Times were rough in the early days

About the time the Weston County History Book was compiled, I asked Babe (Ethel) to write down some of her early family history. At that time, she was living in Walla Walla, Wash. It was early 1990s. The following stories are what she wrote from her memories.
 
MY MOTHER (Hannah 
Arizona Walker Williams)
Mother was born on Oct. 6, 1876, in Kansas. She married William Thomas Williams (Bill) on Aug. 1, 1895, in Mercer County, Mo. She spent most of her life in Newcastle, Wyo. She died at the Pioneer Manor in Gillette, Wyo., on Aug. 27, 1974. She was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Newcastle.
My mother wasn’t the best mother, but she was one of the best. She was kind, considerate, loving, sharing and always helping people. She was a hard worker — not a lazy bone in her body. She was the provider and homemaker in raising all us children. She was the mother of nine children. Her firstborn was when she was 20. The last was born at her age of 45. Two children died in infancy. 
Mother went with Dad to Kansas just before Mary was born. Jasper (Jap) was 2 years old. Mother said Grandma Williams would shut Jap up in a closet under the stairs all day but she took him out and fed him. She let him out when Dad would come home from working. Mother was upstairs all alone and wasn’t able to get up. It just broke her heart to hear him cry and call for his Mommy. When Mary was born, Grandma wouldn’t take care of Mother or the baby. She had one glass of water a day and maybe one meal. Mary had to have one drop of some kind of medicine three times a day in a teaspoon of water. Grandma would take the medicine downstairs and tell Mother, if she wanted it, she could come downstairs after it. Mother told Dad and he got it for her. When Mary was about 2 or 3 weeks old, Dad was going back to Mercer, Mo., and leave Mother and the two kids at grandma’s. Mother said “NO.” So Dad got a spring wagon, put a mattress in it and loaded Mother and the kids in it with a tent and took off for home. 
Mother said when they stopped at night, the poor baby’s skin on her neck was all sore and bleeding from being jostled around on Mother’s arm all day. She had a lot of long black hair and it was pulled off and mixed in the skin and blood on baby’s neck. 
When my family moved from Missouri to Wyoming in 1921, I (Babe) was 3 years old, brother David was 5, and sister Nellie was 11. My Dad had come out before we did. My oldest brother, Jap, was already out here, settled in Osage where he had a garage. We rented a house from Shorty Smith (Shorty owned a row of small houses on Pine Street, down the hill from where the power company is now located); Mickey was born there. Just 15 days before he was born, my sister Mary had a baby girl. When Mickey was about a year or so old, we moved to the Osage oil lease. 
I was 5 years old when Mickey was born. We went to school in a one-room tar-paper shack. We walked to school. It was about three or four miles across the open range. Catherine O’Connel was our teacher. She drove a Model T Ford out from Osage every day. She had 16 kids to teach from 1st grade to 8th grade, all in one room. There were six Bock kids, one Pierce, two Ice girls, two Butcher girls and two Martin boys, plus the three Williams kids. 
We had the old outhouse and at recess time when a girl would go in to use it, the boys would throw rocks at us. Nell and Edith Bock would take us small kids and play hookey ever once in awhile. There was a big, deep gulley that went by the schoolhouse. An uncle of the Bock kids had a nice house across from the schoolhouse. Ever so often, Nellie would take me and David at recess time and go down the gulley and sneak up to Uncle George’s house. He would let us in and hide us up in the attic of his house. Nellie would make candy, cookies or cake for him. We called him Uncle George ‘cuz he was the Bock kids’ uncle.
Mother was a mid-wife. She would go help at anyone’s home when the woman was giving birth. She helped with Dr. Wells and Dr. Fred Horton, early day doctors in our area. People stayed home in the early days to have their children. She also helped lay out the dead. People came to her for all kinds of help and advice. She was always there for people when they needed her, and for her children, too. It wasn’t an easy life for her. 
As I recall in my growing up, Dad was never a dad to us. He was always gone. It was our mother who raised us. All I can remember was Dad bought me one pair of shoes and one coat. The coat had belonged to Bunny McAvoy. Mother always worked to keep us. Sure, Dad worked, mostly away from home. He would come home maybe every six months or once a year, get drunk and spend what money he made, then take off again.
Us kids was scared to death of him cause he would beat Mother. He even shot at her several times as she was running to get away from him. Last time he beat her he almost killed her. I was working at the Antlers Hotel and came home. 
Blood was all over the house. I couldn’t find out what had happened. Dad was drunk and said, “I guess I killed the old lady.” It was a week before I found out where Mother was, and just what happened. Goldie Stevens finally told me. They had Mother at Grandpa and Grandma Cullum’s. Dad broke Mother’s nose and damaged her ear drum. From then on, I hated him.
Mother always grew rhubarb along the fence on the side by Copley’s. He cut it all down, dug it up and threw it in the creek. Mother and I looked and looked for it. I finally found it and we carried it up the hill and cleaned it, then canned the best. I bought her petunias with pretty blooms. She set them out along the side of her house. He went out and pulled them up. He also cut down her big cherry tree.
When Mother was sick with pneumonia we didn’t have much to eat. She measured out the flour, lard and baking powder for me to make biscuits. We had ½ pail of syrup and that lasted us a week. She had worked for Mr. Hurt. He had some kind of food store. She had me go and ask him if he would let us have some corn meal, beans, lard and flour. He did. She worked it out. Later, she was working at the Sewing Room when I was 13. She got sick and I left school to take her place. That was during the Depression.
She always grew a garden and put up food for winter for her family. No one run over my Mother. She didn’t have any schooling much. I believe she went through the 4th grade of country school in Missouri. She was the oldest of six children. She helped raise her sisters and brothers. Her father was a preacher. He would go out several times a year to people far away. Sometimes, if close to home, he would take Mother.
Our mother told us kids about some of her experience she had with the kids when her dad and mother were gone. One night the kids were acting up. She told them a ghost was upstairs. She made them set in the front room, then she got out some English walnuts and cracked them. She left them to eat the nuts and she went in the kitchen and got the cat. She poured homemade sorghum in four shells, then stuck them on the cat’s feet. She put the cat upstairs in the bedroom and turned him loose. He was having a fit running around. That made a clickin’ noise and she told the kids it was a ghost. They all ran in Grandma’s bedroom downstairs and jumped in the feather bed. Well, Mother forgot about the cat upstairs till Grandma and Grandpa came home two days later. Grandma asked where the cat was. Mother sneaked upstairs and the cat was okay but she couldn’t get the nut shells off his feet. That sorghum stuck like glue. She snuck hot water up and soaked them off his feet. 
 
The story continues in next week’s News Letter Journal.