A Fair to Remember

Parade on Main St Halfway, OR - 2011

Baker County Fair in Halfway, Oregon - 2011

Queen and Princess - 2011

Back to the 50s

Halfway didn’t have a lot of town celebrations, but the Baker County Fair and Rodeo was the biggest event of the year and the whole Valley, outside towns around and Baker County participated in this festivity.  This always happened on Labor Day weekend when Monday was a holiday.  It was the end of the summer, the harvesting was done, the canning completed, jams and fruits were preserved, the apples were picked and the gladiolas and zinnias were in bloom.  Flags were hung along the main street of town and store windows were scrubbed with a new display placed behind the panes.  4-H club members were diligently training their animals to show at the fair and getting other entries ready for the big exhibit.  We all tried to take something to enter at the fair in hopes of winning a ribbon and a few dollars.  I remember winning a ribbon for my chocolate ice box cookies and Bonnie won for an apron she had made.

 

The rodeo at the fairgrounds was the top entertainment, it was on for three days and everyone attended from the surrounding area.  It was a good rodeo and cowboys from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Canada came to ride a bucking bronco or rope a steer or ride a mad raging bull.  The purse (the prize money for each event) wasn’t shabby so many young cowboys came to try their luck on winning the big cash prizes.  Riding bucking broncos and mad bulls is a young man’s sport, it’s dangerous and there are a lot of mishaps.  Older cowboys do the roping and herding and easier maneuvers on a horse.

There was a parade on Saturday down the main street of town.  When I was 5 my mother and grandmother made an old 

Judy age 5

fashioned dress and hat for me and I walked in the parade.  After the parade the town gathered for the much anticipated beef barbecue where the beef was buried underground with embers for hours and then dug up and unwrapped and served with roasted potatoes and corn on the cob and all of the trimmings.  It was a feast.  We didn’t have the kind of backyard barbecues one has today, this was a pioneer type barbecue where the men dug a pit for the beef to lay on hot coals and slowly roast.  There was no dirt on the meat, it was wrapped very carefully. 

Our town had a dance hall, it seems strange now to think that a small western town would have a building for dances (I think it was called the Fair Hall) but it did. The rodeo dances, with a live western band, were the main focus for most teenage girls who hoped to meet a cute cowboy.  The dances were on Saturday and Sunday nights.  Some girls dressed western with boots, jeans and hats but others wore summer sundresses with spaghetti straps. 

 

Mama sewed Bonnie and I cotton sundresses that we thought were the latest fashion.  It was thrilling to know that so many new people were in town, young cowboys from other towns and states, it was an exciting time and I longed for a cowboy to ask me to dance.

 I hoped I wouldn’t have to stand along the wall with the old town ladies who planted themselves in chairs to watch the night’s merriment.  This was a time when girls waited to be invited; it would have been way too forward to ask a guy to dance.  

Some girls danced with each other, it was totally acceptable.

The Stringbusters from Boise, Idaho was the western dance band; there were posters tacked up around town.  Actually, they were listed as The Stringbusters and Dolores.  They had been on TV and were on the Country Western Billboard charts so to us they were famous.  The main singer was Dolores, (the only woman in the band) she had a great voice and I loved her renditions of the popular country western songs. This was the era when Willie Nelson was a young song writer, Hank Williams was topping the charts with, “Your Cheatin Heart” and Colonel Tom Parker began managing Elvis.  Johnny Cash was singing “I Walk the Line” and Chuck Berry was hailing rock n roll with “Maybellene.”

Gwen Verdon

One year it was advertised ahead that a real Hollywood movie star was going to attend the fair and there was a lot of chatter in town about this.  She would be introduced at the dance.  I was hoping it would be Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe or maybe Sandra Dee, but it turned out to be a movie star that I hadn’t even heard of.  She was introduced at the dance and she had red hair and looked very pretty and very slim.  I think she was Gwen Verdon but at the time I didn’t know anything about her.  

 

The Indians (Native Americans) from surrounding reservations would bring their horses to the rodeo for the horse races.  The horse races were gripping, loud, fast and dangerous; one of the most thrilling events of the fair.  The prize money was good and the Indians intended on taking it all home and they usually did.  They put small Indian boys on their horses and they rode bareback (meaning no saddle) with no helmet, the horses were fast and the boys were light weight and they didn’t fall off.

Looking back now, I realize how very dangerous it was for those children.  I’m sure it would be against the law today.  I was captivated by the young Indian boys who rode like lightning with their shiny black hair flying in the wind and their faces down near the neck of their horse; their lips whispering into laid back ears a lingo only they and their steed understood.    

Mama was a winner

Mama winning clothes dryer c 1955

My mother was a person who was always hopeful, whether we were hunting for mushrooms, trying a new recipe or browsing at a garage sale, she always thought something good was just around the corner.  She was fun and funny with a charming laugh and a great sense of humor.  Always loving and somewhat religious, she was raised going to a fundamentalist church, and she tried to follow those convictions.   

She read novels, I remember her telling me that when “Gone With the Wind” was first published, she loved that book so much that she stayed up reading it all night long to finish it.  In the 1940s and 50s I remember her in the kitchen with her radio on while doing dishes and preparing the next meal, listening to Helen Trent, a soap opera back in radio days.  Soap operas were named that because they were ongoing episodic stories that were sponsored by large soap manufacturers; I suppose opera referred to the drama of it all.

Mama always longed to be a writer.  She worked on stories and sent them off to various publications.  She loved to enter contests and write jingles and little “25 words or less” phrases about products and she would send them off with big hopes that she might win the grand prize.  Most of the time mama received a ‘thank you for entering’ letter in the mail and maybe a coupon for soap or some product.  Sometimes she would win a minor prize that we couldn’t wait to open and look at but it was always small and kind of cheap and not anything we would really use but this didn’t halt mama’s enthusiasm for writing.  She would send recipe entries to The Pillsbury Bake Off contest when the winning recipes were still all made from scratch and it wasn’t required to use the Pillsbury mixes or store bought pie dough or Jiff peanut butter in your entry.  Mama collected the Pillsbury books of the prize winning recipes each year and would try out some of the winning entries on us.

One year mama entered a contest that the grand prize was an electric clothes dryer.  We always hung our wet clothes out on a clothesline or by the stove in the winter.  Mama WON that contest for the dryer.  Our family was so happy and excited.  She had to go to Boise, Idaho to pick up the prize.  We were all very proud of mama.  Daddy and mama drove the pickup to Boise to get the dryer and stayed overnight with my great uncle Lynn Rumley and his family.  

Daddy and mama came back with stories of their trip.  Mama told about a place they went to eat where the food (each individual serving) was behind little glass doors.  She described how there was everything you could think of to eat and you could open the

little doors and take out whatever you wanted and put on your tray.  There were sandwiches and roast beef entrés and salads and mashed potatoes and fruit cups and soups.  Once you had all of the servings that you wanted to eat on your tray, you paid a cashier.  It sounded like a marvel of an invention to me, it was called an Automat.    Bonnie and I begged to hear that story over and over and asked questions about the food she saw behind the glass.  Was there pie and cake?  Were things warm or cold?  We wondered about the empty places once people had taken food out and mama said there were cooks in the back making the food and putting the next serving in the little space so it never appeared empty behind the little doors.  Bonnie and I wondered if we would ever get to eat at a place so grand.  Of course the best story of all was mama winning the dryer and seeing it brand new in the pickup when they came home. 

Women of Substance

Nora Rumley (Nanny) c 1908 w youngest son Lynn

Nora Rumley (Swiger)

The year was 1888, she was young, very beautiful, 18, and head over heels in love.  Jack Rumley came from Indiana, to seek his fortune in the West.  He was strong and handsome and 23, he claimed to be a butcher.  Nora Swiger was from a well respected family in Union County, Oregon, an area called High Valley.  Her parents had a ranch and cattle.  She married Jack Rumley on Christmas eve, at the Centennial Hotel in Union, Oregon in 1888.

Jack Rumley  c 1898

She was soon pregnant and delivered babies about every two years. They had 7 children, three daughters, Dolly, Elba and Ada, and four sons, Richard, Roland, Paul and Lynn.  Elba, my grandmother Momoo, was her daughter.

Her father and mother, Nathan and Polly Swiger, gave the newlyweds some cattle from their ranch as a wedding gift to get them started.  The story goes that Jack Rumley butchered the cattle and opened a butcher shop to sell the meat.  The profits were soon gone as Jack Rumley, being a bit of a rogue, liked whiskey and women.

Nora Rumley (Swiger) was my great-grandmother.  She was born in 1870 in Oregon, just 5 years after the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln.    My daddy called her Gramit and to me she was Nanny.  She lived with my grandmother, Momoo, off and on during my childhood.  For as long as I knew her she had snow white hair.

Momoo, Nanny, Ada  c 1942

  


She was a big part of my growing up years.  She wore bright red lipstick and lots of rings.  She smoked sometimes which was kind of shocking as my family didn’t smoke.  She was always nice and pleasant and the kind of older lady that little girls feel comfortable around.  Bonnie and I would cut up and be outrageous sometimes, even grab her cigarettes and puff, and she would always just laugh and say “oh you girls.”  I could fix her hair and give her permanents whenever I wanted to, she liked to be pampered.

 

Four generations: Nanny, Momoo, Daddy and me

She always wore beads and silky dresses with flowers on them, like she was ready to go out for the evening if someone would call; as far as I could tell she wasn’t getting any invitations so she always stayed home.  I remember my mom telling me that when she and daddy were going out, he took her to meet Momoo and Nanny, they both wore red lipstick and fur coats and she thought they seemed so sophisticated and rich.  My mother came from plain stock, a Nazarene, not too familiar with lots of jewelry or bright cosmetics.

There are funny stories about Nanny, one is that a couple of her sons (young men) got rowdy and were fighting one night and she called the cops and had them put in jail.  I think she had a hard life, seven children to feed and a husband who wasn’t always employed.  She worked at various jobs to make ends meet; in a hotel and sometimes as a cook, I could see the struggles of her life in the lines on her face.  She made the best of it, she was a strong and vibrant woman in her time.  She passed away in 1958 at age 88 and I was there.

Bessie Bell Chadd  c 1936

Bessie Bell Chadd (Woodworth) was my grandmother, on my mom’s side.  She was born in 1876, to Elijah and Frances Woodworth, one of five daughters. I remember my mom telling me the way to remember when grandma was born was that 1776 was the end of the American revolution when our country declared independence from Britain, and grandma’s birth was 100 years later. Grandma Chadd was mostly raised by her father and older sisters, her mother died when she was 6 years old.  She married Jack Chadd (c 1901) and had four children, Myrtle, John Hobert, Elmo and Naomi (my mother).  Myrtle died when she was a baby of only one year old.  Bessie’s husband, Jack Chadd, died in 1919 when my mother was 3 yrs old.  At that time the family lived in Virtue Flats, a mining community on the old Oregon Trail just outside of Baker.  Grandma had to gather her children (two teenage boys and a three year old) and move into Baker where she could work and raise her family alone.  She did housekeeping and other chores and took in ironing for wealthy people. 

Bessie Chadd and Naomi Chadd c 1940

 She read her Bible during daylight but when the sun went down she went to bed, she didn’t like to waste electricity or anything.  She walked to the Nazarene church every Sunday. She was a stern lady, a little bit snappy, she never drove a car, she walked wherever she needed to go.  When she went out she always wore a hat and sensible shoes.  Grandma didn’t laugh a lot and she wasn’t one to tell a joke or even listen to one.  I do remember a time when she had bought a wedding gift for my cousin, Marilyn, and I asked to see it.  She showed it to me and said; “I bought her a nightgown for her wedding night, but she probably won’t wear it!” and then she gave me a fierce look as if to say I had better not even think of such things.

Cow Schedules

 Cows are milked twice a day, early morning and in the evening and it’s as if they have a clock in their heads, they always know when it is time to be milked, and they like staying on a schedule.  On our farm we had one milk cow, her name was Whitey, and she was all white.   Bonnie and I had to milk her each evening, another family member did the morning milking.  Cows like efficiency and Whitey preferred us to be on time and to work fast but we did neither.  She was out in the pasture all day eating grass but she knew when milking time was and she was always on time and waiting at the barn door when Bonnie and I arrived.



Barn’s have gismos that city folk don’t really think about, read about or hear about.  First the cow comes into the barn and puts her head in a stall, once her head is in, the stall is fastened so she doesn’t back up while milking.  Whitey’s incentive was a bucket of grain waiting on the other side of the stall so she put her head through without reservation.  Hobbling was the next step, you must hobble the cow before milking, this is another device, kind of a leg brace, that you fasten to the cow’s back legs to keep her from kicking, mainly you don’t want her to kick the milk bucket over, or to get dirt into the milk.  I know the word hobbling sounds like something from a bad horror movie but this is just business as usual on the farm.  These are necessary procedures and not harmful or hurtful to the cow and Whitey knew the routine well.  Bonnie and I were often a bit late and Whitey would give us a disgusted snort.  She tried to look fierce but her bluff didn’t work on us.

Bonnie and I were not crazy about milking, but it was a chore that had to be done every day without fail.   Milk stools have three legs and I don’t know why.  The person milking sits on the little stool with the bucket just under the cows teats and leans forward into the cow placing your head against the cow’s flank, real close and personal.  We took turns milking while the other one entertained. One of us would sing and dance while the other one milked.  We mostly sang Elvis numbers; very loud renditions of Blue Suede Shoes; Hound Dog; Jailhouse Rock; All Shook Up, we had some dance moves that even Ed Sullivan hadn’t seen.  Whitey didn’t share our love for Elvis, but it was her price to pay for her bucket of grain.  I look back on this now and remember the laughs and fun we made during this daily chore.  We sang and danced like Elvis and milking became secondary, but we always took a bucket of milk back to the house.

Bonnie and Flame

My sister had a horse she loved called Flame. Flame was more than a horse, she was like a companion, steady, loyal, safe, good natured. Bonnie rode her all the time. Flame liked to stop and smell the roses. Bonnie belonged to a horse club and one of the big events of the year for the club was that the kids rode their horses to music performing a horse square dancing number at the annual county fair and rodeo on Labor Day weekend as well as at the junior rodeo in Baker.

For the performance, the members dressed in Western outfits and brushed and groomed their horses to the nines. They rehearsed with their horses throughout the year to music in anticipation for the big rodeo events.

The horse club was run by a man named Vee. Vee’s daughter, Dodi, was in the club too and she had a beautiful prancing horse that moved quickly and learned all of the steps to the dance. At one of the practices before Labor Day weekend, Dodi told Bonnie that Flame wasn’t good enough to be in the show, that she wasn’t fast and slowed everybody else down. It was kind of true, Flame didn’t like dancing and she had put her feet down about it more than once. Bonnie rode home bawling and hated Dodi after that. Bonnie tried to make Flame move faster, she even had a little whip to use. Flame disliked the notion of dancing to music but she did it, kind of begrudgingly, so Bonnie encouraged her to move with the little whip. Vee had extra horses so he called our dad one night to offer Bonnie a faster horse to ride for the big performance, one that could dance and turn quickly.

One night daddy had a talk with Bonnie and told her that it was her choice, she could ride Flame for the big event, borrow the faster horse, or quit the club, it was up to her. Bonnie was so mad at Vee and Dodi that she wanted to just quit. Daddy told her that she could make the decision of what to do. Daddy dropped a few choice words about Vee in the discussion too. Daddy was a great friend of profanity. Bonnie ended up riding Flame at the big performance and then she quit the club after the rodeo weekend. She knew she would never feel the same about the club again. Bonnie took a stand for Flame.

Back to the Future

Pine Valley  aka  Halfway, OR

Growing up in the 40’s and 50’s in a very small rural country town allowed most children to rely heavily on their own imaginations. Hide and seek was always thrilling especially if it was starting to get dark.  Most social activities revolved around school or church. Summers were helping with haying and harvesting and church camp or vacation Bible school.   No swimming pools in my town, rare to find a sidewalk for roller skating (if you didn’t live right on the main street of town) no bowling alley (one opened years later) no fast food, no public transportation, many things were missing that most city children took for granted even in the 50s.  Still, I had a very rich and full-of-joy childhood, never missing any of the modern city attractions.  Rural life was very unique and, to my astonishment, several years behind city life.

 We had one theater in town, it was open only on weekends, there would be a main feature, a cartoon and a newsreel.  The movies shown were mostly westerns or science fiction, but some dramas and always several years old.  We never saw new releases.  I so remember waiting for “When Worlds Collide” to come to town, I was beside myself with anticipation, this was the era of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, “Forbidden Planet” and long before a moon walk.  Horror films before slashers and CGI, relied on great costumes, makeup and lighting, creaking doors and tiny models crafted to look like real life. “The Blob”;  “Frankenstein”; “Tarantula” scared the breath out of me.

Halfway, OR

The people who owned the theater usually ran the same movie for several weeks to make sure everyone in towns all around had a chance to see it.  My family didn’t go to the movies often but oh what a thrill when we did.  People dressed up, not fancy, but not farmer clothes either.  I envied the ticket lady in the little lighted kiosk.  It was my desire to have that career when I grew up.  She always looked so glamorous and Hollywood in the dark theater foyer in her tiny lit up palace.  There was even an usher and a flashlight to show us our seats.

Our ranch was 120 acres and had many fields and a creek running through it.  My sister and I had the run of the farm and so space was never an issue like in the city.  My dad had many vehicles, tractors and other rigs for farming, various trucks and pickups, and a family car.  Once he cut the back off of an old panel van and used the cab and bed of the truck for something else.  The van (the part cut off) had no wheels, no floor, and sat on the grass of a field, it was open at one end with tiny windows in the back and solid sides and top.  This turned into a space ship in a child’s eyes.  I remember many many hours playing in that perfect playhouse.  Good times.

The Hocketts  c  1925 - Hugh (my dad) Elba (my grandmother, Momoo) Joe (my grandfather)

My wonderful grandmother, Momoo, (my dad’s mom) aka Elba Rumley Hockett Engeldinger, never liked photographs of herself.  She would frown and tell me that cameras made her look old.  I always loved her looks but evidently she remembered herself younger and more beautiful.  When I looked through her albums, pictures of her had been altered, she had either cut or scratched out her face and in some she had replaced her cut out face with a younger image of herself; the sepia tones didn’t match, the new face was pasted on top, the snapshots were bumpy and  haphazard but exceedingly fascinating to an 8 yr old trying to imagine a young grandma.  Of course this was long before Photo Shop.  Now we can “yearbook” ourselves easily.  Heh heh

Momoo (with altered face), Bill, Bonnie, Judy

Mom & Dad hunting c 1940

Daddy killed a bear.  My dad loved to hunt, he hunted everything available that was in season, hunting season was always open for something.  We had many guns but daddy was very careful and warned Bonnie and I of the dangers.  We had shotguns and deer rifles, 22 pistols and 22 rifles and shells and whatever other supplies a hunter needs.  I remember the smell of the gun oil when he cleaned his guns.  I grew up eating venison and pheasant but it wasn’t under glass.  We loved deer and elk meat and my mom served it in roasts, stews, loafs, soups, and steaks.  She made fabulous mincemeat from the parts that weren’t as tender and her mincemeat pies were memory makers.  My mom even went hunting with daddy sometimes.

Bear hanging in shop next to John Deer tractor

Hunting bear was not something he usually did and I don’t remember it being a game that he actually went after.  My mom didn’t want to cook bear meat, she said it was too fat.   When he came home with the bear, the size and hugeness was astonishing.

  

Most memorable to Bonnie and I was that daddy had the bear skin tanned and made into a rug.  It was fabulous.  Bonnie and I rolled around and played on that bear rug for years.  It had a big hard stuffed head that looked life-like with glass eyes, the rest was flat and hairy and a rug. We napped on it, petted it, talked to it, looked at its teeth and big fake tongue, we stroked the hard sharp claws and stared into it’s big glass eyes.  The rug always had a featured spot in the middle of our living room floor.  Now it all sounds kind of barbaric but it really wasn’t at all in a more primitive lifetime in the country.

Our bear rug was like this one

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The Modern Prometheus meets my Mama!

By Barry

It's funny that you mention Frankenstein because ever since I first saw it on TV as a youngster, I always imagined YOU were poor Little Maria, playing with daisies by a pond on your Halfway farm.  I know it was filmed a decade before you were born but I think it's the Alpen-like setting, and the clothes styles that did'nt seem to change much.  Still today, every time I see it I think of you--it's strange I know.

Boris Karloff and Marilyn Harris at either Lake Sherwood, CA,  or Malibou Lake, Agoura, CA.
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