April 1, 2003

Dear John –

Here are some things I remember but keep in mind I was the 5^th child and that my kid brother and I were “the little boys.”  He, Phil, and I were true buddies and remained so through college though he went to the U. of O. and I to O. S. U.  He stayed with Dottie and me for a while after returning from the Philippines where he fought in World War II.  So I imagine my older brothers and Lucile heard much more about Dad’s and Mother’s days in Missouri.

I do, and so does Dottie later, remember Mother’s telling about an enjoyable summer she spent with an uncle in Colorado.  I think it was on a ranch near Trinidad in southern Colorado.  I recall her saying that when they were out riding that they would stop before reaching an arroyo to make sure there wasn’t a flash flood approaching as a result of a thunder storm upstream in the nearby mountains.

I think Mother enjoyed going to normal school (2-year teachers college).  As I recall she took two years of Latin beyond what she had taken in high school.  As you know, she taught in Webb City I think until Dad asked her to marry him.  Mother insisted on checking all our Latin lessons for which I am very grateful.

Except for Latin neither Phil nor I did much homework as we could get it done during study hall.  I do recall one incident.  In the Medford public schools there were three divisions in the junior and senior high schools.  For some reason Phil and I ended up in the same English literature class though he was a junior and I a senior.  Seating was alphabetical so he was directly in front of me.  We decided we weren’t going to let the girls beat us.  So we studied together very hard the night before the first big test.  We both got 100 which beat them.  They may have thought we communicated but we did not.  By the way we both graduated at the top of our classes.  I imagine the teachers were glad to see the last of the Lowrys go!

As we were growing up “Aunt Bertha” visited us during one or more summers.  She wasn’t a relative.  I think she was a friend, probably a fellow Webb City teacher who had moved to California.  Anyway, she was a lovely lady.  I know Mother really liked her.

I remember so well Mother’s father, Grandfather Britten, coming to live with us.  It was never explained exactly why.  But it was during the Great Depression and I imagine there wasn’t any work in Missouri.  Grandfather was a carpenter and helped build the mills for processing the lead-zinc ores of the Tri-state area.  Of course we had little extra room at the old home place south of Medford adjacent to the Pacific Highway.  Grandmother Britten went to live with her youngest daughter’s (Ruth) family in Taft, CA where they ran a cleaning establishment.  Before Ruth married I think she visited Mother for.  I recall a photo of Ruth with the family at Crater Lake where our family vacationed before the road was built across the pumice and ash field (Mt Mazama eruption) to Diamond Lake where the family vacationed and in time built a log cabin on the west side of the lake.  Grandmother Britten would visit us some summers.  She made wonderful blackberry pies.  I know Aunt Ruth and children came up with her at least once.

Grandfather Britten was a quiet man.  It seemed to me he would sit for hours on the front porch in a big rocker with leather strap bottom and back.  He brought all of his tools with him which he arranged in the shop beside the large wood shed.  None of us boys were interested in becoming carpenters so we didn’t take advantage of his skills.  I remember a sign he put up where his drawing knife rested in a fine holder on the wall.  It read: “When I am not in use, let me rest in in place.”  There just wasn’t room for him in the small house in town we would move to during the school year.  So he stayed alone at the old home place where he died one winter.

Uncle Jim, Mother’s youngest brother (much younger), came out from Missouri and stayed with us quite a while when I was a young boy.  He wasn’t much older than my oldest brother, Burton.  He was lots of fun, told stories and smoked Lucky Strikes which we really liked the smell of.  Also one of Mother’s sisters, maybe her name was Alice visited us one time.  I remember she had beautiful auburn hair and her daughter Anita had pretty red hair.  Anita was about Lucile’s age.  She stayed with us a while and the older ones and she enjoyed good times together.

Another of Mother’s sisters, Marie (we called her Aunt Mossie for some reason) visited when I was very small.  Later on a trip to San Francisco, Mother, Lucile, Phil and I visited with Aunt Mossie’s family in Gilroy, California.

I do remember an interesting incident Mother told us about.  I think at the time she was teaching in Webb City.  A young man (Mother told us his name and I remembered it for a long time) asked her to go fishing with him.  When they arrived at the fishing spot he gave her a fishing pole quite inferior to the one he was using.  That was the end of the relationship that was developing.  It was a lesson for us “little boys” and we learned it well!

One more thing about Grandfather Britten.  He said one of his boys, either Ben the oldest or Charley (sp?) discovered a shovel in an abandoned part of a mine where they were working that was coated (not the handle) with either lead or zinc minerals that had precipitated on it.  And, too, he sent a box of pretty minerals to Dad some time before he came to live with us.  In it was a nearly perfect 1-inch cubic crystal of galena, lead sulfides.  I wonder what happened to these specimens.  There also was a pretty crystal of sphalerite, zinc sulfide, which he and miners called blackjack because of its color.

I don’t know much about Dad’s life before he and Mother moved to Medford.  He told us he and his younger brother Roe and sister were “brought up” by his grandmother Rothanbarger.  He never said how his Mother died – maybe in the birth of his sister.  I remember his telling us about working on a ranch in Texas where the rattlesnakes were as big as his lower arm.  I know he attended business college but at what stage I know not.  I think it was a 2-year course somewhere in Missouri.  I do recall Dad’s telling about his work at the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station in Pocatello, Idaho.  I think he worked on small fruit trees.

As I recall he went from there to Medford where he worked for a while.  Maybe it was at the Bear Creek Orchard, which he later managed for many years.  From there he went to Hood River where he managed a fruit orchard.  I gather there he saved enough money to ask Mother to marry him.  I remember Mother told us a bit about her train trip to Hood River but nothing about her stay there and the birth of Burton, the only child not born in the Medford area.  Their stay in Hood River was quite short as Lucile was less than two years younger than Burton.  I’m guessing Dad was offered the job to manage the Bear Creek Orchard as the result of earlier work there.

Of course David should know far more than I, especially as the result of the trip to Missouri to see where Dad’s life began.  John, there really isn’t much more I can say.  Hope this helps a bit.  If you have questions, I’ll try to answer them.

Our love to you both – and the “little ones,”

Uncle Wally