Another Wylie Savage Deaux Drop

These are letters to Beatrice Boedefeld by her Yellowstone Park tent-mate Dorothy “Dick” Loeffler. Dorothy Ursula Loeffler was born 14 February 1890 in Beaver County, Pennsylvania to Christian and Elizabeth Loeffler. She had two older sisters, Marie and Estella, and an older brother, Ed. Younger siblings were Helen, Ruth, Theodore, and Kenneth. A younger sister had died young. Dick completed college and was a schoolteacher. While not as adventurous as Rae Wylie, Dick had a wicked sense of humor. Enjoy her letters!


[undated; a satire written probably upon arriving home from Yellowstone, September 1916]

My darling Bee:

Here I am at the Wylie Geyser Camp, and my such a place! I do wish you could be here in this wonderland. Among the many wonders at this camp are the Geysers, which play at intervals varying from a few minutes to many days. Among the most noted of these are the Giant, better known as Stoddard, playing without an interval of rest; the Riverside, otherwise known as Perla, playing a little all the time, but heap big much every week; Old Faithful, nee Ed Gordon, whose volume is great but shoots for small distance; the Oblong whose former name was Rae, saying little but meaning what it says. I do wish you could be here for a time and know these as I am having the pleasure of knowing them. The various homes in our camp are very interesting also. Imagine yourself in Tent 60, Bunk House Rear, any hour of the Day, but especially just about time for curfew, when all is quiet, and in twilight, produced only by the wee flickering light from our toy stove. This scene is enhanced only by the scanse [sic] of two charming people whose kindness keeps them in “Deaux Drop,” that all might be cosy when the children come in.

I must not neglect to tell you of our camp slang. Do you get that? One handsome young man insists on making the “Baby a Shirt,” much to the disgust of his Frau who true, devoted, [and] wife-like wants to do it herself. Others are always “Coming to You” and “Lookin at You,” so that the girls being so bashful and unused to such courtesies just naturally hie to some secluded cosy little spot for a siesta with the Bears.

The animals here, especially the Bares, seen only in shadow through the tents, when one happens to be out late, well about ten o’clock, are quite tame. They do nothing but flit around and jump into bed. Some class, eh!

Sure enuf I shall not take time now to tell of the camp help further than to mention our beloved laundress Mrs. Mueller, who is a human question box. Really, to see her is to love her, but oh! to hear her or give her cause to make you hear her is superb when accompanied by the washer; and Mird whose midnight editions of the “Hungarian Rhapsody” and “Melody in F.” are charming. Sure this is just a glimpse into the Bigness of the Best Camp in the Park, but shall tell you all when we meet again for a lovely siesta.

Months Later.

Dear One:

Received your letter yesterday and the news that I owe you a Brief. Nicht war?¹ Sure thought I had answered your letter in which I was presented with “A bouncing ------------ money order.” However, it seems not, so thanks awfully right now. Get that.

1. Really Bee there is nothing the matter save work, and gradually becoming acclimated. We, or Helen rather, got a new Victrola, and strange to say several of our records make me so homesick for what? Well, it just really un acclimates me. I never mention it but just scoot off to the hay or bath room and suffer in silence.

2. Yes, Bee, several shirts have been made since I started, but it now looks as if there will never be an occasion for their use.

3. I have Thirty-Five wee kids, twenty of which are of foreign birth, but clean and just as good as any little American.²

4. Ed has been down twice, that is, two Sunday Evenings. Last Sunday he was on his way home from Pittsburg, and stopped over. He informed me that Miss Johnson was to have all our camp bunch from around here, up there soon. I think that is all he said, and then ran home. That, of course, was due to his Park training.

5. Yes I went to the Masonic dance and had a lovely time but oh! so different from what I had learned to love.

6. The “Man I Left Behind” is fine, if I get your meaning. Was that right? I do not see much of him though, for he works most every evening knitting socks for the Belgians. Gee! don’t you wish you were a Belgian?³

7. Got my money O.K. Thanks for the allowance. Am sorry George can not provide better for me, as it was not thus to be. However, I think it will soon be better.

8. Homesick for “Deaux Drop”? Are you not ashamed? That to me is sacred!

9. Gym has not started, but does Nov. 4. Wish you could be among our ranks.

10. What you mean, snow? Hardly snow.

11. Our Savage Roundup is not until the Holidays.

12. Fergie & I had a lovely time together, before she went to Pittsburg. She certainly thinks the Wylie Co. did dirt on us. She says we were fools for not sticking up for our rights.⁴

Sure I love you. Is it necessary to tell every savage that you love them in the same old way. I thought that applied to One only.

No this is not enough. So I shall let you in on a Secret. Ready eh! Mird has called me up eight different times for a Savage Date. I could not make myself say “Yes.” Expect he will call tonight again so will cut out the “chin music” and make ready for church etc. Assuring you that I do love you in the same old way.

Savagely
and
Lovingly
Dick.


[undated; spring 1917]

My Dear: --

Will you really and truly forgive me, if I, seated here on the floor, beside my open trunk, clearing up some of the remains of last summer’s affair, write you a line or two with a lead pencil? After seeing the terrible things that I was capable of doing last summer, you will be surprised at nothing I do. Seems ages since I have heard directly from you, but knowing that “distance lends enchantment” and “that silence is golden,” I have no fear that your love has grown cold.

Your Feb. edition to the D.D.I. sure was a peach. I have laughed and cried over it, by turns. And now, just to show you my generosity, I will share a letter with you. Hope you will enjoy it as I have. This spring I have just thought and thought about you two girls, looking forward to seeing you soon. But now, as Rae says, ’twill only be a year longer to wait.

Our family have experienced some changes this spring. My oldest brother Ed committed matrimony two weeks ago. Marie Norris, who formerly lived here, but recently of Los Angeles & a cousin of Edna Parkinson, was the unfortunate. Helen my next sister is to be married in two weeks, and Ted my second brother is to be graduated from Geneva College.

This war business sure has killed all life round here. Even I have lost all pep. Had a wisdom tooth drawn last week. It has healed off & on all winter. ’Twas a thing of beauty & a joy forever. I have willed it to Perla to wear as a charm.

Now you may move on to Rae’s letter.

Love Immensely

Dick XXXXX


[Undated, written in December, probably 1917]⁵

My dear Bee: --

Have you begun to think that I am leaving you be? Three different times I have begun to answer your letter, then was interrupted. Now will write a few lines.

Had a teacher’s meeting this evening and made plans for a community Xmas service to be held in the Alhambra Theatre. We are to sing the Xmas Carols and Patriotic Songs. Suppose you have learned the new words to America, too.⁶ I think they are beautiful. Our vacation begins next Friday, lasting for two weeks. There is plenty of patriotic work to be done, such as work on the draft boards, Red Cross Campaign work etc.

Spent Thanksgiving with Ted at Dayton. Surely did enjoy it muchly, although I spent the biggest part of two days on the way. Left here Thursday Morning at 7 arrived in South Charleston where I was to meet him at 6.10 (train due at 3.). Sunday left there at 8 and reached B.F. at 12. Midnight, and the biggest part of it I stood. Babies cried the whole way home and oh! ’twas music to my ears.

My Mr. has been at Jersey City in the Signal Corps. Saturday Morning he asked if he could get a furlough Xmas, and the big boss said, “Man you’ll be -- -- -- at Xmas.” You’d better go home now. So he left Saturday at 2 arriving here Sunday Morn., then left Monday. Well, ’twas cold, so cold. Our water was frozen and the pipes busticated. ‘Twas water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink.’ I had a time deciding whether or not to go to N.Y. and -- -- -- but sent him away singular. Several of our teachers committed matrimony this year, and the kids can fitly say “Mrs.”⁷

Our third bunch of drafted boys left this morning, Ruth’s man, also one of the Arnold boys, among them. ’Twill soon reach all the drafted ones.

We all have been knitting. Mother finished four sweaters and five pair of socks. The boys say the Army socks are not warm, and upon examining them, I, too, decided that. I finished a pair of grays, and am quite proud of myself. Have decided to cut out my Xmas and use my money for yarn. Bought 9 skeins today.

Last evening a friend of my Mac’s called to see me, as Mac had asked him to do so. He surely was a blusher and so bashful that, Bee, let me, let you in on a secret, “he went out of the room to change his mind.”

We surely enjoyed Rae’s letter immensely, but have not written her yet.

We enjoyed Fergie’s little visit with us, short but sweet. Tonight’s paper—[attached is a newspaper clipping:] “Miss Maude Ferguson, a Red Cross nurse, who recently visited her father, John M. Ferguson of this place, left Pittsburg last night for Washington City, where she will report for duty at the Walter Reed hospital.”

You asked about those table tops? They are not making them in B.F. now but at their factory in Frankfort, Ill.

Will ring off now with oodles of love and best wishes, I am

Sincerely –
Dickie


Beaver Falls.
February 9, 1919.

Dear Bee:—

Lookin’ at you in the shape of a letter. To the tune of “Will you remember, (Sweetheart)” for Ruth is drumming it now, and I think ’tis all together fitting and proper that here on the enameled top by the dining room window, with those strains in the air that I spend a little time with thee. Now, frankly, do you remember, sweetheart? Was just looking over my Yellowstone trophies, and you know the feelin’ one gets. Had a letter from Ed last week. He said he was working like a tiger and had enough money saved to buy Yellowstone Park, the whole thing. I hope if he invests, the deal includes “Summit Lake.” “Oh! fair one rave on for ’twas a dark and stormy night and the bottom fell out of the hack.”

Now, Bee, going back to the all important question. Sure, my heart is in the right place, but for several reasons, I must say “I can not be there, when the roll is called.” First, I feel I, being in the Pittsburg district for the first, and having only a seven weeks vacation, had better not plan for such an elaborate time; secondly, you know the boys are coming back, and I am interested in One or Two; and thirdly since I am a family woman with many responsibilities, I know, I am persuaded, I am convinced that I must cling to the ship. Now, our Ruth, being unattached, entertains a feeling that she will write Miss J. later in the summer, for a place in the Park.

Peggy Wood, star of “Maytime”

Since I have been in the city, I have been keeping good regular hours. Come home week ends but next month I shall go back and forth each day. Saw “Maytime” last week. It surely is a pretty thing with such pretty songs. The whole sentiment of it seems to be “In the spring a young man’s fancies often turn to thoughts of love.” A few weeks ago, I saw “Chu Chin Chow” much to my disgust. This week I saw “Atta Boy.” All of this is done by boys. Some of them take the girls’ parts cleverly.⁸

Well, what do you think of everything or have you ceased to think? I am only afraid the powers will not give Germany her dues. I would divide the nation among the other countries, with no more Germany, and as for the Kaiser, to hell with him. Of course, I did not say where that Hell is. Oh! these are strenuous and trying times in which we live. Won’t we have some tales to tell our grandchildren? Oh! yes my brother Ed has a boy, Edward Donald Loeffler, born Jan. 30, 1919. Now call me grandma? My oldest sister has one girl and five boys.

To the same tune, “Do you remember (Sweetheart)?”⁹ I shall make an ending, for I must write a letter to France. If you girls do not go to Y.P. hope we all may be able to go to the lakes or somewhere for a week or two. Now, before I saw “Au revoir” I must ask you, “If a Ford were chasing a Ford in Ireland, what time would it be?” Yes, tin after tin.

Besides, Bee, if men’s under clothes are B.V.D’s what are women’s? Yes, you guessed it right. E.Z.P’s.

And now unto thee and thine I shall say “So long” until later.

With oodles of love and best wishes.

Dorothy Dick.

**************************************
^1. Brief means “letter” in German. Nicht wahr means roughly “is that not so?”
^2. A strong sense of nationalism and prejudice against foreign-born people was usual for this time period.
^3. Despite Dick’s facetious tone, when neutral Belgium was invaded by Germany at the beginning of World War I, many of the people of the United States were sympathetic to the plight of the Belgians and sent what humanitarian relief they could.
^4. Because of a threatened railroad strike that ultimately did not materialize, the Wylie Camping Company canceled most its summer employees’ promised trip around Yellowstone Park at the end of the 1916 camping season and sent them home instead. Beatrice and her tent mates missed out on seeing more of the Park than just the Geysers Camp area.
^5. This is a replica of the header Dick typed on this letter using a blue ribbon. She made a row of little soldiers by cleverly combining keystrokes on the typewriter. It looks best in the typewriter font she had, but the computer version of Courier does not work well. There is a poem about these little soldier images, apparently written at the time and published in newspapers everywhere. I will put it in this blog later on.
^6. The poem by Katherine Lee Bates was first published in 1893, then the words were changed in 1904, and they were changed again about 1913.
^7. Dick’s romance did not last; we don’t know what happened. She never did marry.
^8. The stage operetta of Maytime ran from 1917 through 1919, starring Peggy Wood, who decades later was the Mother Abbess in the film The Sound of Music. The story concerned sweethearts who are parted but remember one another all their lives; some sixty or seventy years later their descendants meet and marry.
Chu Chin Chow was a musical tale of Ali Baba and his forty thieves. The women slaves in the production were said to have been dressed quite scantily for that time, which may be the source of Dick’s disgust.

Atta Boy poked fun at Army life, but it ran for only 24 shows before closing, so Dick must have seen one of its last performances.
^9. “Will You Remember (Sweetheart)?” was a song from Maytime. Check YouTube to hear Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald singing it in the film version (which has a different story).
*************************

Dorothy Loeffler died in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in 1962.

If We’re Snowbound, We Need Bee

“Snow Bound Up to Date: A Modern Chronicle”

Elkhart, Indiana
January 15, 1918

Dear Deaux Drops:

I have had such a very unusual adventure, and it is going to take so much space to chronicle it, that this is a family letter which you will please pass around. And this is my tale.

January 11 – 13, 1918

For weeks we have been planning a sleigh ride for the young folks of our church, and when it sleeted on January 6, and that was followed by a good fall of snow, we thought we were fixed. Everything was lovely. The snow didn’t melt, everybody asked wanted to go, and it even lined up an almost even number of boys and girls, which you know is remarkable. So we ordered three big bobsleds, planning to fill one with the High School Bible class, a bunch of 15 year old boys and girls, and the other two with older boys and girls.

On Friday, January 11, it began to snow, quite gently, but very persistently, and fearing that the roads might be too heavy, the president of our Young People’s Society called the livery barns to find out if they thought the trip could be made in safety, explaining that we were going to a house about six miles out on the paved road east of town. “Sure, I can make that,” said the livery man. “I’ll take you through a sailing.”

So at 7 o’clock [p.m.] we gathered at the church. A part of the crowd backed out, but there were 29 in the party which finally left in two bobs. The chaperone for the younger crowd didn’t show up and none of the married couples either, but two of the older girls and I went with the youngsters—that is we started.

We had gone about two blocks when Helen asked if I had bought the coffee and sugar.

“Why no,” I said. “I thought you were going to get it.” So she and Martha got out and went back, which left me alone with the youngsters.

The team hitched to our bob hadn’t been out before this winter, and they wouldn’t budge out of a walk. The other bunch fooled around an hour getting the coffee and sugar from a restaurant, and then caught up with us when we were about five miles out.

And it kept snowing harder and harder, and I was getting quite scared, although I wouldn’t have admitted it for worlds. However, it wasn’t cold, and as soon as the more lively horses took the lead, our team braced up and we arrived at Cedar Dell, our destination, at about 10 o’clock.

Cedar Dell has been remodeled from an old school house by my dentist, Dr. C.L. George, and Helen Kendrick (mentioned above) is his office assistant. The original school room is the living room of the home. Four 12x15 rugs do not cover the floor, so you can imagine how large it is. On the front Dr. George has added a bed room, library, bath room, reception hall, and another bedroom, all opening out of the living room except the first bed room which is in a small wing. A wide porch goes across the entire front, and a kitchen is added in the rear.

While not exact, this plan will give you a little idea of the place.

Of course, this doesn’t sound like an adventure, yet, but wait children, just wait!

The place was brilliantly lighted when we arrived, and the furnace was roaring, so the house was nice and warm. A pressure tank supplies the running water in the bath room.

We had our things off, in a jiffy, aided by the Doctor’s two small boys, and the house keeper showed Helen, my sister Ruth, myself and several of the older girls to the kitchen where we started coffee and unpacked the lunch we had brought. The floor of the big room had been cleared, dance records were ready for the Victrola, and while the lunch was being prepared we started dancing.

There were 29 in our party, as I said before, three drivers, and Doctor and his family, making 36, and I brought just that many cups and spoons from the church. The drivers took the horses to the barn on the next farm, about a city block and a half away, and then came back for lunch.

Mark this well—for lunch we had coffee, cream, four or five sandwiches apiece, cake, cookies, apples, bananas, cheese, pickles and olives, also potato chips. Alas—had we known!!

After supper, we danced a Virginia reel.

Suddenly, someone who had been talking to the drivers came in to announce in a panic stricken voice:

“We can’t go home tonight!”

Immediately there was a hubbub.

Some were sure we could and went to remonstrate with the drivers. One driver was willing to try, and a few were all for starting at once.

But one glance out of the door was enough. The wind had risen and was blowing at the rate of 40 miles an hour and driving the loose fluffy snow before it. To attempt to start home would have been suicide. Doctor said so. So did I, and so did all the rest who looked out the door.

So we went back and started dancing again, but somehow the inspiration was gone.

Almost immediately some of the kids started for the telephone. It was a country line on a country exchange. We couldn’t raise the operator, even with the riot call, but I’ll bet we kept the fourteen other subscribers on that line awake all night.

At 1:30, the Doctor opened out the bed davenport, and with the assistance of some of the boys brought in three spring cots from the store house outside. But there were no extra bedclothes.

Five of us, including Ruth and I, lay down cross wise on the bed davenport. The cots were each occupied by two girls, and five of the small girls took turns with a cot and the floor in the library where the drivers were sleeping in the only available rocking chairs. I had to rout four girls off the doctor’s bed so the little boys could go to sleep, and we begged the doctor to go, also, but he staid up to keep the fire going.

At 1 o’clock it was 15 below zero. At 3 o’clock it was 20 below. By morning it was 24 below, and the windows looked as though they were made of solid snow. The frost patterns were actually embossed.

There was no place for the boys to sleep, and while they tried to be quiet as they played checkers and “India,” we would just begin to doze when someone would have a “Blockade” and get excited about it, and it was all off. Then, we finally prevailed upon the boys to lie down, and just as they got settled, the younger girls, who had had a nap, came piling out into the big room, and were all for dancing again. Ruth and another girl in our bed were sick, and believe me, I went after those girls about like Cora went after Johnnie Kirk, or Dick after the Spook on the night of the “Night Shirt parade.”

“My sister is sick enough to die,” I fibbed. “The people who don’t want to sleep will kindly go into the library and shut the door. Those who want to sleep will stay here. You don’t mean to be thoughtless, of course, but you just don’t think.”

But, in spite of everything, there was no sleep, and at about 5:30 I let them commence dancing again. There wasn’t anything else to do.

I hope you get a clear picture of the situation.

Thermometer at 24 below.
Wind velocity 60 miles per hour.
Thirty three people marooned for dear knows how long.
Food—decidedly scarce.

At 7 o’clock, the housekeeper not having put in an appearance, I poked around in the kitchen with the doctor, found a half package of oatmeal and a small quantity of coffee. Doctor said he’d go to Gregory’s for milk, and so I started oatmeal cooking in three pans.

Our coffee had been thrown out when we were preparing to return to town, and the doctor’s supply even when boiled for a half hour, was decidedly thin.

Housekeeper—She was a lemon—appeared at about the time I got things nicely started, all apologies. Doctor ordered her out of my way, but she wouldn’t go, and from then until the end the adventure she was a detriment. By the way, she was a Wylie Dude in ’16, which accounts for it. Dudes never did amount to anything no-how. I hope none of you met her. She blew in one night, talked to Gene and I and blew out next morning, I think. Much talkee talkee. One of the kind who was “so nervous” she couldn’t do anything, and yet who wouldn’t get out of the way so we could go ahead.

The doctor was nearly exhausted when he got back from Gregory’s, where the drivers had decided to stay, and his face was nipped. He brought a loaf of bread and eight quarts of milk, so we soon had our gang eating mush and milk. Not enough to founder them but enough to keep off starvation.

Having provided the breakfast, I did not wash the dishes, but proceeded to do a little dancing on my own account.

We passed the morning in reading, wishing for our knitting, playing cards, checkers, and “India,” sleeping when the Doctor’s bed was unoccupied, dancing the Virginia reel, playing spin the pan, redeeming the forfeits, and finally, in desperation, we had a mock wedding.

Two members of the party were good pianists, and gave impromptu concerts, and someone was always dancing. After 10 o’clock I don’t see how they had the heart.

We had succeeded in reaching Elkhart on the phone at about 5 o’clock [a.m.], and from then on the phone was kept hot while we endeavored to assure all anxious mothers and fathers that we were all all right. At 8 o’clock, my city editor called up and told me to come to work. I assured him I would be delighted if he would provide the way. As he had assured me the night before that it was an ideal night for a sleigh ride, he had no kick coming.

At 1 o’clock, the crowd began to plead for something to eat. The commissary department reported two cases of baked beans in the cellar, one case of pineapple, and a scattering of cans of other stuff.

Doctor said he’d kill his chickens if he had to, and there were potatoes, but we’d better go light at first. So eight cans of beans were ordered up and four cans of pineapple. Then the bread was cut and buttered.

Each refugee as he marched past the kitchen door was given a plate or sauce dish with two tablespoons of beans, piping hot, a spoon to eat them with, two slices of bread buttered and made into a sandwich, and was told to help himself to a half cup of preserved pineapple from the sideboard.

Some of the hungry boys declare that we figured out the exact number of calories of heat and the percentage of protein in each bean, sized up the crowd to see which ones could stand the strain the longest and apportioned the beans accordingly.

“I got twelve beans in a nice ring around my plate,” said Ed Watson, the president of our society, who is a case.

During the day, Ed marshaled the boys in twos and set them to work at intervals keeping the pressure tank which supplied the bathroom in operation. About every half hour he’d make the rounds with “You fellows done your bit yet?” and any who rebelled were told that it was a plain case of no work no eat.

I’ll let you use your imagination as to the bath room situation. By the second morning we formed a regular waiting list, boys and girls. A case of lost modesty much resembling the “pollyanna” situation at Y.N.P.

Girls—I never truly appreciated the blessing of cold cream, powder, combs, brushes and tooth brushes before, to say nothing of night gowns and real beds.

Ed declared he’d have to use a file on his teeth, that they were growing long and curly, and I am sure mine felt that way.

And all the time the wind howled and the snow came down, and the drifts piled up.

An interurban car started from town to get us, and got lost on the way.

In town, the department stores closed at 10 o’clock, the factories didn’t run, the paper was printed but was not delivered, the street cars didn’t run, and the trains were at a stand still. This news was gleaned at intervals during the day.

At supper time, I had a rest, as I called for volunteers to make biscuits, but I organized the serving. Each applicant got three stewed prunes, two baking powder biscuits without butter, and the hungriest were each allowed a teaspoon of beans as there were a few left from dinner.

We can all laugh now, but it was rather pathetic then. One girl who has no vitality was already looking starved to death, and we saw that she had hot tea and butter on her biscuits.

Then the boys braved the storm to bring the sleigh robes and horse blankets from Gregory’s and we prepared to sleep.

Ever try to sleep on a horse blanket?
Well, I hope you never have to.

There was a time when I didn’t object to the smell of horse, but somehow, this wasn’t the same kind of horse, or something.

We put the boys on the floor of the library, and they copped most of the blankets.

Three of the girls took one of the cots down in the furnace room [in the cellar], claiming that it was warmer. Five were on the bed davenport as per the night before. Three more were on one of the cots helped out by chairs and four more started the night on each of the other two cots. Two others were on the floor.

I tried sleeping on four folding chairs facing four straight chairs on which a fat little girl who snored was sleeping. We had a horse blanket under us and Doctor’s over coat over us, and slept in our own clothes and coats.

Did I say we slept?
Well we went to bed at 8.

At 10, after half waking up every time I moved, in fear that the chairs were going to collapse, I woke up in a sort of night mare, thinking Constance was on the floor. She wasn’t, but just as I had assured myself of the fact, she tried to turn over and the chair collapsed.

Then every body got up. I lighted a night light as I wasn’t going to be left in the dark again, and Constance and I also sought the floor.

Two hours later, we awoke nearly frozen, thawed out at the register, found one of the cots was deserted and appropriated that.

Two hours later, Constance nearly kicked me out of bed. She got up, staggered to the register, fell over the floor, knocked over a chair.

Everybody groaned, got up, tried the other side and went back to sleep.

Two hours later. Repeat as above.

Five o’clock.

The boys began to stir.
Some of the girls began to talk.
Housekeeper came out and begged them all to sleep for two hours more.
Doctor entered looking for “Star Spangled Banner” to put on the Vic.

We told him only a German could be so cruel, and he desisted, contenting himself with building the kitchen fire.

But the kids were waking up and there was no stopping them. At 6 o’clock the boys started the Vic with “O Say Can You See” sung by John MacCormack, and most of us were glad to stand up and stretch the cramps out of our weary bones.

Are you getting tired of this?
Well we were too.

I decided to cook the whole package of cream of wheat for breakfast and see if we couldn’t fill the gang up. Pauline Ellwood made the biscuits which were fatter than those of the night before.

Some of the boys went after the milk, and brought back twelve quarts so we had plenty for mush and to let the kids drink it if they wanted to.

One of the boys who had gone for milk nearly fainted when he got back, the exertion, when he was hungry, having been too great. So in the midst of organizing a bread line, I had to get some ginger from Doctor and feed him ginger tea. He gulped it down like a man while I wiped the cold sweat off his brow and one of the girls held his hand, and some part of the treatment made him feel much better.

After breakfast, as the sun was out, and the wind slightly abated, the boys got busy shoveling walks and cleaning the big rugs which belonged in the living room and which had been out on the porch in all the weather. As we didn’t want the kids to dance on Sunday we thought it best to put down the rugs, for while, under the exceptional circumstances, I should have let them dance, I don’t think the doctor would have approved.

At about 10 o’clock they telephoned from Gregory’s that the men were going to try to make the trip home and that they would take back those who absolutely had to go. Doctor didn’t want any of the girls to try it, but we who worked felt that we ought to go. Some of the little kids who had dates for that evening with fellows who were not in the crowd, also thought they must go, but we firmly said “No.” If we could make it, there would be time enough to think about them, and we were better able to stand the hardships, if there were to be any, than they.

So we started with about a half load in each bob, sitting on the floor with the blankets over our heads. The wind was still blowing. We had gone a mile when the leading team crashed into a drift “up to their necks” our driver said. He got out, took the shovel and started ahead to see. We sat there we thought for an hour and every minute wished we hadn’t started. Then with the help of two farmers who lived on opposite sides of the road a short distance ahead, the leaders got out of the drift and we drove up to the farm house. There was a drift twelve feet high and a block long cross the road. We went into the farm house and the men telephoned to town that we were on the way. They said they would send out four horses and that we should wait.

The farmer’s wife fed 20 of us on coffee, bread and butter, hot apple sauce and liverwurst and would only take a dollar! Farmer Boyer went out and surveyed the landscape, found a way around the drift through a field, and we bundled up again and started out, meeting the other horses just beyond the great drift.

After that, it was plain sailing, the horses having partly broken the road on the way out, and we arrived in town at about 3 o’clock.

Gee, but home looked good.

Dinner was still on the table—swiss steak, gravy, potatoes, and all the other yummy things. Ruth was so all in that she couldn’t eat, could only collapse and cry. I had a meal, a hot bath, and went to bed to sleep from 4 o’clock until 6 the next morning.

My word, to get your clothes off after 60 hours was great!

Helen and Martha, who were with the first bob, went directly to the barn and sent another bob out after the kids and they got in at 6 o’clock. As there were only 12 of them, they were able to have a better dinner than they had had the day before and really arrived home thinking they had had a great time.

And it might have been worse. I wonder what we would have done had we gone to a summer cottage at one of the lakes where we would have had to keep warm with the stoves and no fuel supply, no beans in the cellar, no bath room— say? I guess we have much to be thankful for.

Well dears, I know you are green with envy to think all this excitement didn’t happen to you. I eagerly await your storm adventures, but I think the blizzard blew itself out before it reached you [this was to Perla & Vessie Caughey, Dick Loeffler, and Cora Cunningham, who lived in Pennsylvania; obviously not Rae Wylie in California].

Only my savage training enabled me to take some of it philosophically, especially the housekeeper.

As for the sleep, the first night reminded me of “sittin’s up” in dear old Deaux Drop when Rae and I wanted to go to sleep quite forcibly.

As ever
Your sister

Bee.

Further Adventures of Rae Wylie

I have discovered some more letters written to my grandmother by Rachel Wylie, her tent-mate in Yellowstone during the summer of 1916. They tell the story of the final part of Rae’s education and of the fun she had in the first place she taught.

[Envelope]

Epistle to the Deaux Drops #3.
Official time for Park Migration.

1 month – 23 days in 1917. 1 yr. 1 month – 23 days in 1918.

If you are going to put it off any longer don’t expect me to keep tract of the time—it’s too sad to think about.

[Outside envelope flap]

Extract from the “Sabbath Reading.” Probably you’ve read it.
If _ _ _ _ or the under world were turned upside down what would be the trade mark printed on it? (ans. other side)
[Inside envelope flap]
Made in Germany.

Los Angeles Calif.
Mar. 22, 1917.

Beloved D.D.s, —

Hello, Hawaii? I’ve been hibernating for the winter and just woke up. Don’t think when you get a whiff of these orange blossoms that I have grown desperate and committed matrimony. No such good luck, they are simply put in to tell you that it’s orange blossom time in California. They have quite a scent just now and I do hope they are polite enough to keep it so you can smell it too. Got them off my own little orange tree in the back yard.

Oh! California is great just now, trying to make up for me not getting to go back to the Park. Our wisteria vine is all white, the roses——but I can’t tell you about them. Was up the valley last week applying for a school. (I adore such a job.) All along the road going up were roses, not back east, front yard roses but real beauties like you buy at the florist’s for $4 a dozen or rather like you don’t buy—people plant them along the road like they would sun flowers back east. Then after you had looked at the roses, you looked behind at the orange groves with one-half of the trees in bloom and the other half with ripe oranges, beyond were the mountains and over all this peachy blue sky and the sun that don’t know how to quit shining. Yummy. Yum. Me for an orange ranch in Southern Calif.

Well I suppose if I don’t quit raving on my surroundings and get down to business you won’t be pleased so here goes with every thing I know and some things I don’t know.

Now really first of all I don’t know a darn thing (darn perfectly proper, used every day by my psychology teacher) about the Park. You may not believe me but it’s gospel that Lady Mac does not know yet what she is going to do this summer. They have never heard from the Department of the Interior whether Wylie can have his camps at Grand Canyon. I think some one had better turn that dept. inside out and make an exterior dept. of it so we can find out what they are doing and why. She will go to G. C. if they get the camps there. And only the D. of I. and the Creator know what will happen.

As to people who are going back—Gula Frew has applied for tent-work. Bobbie McC. also has expressed his desire to return, how I shall miss him I really never feel quite right when I go out at night any more—“conscious of a something lacking.” Frank Vetter thinks he will go. And that’s all I know of.

Uncle Roy is going to tour the east and has just returned from a trip to Florida. Geysers will have to have a new guide. Yes I had a dandy letter from him. He has not changed in the least and practices at being in love most of the time. He must have gotten overly excited over some one for I’ll swear he wrote on wedding stationery.

Shorty Green mourns the departure of the horses—no park at all—it’s a burning shame—and will have to work for Sears and Roebuck all summer. Did you know he worked for them? Well he does, asked me if I had ever heard of them. Have I—oh! no. Maybe he could get us some bargains on spring suits. Every time he writes he sends a picture of himself with other films. I’m going to start a rogue’s gallery.

I don’t think Gordon is very nice to tell you I wrote him a letter. I don’t see any chance of getting him at all if he acts that way. But I just answered his letter friendly like, I hadn’t written on any serious subjects yet. Really Vess, it was nearly all weather, you know he used to live in Calif., and then he would rave over some school teacher in the east. It was real disappointing. I don’t think I’ll answer his last letter at all.

No sir Dick, Ed never sent me that picture even after you told him to and I don’t care if nothing makes him sore, some things do me and I want that picture.

Well back onto the main road—there will be no Thumb or Gibbon camp this year as you know but there will be one at Mammoth Hot Springs where Mr. Moorman will reign instead of at Gardiner. Other camps just the same. We also heard they would use the Shaw Powell sites at the Canyons and Geysers, that they wanted to use the Log office at the Geysers. I should think it would be a heap easier to build a log office than to move the camp over there away from all the good geysers, log bath house, bunk house, gentian patch, Firehole River and cow bridge. Besides the office we had wasn’t half bad. I’ll tell you they need us to decide a few things.

Mr. Miles was supposed to come down to L.A. but didn’t and I have now told you every thing I know about the new arrangements.

Well school continues but I am having a real good time this term. Start out in the morning with Nature study. We make trips around the campus; every one hunts a bug or a weed and runs wildly to the teacher. What is it? That, oh that’s a cinch beetle. Out come all the note books and down goes cinch beetle—4 legs, 2 on each side, 2 green spots on tail, sharp teeth but not poisonous, etc. On to the next bug. No outside studying, a delightful subject for one not studiously inclined. Only I rebel at snakes. Our beloved instructor tells us we will so much more win the respect of our pupils if we will only not be afraid of snakes. Respect or no respect I’ll not handle snakes.

Next we rush madly across the campus to oral expressions class where every one gets up in front of the class and shouts to the clouds. To-morrow we rave over Lochinvar. No outside studying to speak of, every one laughs at every one else and we have a delightful time.

The next hour I meet my Waterloo, I go to Art. Our teacher is a dear and personally I like her well, but between you and me I don’t think she has good taste. At least she don’t appreciate my efforts. Her idea of rhythm of straight lines and my idea conflict terribly but I always give in because it wouldn’t do to show her up in front of the class. No outside study to that class either.

Next I go to assembly; if exciting I enjoy it, otherwise I sleep.

The fifth hour I observe teaching in the training school any place I feel inclined. Friday went to the un-graded room where they work on the children who are either half or wholly lacking. One child took a notion to entertain me and drew pictures for my benefit. She asked me my name and then began to specialize on circles and as she drew them said, this is Miss Rachel. I know I’ve gained but I’m far from a circle and I’m not going back to that room. Will observe children in their right minds. (Just got one more class to tell about and then I’m done.)

After lunch go to physical ed and that is the best yet. We do folk dances, stand on our heads and all kinds of stunts and then take a cold shower bath.

A jitney bus of the 1915 to 1919 era.

One of the girls has a new auto and the boy that is teaching her to run it comes [with] us and we do Southern Calif. His father is running for city councilman and we go around and see people for him. Have a big sign on the wind shield, “R.P. Benton for City Council” Of course people can’t tell what it is at a distance and naturally take us for a jitney bus.¹ It’s quite mortifying every time you come to a corner to have people try to get in. Lela is getting along fine at driving too, just been run into twice and both times the other people were easy and paid for all damages. Much more exciting than nothing happening.

Oh! say wouldn’t you like to run around old Y.N.P. in an auto? I know Chip Samuels would run one just right. Wish I could be with you all at Lake Erie this summer since you have decided what you are going to do. We are going to the beach and I expect to work in the store and go back and forth.

The election of teachers here doesn’t come off until June. Isn’t that a great way to do business. We have to wait until then to find out. But I should worry. I have a good place up on the fourth floor at the store in a section with three boys. We run the place about right too on Saturdays. Our head man is a Jew, I know because he has a “stein” on the end of his name, but he is fine looking and so nice that I’m crazy about him.

Clara is going to join the Red Cross and I have serious intentions. We have a class out at school to teach us to make dressings etc. If war starts in tho’, I’m going to apply for a place as a traffic policeman at 7th & Broadway. The policeman there is quite rude to us when we pass him in a hurry. He needs to go to war and get shot and I will have an opportunity to use my gestures acquired in oral expression class—goodness knows there is no other time in life I’ll need them.

Nance’s people are all out here from the Grandmother down to the baby. They have a real nice bungalow and we dedicated it with a slumberless party one night before the family arrived. Nance works in the telephone office but does not like it and has an application in down at the store where I work.

Bee those papers you write are great. To think I slept with all that knowledge last summer and didn’t absorb some of it. But I am going to get something into my head, for Waldo the smallest boy has the mumps or we think he has for he has been exposed and is now sick. Just as soon as he wakes up he calls for me and I have to get in bed with him and I think that will be a good way to get them. Any of you that want them send in a written application and I’ll see what I can do for you. But be sure you have good reliable references. Experience also is desirable—oh! you school applications I can’t think of anything else.

Dick I wish you would come west and teach. Calif is such a stiff old place you almost have to go to Normal before you can get a school, but it isn’t the only western state; wish tho’ you would be near me.

Perla your name is Job. Don’t see how you even can find time to write all those poems and every thing you send. I certainly appreciate them and if I can’t ever repay you in this world you’ll get your reward in the next.

Glad my films have escaped New Castle, I had begun to think they were quarantined or something.

Bee you got your prophesy a little mixed on Bill and I. He happens to be choosing Clara, or trying to, only she refuses to [be] chose. Guess maybe he has given up hope by this time. She and the lady she rooms with worked it beautifully that she was never at home when he called. Bill is a naughty, naughty boy. He hasn’t gotten over those moonlight nights in the park yet.

Have heard from Fergie a couple of times and must answer. If the swaddies down there are like the ones that go thru here, she will have a good time alright.

What has become of Cody? Never hear anything about her any more.

Well I will close. This is a letter of some length, I believe in making up for lost time. You can do as you please about reading it.

Lady Mac’s address is 631 Cypress Av, Burbank Calif. Guess it was Bee said she didn’t have it. Sorry I can’t give you any more news on the Park question but guess you are out of the notion of going.

Please don’t follow my example when it comes to answering letters but be good Samaritans.

With lots and lots and lots of love from
Rae.

Irene Castle in a summer 1917 suit.

Almost forgot to tell you about my spring apparel. Have a new white silk suit and hat to match. Quite a clinging garment, in fact too clinging to be modest and comfortable at the same time. Am afraid I’ll have to invest in hoops. This is positively the end.


[Epistle #4 seems to be missing. Outside of next letter, which is 21 pages long.]

Epistle to the Deaux Drops #5.
Nothing like enlarging your business. Am now engaging the parcel post to carry my correspondence.

[Inside of letter.]

Gray, Calif.²
Mar. 8, 1918.

Dearest Deaux Drops:

No school to-day! Hurrah! Anyone who has lived thru the nervous strain of teaching seven children will realize what a day’s rest must mean to my nerve wracked brain. The last two days have been so rainy that three of my brood could not come, and so I have had only four to deal with, but you will agree that even that number is too great for one person to handle. When I awoke this morning and heard the wind blowing pell-mell against our palatial residence I thought, “No school to-day,” and I was just turning over to enjoy life when I thought another thought, “What a perfectly good chance to write to the Deaux-Drops”—and here I am.

I haven’t the slightest idea what I have told you about this dear old desert, but I believe I introduced you to my school, rooming house, the looks of the country and the almost weekly dances so I will not repeat any of those things. Your experience this winter have been interesting and especially Bee’s escapade (how I should like to have been there) and altho’ we haven’t had the “below” weather, yet we do have weather and weather and sometimes we get it in big bunches. I am so used to “roughing” it now that civilization and the summer to come look mighty black and dreary.

One of the first real good times we had this year was the week before Thanksgiving. A bunch of us (picture A) started out on a two-days camping trip. We went nine miles over to a little town called Palm Springs and right thru the town to a house at the foot of the hills, where lived some people Mrs. McCargar (my desert mother) knew. Here we unloaded ourselves and the burros (picture B) behind the barn which was to be our hotel.

To go back to the start I will introduce you to our crowd in picture A—please move to the right ladies. First and foremost, John Riley, one of the first natives in the valley, age 36, appearances deceiving, very good natured, unmarried, in fact an all around good investment for any single woman with a bank account. Next, Wesley the Los Angeles boy who lived by us on 47th. St. and with whose aunt I board—Wes stayed until Xmas. Next, Aleita my 18 year old school girl (please excuse using figures³, it saves time) Next behind, Mrs. McCargar, my mother. Next in front, Regina Sweetingham another school girl and niece of the young man beside her, who is brother of the woman next him, the said woman (Mrs. Sweetingham) being mother to Regina. The uncle Albert was from Detroit, visiting his sister and seeing the desert for the first time which is the best time to enjoy it. Mercy McCargar also went with us but did not get in the picture as she was back in the sand hills bidding her lover a fond farewell—they were married two weeks later. Then the other member of the party took the picture and didn’t get in on it, but believe me that was all she lost out on.⁴

As we had only four burros, and one was a pack burro, five of us had to walk. We left Bob’s Well, a flowing well about two miles from here that all the country uses to haul from (only shows drinking barrel in picture) at nine o’clock and got to Palm Springs at twelve. It isn’t exactly easy walking in sand either. Then we ate a picnic dinner and explored the town. Palm Springs is a sort of health resort and fairly exclusive one. It is a pretty town; enough water comes from the mountains to irrigate well so the place is full of trees and we picked up lemons and oranges on the streets—don’t need sidewalks as the ground is sandy so the streets are just nice shady ones with grass walks—and rode McKinney’s (where we left our burros) pony by turns. There are quite a number of wealthy & noted people there and also a countess and duchess; it really is like a town you read about. But the strangest things there are the hot springs which you may have read about. You can go in them but cannot sink below your lungs. Some of the men tried sitting on each other’s shoulders but could not force each other down. The springs some times move from one corner of the bath house to the other and the Indians, who run the place, are quite superstitious about them. San Jacinto, the mountain just behind, is a volcano and it is when it rumbles and carries on that the springs get frisky—they certainly are uncanny and weird affairs; you think you are standing on firm ground when all at once you are not and there you stand (?) in the water on nothing. The Indian reservation was interesting too; at some times of the year the Indians have war dances, fire-eating dances and all kinds of celebrations but we did not get to see them.

That evening we built a fire up the canyon and had our suppers there, also had a weeny roast. It was beautiful moonlight and when we came back to the house we all played games in the yard. About ten o’clock we went to the barn to bed. We spread canvas on the hay, or corn stalks as it turned out to be, and lined up in the following fashion.

It certainly was one experience but altho’ the cattle & horses surrounding us munched their grain peacefully and noisily and altho’ Mrs. Mc. snored most profoundly, I could not sleep—maybe I was afraid I would miss something. I do know this, that the place I had next a wire screen window was a cold one, the north pole nothing on that place, but for that matter no one had as much on as they should. We would get half started to sleep when the dogs outside would start to bark and chase the cattle around and around the barn; then the little yappers inside would begin to bark and the horses would stop eating and snort. At twelve every one woke up, we passed comments on the weather, said unholy things of the dogs, turned our other side to the jaggy cornstalks (the canvas has slipped down someplace), and the rest went to sleep.

About an hour later Albert woke every one up in his attempts to put on his shirt, which he had taken off for some reason. It was rather a risky business to try to dress on a sliding hill of cornstalks but he finally accomplished it, and after giving much advice on the subject, the crowd dropped off to sleep again.

But I couldn’t sleep, nor Mrs. S. We lay there, groaned and giggled. Before long I felt Something dropping around my head and then I discovered the chicken roost just above—you can use your imagination for the rest. Mrs. S. got a corn stalk, and in our efforts to move the beasts farther up the roost, knocked one old hen down on the suffering sleepers below. The dogs didn’t like it and said so; then everything in and around the barn started up their infernal racket and the crowd woke up and wanted to know what we two were laughing at.

Just at day break the rooster began to do his bit; he had a wonderful voice that stopped short with a cracking sound, then went off with a bang. Well he set in his corner and displayed himself until we took him at his word and got up.

Such a bunch you never saw, my skirt had to be washed after the chicken had gotten thru with it, and I had to run around with my hair down my back while Albert went to the store after hairpins, mine having gotten lost in the cornstalks.

We finally got ourselves together and our breakfast eaten and were ready for a hike up the canyon. Girls, it was a beautiful place and the waterfall at the top, grand. We stumped each other on the hardest rocks⁵ and in the afternoon started to climb over the lowest range which is not low by any means. We made our own trail straight up, Bridal Veil Falls couldn’t come near it, and most of the party backed out before long. But A. and I decided to show them what Easterners⁶ are made of, so we went on to the top. It was some climb up and worse down; we would sit down and slide for about six feet, then jump about four straight down and we never knew whether we would land in this world or the next. Evidently old Nick wasn’t ready to claim us yet, for we lived thru the performance and got back to the house in time to eat supper and start on our nine mile trip home in the moonlight.

Yes, we had school the next day. I wasn’t even stiff. As to tooth brushes etc. Bee, we hadn’t time to think of them so didn’t miss them. That is the only way to hike, we didn’t even take cups but lay down on the ground and drank out of the streams. Great life!! I wouldn’t have missed any of it. And just think in three weeks we go again. There is no school on Friday before Easter as there is an election in the school house, so we will leave here Thursday after school thus having three days to visit three different canyons.

We have had some other camping trips of only a day’s length that were fun, guess you would call them hikes tho! I spend weeks ends often at Sweetingham’s and we go up in the hills behind their place and roll down in the sand, some stunt for dignified school teachers. Maybe tho’ you realize by this time I am taking an eight months vacation this winter.

Have you ever seen desert holly or desert mistletoe? We went after it before Xmas; the holly is gray with red berries and the mistletoe has berries like our Eastern mistletoe, which sometimes the sun turns pink, but it does not have the leaves, just covered with branches and berries.

Palm Springs desert area sandstorm.

Oh! Yes, we have had some sandstorms too and one especially. It came upon us all unsuspectingly one night, with such violence that I gave the place just three minutes to stand up. Before the three minutes were up, however, there was a great crash and upon investigation we found a window blown in and clear across the room. After several attempts we managed to get a door over the opening where the wind was blowing in at 110 miles per hour and Mrs. Mc, with the aid of the sewing machine,⁷ held the door in place while I hunted nails. Such a time—first I couldn’t find the matches, then the lamp upset, the stove pipe blew down, I stepped on Tiny the dog, he growled and ran at the cats, they spit and Pat began to bark, confusion reigned supreme, but I found the nails and when I turned to Mrs. Mc, I had to sit down in the middle of the floor and laugh. There she stood in her nightgown with her hair in all directions hanging to that door for dear life—all I could think of was that picture “Rock of Ages.”

The nails were no good, however, without a hammer, so I had to take my life in my hands & go to the tool chest on the back porch. The draft from the partly open window took me out of the door a flying and then I did my bit at the “Rock of Ages” stunt—the wind was so strong I had to hang on to the porch post, while I was thankful neighbors were scarce and the night dark; even a nightgown is not much protection on a windy night. The hammer secured and the door also, we went to bed to shiver until nine the next morning. We couldn’t get up until the storm was over and when we emerged we found every thing covered with half an inch of sand, the only clean places being little spots on the pillows where our heads had been—notice I didn’t report on the condition of our heads. There was no school and we excavated all day long. That was another experience I wouldn’t have missed for anything. We really got off quite easily tho’, for most of the neighboring toilets took an air trip; ours stayed with us to the end.⁸

Mrs. McCargar left Aleita and I to run the ranch, while she went down the valley to visit Mercy. She was gone two weeks and we got along nicely. Orr Sang, a neighbor widower,⁹ played the part of guardian angel (?) during the time and nothing could have been more exciting. He is one of these old fellows that have been every place and done everything; he also has his own interesting ways of telling his experiences, and his own expressions with which to punctuate them. These expressions, he claims, are not to be found in the almanac or the Bible; well I’ll agree on the almanac but I’m not so sure of the other book at times. He really should be put in a book and Harold Bell Wright¹⁰ don’t know what he missed when he passed up this valley. The San Gorgonian Pass which you find described in “Eyes of the World” is just a few miles from here, our sun sets in it every night. But to go back to Sang, he certainly took good care of us and together with Mr. Riley took us hunting and kept us supplied with cotton-tails. Also they entertained us in their shacks. Did you say Cook? Well I guess they can. It is quite the proper thing to call on gentlemen here, every one does. I wish Miss McClintic, from old Geneva, could drop in here but she probably would drop right out again and send us those books from off the old Dorm table, namely “Don’ts for Girls”¹¹ and “Marion Harland’s Book on Etiquette.”¹² She don’t need to bother, I know them by heart after forced readings and they have never harmed nor spoiled my life in the least. Please don’t choke on these paragraphs. I don’t have a typewriter and am hooverizing¹³ on paper and time.

Mr. Sang’s worst affliction is his teeth. He has two sets of false teeth but neither will stay in his mouth. He has given us several demonstrations of how they should work but won’t, and one time he got those self same teeth in and couldn’t for some time get them out. I never saw him so worried. I hope I managed to look the same way, you see, he wanted to exchange them when he got to Los [Angeles] and his chances at that time surely did look slim for an exchange. He has departed for Los and we surely do miss him.

One of the cattle men was riding this country after stray cattle for a week while Mrs. Mc was gone and he left us his horse when ever he was not using it. Indeed he let us have it sometimes when he could have been out on the range. It was a beauty, a great, big buckskin; you could see all over the desert when you were on his back. I also had a ride to the station on the dandiest Indian pony.

Right by the station is a row of hills called Garnet Hills; you can pick up real garnets on them. That is enough to make them interesting but we have something more interesting there now—a man. You agree don’t you? This man has been there since November camping in the hills but no one knew it until just recently. The only time he shows himself is when he goes to the store, and he does that at a time when few are around. The former store keeper was a German of somewhat questionable character; but he sold out the first of the year and the new man tells us this man comes down with plenty of money, usually gold. Don’t know why the other store keeper kept so quiet about the man. The people just supposed he was a prospector until one night they discovered red signal lights on the hill. The next day the station men investigated; they found lanterns on the crosses of the Mexican graves on the hill, but the Mexicans could or would not tell anything. They also hunted up the man’s camp but found nothing suspicious, so they decided the Mexicans had been having some burial rites and gave the thing up. But just the other day the station agent from Indio was up; he said for many nights there has been a white light on the highest hill; at first they tho’t it the reflection from the train headlights on the rocks but when it appeared every night at the same time, and lasted four hours each night, they grew suspicious and are going to have matters investigated. I wonder if it is a spy; they think he may belong to a signal system extending down to Mexico as they light is one that shows for great distances down the valley. If the Germans are down there I hope they stay.¹⁴ I am simply crazy to go up and see his camp but Mrs. Mc won’t even let us go hunt garnets now.

Did I tell you about our new married couple and what a time we had at the serenade; how they handed out so much beer and whiskey that the men all got hilarious etc etc. I am sure I did tho’ tell you and Perla, Bee so I will not bore you with the account again. We happened to be over at the station meeting Mrs. Mc that night and got in on it all. We drive to the station in daylight, meet the one-thirty or three A.M. train and sleep in the express room until daylight; I’ll soon be able to sleep anyplace. Since the local trains have been taken off, you can only get into this place in the middle of the night. We are on the main branch of the S.P. and the troops are sent thru; so needing the trains, they took off four passengers and left us to come and go in the dark.

The rains are beginning to freshen things up and the desert is turning green. After the rains the whole place begins to bloom, they say, every bush and plant has a flower and there are hundreds and hundreds that grow up and bloom. I can hardly wait till they get started; we will have some good nature study trips then. Aleita says you cannot walk without stepping on flowers, doesn’t that sound like magic? The lupine like we found in the park grows here. It is a much stalkier plant tho’ and the people do not want it; they call it “loco weed,” for the cattle eat it and go loco or get drunk.

I can’t begin to tell you every thing that happens here. We are busy all the time and yet I don’t know what we do. It isn’t school work that takes our time for I guess you know what it would be like. It is a good thing I have a conscience that troubles me when I don’t do my work right, for my trustees have been in Los Angeles most of the winter, all except for Sang and he never knew whether school existed or not. We visit over week ends and I did intend to tell you of our trip to some of my pupils up in what is called the “Devil’s Garden.” It gets its name from the numerous kinds of cacti growing there and is quite a picturesque place. I must tell you one little part tho’.

There were six children in the family and we ate, dance, slept, and all in one room; they are a fine family and the children as dear as can be. I fell in love with one little black-eyed fellow and he seemed to return the affection, for he would follow me every place, even to the toilet. Once, when in that cozy dwelling, I shut the door too hard and couldn’t get it open. Milton, the cute one, suggested I climb over as the place had no top, but I didn’t feel equal to the occasion. I told him to run in the house and tell Aleita to come; instead he ran over to his father, who was chopping wood in the yard, and called, “Daddy, teacher can’t get out of the toilet, come quick!” I don’t know which laughed the hardest, Daddy or I, but Daddy told Mother, and Mother told Aleita, and Aleita opened the lock and I got out. No use for that word “modesty” out here, you have to use your sense of humor instead.

Well I am beginning to feel those quitting signs which I should have felt much sooner, but my right arm has grown much stronger out here due partly to digging wells. That is my latest occupation. Mr. Riley is putting down a well and as men are scarce and not always available, being busy at their own ranches, Aleita and I go over after school and help him. Sometimes we windlass¹⁵ and sometimes go down and dig. The last two days we struck gravel and had to use the pick which was some work, our backs complained bitterly yesterday. It is some hot place down 45 feet underground but it is something new and therefore exciting. When we get 60 feet down we are going to drill for water. We could not work today as it was too windy; you wouldn’t believe it but a little pebble or anything dropped into the well goes down with such force that it stings like a bullet. The man at the bottom is at the mercy of those on the top but Mr. Riley is good-natured and lets us play around his well all we like. We dug four feet below the casing and then helped him cover and drop the casing which wasn’t so bad for amateurs. Was down a ninety foot well the other day and thought I would never reach the bottom, or the top either for that matter. For helping in this digging process we are to be treated to a trip to some mines over near Thousand Palm Canyon.

Well I will return to that stopping place, which doesn’t seem to exist. I could rave over this place forever but why trouble you further? I am putting in a few pictures; have given so many away that I have only a few left. They are not very good ones, don’t know what the developer was trying to do when he printed them; he seems to be strong on the shine. You can at least see the school house and what some of the natives look like.

Do you know what you are going to do this summer? I will probably work in Los Angeles—unholy thoughts. Clara may go East with the understanding, of course, she gets to come back in the fall. She is so anxious to have her mother come out but how I shall miss her.

I am glad Vessie you are better, what kind of an ailment are you going to try next; but then you didn’t frighten us with ptomaine poison, it was Dick.

I don’t know any park news. No, Cody, I do not have Katharine’s address. I have not heard from her for about a year. Even Shorty Green has failed me, I feel quite broken up over the matter. Maybe he has gone to war. Talking of war, I am simply a slacker lately but I don’t know when I could get anything done. You girls make me ashamed when you write of what you do; I realize I have done nothing at all. How I envy you, Cody, going to be a nurse.

Well I am closing, at last, really I am; you can’t say I don’t make up for lost time when I get started. Loving you the same as always; wishing I could see you all; sorry I make you read such a long jumble of nothing and promising never to write such a long letter again, I am,

Your desert sister,
Rae.


Rae Wylie remained in the same town for a few years as a teacher. She did get to go back to Yellowstone National Park to work in the Geysers camp store during the summer of 1920. There she and Beatrice Boedefeld were reunited when Bee brought her fiance, Fred Andrews, to Yellowstone along with her mother, Laura Boedefeld. Rae went home to Kansas when her stepfather died in 1927, and she took care of her mother thereafter. She taught school the rest of her life. She is buried next to her brother, Waldo, who died at the age of 21 when Rae was just 19.

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^1. Public transportation of the day. back
^2. A tiny settlement, no longer in existence, nine miles roughly northeast of Palm Springs, also called San Gorgonio. back
^3. Accepted style at this time was to write out the names of numbers. back
^4. The 1910 Census showed John W. Riley was a freelance carpenter, born in California to an English father & American mother. In 1920 he was a farmer with his own homestead. The 1930 Census showed he had married in 1920, and that he was a military veteran of the Spanish-American War of 1898 and of the First World War.
The McCarger family consisted of Mrs. Neila McCarger (age 50), a widow born in New York; two older married sons; Aleita, age 18; and Mercy, age 14. (Mercy was married in November 1917 and her first son was born eleven months later. Aleita married soon after 1920; she and her mother both died in 1925. Mercy lived to an old age.) I haven’t found their cousin Wesley.
The Sweetinghams were Mrs. Martha Dippel Sweetingham, age 35 (her husband was an oil engineer), and Regina E., age 13. There were also two younger children who did not go on this camping trip. Martha’s brother, Albert Dippel, was a year older than she, and married with children. He was an automobile factory inspector back in Detroit, so his visit must have been short. back
^5. LOL (they sat awhile). back
^6. Rae and Albert are from the U.S. Midwest states, but anything east of California is East. back
^7. Likely it was a heavy cabinet-mounted Singer sewing machine, the kind with creaky little wheels on the cabinet. back
^8. Hardly anybody had indoor plumbing in that area at that time period. back
^9. Orr Sang, age 52, was a farmer. He had been married in Ohio in 1892. He died in 1945. back
^10. One of their favorite authors, Harold Bell Wright was born in New York, educated in Ohio, became a pastor in Missouri and then Redlands, California, and gave up the ministry to live in El Centro, California and devote his life to writing novels. One of his most famous, The Winning of Barbara Worth, is set in the Imperial Valley just south of where Rae lived. back
^11. See a description of this book at https://gibsongirl247.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/donts-for-girls-a-manuel-of-mistakes/. back
^12. You can download a pdf or other version of this book here: http://www.forgottenbooks.com/books/Marion_Harlands_Complete_Etiquette_a_Young_Peoples_Guide_to_Every_1000038364. back
^13. The verb “to hoover” was used at this time to mean “to clean” especially by using the Hoover vacuum cleaner, invented ten years before. Twelve years after this time it could mean “economizing” in reference to the Great Depression that was popularly associated with the failed economic policies of U.S. President Herbert Hoover, but it is hardly likely that Rae is using this term in that sense, even if it works for the context. back
^14. After the exposure of the Zimmerman Telegram the year before, in which it was revealed that Germany was urging the Mexican Government to attack the United States, the idea of spy activity at this time and in this place was not far-fetched at all. back
^15. A windlass is a type of winch used to haul heavy buckets of dirt up the well when digging it. back
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Sandstorm Picture Credit:
http://memoirsofapsychosomatic.typepad.com/memoirs-of-a-psychosomati/2012/08/the-sandlot.html by Ivon, aka “Psycho som”.

The 1662 Document!!!!!!

This is actually a Throwback Thursday posting about the day I discovered that a document I knew my father had once had was still among his papers that I inherited after his passing.

Going back to Christmas eve 1967, my parents had taken us kids and gone to Portland, Oregon, for the holidays. We were staying in the home of an aunt and uncle who were themselves away for the holidays. My dad’s elderly uncle came over with a box of papers for my dad to look through and see what he might want to keep.

Being interested in anything old, I watched as they sorted the contents of the box. They were papers relating to the genealogical research my great-grandfather had carried out for the last 30 years of his life. In an envelope was this very old document:

We were astonished at it! It is a marriage contract between my 10th-great grandfather and 9th-great grandfather on another line for a marriage between the former’s daughter and the latter. In those days of course women didn’t own property or make their own contracts, so the father of the bride, knowing that his daughter was to be the second wife of a somewhat older man, wrote this to protect his daughter upon the death of her husband, which would presumably occur some years before she herself was old.

Here is a literal transcription:

march 23, 1662/3

it having plesed The Lord in the dispan sashon of his profidans Too me and myne soo to ordar it that thar is lykck to be an afynity xxx be-twixt Thomas Barns xxxxxxx of farming Toune and John John androos of the sam Toune By the maryge of the aforesaid Barns with the daughtar of the aforesaid John androus The covine and agremant betwixt the aforesaid John andros and Thomas Barns con sarning: the: pramisys: ar as: foullouth:

Furst that the aforesaid barns dos give Too his tandar wife his now dwalling hous and orchard and howse loot that is now inclosed with all the apurtynansis belong:ing too it to be at hur one dispose dewaring the tyme of hur natarall lyfe

2) the afore said barns dooth couinant Too and with the afore said John androos too lefe too his tandar wife in cas that he shall dye before: his: wif: I say too lefe too hur a met and comfartaball maynty nanse for hur sallf acording too the istate that the Lord hath or shul blas us with all and allso I doo bynnd my sallf too lefe with my loving xx wif so much istat as is met and cumfart abill for the bringing up of such chilldran as the Lord shall be plesed too give to us to bring thum up xx acording Too the Rulls of the gospull

3) The afore said:: Thomas: barns: doos: couinant: and: agre too and with: the afore: said: John andros: that he will lefe too his tandar wife in cass that he shall dye before his wife hallf the moufabills in the house or hous houlld goods for his wif too mack use of tham xx for hure hure one cumfurt dewaring the tim of hur natarall lif:: and at the end thur of xxxxx what Shall be remayning of tham too returne too gathur with the hous and hom loat and orchurd with the apur tynansis belonging too tham too be xxxx disposed of acording too the last will and testymant of the afore said Thomas barns

4) the afore said Thomas barns doos Couinant too and with the afore said John andros Too give too his tandar wif a Joyntar that shall be: at hur on dispos too give and be:queth to hom She ples aftur the deses of hur husbun:: it being hur one pacullur rit which Joyntar contayns a pasall of land by istymashon Six ackars mor or los lying in a pasull of land Calld the allebow a buting on the reuire xxxx north and on the reuar south and on the land of moysis uant ras est and west

5 the afore said Thomas barns: dos douth Couinant too and with the afore said John androus too pute out all his chilldran axsapt ing his sun banyyman barns ondly and if that the aforesaid barns too gethur with the desire of xxx his wife shall se it comfurtabull for him sallf and his wif and chilld he hath Liburty and poure too cep his dautar hany barns at hom with him xx to be surf uis abill too him untall that xxx she depart hur natarall lif or tull god shall dispos of hur in maridg

/ This aforesaid wif of Thomas barns hath poure now too give the Joyntar abof spasifid or whan She ples but the ayre or ayrs of it ar not too in Joy it tull aftur the deses xx of the afore said barns / in wit nus too the pramisis I hafe set too my hand and synd and deliuured this in the presans of

witnus Sam Stell The marck T of Thomas barns

Now here is a modern English rendition of the document:

It having pleased the Lord in the dispensation of his providence to me and mine so to order it that there is likely to be an affinity between Thomas Barnes of Farmington and John Andrews of the same town by the marriage of the aforesaid Barnes with the daughter of the aforesaid John Andrews. The covenant and agreement between the aforesaid John Andrews and Thomas Barnes concerning the promises are as followeth: 

1.  First that the aforesaid Barnes does give to his intended wife his now dwelling house and orchard and house lot that is enclosed with all the appurtenances belonging to it to be at her own disposal during the time of her natural life.
2.  The aforesaid Barnes does covenant to and with the aforesaid John Andrews to leave to his intended wife—in case that he shall die before his wife—I say to leave to her a meet and comfortable maintenance for herself according to the estate that the Lord hath or shall bless us withal. And also I do bind myself to leave with my loving wife so much estate as is meet and comfortable for the bringing up of such children as the Lord shall be pleased to give us to bring them up according to the rules of the gospel.
3.  The aforesaid Thomas Barnes does covenant and agree to and with the aforesaid John Andrews that he will leave to his intended wife in case that he shall die before his wife half the movables in the house or household goods for his wife to make use of them for her own comfort during the time of her natural life. And at the end thereof what shall be remaining of them to return, together with the house and home lot and orchard with the appurtenances belonging to them, to be disposed of according to the last will and testament of the aforesaid Thomas Barnes.
4.  The aforesaid Thomas Barnes does covenant to and with the aforesaid John Andrews to give to his intended wife a jointure that shall be at her own disposal to give and bequeath to whom she please after the decease of her husband; it being her own peculiar right, which jointure contains a parcel of land by estimation six acres more or less lying in a parcel of land called the elbow, abutting the river north and on the river south and on the land of Moses Ventras east and west.
5.  The aforesaid Thomas Barnes doth covenant to and with the aforesaid John Andrews to put out all his children excepting his son Benjamin Barnes only, and if that the aforesaid Barnes together with the desire of his wife shall see it comfortable for himself and his wife and child, he hath liberty and power to keep his daughter Hannah Barnes at home with him to be serviceable to him until that she depart her natural life or until God shall dispose of her in marriage. 

This aforesaid wife of Thomas Barnes hath power now to give the jointure above specified or when she pleases, but the heir or heirs of it are not to enjoy it until after the decease of the aforesaid Barnes. In witness to the promises I have set to my hand and signed and delivered this in the presence of 

 Witness: Sam Stell The mark “T” of Thomas Barnes

Thomas Barnes was married first to another Mary, surname unknown, who was hanged after being convicted of witchcraft in January 1662/3. In that same winter, Thomas Barnes’ children were: Sarah, an adolescent; Benjamin, age 9½; Joseph, age 7 or 8; and Hannah, a little girl. Thomas was about 40 years old; Mary Andrews turned 20 years old a fortnight after this marriage contract. Note the date: Many English documents were given two dates between 1572 and 1750, the period between the Roman Catholic Church’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the English government’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar and of the move to start the year on January 1st instead of in March. Thus this document’s date in modern terms would be April 2, 1663, but documents legally are left in their Julian calendar dating during this period of time.

Naturally I expected this document to be among my dad’s papers. Not quite two years after he died, my aunt visited and asked if we could get out some of the old papers and copy them for her. We had a fun afternoon going through boxes and files, but we did not find this document.

Oh no. We wondered if my dad had sent it to somebody else. He had given some wonderful letters and tintypes to a cousin, who subsequently gave them to a tiny museum near the old Andrews homestead in southern Indiana, but the museum went out of business and all our efforts to locate what happened to the collection they had have proven unfruitful. Was the old document lost as were the tintypes and letters we wished we still had?

My aunt went home and a week went by. I worked on the box and the files, getting them into some sort of order. In one of the files was an ordinary business envelope, but an old one. It was marked on the outside with exciting news.

And inside was the document! I was so excited I let out a whoop that my aunt should have heard all the way up in Alaska where she lived then.

My mother and I consulted as to what should be done. We took the document to a specialist in preservation of such things, and after stabilizing it, he sealed it in archival-quality Mylar film. He told us that the age of the document contributed to its stability—it was created on a type of paper and using a type of ink that both contained very little acid. The acidic papers and inks came later than the mid-1600s.

The document now lies safely in a dark, dry place, awaiting its next outing to be exclaimed over by a new generation of descendants.