Unearthing a life.....

My parents and I, with our home in the background (1934). My First Grade class at Othello School (I'm second from the left, back row) .... Othello's Christian Church in the background (our family church for five generations).


OTHELLO
Othello as in Othello, Washington -- a town. My home of birth, though I was actually expelled from the womb in the Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, Washington -- April 21, 1934 -- round five o’clock in the morning.
The Othello of my early childhood (1934-1941) was mainly a town of dry-land farmers and railroaders. The Milwaukee Railroad maintained a track section crew, a train station, an ice house, switching yards, and a roundhouse on the western edge of town and was the major employer there. Most of the stores faced each other across a single block-length of Main Street. The sidewalks in this "business district" were made of wood planks. On the east end of the north side of this "block" was the U.S. Post Office. Mrs. Barton was the Post Mistriss and a pillar of our church. Knepper’s Variety store (the "Five & Dime") was in the middle of the block on the south side of the street. The Knepper’s had living quarters in the rear of the store building -- and were also pillars of our church. A dark and mysterious establishment, referred to, in tones of implied warning, as "The Pool Hall", was a couple doors west of Knepper’s. I think there was a grocery store and a meat market across the street from the "Five & Dime".
About a half mile east of town there was a little cluster of three houses with the usual accumulated variety of outbuildings. One was sometimes occupied, sometimes not. Another constituted the "farm" of my Grandpa, Charlie M. The last was the Gilbert Charles M. residence, my first home.
My earliest creditable memory would have to be of the day my folks brought Norma home from the hospital after her birth. That would have made me two years and nine months old. They had her in something with "bars" -- probably a crib -- that Neil and I could stand and look into. She had her face turned away from us and all I could see was the tiny back-end of a head covered with black hair. That’s it. My absolute earliest memory. Not "about" Othello, but "in and of" Othello.
When I lived there, Othello was maybe one-twentieth the size it is now -- "Population 310" sticks in my mind for some reason. From the vacant lot between our house and Grandpa’s, two dirt roads led into Othello (I guess it wasn’t actually a vacant lot. It seemed like a "big space" to me. It is now a street that runs north by south between the two houses.). Between the two roads was a "boardwalk" that also went to the edge of town. If memory serves me right, this boardwalk was made two planks wide and about halfway to town it had a bridge where it crossed a little swale (i.e., dip in the terrain). The planks were old and weathered and splintery.
One day I had walked into town with Grandma -- probably to get something at the grocery store. While we were gone, Neil got hold of some sort of grease from Grandpa’s tool shed and applied it to the boardwalk near this little bridge.
On the walk home from town, I ran ahead of Grandma and apparently slipped on Neil’s "grease spot" and fell on the planks, catching myself on the palm of my right hand. Shrieks of PAIN! I’d filled my hand with wood slivers. One hundred and thirty slivers according to Grandpa’s "post-operative" count! I assume that Mom and Grandma Lena M. must have pulled out all they could get a hold of, but I don’t actually remember that part of it. I do remember that evening sitting on my Grandpa’s lap while he worked slivers out of my hand with the small blade of his pocket knife. Then he coated my hand with his personally concocted "drawing salve" and bandaged it up. We had nightly sliver pickin’ sessions for about a week.
Somehow -- and I don’t have the foggiest notion why -- his "drawing salve" would purportedly draw the slivers back to the surface where he could see and extract them. Grandpa Charlie made this salve himself, as well as a couple other salves. How? I dunno! But my Mom, who was not a zealous fan of Gramps, swore by his salves and always used them on us for any kind of minor wound.
Grandpa also did family shoe repair out in his tool shed. A wonderful iron stand with changeable iron shoe forms....awls and big needles and new heels and scraps of leather. I recall watching him put new soles and heels on various and sundry family shoes -- and sewing leather patches over holes. Can’t say his work was pretty, but it was utilitarian. He wasn’t big on buying new things if old things could be "fixed". I think my mother thought he was somewhat of a penny-pinching miser. Probably just major frugality born of the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
He shaved with a safety razor that used a double-edged razor blade. Then he had another little box-like gizmo that he dropped the used blade into and honed a new edge on it by turning a little handle. His tool shed had bins full of old beat-up tools and a vast variety of reclaimed nuts, bolts, nails, and other used hardware. He never threw anything away. Neither did Dad, come to think of it.
When I knew him, Gramps worked at the Milwaukee Railroad roundhouse as an engine oiler. The roundhouse was, in fact, round. It held a huge round pit with a raised section of train tracks bridging the pit (a turntable). You’d move a steam locomotive onto the "bridge", then the bridge would rotate in the pit and turn the locomotive around so it could go the other way. Steam engines worked between Othello and Avery, Idaho. From Othello to Seattle they used electric engines (kind of like huge cable cars). I once rode an engine around the turntable in the roundhouse. Anyway, Gramps oiled steam engines. It was filthy work. His overalls and gloves and cap were always soaked with oil. I also got to watch him "wash" his work clothes. There was a small pit (with a thick trapdoor lid) that was used to steam clean engine parts. He’d throw his work clothes in the pit and blast the oil out of them with steam. As a child, I found this a noisy and exciting process.
It occurs to me that I spent a large part of my remembered childhood standing around watching my grandparents do this and that. But now I’ve totally lost track of my topic, which was Othello not Grandpa.
Recreational opportunities were spare in Othello, at least in the eyes of a small child. There was a city park on the eastern border of town. The park is still there, but now it’s "downtown" and bigger and better parks occupy "further out" locations. I have vague memories of attending large picnics there -- probably town, railroad, or church functions. What I recall most about that park was the wooden water tank perched high on seemingly spindly wooden legs. The tank leaked continuously, staining its sides and supports with dampness and moss. The structure of the underside of the tank was home to a large flock of pigeons. In the winter, huge icicles hung from the water tank. HUGE icicles! Maybe fifteen feet long.
Airplanes would occasionally land in a pasture a few hundred yards north of our house. These were few and far between and usually bi-planes (two stacked wings) with open cockpits. For a price, these "aviators" would take you up for a buzz around the area.
Once gypsies came to town, a slow procession of horse-drawn gypsy "house-wagons" coming out of the flatlands to the east (from the general direction of Ritzville, the County Seat). They caused a nervous stir amongst the Othello merchants who were of the popular opinion that gypsies would steal you blind -- especially the women in their long, flowing, volumous skirts, suspected of being cleverly designed for the concealment of purloined merchandise.
Grandma Katie R. also lived in Othello. Her house was along the southern edge of town -- a "white" house with a picket fence. Although I don’t remember them being there, the twins (Uncle Les and Aunt Lela) would have been high school teenagers during those years in the late 1930’s. What I do remember about that house is the kitchen and watching Grandma R. make homemade egg noodles and from-scratch Angel Food cakes.