By James E. Kerns

My mother was a woman with a project.  Her projects were her reward to herself for getting her work done.

One of her projects was "the 40"—the 40 acres across the road from my house.  She had purchased the 40 acres herself, with her own money, from a neighbor.  The money came from her father who received regular payments from "The Radio Church of God" for property it had purchased from him in Eugene.  He occasionally sent money from those payments to his children.  The gifts were always received with gratitude by Mom and Dad who generally used the money to offset farm debt.

This must have been a larger-than-normal gift.  There was discussion between Mom and Dad about what to do with it.  Whenever he could, Dad made it a practice to buy the adjoining neighbors' fields when they came up for sale.  This neighbor wanted to sell the south half of his 80 acres.  Mom had the money.  She bought the property.

Mom was very proud of her land.  At a certain time every day, she'd take her dog and go work on the 40.  There were old barbed wire fences which had outlined the draw.  The posts were rotted off, and the wire was everywhere.  She'd take her fencing tools, remove staples, roll wire into neat rolls, and pile posts.  She picked up rocks, piled and burned willow limbs, repaired the perimeter fence, and generally spruced up her property.

This 40 acres was the carrot that she held out to me when I was graduating from college and deciding what to do with the rest of my life.  I had five options to choose from.  One was an offer from my mother that if I would come back to the ranch, she'd sell her 40 acres to me for $16,000.  That, I believe, was the same price she'd paid for it.  After taking the matter to the Lord in prayer, I came away most excited about the option Mom had offered, and took her up on it.

Another of Mom's projects was undertaken when the folks lived in their log house up the hill.  It was her quaking aspen project.  Quaking aspens, if not grazed or cut down, will send up hundreds and thousands of shoots making a dense forest covering many acres.  The whole grove is one interconnected plant.  I'm told a quaking aspen grove in Colorado is the largest living organism in the world.

One of these quaking aspen groves occupied a two-acre area right below Markle's barn.  Mom decided that it had to go.  So every day she took her dog, her pruners, a pruning saw, and a pair of gloves, walked the half mile to the grove, and worked for an hour or two cutting it down.  Eventually the grove was gone, and the acres became a useful pasture.

The only problem with the project was Janie Markle.  Mom preferred to work at her project alone and unobserved.  But Janie discovered what she was up to.  She'd come out on her deck and call, "You hoo, I see you!  Come on up for a cup of tea."

Mom was a friendly person who could visit very amiably with people.  She actually enjoyed these visits with Janie and enjoyed Janie's friendship; but if Mom and Dad had their choice, they chose staying at home and not interacting with anyone but family.  Consequently they almost never "went visiting," and almost never took vacations.

Dad was always honest and honorable to the nth degree.  I've always considered Dad's honesty to be his hallmark.  That opinion stems from an occasion when someone felt he'd been dishonest or backhanded in obtaining the lease from Connie Kohler on the dry hill pasture west of Baker.  On only one other occasion had I seen Dad in such pain.  He agonized and groaned, couldn't sleep, and considered what he could do.  Someone in the world thought that he was less than honest!  How could he fix things and change that man's opinion?

The other time I saw Dad in excruciating pain was when a horse stepped on his face.  He came back from having the doctor stitch up his face, and rolled around on the floor groaning dreadfully.  It was scary for a little boy.  He carried a large scar on the left side of his mouth thereafter.  There was no feeling there.  In his old age I'd have to tell him to wipe his mouth because he couldn't tell when a drip of food had collected there.

Mom purchased a green rocking chair, placed it in the living room and announced that it was her chair, and that no one else was to sit in it.  Dad was too heavy, and would break the chair.  We kids were too rambunctious, and would do the same.  We all honored her proclamation, and the chair lasted and looked nice for many years.

Mom kept her sewing kit on an end table beside her chair.  Darning was another of her projects.  So was frugality.  If a sock or a pair of pants got holes in them, they could in no wise be thrown away until they were thoroughly worn out.  They were darned or patched.  She often told me that there was no shame in wearing patched pants to school.  As long as they were clean, I didn't need to be embarrassed.

There was also a large stack of papers on the end table by her chair.  Mom read newspapers and magazines, and clipped many things from them.  The clippings, magazines, and important papers of every type were there on the end table, and spilling over onto the floor.  I recall being embarrassed sometimes because Mom wasn't a neat housekeeper, but she knew exactly where to look for any paper that she wanted.

I have a vivid picture in my mind of Mom sitting in that chair one summer day.  It was during the three years that we lived in the old yellow house up the hill before we built the block house.  I looked out the window and saw Tim coming up from the pond carrying a garter snake by its tail.  I knew exactly what he had in mind, and ran and hid in the back of our closet.  I crouched there and listened intently, terrified that he'd figure out where I was.  I heard the front door open.  Mom was sitting just inside, with her back to the door.  I heard her calmly say, "Go put it back in the pond, Tim."

That awful brother of mine, not seeing me available to torment, had reached over Mom's chair with the snake's tongue flicking in and out, and held it right in front of her face.  With her proverbial nerves of steel, she hadn't even flinched.  Tim was terribly disappointed.

He and I worked hard to startle Mom.  If just once we could have scared her and made her jump, our lives would have been complete.  We devised the perfect plan.  While we were in the process of building the block house, Mom would always walk down through the field just before dark and close the gate out on the county road.  This was to prevent people from stealing tools.  Tim and I sneaked down early and laid down in the tall alfalfa right beside the driveway where she'd walk past us on the way to the gate.  We were full of anticipation.  We could just see her face when we'd yell and leap out at her in the near darkness.  We waited a long time.  Finally she was coming.  We poised ourselves for the spring.  Now!  We screamed and flew out right in front of her.

Mom calmly said, "Hello, boys."

Mom was always active.  I was under the impression that she never slept.  She was working when I went to bed every night.  She was working when I'd wake in the morning.  She made it a point to take a walk every day after they moved into the log house up the hill.  She put on her hat, called the dogs, and headed up through the fields that we called "the Mountain Place."  Whenever she walked, she picked up trash, sticks, and rocks.  Once she found a black arrowhead lying on top of a gopher mound on the Mountain Place.  I still have it.

One morning she was walking in thick fog.  Just over her head she heard an airplane.  It was frighteningly low, and was headed straight for Hunt Mountain, less than a quarter of a mile away.  She heard nothing more, but turned around and went back to the house where she called Phil Stevenson, the only pilot she knew.

"How do I report a plane crash?" she asked.

A short time later a man hiked down the mountain to the Markle house and informed them that he and a passenger had just crashed.  Neither was seriously injured.  Thirty years later I met a man who was the son of the passenger.  He informed me that at the time of the crash the pilot had been following the flight plans for making an approach to the Pendleton airport!  The passenger saw the tops of trees in the fog and yelled, "Pull up!"  The pilot lifted the nose, and the plane feathered into the trees.  As it fell between two big trees, both wings broke off.  I watched as a helicopter lifted the plane's pieces off the mountain, and set them down in our field north of the Markle house where they could be loaded on a truck and hauled away.

There is a rock pile on the Mountain Place where Mom says that Mr. King is buried.  She didn't know that for sure, but it was a pet theory.  Mr. King was a bachelor, in partnership with another man.  The two of them owned the Mountain Place in some bygone year.  Mr. King disappeared.  No one ever knew what became of him.  Some people (my mother included) thought that he'd been killed by his partner.  No one is likely to ever know what happened to Mr. King, but his story has always made me cautious when roaming around the mountains alone.  I'd think to myself, "What would happen if I broke my leg here where no one would ever think to look for me?"

Mom was alone in the house, and sitting in her chair one Sunday morning in 1980.  At about 8:00 she heard a "boom."  It was remarkable enough that she noted the time and wondered what had caused it.  Soon came the news that Mt. St. Helens had erupted.  She had heard the volcano explode nearly three hundred miles away!

Vacations were something that almost never happened.  A farm and its chores are hard to get away from.  The folks also had no desire to go anywhere or see anything different than their own familiar world.

Once we took a day and went to Halfway to see Jean and Tom.  We did the same, once, when they moved to Wallowa.  Dad took Tim and I and went camping up in the mountains several times as a reward for finishing first crop, and before we'd have to start second crop the next day.  We hayed all summer long.

When I was three or four, Mom took me on a train trip to Eugene to visit her father.  It was a real adventure.  I wore a green cowboy hat with a string that tightened under my chin.  We stood by the railroad tracks down at Haines, and Mr. Carter flagged the train down so that it would stop and we could get on.  I remember the big oak trees in the grove where Grandfather lived.  I was fascinated by the acorns.  It was a beautiful park-like place at 3077 West 18th St.  I still remember the address.  I looked the place up a few years ago.  There's not a sign of an oak tree anywhere.  The area is filled solidly with houses and apartments.

The only real, genuine vacation that we took as a family was when I was in the 3rd grade.  Mom, Dad, Tim, Ellen and I got on the train and went to Montana to see Dad's mother.  That's the only time I ever saw my Grandmother Kerns.  We spent several days with Grandmother, Aunt Peggy and Uncle Bill (Grandmother's bachelor brother) in Hardin, Montana.  They took us to visit Custer's Battlefield, which wasn't far away.  I kept minute notes about everything we did so that I could report about my trip when I returned to my class.  I remember being especially impressed by a city with the exotic-sounding name of Pocatello, and proudly told my class that our train had gone through Pocatello.

I never saw the ocean until I went to college at Oregon State University.  I also never rode a bike until Tim and I drove to Okanogan, Washington to visit Mac and Joyce when we were teenagers.

Aunt Peggy (Dad's twin) took care of their mother in her old age.  She wrote to Dad and told him that they needed money.  Dad was grateful for his sister's care of their mother, and felt obligated to do his part.  He sold the 640 acres of timber above my place to Boise Cascade for $20,000, and sent the money to Peggy.

I remember when a bottle of pop cost 10 cents.  I think that I can remember when postage stamps cost two cents.  I might be mistaken there, but I certainly remember five-cent stamps.  My mother was a great letter writer.  She regularly wrote to her father.  Whenever Dad had any business to conduct, he dictated to Mom who took it all down in shorthand.  I was always fascinated by her spiral notebooks which were filled with indecipherable (to me) hen scratches, but from which she could type out neat, well-worded letters.  Her letters were flawless.  Dad wasn't capable of writing that way, so I'm sure that his dictations underwent heavy editing by his secretary/wife.  She typed the letters up and took them to him for his signature.  That's the way business was conducted.  Mom also "kept the books."  That meant that she wrote the checks, paid the bills, and handled all money matters.

When I went away to college at Oregon State University, Mom was worried about me.  I was so homesick and depressed that I didn't see how I could survive.  I don't think that I told my folks how bad off I was, but Mom knew.  My wonderful mother wrote me a long, single-spaced letter every other day for that whole year.  No letter was less than a page long.  Most were a page and a half.  The blank space at the end of the letter was always torn off.  Unused paper couldn't be wasted!  She used such scraps for lists, and especially as paper for Dad "to figure on."  That was Dad's pastime.  He was always "figuring."

I had piles of letters from Mom.  There were too many to keep, so I threw them away.  What I wouldn't give to have those letters now!  When she died I was desperate to have those letters so that I could feel like she was talking to me again.  I tore the house up looking for any that might have survived.  I found a few.  They're treasures.  She could have been a writer.

Mom and Dad always felt like they raised three families.  They had Jean and Mac two years apart.  Nine years later they had Tim, and I followed three years after him.  Ellen was the tail-end surprise.  Mom and Dad adored her.  So did her two next-older brothers.  Her two eldest siblings had already left home and were married.  Ellen even became an aunt when she was just four months old.  I was really excited when Ellen was born.  I was just turning seven years old.  I was so grateful to not have to be the baby of the family anymore.

Ellen was still pretty little when we moved into the yellow house up the hill.  It was one of those houses where you use the back door more than you use the front.  When coming home from town, we most often parked the car at the side of the house, went through the woodshed, and entered the kitchen through the back door.  One wintry day I jumped out of the car and preceded the folks into the house.  Dad was behind me carrying Ellen.  He slipped on the ice as he entered the woodshed, and fell on Ellen's leg.  It hurt her badly, but apparently hadn't broken it.  She favored the leg for quite a while, and for years afterward the folks were able to predict the weather based upon her "weather" leg.  Whenever there was a change in barometric pressure, Ellen's leg would hurt.  Mom would say, "There's going to be a storm," and there usually was.

Ellen and I were really close.  She's still the best friend I have besides my wife and children.  We both appreciated our parents, and they appreciated us.  Being the two youngest children, it fell to us to take care of the folks in their old age.  After Mom passed away in 1982, one or both of us were up at Dad's place every day for the next 14 years.  He needed company, and he needed medical attention.  He became diabetic, and developed a sore on his big toe which we could never get healed.  Ellen and I soaked, doctored, and bandaged that toe every day for a dozen years.  I played him a daily game of Scrabble while his foot soaked.  Ellen cleaned his house, and did his laundry.  It was a privilege to return some of the favors that these two wonderful parents bestowed upon their children.  I'm sure that each of us would unhesitatingly say that we had perfect upbringings by perfect, salt-of-the-earth parents.

Further Memories of Tom and Janet Kerns

By James E. Kerns

Mom was very puritanical in her views on all moral issues.  Those issues included smoking, drinking, sex outside of marriage, and divorce.  Dad was in lockstep with her on the last two issues, but required a little time to adopt her position on the first two.

Dad smoked cigarettes before I was born.  One day he reached for a cigarette, and pulled the pack from his pocket.  He looked at it with disgust for a moment, and then threw it as far as he could.  He'd had his last cigarette.  "I wasn't going to let those darned things control my life," he said.  "I had to show myself that I was stronger than they were."

I saw Dad drink his last beer.  The hay crew was working around the derrick that sat where Tim's new hay barn now sits on the Semingson Place.  Someone had brought beers for refreshment.  Dad took one and drank it.  I was less than six years old then.  I knew Mom's attitude about beer, so I was shocked, embarrassed, and disappointed.  That was the first and only beer I ever knew him to drink.

I can't recall a single time when my parents ever sat me down with the intention of teaching me anything.  I ask myself, therefore, why I, as a 6-8 year old boy, would consciously resolve never to indulge in those things?  The only answer I can come up with is that I acquired those standards through osmosis and example.  The disparaging remarks Mom made about tobacco and alcohol left no doubt in my mind about where my parents stood on the issues.

Tim and I subscribed to Walt Disney comic books when we were in grade school.  The subscription cost 10 cents per month.  We couldn't wait for each month's issue to come.  Dad liked them as much as we did.  He'd sit with us on the couch and read them through.

Dad liked to tell his kids that he had been a Crow Indian baby, and that his parents had traded him for an American flag.  I believed that story at least up until the third grade, because I remember telling my friend that I was half Crow Indian.

Dad also always told people that he'd "never gotten through the second grade."  For some reason I never believed that story.  I suppose that was because he'd graduated from college.

Dad took all the math he could get in college.  He loved math.  After each test, the grades of the students were posted on a sheet outside the professor's office.  Dad's name was always at the top.

Dad could do anything mathematical except explain a homework problem to me.  I could do math, but I never loved it, and always had to work at it.  I eventually quit asking him for help because I could never understand his explanations.  Dad apparently passed his mathematical gene to his two other sons, because they and he all graduated from Oregon State University with bachelor's degrees in Agricultural Engineering.

Dad was constantly "figuring."  Whenever he sat down, he'd leave odd pieces of paper or the newspaper covered with figures.  He came by it naturally.  His father did the same.  But his mother loved figures, too.  She'd save her husband's lists of calculations.  Then in her spare moments, the game she'd play to amuse herself would be to sit down with those calculations and try to determine what her husband was thinking about.

Whereas Dad was good with math, Mom was good with English.  Dad couldn't spell.  He passed that gene on to some of his progeny, too.  I didn't get that one, either.  I inherited Mom's English gene.  She could spell, write and made it a point to always speak properly.  If any of us ever used a word improperly, she was quick to give correction.  Her ear was offended if our grammar wasn't correct.  I'm grateful for that because it made my English classes easy.

I've always thought it odd that since spelling wasn't Dad's forte, games of spelling became his games of choice.  I don't recall Mom and Dad playing many games when I was living at home, but at least one daily game of anagrams or scrabble became the rule with them later.  During their anagrams years, Mom won more than 50% of the time.  She hated to lose, and took it personally when Dad would steal a word from her.  She worked and studied until she could figure out a way to steal the word back.  When she was successful in doing so, happiness showed all over her face.

While Mom liked to win, Dad didn't care.  He was just as happy to see Mom or one of his kids beat him.  It made him proud to have them get the best of him.  He had a good mind—a logical mind—and if his wife or one of his progeny was able to outwit him, it gave him a great deal of pleasure.

Chess was Dad's game during my growing-up years.  He occasionally got together with Champ Bond to play several games in an evening.  They were very evenly matched, but Dad had the edge.

For many years, later in life, Dad carried on chess-by-mail with Dr. Brooks who was the director of the state mental institution in Salem.  I think Champ Bond was responsible for introducing them.  They had 8 games going simultaneously.  It was a great day when the doctor's chess moves would arrive in the mail.  Dad could make the moves on some games with hardly any thought.  Others he had to set up on his chess board and puzzle over.

 

He and the doctor bet a dollar a game.  Whenever one or the other of them would concede a game, they'd simply enclose a dollar in the envelope when they sent their next moves back.  Dad made more dollars than he lost.

Cribbage was the game Dad's parents played together.  They bet a penny a game.  When one of them would get a dollar ahead of the other, he or she would pay up.  Dad's dollar-a-game with the doctor is a sign of inflation.

Dad taught us all how to play chess, and later he taught his grandsons.  Of his children, only Mac and Tim really caught on and came up to Dad's playing ability.  His method of teaching was to "spot" his opponent some men, meaning that he'd remove his queen and some other fighting pieces from the board at the beginning of the game in order to give us an advantage.  As our skills increased, he'd spot less men until his pupil was up to his playing level.

I never got up to his level, and never enjoyed playing chess because I could never beat him.  He taught my five older sons how to play, however, and they all became great competition for him.  In his old age he was thrilled when they'd come up the hill to visit and play with him.  Pride showed all over him when they'd beat him.  He was loud in his praise, and would brag for days about the clever way one of them outwitted him.

Because of those chess games and philosophical discussions that followed, my son, Aaron, wrote a theme for his high school English class about the best friend he had in the world—his Grandpa.

Dad loved philosophy.  He loved "deep conversations."  He fancied himself a philosopher, but wasn't.

 

He closely followed world affairs.  He outlived every previous or contemporary male Kerns by at least 20 years.  I think one reason was his interest in life and the world situation.  Several years before his death he said, "I can't die.  I've got to stay around to see how things turn out."

Dad never had a hobby until his old age.  When he retired and sold his properties to his kids, for the first time in his life he finally didn't have to worry constantly about finances.  He was a widower, and didn't need much.  He lived on his Social Security check, which amounted to less than $500 per month.

He took the income he received from land payments, and "invested" it in futures commodities.  This was his hobby.  He had always been interested in the stock market, but he found futures more interesting because he felt he could predict the direction commodities prices would go.  He closely followed the prices of beef and grain futures.  He studied trends and cycles.  He bought and sold.  He watched world events and noticed how big news affected the markets.

He became most interested in precious metals, whose prices constantly moved up and down—sometimes dramatically.  He felt he could predict those ups and downs.  He felt that a person could probably make huge sums of money by predicting price moves, and by buying low and selling high.

He was trading almost daily.  All it took was a phone call to his broker.  He may as well have made annual trips to Las Vegas, but he had great fun playing the market.  It gave him something in which to be interested, and something to worry over.

Dad was a good father.  He was always interested in his family, but became intensely so during the years he lived alone up the hill.  Mom died in 1982, leaving him without her companionship for 14 years.  It was a lonely time.  He spent those years worrying over his family, and anticipating visits from them.  During several of those years he had the companionship of his twin sister, Peggy.  After Mom died, he called Peggy and invited her to come live with him.  "We began life together," he told her.  "We might as well end it together."

Peggy cried at the invitation.  She came.  They enjoyed one another.  Peggy gained a family, and Dad had companionship.  But Peggy died, too.  Dad coped very well being alone, but he was ever so grateful to have his children and grandchildren nearby where they could pay him regular visits.  He kept his freezer stocked with ice cream as "bait" to encourage grandkids—and kids—to come see him.

Goodies with which to "bait" the family was actually a tradition started by Mom.  Her selection was much broader than Dad's ice cream.  She also kept jelly beans, doughnuts, gum, and anything else that might appeal to the young generation.

The folks enjoyed good health, but their few aberrations therefrom were significant.  Dad's asthma is the reason that the majority of his family lives in Eastern Oregon.  But for the fact that mold spores gave him asthma, our family would all be living in the Willamette Valley.  The folks lived in Lorane, south of Eugene, when they decided to find a drier climate for Dad's asthma, and were led to Haines.

Dad was always grateful for this valley and his particular nook in it.  He never had any desire to ever leave it or see anything else.  He did occasionally wonder if some utopia might exist in New Zealand (which he pointed out was on the same parallel south as we were on here in the north), or in the Peace River Valley in Canada.  Wondering about those two places was the closest he ever came to stepping out of his own utopia.

The first health issue I remember was Mom's kidney stone operation.  Her kidney stone problem developed when Ellen was just a tiny girl.  I remember Mom being in great pain.  The doctor told her that the only thing more painful than kidney stones was childbirth.  She believed it.  The doctor told her to daily drink 8 glasses of water thereafter in order to keep kidney stones from reforming.  She religiously adhered to that practice the rest of her life.  I tried doing that one day.  That's a lot of water.  I couldn't do it.

Mom had a daily cup of coffee as a means of getting one more cup of liquid down.  Dad didn't like the taste of it, so never began drinking it.  As a baby he was allergic to milk.  It gave him a bad case of cradle cap or eczema, so he never drank milk, either.  He was able to use milk on his breakfast cereal when he got older, however.  Water, and orange juice made from frozen concentrate, were about the only things he ever drank.

Both of the folks had high blood pressure later in life, although Dad's high blood pressure seemed to disappear during his last years.

Mom's high blood pressure got the better of her.  She began having hip pain.  Her doctor told her that she was a candidate for a hip replacement operation, but that she shouldn't have the operation until the pain got so bad that it began waking her up at night.

She reached that point in late 1982.  She entered Grande Ronde Hospital, and had the operation.  All went well, but two days later she suffered a massive heart attack there in the hospital, and died several days later.

Dad's health problems in his old age included diabetes (controlled through diet), an operation for appendicitis, and an operation for gall stones.  The gall stone operation came just after the new less-invasive technique had been developed, so it was really no big deal.

Dad fell and broke the humerus high in his right arm.  I think that's probably when I started helping him shower.  I bathed him for several years.

Katie and Rocky fixed up an apartment for their young family in Dad's basement.  It was an advantage for them to be able to live there, and it was an advantage to have someone there to be on call for Dad.

They hadn't been there long when Katie heard her grandpa fall upstairs.  She ran up and helped him into his recliner.  He insisted that he was all right, but I insisted on taking him to the doctor.  An x-ray revealed a broken hip, and the necessity to have an operation.

I drove him straight from the x-ray in Baker to the hospital in La Grande.  On the way, Dad reminisced about Mom and expressed the desire to see her again.  I promised him that he would.  He got emotional, and for the first time ever said, "I'm ready to die."

Dad had his operation, but his condition went from bad to worse.  He died there in the hospital two weeks later.

Both of my parents died from hip trouble, of all things.

More Memories of Tom and Janet Kerns

By James E. Kerns

My father was a thunder shouter.  Whenever a lightning storm went through, he'd go outside and shout at the thunder:  "Hey, up there!  Cut that out!"

He explained to me that thunder was caused by a guy up in the clouds pulling a wagonload of rocks over a wooden bridge.

Dad loved a good thunderstorm.  He especially liked rain to accompany it.  Rain invariably caused him to recite the poetry he'd memorized for his teachers in the one-room grade schools he attended as a boy.  Over the years the poetry became jumbled in his memory, so it came out like this:

"The falleth of gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath it is twice blessed:

It blesses Him who gives,

And him who receives.

And so let it be with Caesar,

For Caesar was a mighty man

With large and sinewy hands.

The children used to love

To look in at the door

And hear the bellows roar."

Those acquainted with Shakespeare and Longfellow will recognize snatches from "The Village Blacksmith" and "Julius Caesar" and some other Shakespearean play.  He jumbled those together on purpose, but it gives us an insight into the breadth of the teachings he received.

At some point in Dad's early married life, he also read the New Testament.  He believed in God, but never really knew what he believed beyond that.  I discussed religion with him whenever he brought the subject up, but I was never successful in making him understand even the most basic concepts.

One thing he remembered from his early reading of the New Testament was "By their fruits ye shall know them."  He often said to me that if he was ever to join a church it would be mine, because my church exhibited more of "the fruits" than any of the others.  He attended church with me sometimes, and once even said, "All right, you've convinced me.  You can baptize me."  I declined doing so, however, because he really didn't understand anything, and only said that to please me.

Religion wasn't a part of our home life.  Other than going to church a handful of times when I was little, we never went.  Sunday was just another day.  We worked every day of the week in the summer time.

The folks took us to the Methodist Church in Haines a few times when I was little.  I was very self-conscious there because I couldn't find the page numbers in the hymnal.  I was glad when they didn't pursue the church-going kick.

Dad's relationship with God was simple.  He knew God was there.  God's duty was to watch over him.  Dad's duty was to be the best person he could be.  That was all there was to their relationship.  I'm certain that he rarely or never prayed.  But he was a good person.  I was once talking to him about the purpose of Jesus' atonement, and how He had paid for our sins.  Dad said doubtfully, "Well, I suppose I've committed a sin," but it was plain that he couldn't remember what it could possibly have been.

Mom, on the other hand, prayed nightly.  She taught me the Lord's Prayer and the

4-liner, "Now I lay me down to sleep…"  Those prayers seemed pointless to me, especially repeated ad infinitum, so I didn't bother saying them.  Prayer didn't become a part of me until life closed in during my second year of college.

Mom's big religious experience of life involved me.  I was serving in the Far East in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam conflict.  My sister ship and its crew were prisoners of the North Koreans.  Mom was worried to death about me.

One night she was praying for my safety.  Her deceased father appeared beside her bed and said, "You don't have to worry about Jamie.  He's going to be all right."

She ceased worrying.

I was probably about nine when Dad allowed the LDS missionaries to teach us their lessons in our home.  We had three meetings with them before Dad told them that we really weren't interested.  I was glad when he did that because I was uncomfortable having them ask me questions that I was supposed to know the answers to, but didn't.

Dad's father had a beautiful tenor voice and could accompany himself by chording on the piano.  Dad had no musical abilities whatever.  He liked to sing, but couldn't carry a tune.  He also had a very limited repertoire.  It didn't extend much beyond "Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day."  Even though he couldn't sing, he could hum.  He hummed a lot.  If he was tense and concentrating on something, he hummed with a vengeance.  The humming was tuneless—more tuneless than his singing.  We could always tell how hard he was concentrating by how intensely he was humming.

Mom, on the other hand, was a very good singer.  She sang all the time while she worked.  She had a wide repertoire of songs.  When she wasn't singing, she whistled.  She was a very good whistler.  That's where I learned how to whistle.  She quoted to me:  "Whistling women and cackling hens, always come to no good end."  She quoted it, but didn't believe it.

Mom liked most people, but not in groups.  She was a good judge of character.  If anyone ever crossed her, he was given a label which was thereafter permanently affixed to his name.  Thus was born "Roger, Dodger the old Codger," "Camp the Scamp," and "Earl V. Tucker, S.O.B."

Earl V. Tucker was the man to whom the folks sold the Polly Place when they moved up the hill.  I don't know what he did wrong, but Mom apparently had him pegged right.  One day Earl V. Tucker sold the place to Victor Semingson without even telling his wife.  Vic told me that Tucker's wife came to Vic and begged him to back out of the deal, but Vic refused.  Earl V. Tucker's wife divorced him.

Both Dad and Mom used the swear words "damn" and "hell" occasionally, but never, ever the crude swear words in common use today.  They also never took the name of the Lord in vain.

Dad was always interested in the power of the mind.  He believed in the power of positive thinking, and, therefore, tended to subscribe to Christian Science beliefs that one could think himself well.  If we kids were sick, he would tell us, "It's all in your mortal mind," as if we could automatically will our tummies to feel better.

I hated to get sick, and tried not to admit it if I was.  Such an admission always prompted a poking from Dad.  I don't think it mattered a lot what part of my anatomy was ailing.  Dad would poke my abdomen and say, "Does it hurt there?"  (He was checking for appendicitis).

"Yes," I'd say.  Of course it hurt.  He poked hard.

He'd move his finger, poke in a slightly different spot, and repeat his question.  It always hurt everywhere he poked me.

I don't recall ever having to go to the doctor, but I made plenty of trips to the dentist.  Tim always came away from his dental checkups without a cavity.  That was upsetting.  I always had several.  He never brushed his teeth, and I brushed mine every night.  He claimed I was brushing away my enamel.

Mom taught me how to handle dental appointments.  She never took deadening when her teeth were worked on.  She wanted to walk out of the dentist's office when her filling was done, and forget about the experience without having to wait for the Novocain to wear off.  I was pretty young when I decided that if she could do it, I could, too.  It wasn't bad at all.  I still refuse deadening.  It always amazes the dentists.

My parents both had brown eyes.  They had four brown-eyed children and one blue-eyed son.  How can that be?  It's a matter of genetics.  Mom said that she had one brown eye and one blue eye up until she was nine.  She said that her mother, Bernice, would have liked me because my eyes were blue.  From that I infer that my grandmother McCornack had blue eyes.

Since blue eyes are a recessive trait, both my parents had to carry one gene for brown eyes, and one for blue eyes.  Dad would have gotten his blue-eyed gene from his father, who I believe was blue-eyed.

Dad's power of positive thinking and theories about "mind over matter" extended to his diet.  Dad was a heavy man, and had a "pot" all my life.  His method of dieting in his later years consisted of going without all food for several days.  His fasts lasted for up to three or four days.  The theory was that his stomach would shrink, and then he wouldn't eat so much food.  I don't think his fasts did a thing to help him lose weight.

Dad would never tell anyone what he weighed.  One day he was fixing something inside the pen on my cattle scales.  I surreptitiously weighed him.  It was something upwards of 260 pounds.  That's the heaviest he got.  He slimmed down in his old age.  He probably only weighed just over 200.

Dad also mellowed a lot in his old age.  He was always rather tough and brusque when I was young.  He became very softhearted, and could even get emotional later.  I could make tears come to his eyes.  That was something I never saw when I was a young man at home.

50th Wedding Anniversary Letter

From James E. Kerns

To Mom and Dad:

I had a fun childhood.  Home and family were the only things of real importance to me.  I remember wading in the creek, building dams, fishing, playing with Tim in his treehouses, and pumping myself all around the farm in my little wagon.  Most of my waking time was spent pretending.  I was always a hero of some sort in my daydreams.  My daydreaming thoughts were always audible when I was little, until one day Dad said jokingly, "Who are you talking to?"  I was so embarrassed that from that day on I became a silent thinker.

I remember how cozy and secure I felt at home and in my parents' presence.  Once I was hunkered down on the floor in the little space between the cupboards and freezer in the kitchen.  It was late evening and warm.  The two of you were having a pleasant conversation at the table.  Everything was just right.  I was happy, safe and warm; and slowly your voices turned into a drone.  I tried my best to concentrate and make the drone become words again, but the drone became a hum and then I woke up the next morning in bed.

Another time we were at a basketball game at the Jr. High school.  Tim must have been playing, or we wouldn't have been there.  He'd have been at least a fourth grader.  That would have placed me at least in the first grade, although my memory would like me to have been more like age four.  I was bored with the whole thing.  I was restless and fidgety, and it seemed to me that people were watching me.  I couldn't stand that feeling and wished I could hide somewhere.  Then I noticed Mom's long fur coat.  She had never removed it, and was sitting right there beside me.  Perfect!  She wouldn't mind if I slithered underneath and hid in its folds.  I proceeded to crawl between the bleachers and her legs.  As I squirmed in, she squirmed, too—unnaturally so.  Something was wrong.  I peeked out and to my horror realized just how restless and squirmy I had been.  In my gyrations I had dropped down a row or two on the bleachers and was making myself at home in Mrs. Foster's fur coat.  Never has there been a more embarrassed little boy.  I sat very closely and quietly beside my mother the rest of the game wondering who had seen my blooper.

Tim was my friend and playmate those first years.  He had a penchant for building treehouses.  I was glad because they were such fun, but I could never seem to build one of the things myself.  I think I was a good helper, though, and we had hours of fun playing in them and eating green apples.

We did have our arguments, though.  I guess we probably had more than a few.  Being the little brother I could never come out on top.  That was a source of great frustration.  I had just one blaze of glory.  That day our altercation came out just right.  I must have punched him in the nose because it was bloody and he was furious and chasing me.  I made it to the big cottonwood just south of the house.  He was older and faster, but that big tree evened up our speeds.  I went 'round and 'round it.  He tried his best to get me, but my desperation and his bloody nose saved me.  He finally had to give up and go tend to his nose.  I expected him to go to great lengths to get even, but for some reason I don't remember any retribution.

They say I had a temper back then.  Tim was generally the object of that temper.  No one has ever let me forget the time I got so mad at him that I threw my toy gun at him.  My aim was true, and I would have hit him right in the head as he no doubt deserved—but he ducked!  That good-for-nothing brother of mine ducked!  The gun sailed right through a window pane.  I can still see it happening.  Boy did I get in trouble then.  I've never forgiven him for ducking.

Another time, for reasons unknown to me, my big brothers locked me up in the silo.  I was helpless and furious about the injustice of it all.  They say now that it had something to do with my threatening them with a hammer or something.  I don't remember anything about that part, so it must be an excuse they invented in later years.

Mac (and Joyce, too) liked to make up things like that.  They claim that I stopped their wedding procession as I sat down in the middle of the aisle, jerked off my shoe, and began working on the "fistle in my foot."

Joyce tells another fictitious story that I was so mad about something that I steadfastly refused the ice cream cone I was offered.  She claims she could tell I wanted it badly, but that I was determined not to give up the course I had set by accepting it.

There might be a grain of truth to that.  I do remember being quite stubborn at times.  On one occasion if I had been my mother I'd have beaten my little boy.  She fixed something for supper which I was not about to eat.  I think it was venison.  I didn't like tough meat in the first place.  Rather than chew the stuff I'd swallow the pieces whole if I was forced to eat it.  Venison was simply out of the question.  I pouted.  I didn't want that for supper.  What I wanted was oatmeal!  'Round and 'round we went until my poor, exasperated mother gave in and fixed me some oatmeal.  Apparently oatmeal was just the first thing I could think of when I found out we were having venison.  I really didn't want oatmeal, either, and also refused it when placed before me.  I don't remember the end to the story, but nothing physical happened to me as I have always felt should have.

I really don't remember any spankings at all except one.  On that occasion Dad and I were out at the barn.  He told me to do something and I refused.  I was probably told to bring a cow into the barn.  I was scared of cows and knew that if I got over the fence she'd chase me.  So I refused.  He ordered me to do it.  I refused.  He threatened me with physical harm if I didn't.  I reasoned that if worse came to worst I could outrun him.  So again I refused.  My reasoning proved faulty.  He came over the gate like an enraged bear.  Scared as I was and as fast as I ran he caught me in nothing flat.  Mercifully, I don't remember the rest, but I know it wasn't pleasant.

(As I read these things to Margie she says with a look of consternation:  "Why, you sound just like our kids."  It's funny, but to this point in life I always thought I had been a model, well-behaved child).

Before I got out of grade school Dad set me up in the sheep business.  I'll always be grateful for that.  I learned more about work from my sheep than from anything else.  There was much to be done to care for my twelve Columbia ewe lambs.  I had to build a corral to keep them away from coyotes at night.  They had to be corralled each night, and let out in the morning.  Every little hole in the fences around the farm had to be patched.  The sheep had to be salted.  Their feet had to be trimmed.  Foot rot had to be treated.  In winter they had to be fed.  In spring they had to be shorn.  And, oh, the excitement I felt each time one lambed!  There were Cutie and Motherly and Jumper and Thumper and Whitey and Kicker and Cheviot.  The names of the others I've forgotten.  I spent so much time with them that I knew each one's face and differences.  Each had her own personality.  I loved my sheep.

Later Dad had me sell my sheep and buy a cow from him.  I spent a great deal of time selecting my cow.  I finally picked the very best cow on the place.  She was a perfect Hereford cow for that day.  Dad had shown me what to look for.  At that time a good cow was apparently one with a deep body and short legs.  In fact I recall him selling a heifer later because she was "leggy."

The cow I selected was a beauty.  She was undoubtedly the best-looking cow on the place.  I thought I detected a bit of hesitation on Dad's part to let me have her, but a deal was a deal and he was nevertheless proud of me for being a good judge of livestock.

Cattle breeders at this time were just beginning to change their idea about what an ideal cow was.  They were discovering that this type of cow frequently carried genes for dwarfism.  My cow calved the following spring.  It was a beautiful little Hereford heifer.  As she grew I could see that she was going to have a deep body and short legs.  Then her nose grew out pugged like a bulldog's.  It soon became apparent that she was a true dwarf.  I felt bad, but Dad felt worse.  He'd made a deal with his son, and now his son had come out on the short end of the stick.  It didn't make any difference if his son had chosen the best cow and maybe taken advantage of his father's good nature.  I was prepared to accept the situation, but Dad insisted that I pick another cow and calf.

The cow was sold and her dwarf calf butchered.  I kept my new cow and her heifer.  I paid for my cows' keep, traded my steer calves for heifers, increased my herd yearly, and ended up with 21 cows which I eventually traded for shares in the ranch corporation.  How Dad could have allowed my little herd to occupy the space that he could have used for additional cows of his own I'll never know.  But I'm grateful.  Because of him I've always had money and no financial worries ever since I first paid for my 12 ewe lambs.