School Days

Emerson and his siblings rode their horse through snowy days, rainy days and high country sunshine, to the one room school house in High Valley. The horse stayed in the school barn during the day and the children were responsible for the feeding and watering of their transportation. The outhouses, one for the boys and one for the girls, were a few yards away from the barn and the school. In those days a student only asked to be excused if it was extremely necessary as it was not a place they cared to linger, especially in the winter. There was a potbellied stove that heated the classroom and it was the responsibility of the boys to keep the wood box full for the day. Education was extremely important to dad’s mother and by the time he started school he was a fluent reader. After about a month in the first grade he was moved to the third grade. He continued to be a good student whose grades were always in the upper 90’s as documented on his report cards. Memorization was a tool of learning in those days no matter what the subject. When poetry was introduced he not only memorized it but fell in love with the rhythm. His love of poetry never waned and throughout his lifetime he could recite the poems he memorized in his youth. During this time he also developed a love of writing which he later exercised while documenting his travels and the Haggerty Roots.
Grandpa Haggerty, dad’s dad, was a cheese maker. There was an outbuilding on the ranch which served as a store room during the aging process. The walls of the cheese room were insulated with sawdust which was a common practice in those days to keep out heat or cold. At some point in his youth the family spent summers at the milk ranch located ten to fifteen miles east of Union on Catherine Creek. Getting there entailed loading up the horse drawn wagon with all the supplies, bedding and clothes for the summer. The boys rode the horse and sister Gracia rode on the wagon with her parents. It was a labor of love mixing work and recreation in this beautiful setting. The details escape my memory, but I am sure the name milk ranch was related to cheese making. Milking the cows by hand was not the only activity in which they took part. Fishing and exploring were part of the fun during the summers at the milk ranch. They could ride into Catherine Creek Meadows to catch the indigenous trout whose ancestors never knew a hatchery. There was no limit, so these fresh cold water treats were a mainstay in their diets. The scent of the pine trees and campfires created fond memories to last a life time.
In dad’s storytelling his youth seemed like one adventure after another to me. There were however, several devastating events which I believe were overcome by shear determination and the love and closeness of his father and siblings. When he was thirteen his mother died. She had an abdominal tumor. In those years it was not so unusual to come near death before you saw a doctor as you didn’t often see one until you were desperate. Money was scarce so trips to the doctor were not common place. His mother was a great inspiration to him and while on her death bed she had made his dad promise to send them all to college. A promise that was kept.
During his teenage years there was a polio epidemic. Dad and several classmates came down with this illness. Fortunately for him Dr. Fye a physician in Union was a pioneer in water therapy. This therapy took place at Hot Springs Sanatorium in the valley between Union and LaGrande. Through this therapy dad regained the use of his crippled leg. He always had a slight limp but never complained, except about this inability to go out for sports. This was overcome by being an avid football, baseball and basketball fan throughout his lifetime.. The truth be told there were few sports that did not interest him.

Knight in Shining Armor

The knight in shining armor never went away. From the moment mom met him and he her they were a pair as indicated in the drama with Walt’s ring in the park.

Emerson Wilkinson “Mike” Haggerty was from a very different background than Francis. The only connection was that both of their fathers had mined gold in Cripple Creek Colorado at the same time without knowing each other. Dad grew up in and around Union a small eastern Oregon town where he was known as Emerson. He came into this world in High Valley, a rural setting of small ranches in the foothills of the Wallowa Mountains. His birthing took place on February 8, 1905, in the same room where his mother had been born. His mother’s family the Wilkinsons had homesteaded their 750 acre ranch in 1861 coming across on the Oregon Trail. In hindsight it was an ideal place to grow up. He was surrounded by nature, rode his horse to the one room school and played with his younger siblings William and Gracia. However, in the reality of the moment it was a hardscrabble existence. The home had no running water, electricity or phone line. No indoor plumbing meant a cold seat in the outhouse in the middle of the winter, hauling water for household use from the spring up the hill, and chamber pots for night time relief of full bladders or worse! No one ever wanted the chore of emptying them.
The fun times were remembered by dad in the stories he told and retold. There were dances in their small sitting room with the wood stove radiating warmth. The neighbors would come with their offering of food to add to the abundant selection of dishes to choose from, the chairs would be pushed back and men, women and children danced far into the night with the babies tucked in between the layers of coats on the beds. Then out into the night they would go to hitch up the teams for the trip home. He had a vivid memory, told when I was a nursing mother, of one of the neighbors one evening at the dance, whose 5 year old was still nursing and would come up to his mother and say, “Give me some titty”. Maybe he was afraid I wouldn’t wean my children soon enough!
While having their share of chores to do the brothers did have time to explore the many miles of horse and cattle trails surrounding them. Horses cost money and had to have a purpose so the horse they had was for transportation. By riding double one horse was ample to get them to school and back and when their little sister was of school age one of them walked along side. School was only a mile away and upon arrival they would put the horse in the stall with the other kids horses l and give them some hay for their day of waiting for school to be out.
Their property was made up of foothills of timber and lowland of meadows and cultivated fields. The timbered hills were a drawing card for the biggest adventures as they backed on the wilderness and had abundant wildlife. Many times I was told about how they would ride up in the hills just to explore and while going under a low tree limb the front rider would duck only to have the fellow bringing up the rear swept off. It was too far to run home crying to mom or dad but the trip home was fraught with each others verbal thrusts.

Becoming an Adult

Sometime during high school mom had a ruptured appendix.  In those days that was a two week stay after surgery and another week recuperating at home.  This was the first health issue visited upon her and the harbinger of things to come.  She graduated from Queen Anne High School and enrolled in the University of Washington.  The stories about her college experience are lost to history.  Depending on who tells the story six weeks or six months was the time spent on higher education. I do know she was taking secretarial courses. It was ithe mid 1920’s an era made for her.  Women were venturing into new territories and she was one of them. She went to work.   Sometime in her early 20’s she met Walter Shebig, a handsome young man who courted her until she said yes to his request of marriage.  Walt, as he was called, was approved of by her parents and life was humming along.  As it was the 1920’s mother welcomed the “Flapper” life style and loved the freedom that work and Walt created for her. She was a beautiful woman with black curly hair and a complexion which highlighted her beauty.  Any man would be proud to have this “flapper” on his arm.   She went to work for the US Bank sometime after her engagement to Walt.  It is not clear if she was working for the bank in Seattle but she subsequently ended up at the US Bank in downtown Portland.  She was walking through the office one day shortly after arriving in Portland, when the stack of papers she was transporting fell from her hands.  It was a very embarrassing situation as she had not been there long and did not know too many of her fellow employees. Papers were flying everywhere when along came a knight in shining armor who helped her pick up the papers. This was the entrance into her life of Emerson Wilkinson Haggerty, known as Mike to his friends.  She liked to tell this story which was contradicted a few times when she talked about the woman who introduced them.  Maybe the woman happened to be at the scene of the flying paper accident, unfortunately we will never know.  This was the beginning of what would become a 54 year relationship with E W “Mike” Haggerty and 52 years of it in marriage.  My favorite part of this story was when she told about breaking up with Walt Shebig.  Even though she and dad hadn’t really discussed marriage she knew that “Mike” was the man she wanted to marry and so she had to give the ring back to Walt. Back to Seattle she went to take care of this uncomfortable business.  Walt and she were walking in the park at Fort Lawton when she told him that she wanted to give the ring back.  He refused to take it and she had a heated discussion with him telling him it just wasn’t going to work out. He steadfastly refused and so like any normal frustrated woman who felt she had done everything she could to explain the situation to him, she threw the ring at him and walked away.  That was not the end of Walt.  He married her sister Ida! 

Mother's Friend and Teacher Sy Garrett

Mother had a lifelong love of the natural world.  Growing up on Puget Sound where fish, clams and oysters were abundant left her with the love of fishing, digging and hunting for food.  A family friend named Sy Garrett who lived on the Olympic Peninsula also imprinted her with a knowledge of nature.  He taught her, and her siblings the names and use of the trees, flowers, mushrooms and wildlife surrounding them in the paradise they loved.  They spent hours, days and weeks with Sy tramping through the woods and along the shoreline.  Sy was a half-breed Indian as people of mixed races were labeled in those days.  A book called the "The Egg & I" by Betty MacDonald, had a character modeled after him, which upset mother as it made him look like a local yokel.  He was a game warden as well as a self-taught biologist, naturalist and teacher who would be the envy of a doctor of biology today.  Growing up in the Native American society had taught him how to live off the land and this rubbed off on mother.  She loved to fish which did not rub off on me because she always got us up at an ungodly hour to get to the trail head to hike three miles to the perfect stream.  I have come to appreciate the fact that one needs to fish at the proper time of day if we want fish for dinner, but at that time it seemed totally unnecessary.  I am sure her days spent with Sy were a wonderful escape from her mother. However, her German mother was also very frugal and I am sure loved the fact that her children would come home from Sy's with a bounty of fresh food for her to prepare. This also impacted my mother as she loved to make a meal out of freshly picked mushrooms, beef from the ranch and garden produce or any combination of locally acquired edibles.

My Mother

My plan for this blog is not a chronological account of my life but small vignettes as they come to mind.   I will however start with my parents because their stories are so influential in my emotional and mental growth and development. We are all products of those who went before us not just by genes but by the environment and their life experiences.

My mother Francis Katherine Pickett Haggerty the eldest child of Agatha Weise Pickett and Benjamin Thermin Pickett, was an adventurous child and tested her parents right up to the time she married my father.  Born in Cripple Creek, Colorado while her father was working in the gold mines they subsequently moved to Seattle where her life took shape.  Living on Magnolia Bluff above Puget sound she and her brother Alvin Thurman Pickett explored the woods and waterfront escaping a domineering mother and pesky little sister Ida A. Pickett (Shebig) while their dad was busy managing the Seattle Park system gardens.  There were two stories among the many she told that we asked her to tell us over and over.

One day while exploring the beach below their house they were assaulted with a horrific odor. Feeling the need to find the source they scrambled through the brambles, over driftwood. through the mud flats and came upon a dead man behind a huge log.  Mom and Alvin ran screaming home to grandma who called the authorities.  They had mixed feelings of being heroic and guilty at the same time as they were not supposed to be adventuring that day at the beach. I am sure punishment was part of the story but forbidding my mother to do something was futile.  As a child fear and curiosity were constant companions of mother who dared to take chances.  I was not as adventurous so listening to her story fear was my emotion.   It just seemed so impossible that my mom could have had an up close encounter with a dead man.  The other story was a bit more humorous but way too daring to believe my mother would do such a thing.

Mother was raised in a Catholic home.  Her German Catholic mother was so strict that the game was to break the rules imposed and try to get away with it.  Mom did not last long in the Catholic High School she was enrolled in because of the rules that she saw as totally unnecessary,  she transferred with the blessing of the nuns to Queen Anne High School.  During this time she and a group of friends had an evening meeting at WASHELLI CEMETERY.  It happened to have  light bulbs spelling out the name on a large sign looming over the highway. Mom and her cohorts knocked out all the bulbs but HELL CEMETERY.  The next day it was front page news and her mom and dad were loud in expressing their total disapproval and said if any of their kids did something like that they would not live to tell about it.  She was never found out nor were the other perpetrators. 

First Day of Blog

Today is the first day of blog writing for me and it couldn't be better timing. It is the 30th of September and here in the heights of Montana snow has been falling all day.  I am ready to cozy up for the winter and attack the projects that I have put off all summer.  The garden is my summer job which rewarded us this year with a bounty of fresh vegetables.  The warm September gifted us with ripe tomatoes a cherished prize at this altitude.  I always accept the challenge of raising tomatoes here because they say it can't be done.  In the 10 years or so that I have been accepting the tomato challenge I have only had a couple years that ended in an entire crop of green tomatoes.  

The leaves of the trees are still green so we hope for the early snows to melt quickly and not break the Aspen branches. However an early snow gives me time to pause and prepare mentally for the winter to come and remember the beauty and quiet of living in a winter wonderland.