Monthly Archives: February 2017

The New And The

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The trains still run by her old house in Puyallup, WA. In this story, my Aunt Iva Bailey, tells of growing up near near Meeker Junction in the 1920’s and 30’s.

The New and the Old

 Every time we take the short trip to Puyallup, the place where I was born and grew up in, there are new sights and sometimes new sounds. The railroad that runs through the middle of town is still there but the old steam locomotives that pulled the trains of cars are gone. In their place are diesels.

As we sat in our car at the crossing waiting for the train to pass before we could cross the tracks and be on our way. I thought of the days gone by and the part the railroad played in my memories.

We lived just a mile from the depot, in what was called Meeker Junction. Our house was less than a block from the tracks. When the train would come into the junction, they would start blowing their whistle for the several crossings between our house and town. They would keep blowing all the way into the depot.

The engines were fired with coal and the black smoke would pour out of their smoke stacks.

Sometimes if the wind conditions were just right, and this was quite often,  the smoke would all blow our way. The black soot would settle all over us. Many times my mother hearing the train coming would rush out and try to get her wash off of the clothes line before the train got there.  She didn’t always make it and would have to do the wash over again.

The  big red wooden water tank, where the engines took on their water was close by at the junction. It was always interesting for us kids to watch the man climb up the ladder and pull down the big spout that let the water run from the tank into the engine.

It was sad the first time we went back home after they tore down the big tank. It had become old and was no longer a need for the new diesels.

During the depression years in the 1930’s, people would walk up and down the railroad tracks with buckets picking up coal that had fallen from the many coal cars that was hauled by the big trains. That coal probably kept some little children warm that would have otherwise been cold.

 I remember the long trains of logs that would pass by every day. The train would be so long we couldn’t see the end from where we were. At first they were great big logs, sometimes only one log on a flat car, but as the years went by the logs got smaller and the trains got shorter.

It seems to me there were always men working on the railroad then. Many times the section gang, as the men were called, would be quartered near our house on the rails in bunks similar to those in a logging camp. They would have their dining car and after work at night we would hear the dinner bell calling the men to supper.

We were always sad when they would finish their work and move on to another location but it usually wasn’t long until some more men would come again.

It was fun watching the long train of passenger cars go by. We wondered where they had come from and where they were going. We would wave and the people would wave back. I can remember the first time I rode on the train. It was just a short trip. My Uncle Dick took my cousin Blanche and me from Orting to Puyallup which is about 10 miles. We had been visiting grandma and he was taking us back home. If we had been going to New York it wouldn’t have been the thrill that short trip was. It was fun watching for the places we knew.  When we came to our house my mother was watching for us and she waved. My dad met us at the station and took us home just as though we had come from a long distance.

During the 1930’s depression, men would ride the box cars hunting for work, or maybe because there was nothing else to do. Lots of them came to Puyallup. They would get off of the train before it went into town, so Meeker Junction was the place they established a hobo camp, as we called them.

This camp was just across the track from our house. Every day we would have men coming to the house wanting to work for something to eat. We didn’t have work for them to do but my mother would give them food anyway.

Sometimes they would want some particular item such as potatoes, carrots or some other vegetable. I guess they would make a soup or stew and several of them would get together on it. We had them ask for our used coffee grounds but we always gave them fresh coffee. I think they must have had some kind of a mark on our house showing that we some kind of easy mark because they kept coming all through the depression.

The Salvation Army would come to the camp every Sunday. They would have prayer and play their instruments and sing. The men would wash their clothes and hang them to dry on the fence along the tracks. It always seemed funny to us to watch the men hanging up their underwear while the band played Onward Christian Soldiers or some other hymn.

As the years went by and I was old enough to date, the train played another role in my life. My dad would tell me what time I was to come home but sometimes I  would be a little late getting there. I soon learned that if I would wait until the train came by before opening the door, the train made so much noise, dad wouldn’t hear me come in.

Yes, I remember the old steam coal powered train like an old friend. Somehow the diesels just aren’t the same.

The Way It Was

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In this piece my Aunt, Iva Bailey writes about the summer of 1926 or 27 when she and her family went to live in a logging camp. The photo is of her father William Roy Caple (on the right) and his felling partner Gus, taken around 1913-1916.

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 The Way It Was

Today the hills overlooking the Puyallup valley are covered with highways and housing. 

I can remember when they were covered with century old douglas fir, hemlock, spruce and cedar. This is where I was born and lived my childhood. It was here in my growing-up-years, my dad worked as a logger.

I can remember one time when dad took us, my brother, my mother and myself up into the forest to live for the summer. We lived in a large tent and a lean-to that dad built out of shakes he split from a big cedar tree.

The bunk house and the rest of the logging camp were in the valley but my dad was the fire watchman that summer, so had to be up where the logging was going on. Sometimes a spark from some of the logging equipment would start a fire and it would have to be put out before it reached the log trees.

There were no logging roads in those day as that was before the days of the logging trucks.  Everything was brought in and out on a logging train. The only way the men could get to the woods was on a train or by walking.

The men in the camp built steps into the side of the hill. As I think of it now it must have taken a long time to build all of those steps. 

On weekends, when the camp was closed, we would go home which was only about 6 or seven miles away. My mother would do the washing and stock up on food for the next week.

Dad would always try to get us back before dark but sometimes we didn’t make it and we would be climbing the steps in the dark. Dad would go ahead with a lantern and we would follow behind. 

I can’t remember being afraid but there must have been all kinds of animals watching us as we made our way up the stairs of the hill. There were lots of squirrels and chipmunks up there and we would have trouble keeping them out of our food.

It was exciting watching the men cut down the big trees with their big cross-cut saws. They always seemed to know which way the tree was going to fall.

One of my Dad’s jobs was to fire up the boiler on the donkey that would pick up the logs and load them on to the flat cars of the logging train.

    A donkey engine with unknown crew.

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Another of my dad’s jobs that summer was to prepare and serve the food that would come up on the train for the men’s lunch at noon. There was always lots of left overs for us. Loggers are big eaters and there would always be lots of cake, donuts and pie.

At the end of the day when the logs were all loaded on the train, the men would jump on the train and ride it back to camp.

There was always lots of sawdust around. I can remember playing with the saw dust like most kids play in the sand. There was lots of wild berries up there and often after dad finished work we would pick berries and my mother would can or make jam out of them.

Some times dad would take us on the logging train. That was really a thrill. When we passed through the camp on the way to the mill, we would know to jump off when it slowed for a curve.

Sometimes the logs would roll off the train. It was really quite dangerous because they were big logs. My mother would take us to get away from the tracks when the train went by.

When the summer was over and all danger of fire passed, we would go back home just in time for school.

It seemed to me then that there would always be lots of big trees but now they are all gone and in their place are highways and buildings. The only thing that hasn’t changed is Mount Rainer. It still looks down on Puyallup valley like a king on a throne.  

More Voices From The Past

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Silhouette

I am sharing another story written by my Aunt, Iva Bailey. In this one she gives a window of what it was like when the little neighborhood store provided most of a family’s grocery needs. I also have fond memories of this store. A visit to my Great-Grandma Phillip’s house always included a trip to the little corner store for penny candy or an ice cream treat.

Mr. Bryan’s Store

I remember Mr. Bryan’s store. A store that was quite different from our supermarkets today. Different than our small neighborhood groceries also.

The store was on “our corner,” the corner of 16th st. and East Pioneer. Mr. Bryan had this store long before I was ever born so he was a pretty old man. Or at least he seemed so at the time. Now I would say he was middle-aged.

As I remember most everything came in bulk. Shortening and lard was in large wooden tubs. Peanut butter was in large pails. Almost everyone baked their own bread then so the only way flour came was in big, 100 pound sacks. The flour sacks were used after they were empty for dish towels and even clothes. I remember having under-slips and bloomers made from flour sacks. Sugar also came in 100 pound sacks but you could buy it by it by the pound in bulk. I remember Mr. Bryan scooping it out and weighing it on his scales. I remember the large round cakes of cheese, portions were cut off as large as the customer  wanted.

Bananas came on the stock. I still can see the big stock hanging in front of the window just inside. There would be another stock of green bananas in the store-room still packed in the hay it came in. Mr. Bryan would let some of the kids go into the store room and pick the sun flowers seeds out of the chick feed, that was always fun. The seeds were good to eat even if they were mixed in with the corn and other seeds. The feed was in big bins and we would have to practically stand on our head to get into the bins.

Mr. Bryan’s store was just like the pictures of olden day stores you see today. It had the big pot-bellied stove where all the men in the neighborhood that wasn’t working congregated and spent most of the day. There was always plenty of people in the store.

I remember the time our house caught fire. We had no phone so my dad told me to run to Mr. Bryan to call the fire department. I know no one ever ran faster. When I announced our house was on fire, all the men rushed out and was soon helping my dad put the fire out. Dad had the fire out long before the fire department got there. There was a big hole burnt in our roof. We were lucky it wasn’t more serious as it was a very windy day.

Mr. and Mrs. Bryan lived down the street from us in a great big house. I remember Mrs. Bryan’s attic. She had trunks of old clothes and she would let the neighborhood kids play there on rainy days. It was lots of fun trying on all those fancy dresses and hats she had.

The kids in the neighborhood were all disappointed when Mr. Bryan sold his store. It was never the same after that.

The store is still there and through the years has had many different owners but not of them were as unique as Mr. Bryan.

                

More Voices From The PAst

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More Voices From The PAst
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Martha Smith Phillips

This piece was written by my Aunt Iva Bailey about her Grandmother Martha Smith Phillips in 1979. Although she said her grandmother moved to Wyoming as a baby she was older. The family moved to Wyoming around 1887 or 88, born in 1877, she would have been 10 or 11 when they moved. The family did live in Nebraska in 1885 and probably lived there about 2 years before moving to Wyoming. Her future husband’s family were their neighbors in Iowa and the families may have followed each other to Wyoming. Martha and Alex married Aug. 1, 1895 making them 18 and 28 not 17 and 27.
Grandma’s Are Nice
Grandma Martha Maria Phillips was not only my grandma, she was my friend, my playmate and after we lost my mother she was like a mother to me. It was to her I took a lot of my teen-age troubles as well as the happy things that happened during the teen-age years. Things that dads just don’t understand the importance of even if they are the best dad a girl could ever have.
Grandma Phillips was born in Iowa but moved with her parents to Iowa when she was a small baby. I guess she knew my grandfather all her life. Grandfather Alexander Phillips like to tell the story of how he fell in love with her as he pushed her baby carriage when she was a baby. Grandpa was 10 years older than grandma.  They were married when she was seventeen and he twenty- seven. She was always his Mattie and he her Allie.

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Mattie and her brother William I. Smith taken in Nebraska.
To grandma was born three children, two girls and a boy.  They were born at a time when parents were called mama and papa. Even we grandchildren called grandpa, Papa. Grandma told many times how lonesome it was for them after my mother married my dad and came to Washington to live.  She told me how happy they were when they knew they were to be grandparents. How they waited for the news of my birth, when they knew it was time.
I guess having my mother so far away and then a grandchild was too much for them so they packed up and came to Washington to live.
It seems to me the very first thing I can really remember was grandma telling me I had a baby brother. I was three years old then and I guess it was the most important thing to happen to me in my young life so it stayed in my memory.
Grandma was small, I don’t think she ever weighed much over a hundred pounds but she was full of energy. She taught me to jump rope and she jumped right along with me, even red-hot peppers.
Grandma had dark brown hair and brown eyes. In the early days her hair was long. Later on when short hair came into style she had it cut and then she would curl her hair with a curling iron she heated by putting it in the kerosene lamp.  This was before the electric curling irons we have today. She was very proud of her appearance and hated the wrinkles all grandmas are bound to get sooner or later. I remember coming home from school one day, to find mother, grandma and my aunt at our house. They all three had egg smeared all over their face and neck. It was partially dry and they looked terrible. Grandma explained to me it was a secret and I wasn’t to tell anyone. I thought it strange at the time but I suppose it worked as well as the stuff they sell for the same purpose today.

Grandma and Papa lived on a farm a few miles from our home but when my mother died, they moved in closer to us. It was nice to have them close by and not quite so lonesome.

No one could make apple pie like grandma. I can see Papa yet, sitting in a chair peeling and cutting up the apples while grandma made the crust, crust that would melt in your mouth. They had a wood stove and grandma knew just how much wood to put in to keep a fire that would bake a golden crust. I use to watch grandma make the crust and I would do everything she did but my pie crust never turned out like hers.

When I was married and moved to Bremerton, we went back to Puyallup as often as we could. Grandma and Papa loved seeing the great-grandchildren.

One day Papa was out mowing the lawn. He came in, sat down in the chair to rest, went to sleep and never woke up. It was a shock to all of us because he had always seemed so well.  He was 87 years old.  Grandma and Papa had always been so close. He had always taken care of her in sickness and in health. We were so afraid Grandma couldn’t live without him but she was stronger than we thought. Some of the sparkle went out of her brown eyes but she seemed to enjoy life and her family.

As she grew older she seemed to live more and more in the past but she loved having her great-grandchildren and by now her great great- grandchildren around her.

She never forgot I was her first grandchild. Every time I would go to see her she would say “here comes my first.” She lived to be 97. She went to be with my mother and papa just a few days before Mother’s day in 1973. She had lived a full and for most part a happy life.

 

Voices FromThe Past

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By default I have become the historian and keeper of the family photos and papers. Among this collection are the courtship letters my Caple grandparent’s wrote 100 years ago. In the process of getting ready to write about and share these letters, I began rereading the stories my Aunt Iva, their daughter, wrote of her family memories.Written mostly in the 1980’s these stories also deserve to be shared. Below is the one she titled “My Mother.”

The photo is of my Grandparents William Roy Caple and Mae Edith Phillips on their wedding day August, 1, 1917.

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    My Mother

by Iva Bailey

When I think of my mother, I think mostly of a girl of sixteen whom my father met when her family moved next door to his family in Puyallup.

The Phillips family came to Puyallup one day, when my mother was barely fifteen. They came from Wyoming. I’m not sure if they came with the idea of making their home here or if they came to visit some of my grandfather’s family who had come earlier.

It must have been love at first sight for my mom and dad because there was never any one else for either of them.

The family remained in Puyallup for a little over a year before my grandmother became so homesick for her family they decided to go back to Wyoming.

It was to be four long years before mom and dad married.

Dad worked in logging camps in and around the Puyallup Valley. Some of the winters  would be so snowy and cold they would shut the camp down until the snow melted in the spring. When this happened my dad would go to Wyoming to visit my mother and her folks, some times he would stay until it was time for the camps to open up again. In between those times the courtship was carried on by letters.

After my dad passed away in 1972 at the age of 86, I found a lot of the letters mom and dad had written through the years before they were married. From the letters I got to know the girl who was to be my mother. The girl my Dad addressed in the letters  as “Pet”, “my little Mazie” and “my little Wyoming girl.”  From the letters I learned of their loneliness when they were apart and their happiness when they were together. I could see and feel my mother grow from a young girl to a young woman. I learned the things that made her happy and the things that made her sad.

The letters told of things that happened on both sides of my family during those years. I got to know some of the relatives I had only heard mentioned once in a while when I was growing up, relatives that had died before I was born. In those letters I found dried flowers my Dad had picked in the woods while he worked and sent to his little Wyoming girl. In turn my mother had sent wild prairies flowers to him.

 They had worked out a code that they carried on a little private correspondence with. They called it their China letter. It consisted of numbers. We have tried every way to figure out this code but so far we have failed. Just about every one of the letters contain a small sheet of the numbers. It was their way of saying to each other what they didn’t want he rest of the family to hear.

Dad finally went to South Dakota to work in the Homestead gold mine in Lead which was close to Mona, Wyoming where the Phillips family lived.

After a time, on August 1, 1917, they were married. They lived in Lead until later that year in a blinding snowstorm, they left South Dakota to make their home in Washington.

At first they lived in an apartment in the Scott Hotel which was located a block away from the home, my dad soon built for his little Mazie from Wyoming, and I grew up in. He built the house himself. The front porch was built of cobblestone he carried from the Carbon River stone by stone in a pail. It must have taken a long time because there were a lot of stones in that porch. The house had all the conveniences that other houses built at that time had. Dad often express his regrets in later years, that my mother never knew the conveniences added through the years, but I am sure she was happy in that house.

My mother had beautiful black hair and pretty brown snappy eyes. She was about 5 ft 6 and never weighed more than 120 lbs. When I was young my desire was to grow up to look like she did.

I was born while they were still building the house. Dad was working in the Todd ship yard in Tacoma while he was working on the house so it went slow. This was the time of the first world war.

My brother Verle was born when I was nearly 4. My Mother had the measles shortly after that and from that time on she was to suffer from Asthma.  The attacks she had were so terrible she had to fight to breathe. Now they have oxygen and drugs that would have relieved her but then the remedies would help for a while but soon have no affect at all. I remember the powder she would burn in a little container. I think it was Beladona leaves made into a powder. It smelled terrible. The smell would wake me up at night and I would know my mother was having an attack. It was a helpless feeling knowing I couldn’t help her. Dad tried everything possible to get help for her.  We moved to another climate for a time but she only got worse so we came back home again.

There were times when she would feel real good and we would have such good times. She liked to sew and could make anything she put her mind to. I remember the pretty dresses she made for me. She never used a pattern. She could look at a dress in a catalog and make one just like it.

As I look back it seems like such a short time. I was fourteen in 1933 when her heart could no longer stand the strain of the asthma attacks. She passed away Nov. 10th of that year. She was just 37.