Today is The Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, All Souls / All Saints Day. The day we celebrate family members who have left this world for the next.
Category Archives: Maternal
Gunnison – 1918
History is full of stories about cities that sequestered themselves during times of plague. In recent history, one of those cities was Gunnison, Colorado, which “declared a quarantine against all the world” during the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918.
Wilma Hughes: A Graduation Flood
There were 208 students in her graduating class. Wilma kept her tassel, foregoing the 25 cent refund for its return.
Mildred Carpenter: School and Marriage
When I first entered high school, the principal had us write down what we would like to do when we graduated. I said “be a teacher.” Three weeks later I was in charge of the study hall…
Wilma Hughes: The War Ends, and Love Begins
I spent the summer of 1947 at Grandmother Purdy’s house at Ocean Park. What a wonderful summer it was, filled with fun and romance…
Wilma Hughes: The House that Bribes Built
The war was still going on and things were hard to get. Dad bought land on Cascade Way in Longview to build a house on… Building supplies were scarce, but many things were found because Dad being in the grocery business…
Wilma Hughes: A World at War
For me, the War Years were the most exciting time. Sure, sacrifices had to be made on the home front, but people pulled together.
Wilma Hughes: Boys, Scouts and a World on Edge
I joined the Girl Scouts when I was nine years old. My troop leader was a Cowlitz Indian woman named Maude Waunassay Snyder. She was a short, round lady and lived in a river house at the Cowlitz River in West Kelso.
Wilma Hughes: Vacations and the Great Depression
Sometimes on Saturdays we would put on a variety act; she would dance and I would sing, and we would charge the neighborhood kids two cents admission. Carol and I would divide up the money and buy penny candy at the little store up the street.
Mildred Carpenter: Adventures with Nella
I used to wash dishes at Gram’s hotel [the Sportsman’s Hotel] for a nickel, and then spent it for a Hershey candy bar, so Gram got her dishes done pretty cheap.
Mildred Lucille Carpenter Begins
I was born at noon on September 25, 1908, and arrived before the doctor did. I think my mother was angry at me all of her life for that…
Wilma Hughes: Seaside and a Hobo Visit
My next memory was of us living in a tiny house with a dirt floor… with kerosene lamps, and baths in a washtub placed near the wood-fueled cookstove.
Wilma Hughes: Starting life near our hunting lodge
“My earliest childhood memory was when I must have been two or three years of age. It was when my family lived in Colorado.”