Story Excerpts

"The kids and I traveled to Germany in 1949 to join my husband. We took a Pullman Car from San Francisco to New York. We then were assigned to a troop ship where the soldiers were all below decks somewhere and families were lodged in tiny little cabins. We were seasick for the entire 12 days passage. In the English Channel, we hit a terrible storm and were ordered on deck in our Mae West life jackets. We stayed on deck for several hours waiting for the order to abandon ship that thankfully never came."

"We moved to New Mexico in about 1920. Nobody lived in this area for miles and miles. Dad and Grandpa built a dugout home for us to stay in until they could get the wood hauled in to build a proper home. This took several months."

"During the war, Grandpa allowed a Japanese-American named George and his wife to occupy a tenant house and work on his farm. I remember George went into town once to get his hair cut and the barber refused to cut it and several people were very abusive. Grandpa advised him to have his wife cut his hair and to stay out on the farm."

"I was the first girl to be elected president of a senior class in Lawson."

"I rode my pony Billy to school most warm days. Several others rode horses and we tethered them in an open out-building during the day. We had a stile in front of the school but girls were riding astride by then and it was never used." (A stile is a concrete set of steps about three feet high that a lady could use to mount her horse and sit side saddle.)