WASHINGTON

Lester and Gladys lived in that time at McMillin, Washington, a little town between Orting and Puyallup. They had picked berries on a big berry ranch there. The berry farmers had berry shacks for people to live in while they picked berries. That's where Lester and Gladys lived even though the berry season was over. They got permission to live there until they could find someplace else to live.

I started high school at Orting, walking from McMillin, which was about three miles. Then Lester bought a place up on the Puyallup River about four or five miles southwest of Orting. He built a shack there and that's where we lived for the rest of my freshman year.

The summer after I finished my freshman year, I went back to Montana. The folks sent me train fare for the trip. I worked the harvest fields and so forth until fall.

That fall, 1923, Dad and George Croy, who was Gladys' brother-in-law, and I went back to Washington again. George had a Model T Ford and we drove it as far as Gibbs, Idaho, near Coeur d'Alene, where Ada and Cliff were living. Cliff worked in a sawmill. George furnished the car and Dad furnished the money. But, he ran out of money in Idaho; so we stayed at Ada's for a couple of weeks, while Dad worked to make enough money to get us on over to Lester's in Washington.

While we were there, I met a neighbor of Ada's, Christine Pearson. She was a little Seventh Day Adventist girl that Ada tried to do some match making with. I saw her again when I came home the next summer and stopped at Ada's. She was a nice little girl, but I never went out with her or anything.

We got to Lester's, in Washington, about two weeks late to start my sophomore year. I stayed with Lester and Gladys again.

Day stayed there and he and Lester worked in the timber. He cut veneer blocks, fence posts, Christmas trees, and anything else he could do to make some money.

Shortly Mother came out to Washington by train. She left Bide-A-Wee. It was mortgaged for all it was worth, I guess. They just moved away and left the farm. They had lost it. She brought what she could on the train. Later Hiel shipped some of our things out by freight train. Hiel and Anna stayed on at Bide-A-Wee for a while, then they left.

Dad and Mother moved to Washington and rented the old Matthews' dairy farm located about halfway between Lester's place and Orting. So, I moved in with the folks and went to school. The farm was forty acres and had twelve or thirteen dairy cows and a couple hundred chickens that came with the place. Dad was going to make a living off that forty acres. He couldn't, of course, so he went to work for the county on a gravel truck.

I inherited the job of milking the cows in the morning, separating the milk and getting it ready to go out before I went to school. This was while I was going to high school at Orting. Dad got home in time to help me with the evening chores. He worked there, I guess, until my sophomore or junior year at school.

It was while we lived at the Matthew's place that I met Margaret Clarke (Peg). We went to church at Puyallup. Her folks lived in Puyallup and went to church there, too. I met her the first time at an Easter program in Tacoma--just saw her. We had prayer meetings in the homes of the Saints. This time we had prayer meeting at her folk's place. As we came up the front walk, she stood on the front porch all dressed in white and I knew it was an angel. I've never forgotten it.

I courted Peg most of the time going to prayer service and church. That's about the only time I got to see her.

We went to reunion at Silver Lake one year, 1925 I think. We went with Lester and Gladys. Claralyce was a baby and Cecil was a little kid. They took Peg along to help take care of the baby. We went back to Silver Lake Reunion several times after we were married.

Milla and Hunter were living in Redlands, California. Mother and Dad decided to go to California where they were. Dad had a 1921 Model T Ford sedan and they drove that.

I worked the summer between my junior and senior year at school with Lester. They had moved to Enumclaw, Washington where the White River Lumber Company had a big sawmill and woods operation. He got me a job with the sawmill, and I worked that summer and earned oh, I don't know maybe two or three hundred dollars. I really thought I had it made.

That fall Claire Gouldsmith came and stayed with me. We batched in Lester's house up on the Puyallup River and went to school at Orting. Lester let us have a cow so we had milk to use.

Mother and Dad were going to be coming home just anytime, but they never came. Milla kept waiting for me to come on down to California. Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I'd run out of cash. I wrote and told Dad if he'd send me the train fare, I'd come down.

That left Claire all by himself. My professor, T. R. Macanally and I got together and found a dairy farmer who lived out of town aways. He needed some help, so we made arrangements for Claire to stay there and work for board and go to school.