Time for Thanksgiving!

     I've been waiting for Dwight to come up with a Thanksgiving Memoir, but it hasn't happened yet, so I'll write about one Thanksgiving that I remember vividly.  The day was beautiful and unseasonably warm.  We all worked on the dinner, which included some foods that were seldom on our table - celery, red grapes, cranberries (cooked by Mother), and yams, plus the usual big hen baked to perfection in the coal range.  (We had a turkey my senior year in high school, and all decided that it was not as delicious and moist as the chicken.)  We cleaned up, dishes were finished, and with the day so beautiful and fine - blue skies, golden stubble in the fields, etc., so we older children decided to walk down to the river bridge.  All I remember about that walk was that as we were headed home, dark clouds began to appear in the west, and we hurried down the lane to home to avoid a possible storm.  One thing that Louise did was to save the embossed paper napkin she had for lunch (unsoiled), and color the patterns on it, so as in everything else, I copied her.  Paper napkins were only used on special occasions.
     Another Thanksgiving I remember was even earlier - around 1942.  Aunt Cindy and Uncle Norman were living in the remains of the little house that Uncle Orville had built.  There was a main room and a small back room.  As I recall, they just had Newell, and we all crammed around the table in the front room.  After lunch, Daddy and Norman went out and began to stake out the dimensions for our new home.  Unbelievably, we moved into that house on George Washington's birthday in 1943!  I spent another ten years in that home before graduating from high school and heading for Laramie.

Photos of Penrose and Dwight's Two Oldest Boys

 This is a sad lesson in why we shouldn't crop photos.  These are photos I took of Dwight's two oldest boys, Russell and Ron, when they came to Penrose for a visit.  The first photo shows a few more fun things about the living room, (besides two cute, mischievous boys) before the radio died, and the gas heater/stove was replaced with the wall heaters.

 This photo is fun because it shows some of the outbuildings (chicken coop!!!) and a very young Ron.

Note the truck loaded with hay, the garden tractor shed, and the light pole that so often served as home base, or in the case of baseball, first base.  I just thought these showed a few things that were worthwhile to share.  

Penrose Photos

This photo was taken when Uncle Stanley came to visit.

Dad's shop in Penrose.

This is a fun photo that shows the old cellar etc.

Judy and Louise by the Shoshone River

A little while ago, I put Louise's picture by the river, and should have included this one of Judy and Louise. The wool scarves tied around our heads for warmth were always part of our winter wear. We never worried much about what they did to our hair - not much vanity in our family. I still can't remember why I asked everyone to sit or crouch in the snow to take these pictures. Oh, well! This is the best I can do this morning. Where are you, siblings dear? We need to have some rejuvinating of the blog. Happy Sunday to all.

Students and Teachers at the Penrose School early 1900s

I'm sure this page from Mother's original photo album has been posted before, but after posting the photo above (I don't know where it came from), I thought it appropriate to show the two photos on the left of the students and teachers in the Penrose school.  Where did all these kids come from?  There aren't a half dozen people living in the Penrose valley today.  The school was a tribute to pioneer resourcefulness and emphasis on education, largely fostered by early farmers who had little, if any, education themselves.

The Penrose School House at the turn of the Century

This blurry photo may well be the only one we will ever see of the original Penrose school and school yard in the early 1900s.  The school was located only a short distance from the home in which we grew up, but the evidence of its existence had long vanished when we lived there.  However blurry, the photo evokes memories of a barren school yard, an outhouse, home made swings, and children at play.  Where did they all go?

The Penrose School

This is a very poor photo but I think it is worth adding to our history. This is the Penrose School. The photo was in an old photo album of Uncle Brooks that I was able to borrow from our cousin, David Wasden. There wasn't much of interest in the album, except for this photo. There is one of a young Uncle Brooks that I will post later. Hopefully you can at least get an idea of this little country school that Mother and her siblings attended.

Frosty Tree in Penrose Winter

Penrose River Bridge in Winter

First Day of School, September 1945

In the days when girls were required to wear dresses to school, Louise and I were prepared for the first day of school. Louise wore her store-bought (hand-me-down?) brown and white dress and her brown and white dress shoes with anklets, and I wore a made-over green plaid dress with my favorite penny loafers. Notice that the main road through downtown Penrose was full of ruts - dried for now, but susceptible to exciting times when the rains fell or the snow melted. The first day of school was still very exciting to us. Who knew what adventures were around the corner?

Penrose and Penrose Cemetery

I know, these markers have been posted before but I thought I should post them again. Cheryl cleaned out the weeds on both sides just a few minutes later.

Penrose Roads and Cemetery

More Penrose

The giant cottonwoods stand guard over the site of the little brown house where I spent the first nine years of my boyhood.

The rule is, everyone who visits Penrose must take a photo of the little white house where I spent five years of my boyhood, and others spent much longer. My room was on the right near corner, with two windows.


The Penrose Shoshone River Bridge. Can you imagine how the torrent of water narrows to pass under this undistinguished bridge? Used to be, you felt you were home when you saw the old railroad bridges across the river as the privileged entrance into Penrose. Now, no feeling at all.

Coming off the Byron highway down to Penrose

Penrose

Our Penrose Valley where we grew up. Heart Mountain in the background, standing sentinel

Did you know the river we explored is now a public access area? Who could have known?

Looking east from the bridge

The river was running at peak level. You can see barely a riff where the water runs over the dam that sends water to the Sidon canal. The reservoirs, canals, and rivers in Wyoming were all full and running at capacity.

Aren't we getting fancy? A sign for the Penrose road?

Back to our Roots - Again

Okay, so the tree by the old shop (which is no longer there) has grown large, the honeysuckle hedge to the north of the back lawn is still there, but the huge storage building and the quonset hut beyond take away the ambience of our home - PLUS - a red roof is not at all as becoming as the copen blue that was on the roof forever. Seeing this still brings back memories.

The Shoshone River, not far from our home, was always fascinating - it has changed immensely since we lived in Penrose.

For starters, the old railroad bridge has been long gone (since the mid-1960's), and there is a sand bar in the middle of the river as you look west. While it seems like a fairly recent addition to the river, there are trees and shrubs growing on it - amazing!

The other big change is that the east end of the valley. where George McBlaine and Bothilde kept a pretty tight ship, has turned into a big junk pile. Oh, well, we can ignore that, I guess. This early in the spring, trees were just beginning to leaf out in Penrose, while Burlington, about 15 miles to the south had lilacs in fulll bloom. Go figure!

Penrose Cemetery

Just wanted all of you to know that the cemetery is still there, and there is plenty of room left. Some of the gravestones are shifting a bit, as you can see from Grandma and Grandpa's. (I have old pictures of the other headstones, but didn't have this one.) Love the view of Heart Mountain, and the beautiful flowering tree. The meadowlarks still sing, and the breeze still blows across it. All in all, it is a peaceful place. It is one of the few places associated with Penrose that looks better than it did in the days that we lived there.

The Path Through the Field

Penrose Harvest

By mid-August, it is time to start thinking about harvest. How early do you cut the wheat? The rows are crowned with visible heads of grain. Every harvest holds the hope of financial support to make it through another year.

Alfalfa Hay, Once More

Grandpa Wasden's stack yard.  The Jackson Fork was probably one of the last ones in the entire area still in use in the early 1950s.  A large wicked heavy pronged fork hung from the cable on top of the triangle on the Jackson Fork.  Pet and Babe were used to raise the pulley, lifting a load of hay from the hay wagon, which Dad usually did, and then Grandpa Wasden was usually on the haystack when I helped with haying, where he pulled a rope to move the fork load of hay over to the stack, positioned it, and then tripped the load to dump on the stack.  One time while I was driving Pet and Babe to raise the fork, the fork was lowered instead of raised, burying Grandpa.  I was frightened to death, but he came out from under the hay laughing.  You can see from the height of the ladder how high Grandpa, in his seventies and early eighties, climbed to cut layers of hay with a serrated hay knife to fork down to the ground to be moved to the mangers to feed the cows.

Grandpa Wasden with Pet and Babe hitched to the hay wagon.

Dad turning the corner while mowing hay with the old John Deere.  I don't know how Dad managed to keep this tractor running, or how many times I went with him to Garland to Burke's Blacksmith Shop to repair the sickle.  Pheasants, unfortunately, often ran into the sickle blades.  Few smells are as nostalgic or as wonderful as the smell of new mown hay in full purple blossom.

This load of hay got unloaded in a hurry when the wagon tipped over.  This ancient haywagon was built by Grandpa Wasden and used for decades, with patches evident on the floor of the wagon.  This wagon was used for hauling everything that needed hauling around the farm, pulled by Pet and Babe.

Hay that has been windrowed to dry before being picked up by the hayloader on the back of the hay wagon.  This field is just to the east of Grandpa Wasden's home place.  

The tractor shed is on the left, then the granary, then the machine shed, then, across the open area, the blacksmith shop obscuring the garage, and then the Wasden house.  Nothing was fancy on the Wasden farmstead, but everything was neat and orderly.  During my high school years, my job was to drive the tractor pulling the "side-delivery rake", which raked the hay to the side of the rake in neat windrows.  You just prayed that it wouldn't rain heavily and spoil the hay before it got dry and hauled to the stackyard at Grandpa's and then to our farmyard for our share of the hay.

Liz Gage's drawing of the place where we lived throughout the 1930s

I asked Liz to draw a sketch of the layout of the little farmstead where we lived throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s, which we abandoned in 1941 when we moved to Ralston, east of Powell on the Cody highway, and then lived there from 1941-1944, returning to Penrose in 1944.  This sketch appeared in one of my personal history memoirs.