Thoughts On My Life by Betty Lou Mikesell Erlandson
(Taken from an audio cassette tape Betty recorded 14 Nov. 1975.)
Ernie, Betty and Cap, at the Black Bear Coal Mine near Driggs, Idaho
I've been thinking about my life before, when I was small. I can't remember much before starting school when I was six. A memory that must be the oldest one, I think, comes now in just sort of impressions.
I was about three and there was Ernie and me in a car, maybe a truck. We were both in the front seat. There was an adult driving. I'm sure it was a man. We stopped to talk to someone, stayed in the vehicle talking and that person gave us some gum. I remember how thrilled I was. There was a lot to chew and I remember worrying about choking on it, but it was good. Then we arrived somewhere. There were adults laughing, but I was cold. I remember being held by a woman with a warm chest and stomach. I got sleepy. I believe that was when my younger brother Jimmy was born. Mom said that Ernie and I stayed in another town with relatives and that one of them drove us home after Jim was born.
Betty and JimmyRight after that we moved from the coal mining camp near Driggs, [Black Bear Coal Mine] where Jim and I were born, to Pocatello where my father began working in the railroad tie plant. (Union Pacific)
I remember first a house next to a large pile of dirt. It might have been dirt from a new outdoor toilet. I remember playing on the dirt and getting spanked and scolded by my mother. Another time I remember being spanked for jumping up and down on the bed. I recall the fun of the jumping and the surprise and resentment of the punishment.
Soon we moved again and I remember a Halloween party at this other house, and how a ghost story was told that affected my sleep later. I was afraid to go upstairs alone as long as we were living there and I never forgot that story. It was one about going up stairs. He goes up one step. He goes up another step. He goes up three steps. Any way it was scary!The third and final house in Pocatello we moved into before I was six. I remember it was said that I could pick any color I wanted for the walls of my bedroom. I was so excited! It took me a long time and I chose pink. The walls were painted blue. My mother preferred blue, I never liked that room, even later when it was painted pink.
I was excited about starting school and felt that I was a big girl. Just before my birthday my sister Della Ann was born. She was beautiful and oh so tiny, but my mother let me hold her. I was to carry the dirty diapers to the back yard where a tub filled with water was ready to soak them. This was the beginning of a particular job that continued everlastingly until I was almost sixteen. My job was enlarged gradually to wringing out the dirty diapers from the soap, replacing the water, carrying them to the boiler on wash day, hanging out the clean cloths and when they were dry, folding them and putting them away.
At age nine my sister Thelma was born. I was old enough to diaper her. The job became the ultimate in my diaper career when Leslie was born. I was nearly thirteen and I was old enough to wash them all by myself. I hated that, especially in the wintertime. I did get a sort of wringer washing machine upon Mt. Kit Carson, where we moved just before Leslie was born. The thing had a vertical handle mounted on the side, and we pulled it back and forth, back and forth, and that would make the agitator inside move, which would wash the clothes. But the water had to be hauled and poured into it and then dumped out of it from buckets. I remember we had a clothesline that was sort of circular and it was fun to hang the clothes on it. I didn't mind that so bad.
1939, Betty and Jim watching over Leslie
I remember the train trip from Pocatello. I didn't know about it until later but my mother and dad decided to come up to Washington, where my Aunt May (Mary Dean) lived. I was so excited. I was sort of scared because I hated to leave my friends. I was just starting Mutual, in the Mormon Church, and I looked forward to that for so many years. I was really upset about that. We came on the train and I was a little sick at the stomach on the train. My brother Jim threw up all over my mother who was pregnant with Leslie. The porter was disgusted.
We arrived in Spokane, went to a little old place on Trent or Main avenue to eat some lunch. Aunt May and her husband, Uncle Gilbert, came in and took us up to their place. I remember going to sleep that night and listening to the coyotes. Everything was so noisy. I was a little bit frightened because I had never lived in timber, and this was deep timber way up on Mt. Kit Carson.
The next day was Jay (Dean) or Ernie's birthday. They were a day apart. We went on down in a day or two to this dump that we chose as a house. It was cheap, had an oilcloth ceiling in the big living room, kitchen. I had to scrub that and I drew a picture of my dad with his initials underneath. I went to scrub it out but it left an impression all the while we were up there, no matter how hard I scrubbed. Oh, my dad was mad!
It was a beautiful place to go down into the canyon or else go up the hill and sit in the apple tree and look over the whole countryside. I would like to live there, myself now. Not in that house of course, it's gone. The walls were covered with newspaper. The first few weeks I spent all my time reading the newspapers and magazines. I remember a Tug Boat Annie story but I never could read all of it, because some parts were pasted facing the wall. I practically memorized parts of it.
I remember Rice's coming up after we moved there. They were our friends in Pocatello and they came to visit us overnight. We all slept on the floor on blankets. We had some good times up there. The crows, hawks, or eagles would come and we'd have to go get the gun. My dad taught me to shoot the gun, so I could kill the hawks so our chickens wouldn't be taken. We had to have them. We nearly starved the first year we were up there until the garden got started. We raised strawberries. Somebody gave us some strawberries. I was allergic to them. Every time I picked them I broke out. That saved a lot of work, but then I found work somewhere else to do. Work! Work! Work!
I started school and I didn't like it. It was a small school. The kids were all used to each other and didn't know me and they didn't care to get acquainted easily and I was shy. Then right after I started, Della Ann and Thelma got scarlet fever and we had to burn our books, I guess dad did, I couldn't. I loved to read. I would go down in the valley and find a little moss covered place and read and go for a walk, in the summer time.
We got to go to a community type church, way up at the schoolhouse, which was several miles straight up the mountain. It was fun. Then the Reorganized Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints started a mission there because there were some people nearby that did belong to that church, called the Loves. So the mission got pretty good, quite a few people. That's where I came to know the doctrine of the church and the people. I joined the church. I came down to Spokane and was baptized, all of our family, in two different sessions.
RLDS Church where the Mikesell family were baptizedI remember being chased by a farmer's cow. The dirty people who lived near us, I don't think I'll give their name, but they were filthy. The woman was big, heavy and fat. One time she got sick and she lay on the bed. I cleaned up her bedroom, tried to sweep under the bed. There were all kinds of things, a dead chicken under there, dirt and dust. They wanted me to stay for lunch several times but all I would do is take a slice of wonder bread out of the bag. They never baked. They got their water out of a big drum out on the porch for cooking and drinking. The cows and animals would get loose and come up on the porch and drink out of that thing. I wasn't going to drink that water.
We got our milk from some people, who were real clean, but it wasn't pasteurized and I got a terrible cyst on my neck. To this day it's a sore spot. They took me into town. I thought I would go to the hospital, but the county doctor did it in his office then sent me to the juvenile home for a week to recuperate. It was cheaper than the hospital. I'll remember that experience. It's done a lot to help me go the straight and narrow way because I didn't want to go back there. The children were so miserable, running away from home, getting into trouble. Anyway, I've had a pretty good life." [end of tape]
Betty evidently doesn't remember one of the worse things to happen to her in her life. At the time the Mikesell family was living in Alameda (now part of Pocatello), Bannock County, Idaho. From a saved old newspaper article we learn: "Betty, age three years, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Micksell of 415 Randolph, experienced an accident Sunday that could have easily resulted fatally. The family was traveling north on the Blackfoot road near Fort Hall, when Betty, who was alone in the rear of the car, unlatched the door and tumbled to the pavement while the car was traveling quite rapidly. She was brought to the Lynn Bros. hospital, and upon examination was found to have sustained nothing more than a number of bad body bruises and an injury to an eye." The article was wrong. Later it was found that Betty had two broken ear drums and had trouble with her feet and back for the rest of her life.
Betty was a poet, short-story teller and playwright. She liked to put her thoughts down in poem & story form, sometimes just on scraps of paper that were handy at the time inspiration came to her. Other poems and stories were done for classes that she took at different times in her life, always striving to improve her writing.
On a scrap of paper Betty typed "writing talent hidden in the family genes somewhere. A member of my extensive family needs only to grasp a pencil and paper, look pensive and everyone crosses their fingers in hopes that maybe the right genes have appeared at last. In 1939 I won $2.00 in a ditty contest and was praised by everyone. In 1940 I had a literary love affair with Edward Lear and spent hours writing. In 1942 I had some small success with poetry and that did it. I love to write."
In a letter Betty wrote:
"Your card yesterday reminded me of when I was thirteen & fourteen years old, living up on Mt. Kit Carson. I would rise very early on fall mornings & quietly tiptoe out into the dawn, past the rabbit shed where I could hear their thumping, (calling for me to feed them) and went down into the draw behind the outhouse.
In the shady draw I ran through a small area of thick pine trees. The thin straight path among the trees was used by deer - It was cool there in the hot summer but now the hoar-frost took longer to melt, but when it did, the days of fall were heavenly. I usually stopped to listen before I began climbing out of the trees & up the hill. Birds were everywhere with that wake-up song each song making a chatter & clatter. I know that their song is understood by them - each to the other - but I wanted them quiet so I could hear what I was waiting for - the sound of my younger brother [Jim] following me.
He was an early riser also & usually caught up with me before I left the trees. We never talked much but were happy to be together there. We looked at the tiny purple-starred flowers on the forest floor and tried not to step on them. Where the rising sun-rays caught them the flowers were covered with dew glittering in the sun.
At the top of the hill we would climb an old apple tree and sit & study the spread-out land below us - miles and miles of it - so majestic in the early morning calm. Winding roads below promised adventure to us, low fields were gold blankets of wheat. White farmhouses, cattle feeding, and, many times, deer grazing were all before us.
In the far distance to the left we saw the city - big & scary when we chanced to be there but from the tree it looked very small. On our right we viewed, way in the distance, broken-topped peaks (some with white hats) that showed us a strange land - Canada.
We thought of it as a chaos of mountain behind mountain all bracing themselves for the heavy snows soon to fall. Closer below us, we laughed at bundled up farmers coming out of their houses heading hurriedly for their outhouses & barns. We felt like Angels watching them unaware. All the time in the tree we would be munching ripe apples so cool & crisp & good.
Then we filled the bag I had carried with those wonderful Winesaps and others I don't remember. We said goodbye to the far away mountains, to the town (just waking up) & the flowers below us blooming like a vast bluebell carpet. We scrambled to home past an old rickety gate that sagged, sorrowing for the loss of it's yard & fence & house & owners long gone. Soon we heard our dear daddy calling us to hurry with our chores. Breakfast was ready and a school bus would soon come after us."
About Christmas Dec 25, 1947 at the Mikesell's [On Haven St., Spokane WA] Betty wrote:
"Early, Evan & I went over & after opening the gifts we just played around - Making records etc. until dinner. [Betty & Evan had a recorder, that recorded on records, with a microphone that was usually passed around the family circle for each person to say something.]
Christmas 1954 at the Mikesell home
Ham was served with jello for dessert. Salad & potatoes & gravy were as usual good. Then we painted, colored & talked until four when Evan & I left. Mom, Dad & I recalled the previous Christmas's when although all the family was home we had nothing for Christmas.
In 1941 we were separated, dad, Jim & I on Mt. Spokane & none of us received or gave a gift at all except the girls got some from the neighbors. No food in the house but we were all happy in the prospect of maybe future prosperity in a greater degree than ever before. Daddy was sick that year. [Florence & other children were in the Mikesell's, just-rented tiny home, on south Ferrall street in Spokane.]
Next year I hope Ernie & Jimmie can be home for Christmas." [Both Mikesell boys were in the service. Ernie enlisted 15 Oct 1942 in the Air Corps, at the age of 20, and Jim was in the Merchant Marines until he enlisted in the Army on the 12th of December 1945, having just turned 18. Perhaps he lied about his age to get into the Merchant Marines, he had quit school in the 11th grade but later went to college.]
ca 1944. Mikesell family left: Edith [Ernie's wife]; Ernie; Della Ann; Thelma; Dad Jeff; Jim; Leslie [in front]; Mom Florence; and Betty. In front of Mikesell home, 424 S. Haven, Spokane WA.
