For the Love of Mom

Old Woman of the Sea (Mom)

Today, I celebrate my Mom, Elsie Price, born October 13, 1920, home to heaven May 9, 2007.

She loved the ocean.  When she lived in Oregon, a trip to the coast was high on her list of favorite things.  She always spoke of the inspiration that she received from the power of the waves, the endless beauty, and the thought that the God that knew each grain of sand, also cared for her.

Coming home from church

She was a happy woman, who in spite of health issues later in life, still sang and lived each day as a precious gift.  She was kind, and she was wise. Oh, and by the way, she loved football--especially the Denver Broncos.

The Garden

Below our house, carved into the side of a mountain and separated by a dry laid rock wall was our garden. It was a large plot.  It was about 100 feet long not including the corn patch, and up to 50 feet wide. Corn was planted up near the house.  All the ground was hoed, then straight rows with little irrigation ditches on either side were planted with all kinds of vegetables--peas, beans, beets, carrots, and others, and all kinds of salad fixings, each with little stakes telling what was planted there.



When the seeds were all planted, we would run to the garden every morning to see if we could see any little sprouts pushing their way up through the soil.

But among all these necessities were planted a row of zinnias here, a row of cosmos there, and a rows of marigolds and calendulas. When they bloomed they would make bouquets for our table or to give to friends.  Their happy spots of color brought joy and made the hard work of gardening a little easier.

***********

1. What is your favorite kind of soup?

Rustic Mushroom Soup

2. What was the last movie you saw in a theater?
One For the Money--A funny, adventure, a good matinee chick flick

3. What is your least favorite TV program?
Reality shows, like Housewives of..., Pregnant & 16, Jersey Girls, etc.  Most of them are so fake or exploit people.
4. If you were to write a book about yourself, what would you name it?
From Logan Mountain Trail--This is actually in process.

5. What 3 places that are on your bucket list to visit?

Louisiana--with its Cajun country, Mardi Gras, and swamps

Scandinavian Countries--Explore the fiord's, culture

Amish Country--Arts and crafts, quilts, simple culture.

Two Signs of Spring

There were two signs of spring at the ranch where I grew up.  Our ranch house sat at the headwaters of Logan Creek, a small stream that bubbled from the earth and threaded its way down the mountain to Shoshone River Reservoir.  As the snow began to melt, along its banks tiny flowers began to push up through the snow, bright green leaves contrasting with the snow and ice, then tiny burst of purple, blue and yellow. A sign of spring.

The other sure sign of spring was the arrival of the Burpee Seed Catalog.  We would hear Mom oohing and aahing as she read it from cover to cover, more than once; then she would take pencil and paper and make a list of what she would plant that year, often trying a new variety of tomatoes or corn.  She knew how many seeds she would need in order to provide for a year's worth of vegetables. 

But among those carrots, beans, and peas she always included a few packets of flower seeds or perhaps a few flower bulbs for she had the soul of an artist.  When the order was mailed, she would begin preparing the garden, a plot of land carved out just below the house, sheltered by a rock wall.  Then she would wait expectantly for the order-a sure sign that spring was very near.

Olive Fell, Flour Sacks, and Monkey Wards

A well know artist lived up the river from us.
"Olive Fell grew up in Wyoming, and after studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, she returned to her home state. She settled on the Four Bear Ranch near Cody and lived there for the rest of her life. In the 1930s, Fell developed her popular "Little Bear Cubs" design on cards and novelties, which sold to tourists in the national parks and resorts. During the 1940s and 50s, she continued to create postcards and posters for Yellowstone National Park. In 1935, the artist began painting Native American children with oils and later acrylics. She also sculpted wildlife in wood, rock, and stone. 
Despite her isolation from the artistic community, Fell became known especially for her etchings. For Minds to Know was chosen as one of the one hundred best prints of the year by the Society of American Etchers in 1934. During the 1930s, several of her prints were featured in exhibitions sponsored by organizations such as the International Etchers, the Northwest Printmakers, and the Society of American Etchers. She also showed at the National Art Exhibition in Chicago in 1936 and the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. 
"The inspiration for most of Fell's work came from within the boundaries of her 1,800-acre ranch, a protected game refuge in the Absaroka Range of the Wyoming Rockies. Regularly she tracked animals on horseback or on skis, then sat for hours, often using precarious vantage points to observe and sketch for future reference." 
(Source: Kovinick, Phil and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick. An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.)"


Daddy became good friends with Olive, who preferred living an isolated existence.  He would shoe her horses, help with jobs around her ranch or some project that  she was working on. Sometimes she would make trips to New York City or Chicago for art exhibits. Knowing that my mom was a good seamstress she would give Dad boxes of "city clothes" that she was tired of.  Mom would carefully take them apart, and refashion them into dresses for herself and us girls, dresses made of expensive fabrics that she could only dream about..


For inspiration Mom would check the pages of the latest Monkey Wards catalog, and carefully recreate the current fashion.  Our good dresses made from the the reworked fabric, and our everyday dresses made from flour sack prints were always in the up to date styles.  We were poor, but always dressed well, thanks to Olive Fell, flour sacks, the catalog, and Mom's wonderful talent at the sewing machine.

Sewing Machine

One day Daddy was on his way home to the ranch, when he noticed that  someone had cleaned out an old house, he stopped to see what was being thrown away.  You just never know what you might find, you know one man's junk is another man's treasure. He noticed a sewing machine in the heap,  loaded it up in the pickup, took it home, cleaned it up, made a few repairs, and this made Mom so happy. She had a Singer long bobbin treadle machine. 

And for more than twenty years she made all the family clothes, dolls and their clothes, other toys, quilts and mended many a pair of jeans and shirts on this machine.  Late in the evening after everyone was in bed, you could hear the rhythm of the machine as she turned out our wardrobe. She also taught all us kids to sew.  She felt that it was as important for a boy to know how to take care of himself as it was for a girl to know the details of homemaking. Her goal was to make us independent.  Being able to sew was just one element in self-sufficiency.  Her trusted old treadle machine was one of the tools that helped us learn these lessons.

Dr. Mom--Chicken Soup and Ginger tea

During these winter months when colds and the flu are making their rounds, I was remembering back to when I was growing up. Living on a ranch 25 miles from the closest town, the roads often impassible, and being poor, we had to rely on home remedies for most things.  We were fortunate that we were healthy, probably due to a good diet, plenty of exercise, and living in the mountains with fewer chances of coming in contact with illness.  But on the occasion of a cold, we would get the tried and true chicken soup. 

Here's what I found about that as a remedy--In a study published in the medical journal Chest, researchers made an exciting discovery. When they added chicken soup to a Petri dish full of inflammatory cells called neutrophils the ability of these cells to move around and migrate was decreased. Neutrophils are cells that help to fight infection but also cause inflammation which is responsible for some of the uncomfortable symptoms experienced with a cold. That something as simple as mom’s chicken soup has the ability to ease cold symptoms is nothing short of amazing.
Read more: http://healthmad.com/home-health/chicken-noodle-soup-for-colds-does-it-work/#ixzz1iyWwgq40

And we would have some ginger tea for nausea.--NASA even used ginger to counter the nausea in outer space.

And Baking soda paste or ice for bee stings.  Research has shown that ice is better than any pharmaceutical treatment. It is nice to know that science has validated mom's home remedies.  

Of Hankies and Tea Pots

A rancher's wife, mother of seven children, provider of food and clothing, up at dawn, baking bread, cleaning house, tending the garden, milking cows, preparing meals--a life filled with hardship, BUT my mother was a lady.  Every supper, we sat together around a big plank table.  Mom and Daddy would talk of the day's events, we would tell of the highlights of our day, AND they would drink tea, served steaming hot from a black pot with little colored dots forming flowers and swirls.  Us kids longed for the day when we would be old enough to have tea.

And then there were the hankies 

Mom always had a pretty hankie tucked in her purse.  Some had edges that she had crocheted, some were on fine cotton with designs of vibrant flowers.  She would be able to wipe her eyes, or pat her lips (no nose blowing--ladies didn't do that in public)  

Lessons learned

Tea was a soothing end of the day drink

No lady went in public without a fine hankie

Mother's Bible

Almost every page of my mother's Bible has verses underlined in red, and many pages have a note in the margin.  She not only read the Bible she lived it.  It was her guidebook.  


When she passed away, she noted that she wanted me to have her Bible.  I Timothy 6:6-7 was bookmarked.  "But godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out."

Coming Home

This was her guide for living.  Now, she is living in riches beyond imagination.

Thankful Harvest

Every harvest time I think of my mom.  We lived on a ranch in the mountains of Wyoming, but each year she planted a large garden.  There were rows of beans, peas, carrots, and beets.  (Also a few rows of bachelor buttons, zinnias, and marigolds.)  We visited my grandma in Utah and brought back bushels of fruit from her orchard for canning.  When fall came, mom and all us kids would pick the bounty, and she would let us help prepare them for canning.  First of all, they were rinsed in a large, round laundry tub, Peas were shucked, corn cut off the cob. Beans were snapped, except for a few of the very best, which she would carefully place in jars--all straight and proper like a row of soldiers, to be used when company came for supper. 

Then after the jars were full, into the pressure cooker they went, for 20 minutes or so of processing, all on a coal/wood burning cook stove.  By the end of the season she had "put up" 100 quarts of beans, many pints of peas, and countless quarts of other vegetables, along with many quarts of peaches, pears, apricots and applesauce.  We would have enough fruits and vegetables to last til the next harvest.  Looking back it must have been a huge task, but she was always sang through the whole job, thankful that God again had given a good harvest.

Remembering Mom

Collage of my mother, Elsie Price

 October 13th was my Mom's birthday. She was born in 1920 in Baltimore, Maryland.  While still young she moved to Philadelphia, PA, where she enjoyed frilly dresses, city parks, and the urban way of life.  Then as a young teenager, she was uprooted and found herself living in a primitive house near Roberts, Montana--close to Custer's Last Stand.  Can you imagine how today's teenagers would react?  But she loved school, studied hard, became an accomplished pianist, then when she was 19 moved to Wyoming where she worked on a Dude ranch close to Yellowstone Park, met my Dad, was married, and raised seven children.  Her home then was a log ranch house (no indoor plumbing).  She baked bread in a coal burning oven, grew a huge garden but intertwined the rows of vegetables with rows of flowers, canned enough food to last through the winter, sewed all the kids clothes, but still found time to read, crochet, sing and play the piano. 

Mom's favorite flowers

By today's standards, she lived in poverty, but never complained.  She endured many hardships--losing her husband when the youngest child was only two, then having to work outside the home to support the family, in charge of the care of one child severely crippled by polio.  But she was a happy person, feeling that she was truly blessed. What an awesome example for her children!

Memories of Mom

Today is in memory of Mom.  What a woman she was!  Born in the east in 1920, moving west as a child to Roberts Montana, after high school moving to Wyoming--the Northfork of the Shoshone river not far from Yellowstone park.   

Met a cowboy/rancher, became a rancher's wife, raised seven children, faced many hardships, but in spite of it all was a happy, artistic, funny lady. She loved flowers, especially roses, loved to visit the Oregon sea coast and watch the magesty and power of the ocean.

She was a very good mother to me--supportive, wise, able to look on the funny side of life, forgiving of my faults, and encouraging me to be better--an example I want to follow. I salute you, Mom, on this the day of your birth.