Recollections of Ruth Marie Bryant
1966
April 25, 1893 - October 1969
My earliest recollections are of a farm home in Kansas. And of the heat in summer and the deep snow in winter.
Once I remember a heavy snow that drifted so deep that my father and two brothers had to put up a wire between the barn and the house to keep from getting lost while the blizzard lasted. Then they shoveled out paths. I do not recall whether the storm lasted very long or not. But my impression is that it didn't.
Many years later I received a letter from a cousin there who said that she had just planted her garden and that was the first of March. So altho the winter storms were bad, evidently they did not last long.
Once my father went to town and during his stay in town a heavy storm came up followed by a blizzard. The wind drifted the snow so badly that he lost his way home. Fences were drifted over and he couldn't see the road. He kept trying to keep the team going in what he believed to be the right direction. Finally he had to admit that he was lost and he gave the horses their heads and before very long they found their way home. After a long while he saw a light in the distance which was a lamp my mother had put in the window to guide him.
We had terrible storms in summer at that time, people there called them cyclones, now they are called torndoes. One storm I remember came up suddenly. My mother and the twins and I were in the house and my father and my two older brothers were working in the barn. I remember my mother pushing pieces of furniture against the doors in the wind-ward side of the house. Just shutting and locking the doors did no good the wind blew them open as fast as we shut them. My father and the boys stood in the barn door facing the house. It was impossible for them to come to the house, they couldn't walk. It didn't do any damage at our place but a few miles away from us there was a small country church. The tornado sucked that building up and carried it half a mile away and set it down again. Was not damaged much.
A relative of ours lived on a farm and on a table against the house they had put milk pails and crocks and pans to cure and after the storm was over the house had been demolished but the table of milk things was just as it was before, nothing broken or blown away.
Many strange things happened during those storms.
I remember one place where I was staying that a storm came up at night. We had no storm cellar so we all went to a neighbors who had a large cellar and stayed till the storm blew itself out.
I went two years to school there. My brother and I walked about 1 1/2 miles to school to a little country school. I have some happy memories of that school. One day as we were walking home we were overtaken by a covered wagon full of gypsies, I remember how frighten I was. In those days we heard many tales about gypsies stealing everthing they could get their hands on. Also stories about them stealing little children, who were never seen or heard of again.
We lived on a farm and raised corn and cane, also flax. We had gardens and raised pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and early stuff such as watermelons, I've never seen such huge ones since we left there.
One of the finest memories I have is of the fun I had swinging in our yard in the shade of two big Catalpa trees. In the spring large leaves come out and also big white blossoms, after they fall off big seed pods come on. Thinking back it seems to me now that the seed pods looked a lot like Kentucky wonder beans and looked a little like green snakes in amongst the beans. My cousin and I used to play house in the shade of the trees and we made and baked mud pies. We had saved all the pretty pieces of dishes we could find and of course baking them was no problem as the days were usually very hot in the summer and we set them on rocks to bake.
I had an aunt who used to take me home with her for a few days visit, now and then. I remember being awakened one morning by music. It was coming from a music box in the back of a photograph album. It was the first music box I had seen and how I loved it. Many years later she came out to visit all her family in Montana. She remembered how I loved that music box and brought it to me. She only lived a year or so after her trip to Montana. I was glad to have her give it to me and when I am gone it is to go to one of my daughters who liked it very much. It is very old.
I remember visiting my aunt once in a large city and seeing a peddler with a horse cart. He traveled about the city everyday. At that time it was very hot weather and his horse wore a straw hat all day. It had holes cut out for his ears to stick through. I guess the idea was to keep the horse from getting sun stroke. He really needed the shade. The grass in my aunts yard was nice and green and I thought it would be wonderful to lie down it the shade and rest. But I wasn't allowed to do that, the grass was full of chiggers. And they really could bite.
Once I remember going with my mother and brother to town and we had to ford a river on the way. We had to let the team drink and my brother walked out on the tongue between the horses and took down the horses check reins. I remember how frightened I was, I felt as tho we were moving all the time instead of standing still in the river. I was always dizzy out in the water.
My father loved to trade horses and one time when my little brother was only five years old, some men came to our place to trade horses with my father. My father was showing off his team and my little brother listened for some time and finally said "this one gets lame after he is driven for awhile". I don't think he succeeded in trading but he wasn't angry, I guess he thought he got what he deserved. Shortly after that my parents decided to go out to Montana where my Mother's sister lived.
My aunt was lonely for some of her own people, so we packed up and got on the train and went west. We were on the train for about 4 or 5 days, it was a wonderful trip for us. I will never forget crossing the plains. We saw vast plains and a great many praire dogs. It was a strange sight. I'll never forget. We travelled thru a portion of Colorado, the mountains and deep canyons surely were a strange sight to us. I remember one deep canyon where the railroad was a great curve. As we came around it two engines were in front and two were behind pushing the train. I was only eight years old and it was a fearsome sight. But it was a wonderful trip, we rode in a chair car and were allowed to turn the chairs down and use them as beds. I often think of our mother and what a terrific task it must have been for her to provide food enough for a family of seven. We arrived at our destination in the late afternoon in September. My uncle and his three boys came to meet us. The station was about two miles from town. On the way we crossed the river and I saw the first Indian I had ever seen. It was a young squaw on a pony riding along beside the river. My aunt said that some times the squaws would come and ask for the offal, if they knew that the people had butchered an animal. They were friendly and didn't bother anyone.
I'll never forget how everything looked the first morning after we got there. That morning it was clear and cloudless and the mountains were so beautiful and looked so close. At home in Kansas, of course, we had never seen a mountain, the only thing even resembling a hill was an Indian mound. Some said it was an Indian burial cave or something of that sort and had been heaped up, of course it wasn't large.
In Kansas we could look around and see nothing for miles in all directions but flat prairies.
My father and two brothers got work at a saw mill in the hills (Frank was 15 years old and Fred was 18 years old) and my mother cooked for the men. We had a wonderful time while we lived at the mill.
There was one man who worked there who was really good at playing black-face roles, he came to our house one time with his guitar and his face all blacked up. He was a good mimic and sang Negro spirituals and thought he was wonderful.
So much for things that children enjoy.