homesteaded government land. They built their house and barn near the Scukumchuck river.

David and Mary Magdalene had eight children. The children's names were Rynhold, Otto, Philip, Selma, Pauline, Hannah, Hattie and Helen. Philip and Helen were the youngest.

Grandpa Hilpert was twenty years older than Grandmother. He was a great big rugged, ornery man or so I've been told. Dad was the youngest and Grandpas favorite son. His brothers were jealous of him. The reason my Dad's eyes bulged a bit was that his brothers tried to smother him. His Mother came in just in time to save him.

My Grandmother Hilpert was the typical old country grandmother. She was short and stocky and wore her hair in a big knot on top of her head. She was very gentle and nice.

Grandma made the best German coffeecake one ever tasted. My sister Evelyn ran away to Grandma's house when she was about three years old, long blond curls flying, off to have coffee and coffee cake with Grandma. It scared my Mother, for it was quite a ways for a little girl to go. So Mother got a switch and switched her all the way home.

After Grandpa passed away she lived on the farm for several years and then later she lived with Hattie, one of her daughters, in Centrailia until she passed away at the age of ninety-four.

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At that time there were Indians living along the Scukumchuck river. My Father went to school in a log house across the river where the schoolmaster was very strict. There were only eight children that went to the school. Dad played with the Indian children.

Dad's two oldest sisters Helen and Hannah were sent to Germany for a musical education. When they returned home they married brothers Fred and Herbert Schafer.

Grandma and Grandpa Hilpert's house was about three-quarters of a mile from my folks house near the river. They had a three or four-bedroom house, which they built.

My grandma loved lilacs. There were several bushes by the house There were light lavender, dark purple and white lilacs. The rest of the yard was full of daffodils and narcissus. She would let my sister and I pick all that we wanted to take to school.

Off to the side of the house was the separator shed. Where Dad would separate the milk. Cream from the milk and whole milk was sent by truck to the Dairy Gold place in Centrailia. The skim milk was fed to the pigs and calves.

Mother would take off the cream from the whole milk that was used at our house The cream was then placed in a gallon jug with a big wooden paddle. Three was a handle on the jug that turned the paddle and eventually you would have butter for the table. The buttermilk we drank and Mother made biscuits, hot cakes, etc.

On our birthdays Mother would make a delicious white cake. She would frost the cake entirely with whipped cream and put candles on the cake, This was our special treat. The cakes were so good but a lot cholesterol, I'm sure! Everything that we ate had a lot of cholesterol!

The large family barn, which was quite close to the river, had stalls for about twenty milk cows and four stalls for the horses. We had lots of cats. They usually had their kittens in the horses hay bin, as it was nice and comfy. Three was some born and Dad said I could have the pick of the litter. I picked a little orange one that I named Peggy. I took her to our house to raise.

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In the barn was a big hay rake that took the hay up to the top story of the barn. One side of the barn was wide enough that a truck or machinery could be stored. Bales of hay were stacked along the sides. and several barrels of cider that later became vinegar. Dad had a cider press, which was used to squeeze the juice out of the apples, then the juice would go into a bucket and be poured into barrels and be sealed with a wooden lid. About half way down the barrel was a plug that could be pulled out to test to see if the apple cider was turning to vinegar. We would see Dad test it every once in awhile and even though we weren't supposed to the three of us would test it too.

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My sister and I did the cooking as best as we knew how. Every cow was sold except for one Jersey named Betsy who was our pet. Our Brother was supposed to milk her, but he went off to a friend's house and Grandpa was too old to do the milking. He didn't know what to do about the situation, so I said: "I can milk her, Grandpa." If you don't get all of the milk the cow will dry up. I think I did a pretty good job for a ten-year-old.

The next morning my sister and I got a brilliant idea. We got Nig the horse up to the fence and climbed on. Evelyn guided him by his mane. We headed for the barn across the field. We decided it would be fun to go across the river and snitch fruit from Otto's orchard. He had great big reddish pears and big yellow plums. When we had our fill, we headed back across the river. My sister didn't do as good a job of steering on the way back and headed Nig right through the low branches of the fruit trees in the orchard on our side of the river. I was so scared. I thought we would be swept off of Nigs back, but we flattened ourselves out and made it ok.

We went back to our house and got off by the fence, and who was three to greet us but Grandpa! Was he upset! He told us in no uncertain terms that he had better not catch us on the horse again. Good thing he didn't know where we had gone.

By this time I think he had had it with all three of us. So my step-cousin Velma and her husband Ray came to stay with us. She had a twin sister named Thelma.

By this time the Padham's had gotten together and decided that Uncle Harry would be our guardian. Aunt Bella would take us two girls and Fred would go with Harry to work on the farm.

My Aunt Bella had breast cancer and wouldn't have an operation. Instead she went to some Quack Dr. who said he could cure her. Of course, he couldn't. My sister was sent to live at Grandma Padhams. She was at the age where it was hard for Aunt Bella to keep track of her.

I was Aunt Bella's favorite niece from the time I was little and she was my special Aunt. I loved her deeply.

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I lived with Aunt Bella a total of three years. I helped around the house and with the cooking as she was steadily growing worse. Her son, Bob, was also old enough to help out. My step cousin Mable and her husband came to lend a hand at the postoffice. I just loved Mable. Although she had no children, she was like a mother to me.

My Aunt Bella passed away and my Grandparents came and took me home to live with them and my sister Evelyn. Grandpa passed away when I was a senior in high school. I lived with Grandma until I got married at nineteen. Evelyn got married about a year later.

I loved my Grandmother so much. She was a Dear little person and a good Christian lady. She was so good to us.

I was raised in four different families: My folks, Aunt Bella's, Uncle Harry's and Grandma Padham's.

I hope you have enjoyed reading these memories as much as I have enjoyed writing them down for you.

SignedBeulah Hilpert Kinsey, Brasier

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