Roger's Story

My younger brother, Roger also added his recollections to my story - "I was named after a truck driver my mother knew and my middle name, Tuttle, was my grandmother's maiden name, on my mother's side.  I was born in Emmett Idaho on June xx, 19xx at 714 pm, I was 20 inches long and weighed 7 lbs. and 9 ozs.  My Doctor was Ed Newcombe.

 Baby Roger with older siblings

I have no recollections of my mother's parents. My father's dad, I only remember him sitting in a chair. But Grandma I remember quite well, she always had graham crackers on top of the refrigerator.

The first place I remember living was behind the Garden Valley Store. The store had an uneven wooden porch, and an old horse hitching post out front. There was a big beautiful yard on the one side and on the other a road went up and made a big loop. We lived at the top of the loop to the right directly behind the store. There was a couple of other building at the top of the loop and then a big white house on the left. This was where the Arterburns lived. In the center were some trees, one of which had a platform built in it, a tree house. Behind our house, on the way to the outhouse, was an old Model A car body, and a wood shed of some sort.

Roger (front) at house behind store in GardenValley

Down the road a ways was the schoolhouse. There was a very high slide, teeter-totters, and the giant strides. This was a tall pole that the top was free to turn and had several chains attached with one or two bars at the end. You grab one of these bars and run around the pole and swing on the end of the chain and take giant strides to keep going. [You had to really watch out, especially if some of them were shortened to just two bars across - they would hit you in the head really hard.  I still have knots on my forehead from being hit by the Giant Strides.  But boy did I love to play on them. Reba]  It was a lot of fun in later years but then I was too small to make it work right. When I was five they let me visit the school with my brother and sister. I remember going across the road to a hand pump well to get water in a bucket for drinking water for everyone.

 The Giant Strides

Across the road from the school, where the water pump was, there was an old building that used to be a stage stop. It was a big building with a porch all the way around it. Inside was a large room with several rooms along one side and a kitchen area at one end. The Taylors lived there, and we use to go watch TV there. It seems like always war movies.

 Beside the stage stop was a small house where Mr. Quinn lived, and between the two buildings was a wooden fence with a big gate. Through the gate were several old buildings one of which was a granary. It had a big piece of board missing from the door so we could sneak in and play in the grain bins. And it seems like I was always finding pennies on the ground around that door. We also found pennies where the old school burned down between the high school and the grade school.

One day Adrian, Reba and I decided to walk to the river, and we took off across the fields toward the river from the store.  We didn't get far before Tom (our oldest brother) came and got us. We tried to hide behind a hay stack but he had already saw us and came right to where we were, and took us back home.

I had quite a crush on the daughter of the store proprietors. One time Adrian and Reba talked us into kissing under a rug that her mother had put out on the line to beat the dust out of it. I went in one end and she went in the other and when we met in the middle we kissed. I remember her lips being chapped. As we kissed we heard Adrian and Reba laughing, they were looking up at us from the bottom of the rug. I was up in the tree house watching when the Arterburns moved away. I don't remember what my feelings were but it must have left quite an impression since I remember it so clearly.

The only other memory I have while living behind the store is one of my uncles buying my warts. I had several warts all over my hand and he said if he paid me a penny for each wart and I didn't spend the money they would go away. I hid them in a tin can with a lid, inside the bottom of the couch and my warts went away.

The summer I turned six, 1955, we moved to the other end of the valley, across the river, behind the old portable mill. Our house was a long house built on two big logs called skids, for a foundation.  There were two rooms in the main building, a long room that was kitchen, dining room and living room, a small bedroom at the end and another bedroom and a big porch built along side.  A wood shed along side the driveway and a garage in back and of course the outhouse behind the garage. The woodshed was more of a tool shed with a elongated roof in back where we kept our fire wood. It was all up close to the hill not far from a white cliff face, which can still be seen from the main road that goes up the river.

 Into Army 1968, trained for helicopters in Alabama military base.  Served in KY, Alaska, and Vietnam, getting out in 1970, after 13mos in Vietnam."


Roger told me this week that he is again attempting to write his life story for his children and grandchildren.  Maybe one day I can post that story on my blog also.  Til then, I will continue on with my story and genealogical research notes.