More letters...

8/15/50 (after an inspection trip to Dunsmuir)...The former minister says they always have at least 5‑6 feet of snow in the winter and it sounds as though we'll be Eskimos. (That's what the boys think‑‑I've read them the Eskimo Twins and a couple of other Eskimo stories and they are training David and Billy to be dogs to pull their sledges and go around explaining to everybody about how they'll make an igloo. My favorite story of the camping trip: Timmy and Charley were arguing over something Timmy had and Charley wanted. Charley kept saying "Please give it to me" Finally Timmy said:"Well, I'll see" (adding after a thoughtful pause) "...that means NO." It was such a direct reflection on his ma that I've been chortling ever since...Now it's bedtime for the boys‑‑they (I mean the top 3) are in the bathtub washing off some of the mud. One of Charley's thoughtful remarks on our camping trip was, "What are you going to do when you want to punish us? There's no ROOM you can send us to..." We found ways.

9/10/50...after the van left we climbed in the car and drove over to Motherdee's. She had a nice light supper ready. By 5:30 p.m. we were rolling with Charley and Timmy in the back of the car. We stopped to say goodbye to the Newhalls...had a hot trip even at night..arrived in Dunsmuir about 12:30 A.M. and found we couldn't break into our new home. All the time the key sat under the mailbox but we ended up raiding the basement for an old pair of springs and an old rug on which Dink slept. I slept in the front seat of the car while the boys slept in back. They were good little sports as we were not prepared to make ourselves comfortable and none of us got much sleep. All we could see of the house was an enormous pile of rubbish outside and I feared the worst. Next morning after a hasty clean‑up trip to a gas station we got hold of the key and even though we were weary and breakfast‑less, we were astonished when we got inside the house. A committee of church people had made it glitter‑‑downstairs repapered and painted, etc. I am now typing in Dink's study which is bigger than we remembered and very cosy. The boys felt at home at once and were soon busily engaged in collecting acorns (they wanted to know where the pigs were), knocking the ripe plums off the two plum trees (also the non‑ripe ones) and making countless tours of inspection.

The moving van arrived Wednesday and Motherdee arrived Thursday afternoon with David and Billy and Mary Jane. As always she had managed everything wonderfully. David and Billy fitted in quickly...we discovered the city park for picnic suppers on Friday‑‑it is on the Sacramento and perfect for wading, and the railroad on the opposite side provided additional entertainment. Also swings and slides, etc. The Sacramento is a delightful river, all burbly and crystal clear. We already feel as if Mount Shasta is "our mountain."...the boys miss Mary Jane. This morning Charley was again lamenting that they have no girl to be the mother when they play house...they discovered the laundry chute as a play telephone this morning and practically wore out the staircase trotting back and forth and hollering at each other. The space in this house is wonderful‑‑big bedrooms [hard to heat we found out later]. The front porch is another delight‑‑it looks old and shabby but it has a restful view across the canyon and a comfortable swing‑seat. The neighbor children seem several cuts above Elmhurst...Mrs. Cravens across the street seems most cooperative. Now it's time to hustle David into his Sunday duds and get over to church.

9 p.m. ...Bob suggested we all go to the Young People's Outing, scrambling the children, bathing suits, hot dogs, diapers, etc. into the car. The outing was in two stages. First a nice place to swim in a creek and then a rough ten mile ride on a mountainous dirt road to where a campfire was planned. By the time we got to the second stage thunder and lightning were threatening, and by the time we had half eaten we were pretty well rained out. Such a mess! But the kids were intrigued and cooperative while we repacked the car. Bob left for a meeting as soon as we got home, and I got the boys into pajamas and toasted the left‑over hot dog buns which they ate with apple butter and milk. Then we read another chapter of "The Dutch Twins" and now they are all tucked in. They are still not quite adjusted to "trespasses"‑‑adding a new cousin to the prayers seems quite routine compared to changing the Lord's Prayer. They ask every night if we can't do it the old way, but are beginning to "help mama say it the new way" as Timmy suggested tonight. Billy called the thunder "funder" all the way home. Charley started to school last week...I still have to walk him to school (a mile round trip and two trips in the morning make it scarcely worthwhile). The walk this morning was especially beautiful‑‑Mt. Shasta had a fine new coat of snow...

10/8/50 Dearest Molly...you know the only thing that haunts me about your being a step‑mother is how mad I get at my own children and how horrible they can act. I mean if I were their stepmother I might get to feeling very subjective and as though I were a fiend. I love them very tenderly when they are asleep, sick or on picnics (where they act like perfect little Indians); my affection for them when I am dressing them and at mealtime reaches a pretty low ebb. Especially at mealtime. I forgot to say that I love them a whole lot when I'm reading to them. When we take them all on a tedious trip, I alternate between moods of egregious pride and black despair. Right at the moment, Charley, Tim and Billy are at Sunday School and David is taking a nap preparatory to going to the nursery while I take Charley and Tim to church‑‑so I am feeling very fond of them. But at breakfast this morning I felt like leaving all the porridge on the table and going off into the woods with the three bears.

10/8/83 Took a heavenly trip halfway up Mount Shasta Monday leaving right after Charley got home from school. A dirt road brought us to an elevation of 7600 feet where we toasted frankfurters and cheese in rye bread. David sat in the folderolla munching banana, apple, corn chips and anything else he could lay his hands on (just as if I hadn't fed him a whole lunch just before we left). Maybe it was the crisp mountain air that made everything taste so good, but I thought it was the best picnic I ever ate. There was a log seat made by cutting a quarter wedge out of a single big log, and many fallen trunks lay about where the children had a fine time playing ship, pirates, etc. Around the bend we discovered "Panther Meadows", a heavenly mountain meadow with a crystal clear baby brook sparkling through it with miniature waterfalls and tiny pools and places where the children could easily jump across. An unforgettable day‑‑having just finished reading the two volumes of John Muir's Life and Letters I feel a fine passion to know all the flora and fauna of this region...

10/21/50 Recent incident:

Charley (bashing Timmy) Bash...

Timmy: (sitting on Billy) Owwwww...

Billy: Owwwww...

David: Wahhahahhhhh

Robert: (assuming the slightly beaten‑but‑patient expression that has furrowed his brow in recent months) Now, is everybody even?

All right, what shall we do now?...

10/27/50 ..rain and more rain. The boys get sort of house‑ crazy, but they're a lot of fun...David still doesn't walk, but stands alone and so nearly walks that we expect that development momentarily. He eats most everything we do, but I am going more slowly than I did with Billy. He is very efficient at feeding himself, but is so vigorous in heaving his bowl when he's through that we are wearing out even the heavy plastic ones.

Billy is still his funny engaging self. He rushes into his daddy and says, "DADDY, you know what I went into?"; Daddy: What? Billy: "I went into baffroom..." He is still far from perfect but he IS getting the idea.

A gal who borrowed some cups for a scout function donated a couple of left‑over tunafish sandwiches to us. We had them for supper and they were quite fishy. Timmy took one large bite and said, "Tastes just like bait..."

Another Timmy‑quote. I had "sneaked" a lime life‑saver, having found the package in the middle of cleaning up the house. I was sucking it very discreetly‑‑and I have learned through many years of practice (I thought) to be very discreet at hidden eating. Timmy sauntered into the room and put his head up in the air like a puppy scenting the wind; his eyes got that bright look and he said to me, "Do you smell what I smell?" When I said, "What?" He took another sniff and said..."Lifesavers..." Had to be seen to see how funny he was.

10/29/50 Pulpit exchange at Fall River Mills. Took all the boys, leaving Dunsmuir in torrential rain, stopping by the side of the road to see a cute family of pigs and huddling around the wood stove in the small church. A long day including a venison dinner, visit with Nancy Gordon on the way home. We got back in time for Bob to conduct his 7 p.m. evening service and I fed the children cornflakes and milk and washed all the piled up diapers and hung them in the basement.

ll/l/50 Practically verbatim stories:

Timmy (while playing with the Montessori toy pretending it was a train): And then the train carries buckets and buckets of water down to the ocean; and then the train goes up to where the Eskimos live and melts all the snow and it goes into a big black pipe (at this point I asked which, the train or the snow) no the water that all the snow melted into, and then it goes down in the big black pipe, down deep, deep under the ground where all the angleworms are sleeping and the dead people are, until it comes to a big sack of coal and then it gets its coal car all loaded up.

I said, "Tell me a story Timmy..."

Timmy: One day there was a little fox that was running away. He was planning to do that and then somebody came and caught the fox, and then along came a boy, and a man with a newspaper. And then they ate some ice cream cones out of the paper, and then here came a BIG ice‑cream cone that the fox had to eat, and then he had a popsicle and oh it was so good and then he went and found two old jack‑o‑lanterns that somebody threw away and then pop ‑‑ he didn't know what that pop was but he heard a sound that was popping, like this, and it might be a lion or a tiger coming to fight, but he could fight better than any animal in the world even lions and elephants, and he could fight them till they were dead. And then he could hardly be out of the grass because he was so scratched and bitten. And then it went pop again and he knew it was a lion or a tiger so he peeped behind a palm tree and saw two tigers coming to fight the fox's children and then he was going to snatch their children‑‑that wasn't nice, was it‑‑that's the end of the story. (Mama asks well what happened? Did he eat them?) NO. (firmly) that's the end of the story."

Charley: Once there was a little boy only he was a great, great big boy, almost a man. And along came a big crocodile and he had a big spear, and he lifted up his spear and the crocodile sank down into the bottom of the sea and he was dead. And he went and told everybody about it and said "I saved you from the crocodile", and they changed him from a giant into this beautiful king, and the boys were princes and the man turned them into soldiers and they magicked a beautiful palace and there was...and the palace was made of pure gold. No it wasn't pure gold because it was too strong, it was made of stiff gold, no I mean metal. Oh it was pretty. Then the giant was so glad he had killed the crocodile he magicked the spear into more spears and gave the spears to everybody. That's the end of the story.

Timmy: Once there was a normous king that lived in a palace and they found a man and magicked him into a soldier. He had a normous rifle so he shot everybody down except his own king. Once he found 600 soldiers who were marching around trying to catch everybody. So he said,"march with me" so they marched with him to his palace. They came to the doorway and everybody put up his hand and said "RAY"...and they ran as fast as they could and they banged into the swords and they were killed because they were wicked people. And that's the end of the story.

12/5/50 Our first big snowfall December 2nd ‑‑ have had several power failures that eliminated our cooking, heat and lights. When Dink explained to Timmy's worried question the first time it happened, he said "No, we can't turn on the lights, because the company turned them off..." Timmy brooded for a while and then, after we had gotten out of context, started asking " Well where IS the company..." We finally came to...he thought company was always what stays for supper.

12/17/50 Charley and Timmy have "pieces" for the Sunday School program and will also sing a duet. The pieces are "I shoveled snow for all the neighbors; earned Christmas money for my labors" (that's Charley's‑‑part of a group piece) and Timmy says "I hope your Christmas will be glad; the nicest one you ever had..."

They love to turn out all the lights, except the creche, and sing carols. Re David and Silent Night. I didn't mean to imply he sings the whole thing, but he sings the first line using the syllable "Ho‑o‑o‑o" in excellent tune, and in the middle of the program Friday night when one little girl got up to sing it, David chimed right in louder and much more on key than she was. As far as I know it is his only song. He jabbers a great deal and his walk is really comical. He has held on to things so long that he still walks sidewise most of the time‑‑completed a large circle in the kitchen that way this morning‑‑I think it may spring from his delight in playing Ring a Round a Rosy with the boys.

1/7/51 One of the big hits of Christmas was Tim and Charley's pocket knives found in their stockings. They promptly fell to work peeling the apples (also from their stockings) with such gusto that nothing else was noticed for a full half hour and we had apple peelings everywhere. The wagon we thought would be the hit of the day proved to be of minor interest (hills too steep maybe). The trains Alice & Luther sent kept the boys delighted. I have put them away for now but they keep asking for them. Motherdee sent them handsome plaid shirts...David watched his big brothers and chimed in with most everything they did and finally resorted to his two favorite things (l) pulling the paperbound books out of the bookcase and (2) settling down at "his" drawer with all his nice old familiar toys‑‑happy as a clam all day. More tonsillitis‑‑poor little Billy, he has the worst time and the doctor recommends that we get all their tonsils out in the spring. Tim asked this morning (with only 3 feet of snow on the ground piled in many places over his head), "When will winter come?"

2/4/51 Billy goes around the house singing "Where have you been all the day Billy Boy, Billy Boy; Where have you been all the day Charley and Billy..." Charley has been having "A Bomb and Bomb drills" at school...he alternates between shyness and show‑off in the face of the ruff‑and‑tuff school competition. But he retains his sweet, generous ways. Timmy is more articulate and extroverted. I feel sympathetic for Charley's incoherence remembering how frustrating it was to me as a child. Charley jumps into the middle of a story in a burst of excitement and leaves out several vital links to sustain his audience whereas Timmy organizes his material intuitively. David trots about busily‑‑he can be very stubborn but in the main is a sweet, fat, jolly lunp.

4/1/51 ...Nighttime prayers...Timmy got into the habit of adding, "Bless we for the rain," "Bless we for Grandma," or Bobby or whoever was uppermost in his mind. So Charley added very fervently "and ESPECIALLY Korea and Grandma..." You wonder what their funny little minds are full of. Billy was getting us out of bed the other morning and I said sleepily, "All right, if you'll count to 10 I'll get up..." So he counted very slowly, "One, two, free, fow‑er, five, six, sev‑en, eight, nine...pause and then very impishly and as fast as he could "21,22,23,24..." Dink & I of course were lying in the anguish of those about to be sentenced, and he seemed to have concocted the whole joke so whimsically that we laughed very hard.

4/12/51...The triple tonsillectomy...Alice White kept David...the rest of us reached the Mt. Shasta hospital at 7:30 a.m. We had an unexpected overnight guest (Ernie Troutner's dad) which made me edgy because I was afraid the boys would "catch" us at breakfast and absentmindedly pick up a piece of bread or drink something which of course was taboo. Anyway they were very good. Charley was first and seemed to have the hardest time coming out of the anesthetic. I began to feel very woozy and had to put my head between my legs for a few minutes. Timmy had the biggest tonsils and adenoids, but the dr. said they were all very much enlarged. We brought them home around 6 p.m. and Bob went off to get David. I felt as though I hadn't seen him for a week. The first thing Billy said when he came out of the ether was "Where's my bank (his blanket) I want my bank..." I had especially intended to bring it, but in the confusion of saying goodbye to Mr. Troutner had forgotten. They slept pretty well through the night, better in some respects I think than we did. I was still rather worried about Charley. Needless to say this morning was a busy one; the payoff was that we called the fire department who swarmed through the house because of some smoke coming out into one of the upstairs bedrooms. Turned out to be nothing serious, but after the tumult and shouting died, Bob glanced at the boys and said to me, "Well, how can we amuse them this afternoon..." My emotions had run the gamut, from figuring out how to quickly evacuate the children and where to take them, to being very calm and reassuring to them. I had them all four on one double bed and explained to Charley and Timmy how they could hold hands and walk, etc. Charley's teacher brought dixie cups for the boys. Billy apparently got tired of his after the first couple of bites and kept telling me he'd put his under the bed to "save it"‑‑I hunted high and low, but didn't find it until later in the evening when I discovered it the hard way‑‑he'd propped it on the angle iron where Timmy sleeps and when Tim fell out of bed, I felt something very sticky and oozy...I told Bob I wished we could phone his mother to tell her we were relieved to have everything over safely. A few minutes later when they were all howling at once, Bob said, "Why don't we just send mother a card "Having helluva time. Wish you were here..."

5/6/51 Reading aloud about Jesus I mentioned that Joseph died‑‑Charley said "Which Joseph" and I said "You know, Jesus' father." Charley was thoughtful a moment and said, "Why do grandmas stay alive better than grandpas?" Charley and Timmy brought me a jagged bouquet of iris they had picked for Mother's Day and Timmy spilled it all over creation‑‑it's the thought that counts!

5/20/51 Climbed out of bed this morning wondering whether Timmy was sick or not (slight fever yesterday); decided he was well enought to make it to Sunday School. By the time I'd breakfasted the family and had half their hair combed (feeling thankful for the l000th time for the shirts motherdee got them for Easter) it was time for Sunday School. One of the mothers had asked me to see that her Jimmie's birthday offering was taken care of, so I went over and tried to see the right person. The right superintendent was late and Jimmie hadn't gotten there either so I ran home again to discover David had gotten into the cupboard and mixed up all the offering envelopes. Sorted envelopes. Decided to see if Jimmie had arrived yet; went back to Sunday School. En‑route found Mike, a 5 year old who should have been in the Sunday School already. Asked him why he wasn't. He said he didn't know anyone to sit with so I said "Oh, c'mon, you can sit with our boys..." Sunday school had already begun, but I thought I saw a vacant chair next to Charley. I knew Mike knew Charley so I told him to go in there and sit next to him. Meanwhile somebody else took the chair so Mike tried to take Charley's chair. Charley firmly pushed him off. Mike pushed back. Everybody rose for a hymn. I didn't see Jimmie. Tried to get the boy at the end of the row to move back. Decided to go home and let them fight it out feeling I had precipitated a completely unnecessary row. Went home. David had pulled my bureau scarf off and was helping himself generously to cologne and talcum. Cleaned up bureau. Doorbell rang. Rushed downstairs. Had forgotten a Sunday School class was due to meet in the livingroom. Sent the girl back to be sure the teacher was with them. Dashed most conspicuous disorder out of livingroom into playroom. Rushed upstairs to stop David playing with toilet. Rushed downstairs to answer doorbell.

The Sunday School class arrived with Mr. Gray as teacher (he is the chairman of our official board, school principal, etc. and I wished I had cleaned up better). Upstairs again. David finally discovered putting on Charley's tennis shoes having taken off his own. Also soiled. Cleaned up David. Assembled toys for the nursery. Billy didn't want to go to the nursery but wanted to go to church. Decided to let him. Explained nursery to new mother. Herded Billy, Charley and Timmy into church during prelude. Well church went pretty well, except that they got restless during the sermon and I wanted to beat them just while Bob was preaching on "Christian Persuasion" and how you shouldn't have to knock people on the head and MAKE them be Christians. Life is less turbulent part of the time . It was a beautiful day and after dinner I left Bob with the kids and went to call on two new mothers (I mean they have sons less than 2 weeks old). Then I took our four out to a lovely birthday party at Brown's Motel (later Cave Springs). The party was outdoors where they have a fountain of mineral spring water, genuine "Shasta Water" which makes good fizzy lemonade. Cereal and milk supper, Glinda of Oz, prayers, drinks and bed. It's even quiet now.