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The Memories of Irene Whitfield Chisholm |
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In 1979, I gave my mother a hardcover blank book and asked her to please write down all the stories of her childhood that she'd been telling me. She claimed she couldn't think of which stories I could possibly want written down. So, I sat down and made a list. I gave her the list and then she gave up and started writing. She didn't write everything on the list, and she wrote a few things that weren't. But she wrote down things in more detail. At first, they were merely interesting. But now, more than fifteen years after her death, they are a treasure trove of history and family knowledge.
I can remember lying flat on my back in a crib and drinking milk from a bottle. The crib seems enormous.
My parents, who were tall in retrospect, were standing near by.
Being more bored than hungry, I tossed the bottle through the bars of the crib. There was a crash and
Mother exclaimed, 'I don't know what we're ever going to do for bottles.'
Father, joking as he often did, said that maybe he could get some down at Kirkpatrick's.
'Charlie!' mother exclaimed in a shocked voice.
Some years afterward I learned that Kirkpatrick ran the local saloon at Fall City.
Two or three years later I used to run away from home. When I got to the saloon, Mr. Kirkpatrick would take me home. I was between one, two or three, then. We lived in Fall City, then, where the parsonage is.
NOTE:
In one version of the story that she told me was that Mr. Kirkpatrick carried her home under his arm and that he had a long white beard that tickled.
One evening we had company. At least Papa and Mama did. I had been put to bed.
The crib again. Old enough now to stand up hanging on the rails, not old enough to talk.
I screamed. That always got some kind of attention. I stopped to listen. The grownups were
arguing about what to do. They didn't want to spoil the baby. I screamed again. Same results.
Mama was getting worried. More screaming. More talking. I was told to 'shut up'. I didn't.
Persistence paid off. They came and got me. For awhile. When it became perfectly clear that
there was nothing wrong, they let me visit awhile before they put me back, telling me that this
time I was going to stay. I did, under protest.
One evening I was on a couch crying. Then I rolled off and cried some more. Papa came to see if I was hurt. I was not. Then why was I crying? The little dog in the picture had spilled the baby's milk and was drinking it. I was very concerned and unhappy. Papa didn't understand. He thought I liked the picture because I did like dogs, and I could not talk well enough to tell him. Frustrating.
One evening a lot of people came to see my baby brother. He just lay quietly in his
bed except when mama was holding him. He wasn't at all exciting and I felt lost in
a forest of tall legs. Whenever I could find the right legs, Papa's, I would demand
a drink. Mostly I wanted attention.
The kitchen was very dark. That was long before we had electric lights. We had running
water though, in the kitchen, cold.
That was at Grandma Howe's house. Papa picked me up and carried me to the kitchen.
The water was too cold to drink much at a time, but we managed lots of times.
We were living in a tiny shack not too far from Grandpa Whitfield's place near
Lakebay. Mother was in bed with the measles. My brother was, too. Papa was trying
to do the washing in a big wash tub.
It was Christmas and Grandma Howe had sent me
a cape for my doll. It had a hood. But I had no doll. I cried. Mama made a doll
for me from a pillow case and sewed it there in bed.
It was lonely playing in the yard all by myself and sometimes I wandered through
the gate and up the road a ways, to the first bend. Once I was wondering what was around the bend,so
I tried several. Beyond each bend was another bend, and another and another, all just alike,
all edged with a forest of young fir trees, very thick and all alike.
After awhile I came back part way, changed my mind and went forward again. This happened several times
until I was unsure which was back but I went in the direction I thought was right and I went much further
than I thought I had come. The road was only a wide path through the forest and all pretty much the same,
and I was getting tired and hungry, too.
If I had been older I might have kept going, or I might have panicked,
but I was only two and a half. I screamed. When I didn't get results, I bawled and I could bawl
very loud in those days, quite confident Papa would come and get me. He did. There were only two
more bends to go around and we were home. That was the only time I went for a walk on that road.
The gate was kept locked after that. Papa thought that I had gone only a little ways, though,
and was quite shocked when one of his friends mentioned seeing my tracks way down by somebody's place.
I remember when I got too tall to walk under the table. I bumped my head. It was the day I got spanked for chewing the paint off my doll's nose (it tasted sort of like bananas) and little brother got spanked for pulling the tablecloth off the table. There were dishes on it.
On my third birthday there was a party. There were quite a few people there.
Jack [Chisholm] was there and several other boys. I don't remember any girls. It was NIGHTTIME
and sort of dark. We had coal oil lamps. We played airplane. The 'victim'
who volunteers for a ride is blindfolded and walked up an inclined plank which
is maybe 18 inches or less off the floor. The guides stoop down so that the VICTIM,
who has his hands on their shoulders feels that he is far above the floor. Then they
tell him to jump. I remember I insisted on playing even if I was 'Just a Girl'.
It was My Birthday.
Jack said that was where he first met me.
One day Johnny was talking to Papa and Papa couldn't understand him so he asked
Lewis, who was more than a year older to interpret. Lewis came up with something
alright but Papa couldn't understand that, either. Then he asked me to translate
what Lewis said. I couldn't understand what either of them said, though really
I think Lewis tried to imitate Johnny's speech without understanding it.
Dad said he got the idea out of the funny paper, but it didn't work.
We had a swing and a sandbox to play in, but mostly it was more fun to climb a stump. One day Lewis slid off the stump into a hornet's nest. Papa had to rescue him.
One Christmas I can remember happened when I was four. It started in my crib
with a package of doll dishes and mama trying to keep me covered up without getting
uncovered herself.
There was a big tree in the living room. It was beautiful.
There were no decorations on it, but as us children had never seen a decorated tree,
we didn't miss them. Mother wanted a nice Christmas for us and it was. It was also
her last and I think she knew that it was.
The tree stayed until after breakfast when it had to be removed so Grandpa could build
a fire, and besides it did take up a great deal of room.
We had hung up our stockings,
too. I was disappointed in finding shoes in mine. Papa thought that was appropriate as
shoes & stockings go together and I should be glad to have new shoes. On Christmas kids
aren't glad to have new shoes.
There were other toys, though. Ray had a bear on
wheels. Lewis had a box of building blocks and I had a beautiful doll with a
breakable head. I know it was breakable because my little brother broke it.
Christmas is always exciting and sometimes rather traumatic.
While relaxing on the floor one summer day, it occurred to me to wonder about
the means of locomotion employed by the adult human female. I was watching Grandma
floating along above her long, full dress, her little feet pattering along
independently, seemingly unattached to anything substantial.
'Grandma,' I asked suddenly, 'do Ladies have legs?'
I knew that men had legs, of course, and kids had, obviously, but Ladies?
Grandma paused long enough to give a disapproving stare at my sprawling position,
and replied pointedly, 'I don't show them off to everybody.'
It seems like Grandma Howe was with us and Papa and I went to Vaughn. I remember
walking some distance in the dark and Uncle Irvy meeting us and guiding us under
a trestle where a bridge was out, and playing with Uncle Irvy's daughter's doll buggy.
She let me play with her old one. She had a new one for Christmas though it was only
Christmas Eve. Her name was Irene, too. I think Doris was the older daughter.
Anyway I never played with her. The mother was very kind to us. We stayed there
all night.
The next day we went to see Grandma Whitfield. They had a marvelous
Christmas tree all decorated with strings of popcorn and some cranberries, too.
I had a lovely time playing with my cousin Francis and her little brother.
They always called him Brother though his name, Lewis, was the same as my oldest brother.
In the process one of Brother's toys stopped functioning. The come-back can stopped
coming back. Francis went to tell Grandma and was a long time in coming back.
I heard voices.
Grandpa: 'Poor little tyke,' sympathetically.
Grandma, angrily: 'Just the same, she's not going to spoil Frances's Christmas'.
Grandpa: 'Ah, Frances is enjoying it.'
Grandma: 'She's already broken one of Brother's toys.'
Grandpa: 'How do you know?'
Grandma: 'Frances said so.'
Grandpa: 'Frances says what is convenient to her.'
And so she had. We were both playing with the thing and Papa later fixed it only
it wouldn't stay fixed. The rubber band was too weak.
Later when Frances told me that the tree decorations were edible and I tried to eat them,
I was in disgrace again and was taken for a walk to see the Vaughn folks, several miles
away; Grandpa Whitfield lived at Lake Bay. It seemed a long ways. Some of the way
Papa carried me though I was five years old.
He showed me how the fir trees have crosses at the ends of the branches and a little
spire on top like a steeple, and I played with my new coral necklace along the way,
fastening and unfastening it and eventually lost it when it fell through a crack in
a bridge.
When we got there, the folks had the flu and we couldn't go in. We looked in though the door
and talked. Kenny had a new Teddy bear. I had never seen a Teddy Bear but he wouldn't
let me hold it.
I don't remember what happened next. Probably we went back to Palmer's, Uncle Ervies.
Next I remember being at Grandma Whitfield's looking at Christmas cards. I thought
them very pretty. I was surprised that the tree was gone and Uncle Ward was making
unkind remarks about 'that woman' Papa was going marry (or getting married to) and
Grandpa was trying to hush him up. Warde was 17.
When I was six years old I had a pet snail, a very pretty one that I found outdoors. I kept him in a box. Johnny and Kenny had to have snails, too, so we spent hours looking until we found them. Johnny's snail talked, he said. He was three or four, then. I made like my snail talked, too, but Kenny's snail wouldn't or maybe couldn't. We asked Johnny what his snail said and he said, 'I want to get out.' We persuaded him not to let it out. We had to find food for them which was rather a bore. Anyway, Kenny told his mama that our snails talked and talking snails promptly became illegal. Shortly, later, the snails got away. Someone left the lid off the box. Johnny thought his snail needed more fresh air. So naturally the other snail got more fresh air, too.
One day Johnny got severely punished because his doll said her prayers before being
put to bed. Right out loud, too. Unfortunately within the hearing of the adult world.
Johnny was always getting himself punished. Sometimes it just wasn't his fault.
Like a few months earlier when Grandma gave him a whipping for mistreating a kitten.
It died. But he was only conducting an experiment. He had heard that a cat always
lands on its feet and he was trying to see if it did. Apparently kittens didn't.
The wagon was the highest place he could climb and that is where he dropped the kitten
from, several times, in fact, just to make sure. I understand that later he tried
it on an older cat, from an upstairs window. I don't know how that one turned out.
The same, I think, except that the cat escaped after the first turn.
Grandpa Howe always said grace before every meal, quite a long grace and try as
I might and listen as hard as I could, I never could understand what he said. After
several years of this, I asked Grandma what he said. She told me to listen. I have
always suspected that she didn't know, either.
Lots of times we also had family prayers in the morning after breakfast. First Grandpa
read something from the Bible. Sometimes it was interesting, sometimes quite
incomprehensible. After the reading each of us kneeled by our chair and closed our
eyes and listened. If we dared open our eyes Grandma scolded us. How did she know
when our eyes were open? It didn't help any to ask her. She just shushed us up.
When I was very young, I wanted to go to school. Carol went. Ray went. All the big
kids went and I wanted to. I was six years old and school had started but Grandma kept
me home because I would be going out to Vaughn soon and it would be too far to send me
to school there. I begged and pleaded until after awhile Grandma relented or maybe to
get rid of me, she let me go. After all there was a school bus that year, it wasn't as
if I would have to walk.
School wasn't as much fun as I had hoped. The teacher started out by asking a lot
of questions. Name etc. and where had I been to school & why not and the like and then,
age?
'Five' I replied, uncertainly.
'Are you sure?' she barks. 'You can't come to school if you are only five.'
I do a retake. Ray was nine. He said so last summer. He got to go to school. Nine
must be the age to be. So I told her 'Nine.'
She knew better and asked Carol. Carol didn't know. 'She's younger than me,' she said.
'How old were you at your last birthday party?'
'Didn't have a birthday party.'
Teacher figured it was hopeless and sent a note home to grandma.
So after that I was six.
Aunt Mary and Uncle Well had a funny little automobile. It was black with brass
trim including a wide brass band in front. The top folded down for better visibility,
I suppose.
Cars didn't have glass windows in those days. There were small isinglass windows
in the curtains if they were lucky enough to have curtains. I don't know if Uncle
Well had curtains for his car or not. Maybe they only drove on sunny days. When
the top was folded back it made a little seat just above and behind the grownup's seat.
It was fun to ride there. There was a splendid view of everything. I could even lie
down if I wanted to, which I didn't.
I rode to Seattle up there. It was great. Afterwards on other days we rode around
quite a lot. We went to a playground where there were slide sets, to a zoo and
someplace where a band played outdoors. I remember I asked Uncle Well how the noise
came out of the big horn. He let me ask the musician who got kind of mad because
he thought Uncle Well had put me up to it.
Aunt Mary let me sleep in a huge wooden bed upstairs. There was a little window
with diamond shaped panes. Aunt Mary told me that angels looked in at the window
and they would take care of me. I never caught them at it, though I did look every
time I was awake.
Uncle Well got tired of combing my long honey-colored hair. It had to be braided.
So, with MY permission he took me to the barber shop to get a haircut, a real,
for sure boy haircut, too. In those days girls just didn't have haircuts. I wanted
a Buster Brown haircut but the barber said he didn't know how. He didn't want to cut
it at all and put up quite an argument. We overruled him though, as Uncle Well thought
that my permission was enough. After all, it was my hair. It did seem strange to be
without hair but nice. Aunt Mary had short hair, too. She was crippled and either
couldn't or didn't want to take care of long hair. And there I was wearing dresses
and sporting a boyish haircut. It probably looked weird.
The next day they took me to a big store for some new clothes. They insisted on
coveralls with red trim. I was delighted. The clerk put up a fight. Girls just
didn't wear coveralls, she thought. Uncle Well found some lovely bare-foot sandals
to go with them. I adored them. It was heavenly except when people kept insisting
that I was a boy. My Grandparents were decidedly disapproving though they did not
say much in front of me. Grandma Whitfield decided I needed some dresses so I wouldn't
'have to' wear those pants to school. So she made some for me. That was in the summer.
It was still spring when Uncle Well got my hair cut.
One day we went to a circus parade. There were huge elephants, grey and wrinkled with big flat feet, and clowns and fancy wagons with bars that they said animals were in. There was also a man with balloons, lots of balloons. Uncle Well bought one for me. My very first balloon, a blue one, delightful. It lasted until the next morning which Uncle Well said was a record for a balloon. I was playing with it when it suddenly went 'phurt' and there was just a little dark wrinkled rag and Uncle Well could not fix it. After that, whenever we went for a ride I was told to look for the balloon man. If I saw him, Uncle Well would buy me another balloon. After the first day Aunt Mary said it wasn't fair and I needn't keep looking if I didn't want to and Uncle Well said that rides were more fun if there was something to look for. So I kept on looking, but not very hard.
Here are some short family lines to sketch in who is in what generation. This does NOT include all the sibs & cousins and children! This is just who is in the stories in Irene's diary, plus any others needed to make sense of the list.
Diary: Irene Margery Whitfield Chisholm
Photographer: Jack Chisholm
Author/artist/designer/programmer of page: Rowan Ainslie Chisholm
This website and all contents copyright 2009 Penelope Chisholm aka Rowan Ainslie Chisholm
This page first posted 8 May 2007
Latest revision: 23 January 2011
