Personal History I. Birth and Early Childhood

I. Birth and Early Childhood
    Here is an 1976 oral history interview with my mother, Hazel Lewis, that gives a lot of insights about my early childhood:
    Bob:  I wanted to get you to recollect some of the things that happened to me when I was very small.  Maybe we could start with what you recall even before I was born, even when you were expecting me.  Where were you living, could you tell me something about that?
    Hazel:  Well, we had bought a place out in Glenwood, a 30 acre place on Bird Creek and we were living there.  We had been living in Glenwood about 5 years, on a place which had belonged to Clarence’s father, a mile west of Glenwood.  They had an 80 acre ranch up there. Prior to that we had been living in Hood and it was hard there.  Daddy was working awful hard at a saw mill and got continually wet in the job.  He was working at the end of the flume, where the lumber would come off.  When his dad found out that Kemper O'Neal wanted to move from the ranch and there they were with pigs and it was in the spring, and cows too.  They had a bunch of cows.  Daddy wanted to go back there and farm again.  He had never lived any place that he'd had more fun than in Glenwood and it was home to him.  They used to have community get-togethers and parties and ball games and everything.  So that was alright with me, because I was glad to have him get out of that mill.  He was getting a bad cough from being wet so much because the lumber was wet, and the flume was right there.  He had to stoop over to run the saws. He was getting about the highest wage of anyone there, running the re-saw. They didn’t have much of a market so they had to run the lumber around several times.  It just kept him so busy there on the re-saw because they were really manufacturing the lumber there.  They'd bring the big cants down on the flume.  It was a 9 mile flume from up in the mountains up at Willard.  Then he'd have to re-saw them, and he had a fellow helping him line it up.  It was hard work.
    So we decided to go out there to Glenwood.  After we got out there, in one year, we realized that it was a mistake.  We stayed on there until his dad had sold the store and was ready to come back to the farm in Glenwood.  The reason it was a mistake, was, that he couldn't run the ranch alone.  His dad wanted remote control of it.  One time for instance, we were so over stocked and had no pasture, except the woods and that was mostly just sagebrush and little scrub pine.  There was hardly anything for the cows to eat to eat except for early in the spring there would be some buds.  The rest of the time they would wander around and get themselves all scratched up so that it was awful hard to milk them.  It hurt them to get milked.
    Bob:  What sort of arrangement did you have about finances?
    Hazel:  The strange thing about it was that after all those years he trusted his dad to and we were supposed to have half of' the increase of the cattle, and half of the milk.  We were milking several cows, and that's about all.  Half of anything that was extra produced, such as the young pigs.
    We had 18 baby pigs.  One sow had 9 and the other 9 also.  And then the second sow died, so he had to feed the other 9 pigs.  I guess the one mother still nursed her 9 pigs, but these others had to be fed quite a lot.  I remember when it was time to feed them, that they would follow him around and there would be the whole 18 pigs running after him, single file, squealing and squeaking.  It was a lot of fun for us.
    When we first got settled out there and he got the crop in and was just irrigating, he could rest and come to the house and it just seemed so really nice.  We thought we'd like farming.  And we did.  But we couldn't get anywhere financially.  The great depression was going on.  The first thing happened, the market in the pigs was rather strange.  The government was paying people to not raise pigs.  Anybody that sent pigs to market had to pay a big percentage of it as a processing tax they called it and then that was collected and paid to people that didn't raise pigs that had raised the year before but didn't that year because of the superabundance of pigs.  They thought that would help the market.  This was the government working this out.  By the time we had paid for all our ground barley and other food that we had given them and paid the processing tax, there was nothing left after we had sent the pigs in. That was quite a loss.
    But still we had fun.  We enjoyed living out there.  The meadowlarks singing, going after the cows down in the woods, in spite of there being hardly any pasture.
    Bob:  You had lived there several years when I came along, hadn't you? ·
    Hazel:  Yes, we lived there five years, and then in 1937 his dad sold the store at Bingen and came back up to the ranch and we moved back down to Bingen and Daddy got a job in the mill down there piling lumber.
    Bob:  How old was I when you moved, or was that before I was born?
    Hazel:  That was before you were born. You were just on the way.  We moved down about the first of April, and you weren't born until the 24th.
    Bob:  You were living in Bingen before I was born?
    Hazel:  Yes, I came down about a month before and stayed with my folks, because we were worried by the heavy snow up there that year.  You couldn't even see anyone walking along the highway.  If they were on a horse you could just see the top of the horse's head and the person, the snow was piled so high when I left up there.  So we just decided that I had to stay down in Bingen.
    Bob: Then how long did you live in Bingen?
    Hazel:  One year.
    Bob:  In the same house?
    Hazel:  The same house.  It was a little, tiny bouse.  We paid $10 a month rent.
    Bob:  Then you were able to purchase your own farm?
    Hazel:  Yes we had saved some money and we put a down payment on it.  It belonged to Grace and Wallace, that little 30 acre ranch.  They had got it from Mrs. Bordie.  Well, in fact, all they did was have a down payment on it, so we just took that over and paid them.  And then we paid Mrs. Bordie $200 a year or something like that.  It was supposed to be $100 a year, but we finished it up faster.  It made her a little bit upset.  She didn't have anything in writing that we couldn't pay it quicker.  She would have liked to have the interest.
    Well, I had been down there a while and one morning I woke up and I didn't feel too good. It was about the time you were due. But I wasn’t having any labor pains.
    Bob:  You were living in that rented home already?
    Hazel:  Yes. This was the 24th of April.
    Bob:  What time was it?
    Hazel: It was about... Daddy had to be at work at seven, so he left and I was still alright although I didn't feel too natural.  So he went on to work and then labor pains started a little bit so I walked down to my mother's.  It was just about 4 blocks.  By that time I definitely knew it was coming, so we got Kenneth.  He lived across the street catty-corner, to take me up to Mrs. Seaton's.  She had a maternity home.
    Bob:  What time was that?
    Hazel:     About 9 o’clock.  This maternity home was a pretty good sized rambling house--two story-- a white one, with a big white fence around it, just west of the Columbia High School gymnasium, across the street.  She usually had from two to seven or eight mothers there, who either had just had a baby or were waiting.  There was one girl who lived way out somewhere.  She was just boarding there until she had her baby.  I remember it just cost $50 for her.  And they kept you 10 days.  In those days, maybe the life was harder and when they’d go home there was so much hard work to do.  They didn't have washing machines or all the things like that.  So they did figure that 10 days wasn't too long to keep a mother there and let her recuperate.
    My doctor was Dr. Russell Baker.  He was a fairly young man.  He seemed to specialize in babies.  He had had a lot of experience.  He used calipers to measure you and a lot of things that Dr. Donnahue, our doctor we had with our first baby didn't do things like that.  He had you come in and get checked, he was more modern.  I remember Mrs. Seaton telling him that I was there and how far the pains were apart and I think that they were about five minutes by eleven o'clock.  Naomi was working at the bakery, Warneke's Bakery.  At noon I called her.  I was standing there in the kitchen and the others were there eating.  I was standing there.  They had the telephone on the I wall and all of a sudden I felt something---the waters had broken.  It was good I was in the kitchen. So Mrs. Seaton called the Dr. immediately and he came over.
    Bob:  The Dr. was real close?
    Hazel:  About three blocks.  It was in the noon hour.  Anyway he got over there within a few minutes.  By one o'clock you were here.  So I think that was quite fast.  You came rather quickly.  I didn't have very long to wait.
    Bob:  It sounds like a rather fast and easy birth.
    Hazel:  I don’t remember very hard pains.  It would just be like you had a stomache ache, colic, or someth1ng, cramps.  I wasn't really awake when you came.  I don't remember anything because he had given me some ether, because he had to cut me.  I wasn't big enough for your head.  He just did a neat little job.  He was left handed.  Mrs. Seaton used to say that all the mothers had a neat little place that he had helped so they wouldn't get torn.  I remember him stitching a little bit.  I remember hearing that it was a boy.  I guess I went to sleep for a while after that.  I nursed you, so there was awhile that they were bringing you in every 3 or 4 hours.  At first oftener than that.  I just had so much food that I had to have hot packs on.
    Bob: So what time was I born?
    Hazel:  About one o'clock.
    Bob:  Do you remember how big I was?
    Hazel:  Not the number of ounces.  Eight pounds, and some ounces.  It is written down in the baby book though.
    Bob:  What did I look like? 
    Hazel:  You looked a great deal like most any nice-tooking little baby, sort of red and you didn't have hardly any hair, just little strings of hair.  They put quite a bit of oil on your head.  That made your hair darker.
    Bob:  What was Daddy doing at this time?
    Hazel:  He was down at the mill.  They got word to him.  I don’t remember too much, except that he came in.  He was happy about you.
    Bob:  He didn't get there until after the birth?
    Hazel:  No.
    Bob:  Did he have to work his shift out?
    Hazel:  I wish you could ask him that.  I think he quit and came up, at least during the noon hour.
    Bob:  Tell me about deciding on a name.
    Hazel:  Well, we talked about it a great deal.  He didn’t want the name Clarence or any name like that, because when he was a little boy all the sissies were named Clarence or Percival or Harold, especially in the silent movies.  He didn't want to be called "Old Clarence”-- you'd be "Young Clarence”.  I’d like to have had you named Clarence.  But then next we thought of Robert.  We talked about other names and we ended it for one of those ordinary names that lots of people have.  Robert sounded better to us than any other.  I had picked out Patricia Ruth if you had been a girl.  The funny part of it was that Ruth Akerill had a girl and she named her Patricia and of course Ruth's name there, that just spoiled it.  I never would name my next baby Patricia Ruth.
    Bob:  How about the Eugene?
    Hazel:  It was partly for Uncle Eugene, Daddy's uncle, his Dad's brother. 
    Bob:  Did you have special feeling for him?
    Hazel:  Daddy thought Uncle Eugene was a pretty nice fellow. He'd stayed with us. He came out from Virginia when the folks came back from the trip they took in 1921. He stayed with us for a while out there on the ranch.  He had asthma pretty bad. 
    We thought Robert E. Lewis sounded good. We liked Robert E. Lee- It sounded good to us.
    Bob:  I think I had a blessing when I was small.  Why don’t you tell me a little about that?
    Hazel:  Papa had the Priesthood.  He was a Seventy.  So I just naturally asked him to give you a blessing and name you.  The Hood River Branch was our Priesthood headquarters, yet I know they sent the report into Portland, into the mission.  Whether it was sent in by the Hood River President, I don't know.  They contacted him quite a bit.
    Bob: How old was I?
    Hazel:  Oh, within a month.  You have the date there, but I thought it was just as soon as we had a chance.  I think at that time they were holding Sunday School in Bingen in our home.  There were a couple of Elders that came now and then.  I don’t remember their names-- Elder Spendlove I think was one.  I can't remember the other one.  It was about then or a little later that they went all over the area and found different members of the Church that they didn't even know each other.  Eventually it ended up that in 1948 when they started the White Salmon Branch.
    But before that they had Sunday school, when we were living there in what we called the Henderson House.  When Daddy and I were living in Bingen, I always went down there on Sunday mornings because they had the Sacrament because Papa could bless it.  The boys hadn't been ordained at all.  I think this was too bad.  Mama would have liked to but she wasn't able to do anything about it, except just encourage.
    Bob:  So Grandpa Davenport did the blessing and was helped by some Elders?
    Hazel:  They weren't there. He did it by himself.
    Bob:  Do you have any recollection of anything he said?
    Hazel:  It wasn't anything unusual.  I remember him blessing you with health and a clear mind.  And that your parents would be able to raise you and help you to grow and mature and be righteous.  These were the main parts of it.  It wasn't a long one.
    Bob:     Can you tell me something about my early development, like learning to crawl, learning to walk?
    Hazel:  I remember that you didn't crawl very much.  The folks had an old walker and fixed that up and you used the walker.  I felt like it was really the wrong thing to do, because when you would try to walk, to take your first steps, you wouldn’t just sit down.  You’d fall flat, the full length.  If you had learned to crawl first either you would probably crumple down when you'd lose your balance like most children do that don’t have walkers.  You were strong.  We didn't have a jumper but this walker made your legs strong.  You went everywhere in it in the little house where we lived.  You were walking before we got back up to Glenwood.  You'd walk if we'd hold your hand.  You could walk around holding onto something for a long time.  I think you were about 10 months when you first started to walk alone.  But you still would go in the walker quite a bit.  When you'd go through a door you would bump you head if you lost your balance.
    Bob:  I have a recollection of your saying that I took a kind of a bad fall and quit walking for a while.
    Hazel:  This was Dorothy that did that.  We were in that first little house up there on our ranch, that old house, and the floor was up and down.  She was walking at about 8 or 9 months. She went hurrying across the floor and came to that uneven part and fell and made her nose bleed.  It must have been 2 or 3 months before she really got to walking alone with confidence. Yes this was Dorothy, because I don't remember you ever stopping once you got started.  I remember when we moved back to Glenwood, your first birthday.  We went back there the first of April.  We moved into a little house in Glenwood village.  The folks were out on this ranch.  It was a mile and a quarter out there.  We had this big wicker buggy.  We took you in that and walked out there on your birthday.  We got you an all-day sucker.  That was the first time you had had that.  And on the way back, we were walking along there about halfway between the ranch and our place in town, and you didn't want to ride any more.  You got out and walked part of the way and helped push the buggy.  You weren't about to spend all your birthday riding in the buggy.
    Bob:  Which house were you living in in Glenwood?
    Hazel:  It was across from the school.  You know the corner where the house is that the janitor lived in?  Well it was right across south from that.
    Bob:  Wasn't that the house Hank and Lorene lived in? [NOTE: This was much later]
    Hazel:  Yes, Hank and Lorene.
    Bob:  You go right down the street [NOTE: go east on the Glenwood main street] and if the road hadn’t turned you would have run right into it.
    Hazel:  Yes, there is a jog there. It was called the old Parrott house.  Grandma Parrott used to have it.
    Bob:  How long did you live there?
    Hazel:  Just a few months because Daddy was working for Orie Conboy helping them put in their crop.  That was in April. Then in May he got a job on the "steel gang" for J. Neils logging company.  That was a steady job and we felt that we could buy our own place.  We got a chance to do this.  Grace and Wallace had made a down payment on a small ranch but didn't want that place.  They were living over at Fulda.  He was working in the mill over there and she was teaching school.  It was just an investment.  Gracie had put her money in it mostly.  The cost was only $1,200 dollars for the 30 acres and an old house and an old barn.  So we decided to buy that from them. We were able to handle it when we got the steel gang job.  They were building logging railroads.  We moved down there in May.  We weren't in the Parrott house very long, probably less than 2 months.
    Bob:  How about my learning to talk?
    Hazel:  You started in saying words, I know, before you were a year old.  We made a mistake of repeating them.  I remember you’d say "cow", "cow", and the first thing you know you were saying “cow-cow" and "car-car.”  It seemed as though we had to correct that.  I think cow was one of the first words you could say except "Mama" and "Daddy.”  You could say "Water" pretty soon.  I don't think you ever said "Wah-wah".  You just kept on learning words.  I would always talk to you.  I never did anything else but just reason things out.  Even when you were six months old or younger, it seemed as though I could just talk to you and you could understand what I was talking about.  Mama used to say that I didn't have to discipline you.  I'd just explain something to you and you seemed to understand it.  You seemed to be a happy baby.  Of course, I don't think there were things you wanted that I didn’t give you, but I don't think you wanted too much.
    Bob:  What sort of philosophy of discipline did you have and how did you arrive at that?
    Hazel:  Well, it just seemed like you were a part of me and I could just talk to you.  We just had a real good relationship all your baby years.  Daddy played with you a lot but he didn't take any part in that.  He wouldn’t even think of slapping you or spanking you.  He swung backward the other way.  We just explained to you and you could do it.  One time, after Dorothy was born, you wanted to go out to the barn and climb in that loft above the horse stall. At that time I did explain to you that you might fall but you had such confidence in yourself that you did go out one time when I was getting her to sleep.  I think you cried.  You weren't more than 3 years old then.  I went out and got you.  You really had learned your own lesson, because you never tried to do something like that that I told you not to again.  It was only for your own protect1on, of course.  I just don't remember having to spank you.  I don't think I ever spanked you.  I don't know if you can remember it either.  But it was because we had this relationship from the time you were born.  I think talking to a child, like you and JoAnn do, and Dorothy and Ed, they talk to the children like they're adults.  Don't use baby talk.  They just begin to understand and pick it up as fast as they can.
    Bob:  Did you find that your other two children were the same way when they were little?     Hazel:  Yes.  Except Dorothy was a little different temperament.  And I could talk to her and all but she still wanted to do what she wanted to do.  And at times she wanted to do something, I didn't spank her.  We told her to go in the bedroom and she'd go in there and shut the door herself sometimes and stay there until she had cooled off a little bit and quit having this temper tantrum.  I remember one time Daddy came home from work and I don't remember whether she had one or two, but she said when she greeted him, "Daddy I just had one tantrum today.”
    Sometimes you would tease her.  I remember the first words she ever said was, "Bobba, Bobba."  You were doing something she didn't like.  You were on the bed and she was trying to get you to stop whatever teasing you were doing.
    Bob:  What sort of relationship do recall me having with Dorothy when she was a little tiny baby?
    Hazel:  Oh, you thought she was pretty nice. You were really proud of her. When she was born you were just 20 months old.  A little while before she was due, we took you down there and you and I stayed at my Mother's.  It was probably a. week or two.  You really had a good time with their dog.  The kids took care of you-- Myron, Naomi took care of you quite a bit. 
    Bob: There's a picture that we have with a dog out in their back yard. Is that from then?
    Hazel.  Yes.  That was taken a that time.  And there was a little black rabbit on a box.  You played with this little black rabbit and they took your picture.  But when I went up to Mrs. Seaton’s for Dorothy, you stayed there for a few days.  Then Daddy took you up to Glenwood and you stayed at Grandma Lewis' the rest of the time.  Probably a week up there.  Daddy would go up every day and see you.  He had the cows to milk down at the place.
    He would go up there and would say you were so anxious to see him when he got there. Grandma took care of you but it was sort of lonesome there.  When he brought Dorothy and me back to our place, then he went back and got you and brought you back home, and when you first came in you wouldn't have anything to do with me.  You'd just stand off and look.  I'd had the baby at first.  When I put baby Dorothy aside; then you came and I could pick you up. You were just a little leery, where I had gone off and left you and didn't explain to you.  I didn't even think of how to explain those days.  Even that wouldn't have helped I guess.
    Bob:  Did I have any other playmates, in my first three years?
    Hazel:  Well practically every Sunday, we went up to Grandpa's and Grandma's and there were Marylin and Evelyn.  I don't know if Virginia was there or not, but soon, you had Judy.  She was there and Morrie.  Judy would come when they would come over.  Sometimes Edna and Wig would come and Roger would be there.  There was always something going on at Grandma’s on Sundays.  We always went up there on Sunday afternoons.
    Of course the Davis' were over at Horn's Mill (they called it Fulda). They would come over.  Evelyn stayed there when she was five, when they were at school.  They'd bring her over there and she'd stay all week at Grandma’s and Grandpa's and then they'd take her home or come and see her or something.  She finally started school when she was five because she didn't want to be away from her family so much.
    This place we lived on, Bird Creek ran right through it.  I can remember when we'd go up there, through the fields.  We used it mostly for pasture although part of the time we planted some oats in the field.  We had Roy Feller come and combine it.
    I can remember you kids riding in the wagon.  I guess you can remember when 'd cut the hay.
    We went to Sunday School quite regularly at the community Sunday school.
    Bob:  Starting when I was how old?
    Hazel:  Soon after you were born.
    Bob:  Did you have a car all the time?
    Hazel:  No.  We didn't have one all the time.  We didn’t have one at all on the other place where we lived except right towards the last when we got a little Model T Ford.
    Bob: How did you get to Sunday School?
    Hazel:  Aunt Olivia picked us up.  She was living down where Bolts lived, with Lillivan.  Every Sunday morning she'd drive around that way, bring the Bolt children that wanted to go, and stop and pick me up.  Oh, this was when we lived at the other place [NOTE: Grandpa Lewis’ farm].  That's how I got to Sunday School.  After we were down to this place [NOTE: our own farm], and you were born, I guess Daddy took us up and then came home again.  He didn't stay, for a long time.  But before that I had ridden with her.  But I know that I was teaching these Sunday School classes, and while you were in the little nursery classes on up, I was your teacher all the time.  I just wanted to make sure that you weren't taught anything but what I believed.  I taught the Bible from the outlook of my beliefs of the Church.  I tried not to teach anything that would offend anybody but we generally didn't get any teaching that was against our beliefs in the Uniform Bible Lessons that they were using.  The same thing with Dorothy, but generally we didn't have so many children that you couldn't be in the same class.
    That's the way we worked that until you got up into Junior High.  Then I didn't teach you after that.  That's about the time that most of the kids quit coming to Sunday School up there, until McNutts were there and then they started in again.
    Bob:  This is a question that I’ve never asked before.  Would you tell me a little about what your philosophy of toilet training was and how that had occurred.  How early or how late?
    Hazel:  I'd read not to hurry  it too fast.  If you did, you were just training yourself.  When a child was ready, they would train themselves-- as soon as they were old enough to understand or didn't want to wear pants that needed changing.  But you couldn't do it very well, at first.  I remember your rhythm was different.  Instead of being the same time every day, it might be two hours later.  But otherwise you were pretty easy to train.  I didn't really push you.  I just explained and we worked it out.  With both of you.
    Bob:  How early, do you remember?
    Hazel:  I suppose at a year and a half, or so, you were being dry in the day-time. And it was about at two years before I was sure that you didn't have to go to bed in your pants.
(recorded 18 September 1976)