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Mary

Living off the Land

Posted on: 04.21.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

When my parents were growing up, in the early part of the 20th century, many people still had gardens even if they lived in the city. Both Mom and Dad grew up very poor and knew that the best food was what you grew yourself or found growing wild. Stores didn’t have refrigeration and there weren’t trucks to haul food from one part of the country to another, so if you wanted lettuce or corn or juicy, ripe tomatoes you had to grow them yourself.

Living in that old house let us live off the land and eat better than we’d ever been able to eat before. We had two gardens, one that was kind of big that my dad plowed with a hand plow every spring and helped my brother and me plant and the other was a really big garden that he and mother planted every spring. David and I grew radishes and onions and lettuce and other easy crops and learned to tell which were garden plants and which were weeds. Mom and Dad planted sweet corn and tomatoes and squash and green beans and all sorts of other vegetables.

But what was really crazy was the wild food that grew all around us. There was a fence at the bottom of the front yard that was covered with wild grapes. The grapes were really small, about the size of peas, and really sour! We’d pick all the grapes the birds didn’t eat and then Mom would make Pillowcase and Clothesline jelly. What??? She’d cook all the grapes until the skins burst and then she’d put the hot grapes into an old pillow case, tie a short piece of clothesline around the top of the pillow case, and hang the whole mess from a cabinet handle and let the juice drip into a big bowl. Then she’d add sugar to the grape juice…lots because they were so sour…and make beautifully sparkling clear grape jelly. After she had made one or two batches of the really clear kind (to give as gifts or to serve when we had company), she would squeeze the pillowcase to get more juice out. This would have little tiny bits of grape pulp in it, so it wasn’t as clear but the jelly it made tasted just as good. It just wasn’t quite as pretty.

All along the railroad track and most everywhere, there were elderberries. They make purple berries too, only they are in flat clusters at the tops of the stems. Mom would make elderberry jelly the same way she made grape jelly.

On the west side of the railroad track, quite a ways past our house, was a little hill that was absolutely covered with wild raspberries that got ripe about the same time school was out for the summer. We’d hike up the railroad track with buckets and pick raspberries. I’d bring back a big old bucket full and my brother David would bring back a few. He’d also be wearing a stained shirt with juice dripping off his chin. Guess which one of us really liked raspberries and which one didn’t?

To Figure Yield of Canned Fruit from Fresh.

There were also gooseberries along the track, but Dad was the only one who liked them. I think one time we picked enough that Mom made a gooseberry pie for him. There were a few wild strawberries, too, but the birds must have gotten them. I wasn’t too worried, because I love the taste of strawberries but I didn’t like the feel of them in my mouth. (I learned to love them after I was grown up and I’ve eaten plenty ever since!)

Then there were the pears. Somebody must have planted about eight pear trees in a couple of rows way out in the pasture very long ago. We never did anything to those pears except pick them when they were almost ripe. Mom would put them in the cellar and let them finish ripening in the dark so they didn’t get crystals in them, then she and I would can quarts and quarts of pears. Some were so big we had to cut them in quarters just to get them in a wide-mouth canning jar! We ate canned pears all winter long.

There were two apple trees in the same pasture as the pear trees and we didn’t do anything to those apples, either. So, they got lots of worms. But we didn’t have much money and Mom sure wasn’t going to waste free food, so we would pick all those apples. Gobs and gobs of them. We’d peel them and cut out the cores and the wormy spots and make applesauce. I wish I knew how my mom made her applesauce because it was the best in the world. I have made lots of applesauce myself but never got it to turn out as good as hers. She also cooked down some of the apples and made jelly from the juice.

The best jellies she made were the Mystery Jellies. A little bit of grape juice left over? Add a little apple juice. Or somebody gave us some cherries and she’d add cherry juice to the apple juice. She always managed to make really good things out of whatever she could find.

Note: This is the tenth of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

School Days in Clive – 1957 to 1960

Posted on: 04.17.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

When we moved to the old house in Clive, it was just before Christmas. I was in fifth grade and my brother in third at Clive School on 73rd Street. I’m not sure what my teachers’ names were, just that there was a woman in the morning and a man in the afternoon and he was principal of the school.

Clive School – October 1958
6th Grade, Miss Jones, Mrs. Luther

By sixth grade, the school was so crowded that classes were split into morning sessions and afternoon sessions. My sixth grade teacher, purportedly the “meanest” teacher in the school, was a Miss Jones, who was in a terrible accident soon after school started and we had a long-term sub until after Christmas when Miss Jones was finally able to return. She turned out not to be mean at all, just firm in setting expectations, like most teachers then.

I attended several different schools in and around Des Moines and may be confusing Clive with my previous school, but I’m pretty sure there was a two-story building being added to the back of the one-story portion of the school. The upstairs of that contained the seventh and eighth graders and we had four teachers. We may have still been on split sessions in seventh grade. I do remember the teachers were Mr. Peckinovsky for English, Mr. Stone for science, Mr. Wright for math, and Mrs. Nyberg for Iowa History. (Why can I remember all that and not the important things that happened last week?)

Clive School – October 1959
7th Grade, Mr. Charles Peckinovsky

We rode the school bus but had to walk to Lundberg’s on the corner of University and Clive Road (86th). On really cold mornings, we were allowed to wait inside for the bus to come. We rode second bus, so we got to school just before it started, but had to wait thirty to forty-five minutes to get our bus to go home.

In sixth or seventh grade I got the coveted School Crossing Guard belt and stood at a corner just north of the school to help the younger students across the street. That was a really cold job in the winter!

When we got off the bus in the afternoon, we waited around in front of Mrs. Swanson’s house for the paper man to come and deliver the newspaper. There was no point in walking all the way home just to turn around and come back for the paper. While we waited, we practiced balancing on the railroad tracks and got so good at it, we could walk all the way home without falling off the rail once. That came in handy in the spring when the ground thawed and the road was impassible. Dad even had to park the car at the train station because the road was so mucky.

Mrs. Swanson’s house.

When the paper finally arrived, we would take her paper across the street to Mrs. Swanson, who gave us each a cookie for delivering her paper. We knew Mildred Swanson as Miss Swanson, the school secretary.

One winter day we were sitting quietly working in class. Talking was not allowed, nor working with a neighbor. Suddenly, somebody said out loud…startling us all… “Look at the snow!” It wasn’t just snowing, there was a blizzard out there!

Almost immediately there was an announcement, or the principal came around (I don’t remember which) and told us that everybody who could walk home should put their books away and get home as quickly as possible. Same for everybody on first bus…go now, the buses were waiting. By the time the buses came back for us second-busers, the blizzard was horrible. We lined up for our bus and got on almost silently. Even the youngest kids knew this was scary. The driver faced us when everybody was on and said he’d need us to stay very quiet on the ride home because “I’m driving by feel tonight.” We didn’t have to be told twice.

We finally got to our stop and five of us got off. The three Reames sisters, my brother and I. How on earth were we going to get across Clive Road where there was usually quite a bit of traffic…nothing like now, however. Finally, I said “Let’s all hold hands and nobody run. If we slip, we’ll all go down and get hit by a car.” So, I got on one end, the oldest Reames girl on the other, and the youngest in the middle, holding the hands of her sister and my brother. We waited and strained our eyes but couldn’t hear or see anything, so we carefully walked out into the street, resisted the urge to run, and got across safely.

The girls had only half as far to go as we did, as they lived in the house that had not yet become the noodle factory. Then my brother and I trudged along the road, hoping no cars came. We walked as close to the edge as possible but were afraid we’d fall into the ditch which was already filled with snow. One car did come by, very slowly, and we were able to follow its tracks for a little while until the wind and heavy snow obliterated them before we reached our driveway. Usually we climbed up our front yard hill but that day we followed the driveway because it was lined with trees that we could barely see. At least that kept us on the right track. A nice warm house sure felt good that night!

Note: This is the ninth of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Visitors – Some Welcome, Some Not

Posted on: 04.13.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

We had a number of visitors at the old house, most of them family and friends who were always welcome. The huge round oak table in the kitchen was filled with relatives for Thanksgiving dinner, the best holiday dinners ever!

Not all visitors were so welcome, however. One that managed to visit most folks the winter of either 1958 or 1959 was a virulent strain of Hong Kong flu. Both my parents and my brother got it and I figured I’d escaped, but once they started feeling better, I got it along with a high fever. The monster that appeared at my doorway each time I tried to sleep was a figment of feverish hallucination, but my 12-year-old brain didn’t quite understand that.

When I was finally feeling slightly better, I awoke one afternoon to strange voices downstairs. I managed to get myself down there, only to find a “cute boy” (aren’t they all cute when you’re 12??) talking to my dad. It turned out he had spent the night in our barn after running away from the prison farm, a low-security facility where Living History Farms is now. I don’t know how old he was or if they had a juvenile facility there or what. He was one of at least two who spent the night in our barn after escaping from the farm.

One visitor I wish I knew more about was an old man. He came one day in a car driven by a younger relative of his and said his father had built the house and that he was born there sometime later. The man was about 80, so if he was born there, the house was built before 1880. If someone knows how to research land records, or if I can find the appropriate records online, I’d love to know more about that house and the family that built it.

Often when we came home in the evening there would be a car parked in our driveway. The house wasn’t visible at night, there were trees on either side of the driveway, and it made a dandy lovers’ lane. Dad would pull up behind the car, the driver would freak out and drive away, only to find himself in our back yard. He had no choice but to turn around and come back down. Any sensible man would have simply backed up and let them pass but sensibility and different standards of conduct were rare concepts for my dad and he would by this time have gone to the house to call poor Mr. Lundberg who was justice of the peace and maybe a sheriff’s deputy or maybe just what passed as local law enforcement. That good man would come out and make Dad get out of the way after talking with the driver of the parked car. Justice was done, Dad got over his sputtering anger at the ‘immorality of young people these days,’ and all was well again.

One surprise visitor early one evening was a bona fide Sheriff’s deputy who served my mother with an eviction notice. We were having a church progressive dinner party that night and we arrived shortly after the deputy left to find Mother on the verge of tears. The property had been sold and we had thirty days to leave. Mom wasn’t feeling good that night and soon after the party went to bed. She became weaker and weaker and terribly sick. Mother was NEVER sick. The whole world was turning the wrong way. How could Mom be sick? Finally, she called a doctor. Little money and no insurance meant no doctor unless you absolutely couldn’t figure out for yourself how to get well. A shot and some pills and lots of water and rest finally made the difference and very slowly Mom returned to health.

Her return to health was not fast enough for one more surprise visitor, who showed up about a week before we were supposed to be out of the house. We had done nothing about moving because Mom was sick. How can anyone do anything when Mom is sick? The visitor was the new owner of the property and he was surprised and angry that we weren’t already out of his house. He informed Mother that his family was moving in on the Saturday when the thirty days were up, and we’d better be out of his way. He came by every afternoon to see how we were progressing toward that goal, always after Dad had left for work and before we got home from school. Mom would be in tears after his visits.

The best visitors turned out to be almost residents. The barn was rented to a family over on Buffalo Rd. They had two daughters, one in my class and one a year or two older. They started out with three horses. A trip to Mexico added some miniature horses to the herd, a burro or two, and the world’s most beautiful and absolutely foulest-tempered white Shetland stallion. The animals stayed for two years and the older daughter and I became fast friends, hanging out in the barn, talking about boys, listening to her transistor radio, and taking care of the horses. I rarely got to ride but I loved those horses like family.

Small wonder that my years in that house were my favorite childhood years!

Note: This is the eighth of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Memories of the Railroad

Posted on: 04.10.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

When we moved to Clive in December of 1957, the railroad station was still in its original place, with a Western Union telegraph sign still on the outside. Even though we waited near the station after we got off the school bus for the paper man to deliver the evening newspaper, we had been told not to “snoop around” the station so we didn’t. I may have looked in the window once but nothing there would have made any sense to me, so I don’t remember much about it.

I do remember walking those rails with a great sense of balance I wish I could still have. It was easier than trying to walk on the ties, which have never been placed evenly and maybe that was done deliberately to discourage people from walking on the right of way.

Once I was coming back from picking wild raspberries up along the track about halfway from our house to Hickman when suddenly a “speeder” came down the track. It was a flat, open platform with two men on it. I know I’ve seen the kind of speeders where the two men had to alternate pushing and pulling a lever to make the speeder go and I’ve seen motorized ones and I honestly can’t remember which this was. It’s enough to say I wasn’t expecting it and I jumped off the tracks in a hurry!

There was only one regular train a day on that track and it came through every night at 9:55. You could set your clock by that train! I remember the time because we were in bed with lights out by then but Mom would have the radio on WHO so we could listen to a program called Velvet Serenade. We didn’t have a record player or a TV and Mom wanted us exposed to good music. The show went off at 10:00 and we could never hear the end of it for the loud whistle of the train at the crossing. It was going pretty fast by the time it got to our house and it had a hill to climb around the bend. Many nights, both in summer with the windows open and in winter when the cold air carried sound so well, I fell asleep listening to the train fade into the distance, never knowing for sure whether I was still hearing it or just imagining that I was. Later when I first heard of a doppler shift, I understood immediately what it was, by having listened to the changing sound of the train as it approached and as it faded into the distance.

For as much time as I spent near the depot, I was always a little scared of the work cars. Several times an engine would pull one or two work cars onto the siding on the far side of the depot. These were boxcars with screen doors on them. I suppose that inside they had been turned into campers of sorts and I remember seeing children and women living in those cars. I wish I had talked to them or learned more about them. Maybe someone else will remember them or know more about them.

Years later, probably in the 80s when I was visiting in Des Moines and before the old house was torn down, I walked part way up those tracks again. By chance, I was in just about the same spot as before, but not carrying raspberries this time, when a motorized speeder came down that unmaintained track. It scared me as the first one had and I got out of its way in a hurry. How ironic that I would pick a day to walk up that old track and get scared by a speeder in the same place.

Note: This is the seventh of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Winter in the Old House

Posted on: 04.07.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

The first winter in that old house was decidedly not too pleasant. We finally got heat but there was no water until the floods of spring. The following two winters were much better.

Yes, my bedroom was still cold. Yes, I still had piles of blankets and listened to my radio until late at night. But evenings were usually spent in the kitchen. Dad worked swing shift in town, leaving before we got home from school and getting home after midnight when we were already asleep. Because we were on the afternoon shift at school at least one of those winters, we had mornings to do homework, so evenings were reserved for games.

We both got hot lunch at school and Mom cooked a big meal at noon for Dad, so supper was soup and sandwiches or whatever we had on hand. Then we’d sit around the big oak table and play games. We had no TV, the radio had moved permanently to my room, and we had no record player. Electronic games had not been thought of yet and card games were yet another “work of the devil.” (Ours was a very religious, conservative household!) So, we worked jigsaw puzzles or played word games or made up games of our own. We played dominoes almost every night and learned to add in our heads faster than you could ever punch numbers into a calculator (which also had not been invented yet). Some of our games were based on the Bible. “Name all the Bible characters you can think of whose names begin with A, then B, and so on.” Adam, Andrew, Absolom on down to Zachaeus and Zephaniah.

If there was heavy snow overnight, we gathered around a radio (maybe we’d gotten another one or else I brought it down to the kitchen) to see if Clive School was closed for the day. “Hooray” if it was, grumbles if it wasn’t. If we got lucky and the snow was too deep for school, we immediately bundled up and spent the rest of the day sledding down our long hill in the front yard. If the snow was just right, we could even go into the pasture to the east of the barn, pack down a run all the way down the pasture and across the barnyard, and down the front yard—one long, truly fine sledding run! The only way to stop after such a nice long run was to turn sharply just before we hit the lilac bushes at the bottom of the yard. There had better be enough snow to cushion our tumble as we flew off our sleds. Then back up the hill we trudged to do it all again.

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and country Christmases seem best. Our presents were usually something we needed but they were always wrapped and put under the tree. Until the last year when we couldn’t afford a tree. We knew that Santa Claus and decorated trees were not the real reason for Christmas but the idea of that big box of decorations sitting in the storage room was just too sad to bear. No Christmas tree. Whatever would we do?

The last day of school was a snowy one and again we walked all the way up our driveway, thankful for the tracks Dad had left when he drove to work. We went in the back door, hung up our coats and stashed our boots then went up the steps to the kitchen door. Ahhh…the smell of fresh bread right out of the oven. Maybe there’d even be Mom’s applesauce to go with it. WAIT A MINUTE! Over and through all of that wonderful warmth and fragrance was the unmistakable scent of a Christmas tree! There it was in the corner of the living room, kind of small, but already decorated with all of the beloved ornaments and icicles and the lights that all went out if one bulb burned out.

It was a few days before we figured out the Christmas tree was Mother’s broom stuck in a bucket with rocks. Wired to the broom handle were branches she had spent half the day cutting from the many evergreen trees in our front yard. It was the freshest smelling Christmas tree ever. And the best loved!

Note: This is the sixth of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Radio in the Winter

Posted on: 04.03.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

I’ve already mentioned how cold it would get in that old house where we lived. My bedroom was the coldest in the house and all winter I was buried under plenty of heavy blankets and quilts. I went to bed early to stay warm and to listen to my radio.

My radio was AM only, as all radios were then. It was a Zenith “portable” my parents had bought when I was little, which meant it was not a piece of furniture. It still had to be plugged in and weighed a few pounds. There were tubes in it which had to warm up before any sound came out and it had a loop of wire on the inside of the back panel which served as an antenna. That radio warmed a spot on the edge of my bed and I snuggled in close, partly for the warmth and mostly so I could hear it. I didn’t dare turn it up very loud or Mom would know I wasn’t asleep and I was probably listening to that evil rock and roll. That music was the work of the devil – all the old folks knew that.

I listened to all the rock and roll stations: KIOA and KSO in Des Moines, KCMO in Kansas City, WLS in Chicago, KOMA in Oklahoma City, KOA in Denver, KOB in Albuquerque, and WWL in New Orleans. Those were my regulars. On winter nights, each of those stations came in loud and clear. There were others and sometimes I’d slowly turn the dial, listening to the weak stations fade in and out. One time I even managed to get a Boston station. Oh, and there was the station in Del Rio, TX. Anybody who listened to radio in those days can remember how the announcer drew out the DELLL RIOOO, TEXAS. The reason everybody in the Midwest and into Canada could hear Del Rio, TX was because its transmitter was across the border in Mexico and was running 100,000 watts, twice the legal power of US stations.

One night I was listening to WWL in New Orleans and it didn’t play the national anthem and go off the air at midnight like any sensible station would. Instead it had some really loud music I’d never heard before and then some man was yelling into the microphone and I couldn’t understand a word he said. I listened to this several nights in a row and suddenly realized what he was saying was “Señoras y Señores.” OMIGOSH…he’s saying “Ladies and Gentlemen.” I knew there were other languages, but I hadn’t figured out yet that everybody says the same things with just different words. What an eye-opening moment!

So, then I listened closer and figured out they were reading the news. Eisenhower and Khruschev sound pretty much the same in English and Spanish. I eventually wrote to the radio station and got a letter back explaining that I was hearing Radio Free Cuba, just after Castro had taken power there. The most troubling part of that news was that there were other stations beaming Radio Free Cuba to the island nation, but they weren’t on my dial! They were shortwave. I had no idea what shortwave was and nobody I could ask. So, for years I was just incensed that there could be radio stations I couldn’t hear. It just wasn’t fair!

Maybe there is something to be said for boredom and lack of heat. Those long winter nights in that cold bedroom led me to a hobby few women ever consider, much less enjoy. I’ve been a licensed amateur radio operator for over 30 years and I do know what shortwave is now. And for the record, I still have the Zenith radio. Of course. Every ham has the radio that got them hooked.

Note: This is the fifth of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Miracle of the Well – Part 2

Posted on: 03.31.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

The well that had been dug by hand back many years ago and then had gone unused until it silted in was now back in working order. It provided cold, clear water for the two years we stayed in that old house. Even in the hottest weather, we didn’t need ice. We’d just go to the tap and get a drink of wonderfully cold spring water.

Another family rented the barn and started with three horses then added several more animals and they all had plenty of water to drink. Even if somebody left the stock tank faucet running, the well recovered quickly and we never went without water.

One evening the sheriff came and gave us notice that we were being evicted from the house. The property had been sold to someone new and he wanted to move his family in. Mother was home alone and was in tears when we arrived and gave us the bad news. How on earth could we live anywhere else? The house wasn’t very nice but oh, so much land to run around in and grow gardens in and be free. Finally, we lived in the country and now we’d have to move. My heart was broken.

My mother in healthier days at our old Clive house.

But before we could move, something worse happened. Mom got sick. Mom never got sick. She was always there for us, always doing what Moms are supposed to do. And now she was in bed, too weak and too sick to do anything. Finally, we called a doctor and he came out and gave her some medicine and slowly she got better. Still weak, she could get out of bed for a while every day but couldn’t do much work around the house and definitely couldn’t do anything about moving.

Near the end of the month, the new owner came out and got really mad to see that we were still there. After that he came nearly every day, after Dad went to work and before we got home from school. Every day Mom would be crying. Mom never cried. Moms don’t cry, they just do what Moms do. And she wasn’t able to do what Mom was supposed to do.

Finally, the man told her his family was moving in on Saturday and we could live on the grass in the front yard but we had to be out of his house. There was a house for rent in the paper that morning and Mom called about it. We could afford the rent so she said we’d take it even without seeing it and we started moving out while the new family was moving in.

Dad took the new owner out to the pasture to show him the well and then they came back to the house. Dad’s face was white, his eyes wide. The man’s face was red and he was yelling. Dad walked over to the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. Out came sputtering, muddy water. Dad explained that he took the cover off the well to show the man the nice level of the water and all he saw were bricks falling in from the sides and muddy water all stirred up. He was afraid to stand too close to the well, not knowing if it was going to cave in. The man was sure Dad had done something to make the well cave in but I knew Dad would never do that and besides, he was so pale and scared, I knew he didn’t know anything about it.

We moved and didn’t worry about the well anymore but our friends with the horses had to move them to another place because the well never recovered.

Note: This is the fourth of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller.  Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Miracle of the Well – Part 1

Posted on: 03.27.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

I mentioned that we went to church a lot. On the nights that we didn’t go to church, we had family devotions. One of us would read a portion from the Bible, then we’d quote verses we’d memorized or we’d play a game based on the Bible, each of us would pray, and we’d end with the Lord’s Prayer. Once in a while, Mother would pass around the promise box. The promise box had Bible verses printed on small cards. Each verse was some kind of promise.

Late in the first winter we lived in the old house, we had gone without running water for four months. One night, I drew a promise from the box and it was from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, chapter 44, verse 3: “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.” When it was my turn to pray, my eleven-year-old faith prompted me to tell God that I was going to hold Him to His promise. We were definitely thirsty for good water (and profoundly tired of hauling it) and I fully expected Him to come through for us!

 For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground.

That spring there was rain. And more rain. It must still be in the record books. Rain and melting snow made Walnut Creek, where the Greenbelt Park is now, fill the entire woods. Water was up over the barbed wire fence that ran along the base of the railroad track that went out to the steel plant. There must have been flooding all over town but I just remember seeing weeds and leaves caught on the top strand of wire on that fence.

One day when there was a break in the rain, Dad and an uncle went out to the well. Dad put an old ladder down there, tied a rope around his waist, and climbed down. The bottom of the well…a spring, really…was only about 9 or 10 feet down. Uncle Gordon handed him a shovel and a bucket and Dad started digging the sand and silt out of the bottom of the well. Suddenly he yelled up that water was coming in FAST. He climbed faster and Uncle Gordon helped haul him out. They grabbed the ladder and watched the well fill with water. It filled to the overflow pipe at ground level, then slowed down. Very little water ran out the overflow.

Back to the basement they went, pumping air from the long lines to the house. Finally the air was gone, the pipes were full of water and we had running water in the house!

For the next two years, the well never failed, even when deeper wells over on Harbach ran dry. The water was cold and clear and an inspector said it was the best water he had tested in years. Mom could run her washing machine, we could take baths, and eventually another family rented the barn and watered several horses from that well. It filled rapidly until it reached the ground level, then stopped.

I’ve never drunk better water anywhere.

Note: This is the third of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller. Follow along as she shares her precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

Esther Hasting Miller’s Stories

Posted on: 03.24.20 | by Mary

 

Esther Hastings Miller shares 11 stories capturing her precious memories growing up in Clive, Iowa, during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Please find all 11 stories listed in the right sidebar and join Esther on her trip down memory lane…

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

 



*** Samples of old recipe books shared by Esther Hastings Miller.***

Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cook Book

Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cook Book


Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cook Book

Betty Crocker's Bisquick - inside pages.


Jello Cook Book

Jello Cook Book

Cakes Men Like Cook Book

Cakes Men Like Cook Book


Summer Time and the Livin’ Was…

Posted on: 03.24.20 | by Mary

By: Esther Hastings Miller

Well, the living wasn’t that easy, since we were living off the land and that much gardening means lots of weeding then lots of canning. But we had plenty of time for our own pursuits and we’d always spent most of our time outdoors, so with all those acres to play in, we did have fun!

It’s hard to describe those acres now. The old house was torn down in the 80s and so much has been built since. I haven’t lived in Des Moines since I was a teenager, so I didn’t get to see the changes happen slowly. Let me try to place things now by looking at the satellite image of the maps of the area.

Approximate location of Hastings’ house in the late ’50s & early ’60s – Swanson Blvd.

There is still a little bit of the driveway showing. Just before Swanson Blvd. crosses the railroad track, you can see a flat area that follows the same curve as the track. That was our driveway and it went up and around to the back of the house. NW 90th Street is probably about where the house sat. It was on a hill, the backyard (really just a big driveway and graveled area) and most of the barnyard were fairly level, then behind the barn the land went uphill again, toward the north. The spring/well was out in the middle of what was probably a 20-acre field/pasture that also went somewhat uphill to the east. I suspect that all of that was graded before the new houses were built.

The 20-acre pasture had fences on both the east and west sides and a fence on the north separating it from other fields we never explored. Those fields extended all the way to Hickman. To the west was another 20-acre parcel (I’m guessing here) and it extended down to the railroad track. About the only time we went into the east parcel was to check on the well, but we played a lot in the west parcel.

I’d fly out the door as soon as breakfast was over and never opened the barnyard gate. It was too big and too heavy, and it was much easier to climb over than go through. My hair was in long braids and I had to wear dresses…shorts were immoral, and pants were for boys. Climbing over gates and up into the hayloft of the barn in a dress or skirt was not particularly modest, but oh well…

Most often I would go out along the west side of the barn and turn left into the Green Grassy Path which led into the west pasture. It was usually wet there and the grass was always green. I realize now it was probably one of the many springs or seeps to be found on those hills. Had it rained recently? If so, there was probably water in the pond. How the “pond” got there I do not know. There were mounds of dirt around it so I suspect someone had, years before, tried to create a pond in the really heavy clay in that portion of the pasture. It held water after a rain and it even got deep enough to float an old piece of plywood on, but playing out there didn’t make our mom too happy. The water was full of clay which dried on our legs and our clothes and left us looking really orange. It was pretty good for ice skating in the winter, however.

Up the hill from the pond were two apple trees which thrived on neglect. The moths which laid their eggs in the blossoms thrived as well, making the apples quite wormy. A little farther up the hill were the pear trees, two groups of them. One group had maybe a half dozen trees in a rough circle and the other, a few yards away, had eight or nine trees in two rows. The pear trees provided the most shade on that hillside and became our camps…my brother had the rectangular camp and I had the circle. We pulled armfuls of the long grasses that grew all around and laid them on the ground under the trees, providing us a clean, dry place to sit in the shade. They also undoubtedly contributed significantly to the number of chigger bites we were plagued with all summer. From our camps we rode our make-believe horses through the tall grass, rounding up our herds of equally imaginary cattle. Our horses leaped over the tallest grasses, raced down the hill to the fence, struggled through the thick growth of who-knows-what, and cooled off in the orange clay pond. How much better can it get?

But oh, it did! When even the shade of the pear trees was not enough to cool us on hot days, I would head down the Green Grassy Path again but instead of going out to the pasture, I headed down into a grove of trees which now I would be in a hurry to identify but then I knew only that they provided deep shade. One even provided a good-sized hollow area for my cat. He’d go with me, find the tree, climb up to about eye-level with me, and settle himself into that hollowed-out area for a nap. Birds would dive-bomb him and he would mostly ignore them. Just to keep them in line, once in a while he’d open his eyes, swat at the birds with his claws out, and go back to his nap.

Why did I head to that grove of trees? It was terribly overgrown with stinging nettles and catnip but it was cooler down there. I fell into a clump of nettles one time and have been outrageously sensitive to them ever since. My cat totally ignored the catnip. But it was more than just shade that drew me there.

One day I was down there with a walking stick. I sure didn’t want to slip on another rotten log and fall into the nettles again. I steadied myself with the walking stick and when I pulled it out of the soft damp ground, I saw water running in the hole it made. What?? Water was running a few inches below the surface! So, I saw which way it was running and poked another hole and sure enough, there was running water in that hole too. Many holes later, I’d found twenty feet or so of a clear running spring a few inches below the surface. I’d clear the dirt between one hole and the next and then clear more dirt. Over a few weeks, I pulled gobs of weeds and got all the “creek” exposed and kept it flowing till it fell under the barbed wire fence and into the ditch beside the railroad track.

For a long time, whenever I needed to calm myself or think, even long after I’d moved away, I’d head for my creek in my imagination to cool down and calm down. It has been my “happy place” for a long, long time.

Much of the day was taken up helping with the horses…the real ones. I never tired of brushing them and talking to my friends and listening to the transistor radio. One day I got to ride the Reames’ pony which they kept in a pasture next to our front yard. That pony wasn’t in the mood for riding but didn’t object to me getting on bareback. He simply walked under a low hanging branch and went on his way without me.

Once in a while we’d ride our bikes down the road past the steel plant to a little road that crossed the track and went into the woods, probably about where the bike path enters Greenbelt Park now. We’d leave our bikes near the tracks and wander into the woods to a place where we knew there was a sandy bank and a nice place to cool off in the creek. We explored quite a bit of the woods but not often enough for me to remember many details.

Most people had TVs by then and many moms had learned to drive but we had no TV and Mom never learned to drive, so we were stuck at home all summer long. We didn’t consider ourselves stuck, though, because there was so much to do. The only limit was our imagination.

Note: This is the last of 11 stories written by Esther Hastings Miller. Please refer to the right side bar for additional stories capturing Esther’s precious memories of growing up in Clive, Iowa.

About Esther Miller:

My parents, younger brother David, and I moved to the old house at the end of what is now Swanson Blvd just before Christmas in 1957. The address was University Avenue and the house may have been the “Kurtz Hill” mentioned in Mildred Swanson’s story about sledding. That yard was outstanding for sledding!

I was in fifth grade at Clive School and David was in third. We lived in that house until June of 1960 when the property was sold and we had to move. We moved to the Johnston area where we went to school for a year. In September of that year, my father was severely injured at work and was never able to work again. We moved to Des Moines, since Mother didn’t drive and Dad couldn’t anymore. And then, in December of 1961 we moved to California. Mother had gone to school in a small town in Southern California in the 40s, so she had friends there and she knew the climate would be a lot easier on all of us.

Both David and I finished high school in California, then I attended two small colleges nearby and graduated, first in my family, in 1970. I worked as an occupational therapist with severely handicapped children, then took several years off to raise my own two children. I eventually returned to work until my husband took early retirement. We traveled around the country in an RV, a long-time dream of ours, until we found some place we wanted to move to.

We sold our home in California and settled into an old farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where we lived for several more years. I returned to California a few years ago and now live way out in the country. Do you see a trend? I love living in the country and over the years I’ve built on the skills I first learned in that old house in Clive.

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