1. What is your full name? Why did your parents select this name for you? Did you have a nickname?

Eileen: My aunt's first name was Esther. My first name is Esther, and I don't know where Eileen came from. And in school, I did have a nickname, because my last name was Pyeatt, so they called me “Pie-face”. That was fine with me, but when the teachers got after them for calling me “Pie-face... so then they started calling me “pirate”.

John: I was named after my dad, who was, John Wesley, and so I am John Charles, but I don't really know where the Charles came from. And the Zones name came down out of Minnesota, supposedly. And we have heard this story, I don't know whether it is true or not that they were Dutch up in there and there names were “Sones”. Somewhere along the line they changed it to Zones because of all the confusion. I went through high school with the nickname “Zombie”, and my brother's name was “Little Zombie”.

2. When and where were you born?

John: I was born out of Douglas, close to Waterville in 1929 in a blizzard. Mom said there was a blizzard. We lived there 'til '35 or '36. I went into the fist half of the first grade at Douglas. They had 8 grades there, but it was divided into two rooms―the lower rooms, and then the upper. I went there for the first half of the first grade, and we rode a horse. Most of the time we rode a horse to Douglas―an old white nag. They'd walk her down the ditch line to stay off the highway. I remember one time she just leaned over against the bank. There was two of us on her. They had a barn there at Douglas for the school, 'cause there was other horses too. Then the second half of first grade we moved out to Farmer. Then I went to school the rest of the year at Happy Home School which was... well it was kitty-corner, a little over a mile, but we walked a mile west on the highway and a mile south on a dirt, gravel road to the school down there. Then I went to the rest of the school years and graduated from the eight grade there. We had our graduation up at Withrow. [chuckles] They still had the high school going there, so we graduated up there but, when we graduated then that class went to Waterville. One of the things I remember about, we went to the school out there at Farmer... we didn't have all 8 grades, but we had most of them. The teacher would give the eighth graders their class, and if they couldn't answer their questions, she dropped down to the seventh and sixth and on down and made the eighth graders look like they weren't studying. We learned a lot that way, and even if we weren't in on the class... we had a lot of multiplication and division and subtraction. When I went into high school, we could beat those kids in town both ways. They didn't learn it. Then I went to high school there, played a little basketball―very little football, because I was too small. I could hold down the bench. That's were I got the nickname “Zombie”, when I got into high school. Then Steve, my younger brother, he's a year-and-a-half younger... then they nicknamed him “Little Zombie”. When we graduated from high school, I think there were twelve of us. I think right now about half of them are gone.

Eileen: I was born in Omak in 1929. Then when I was young, probably about 2 years old, we moved to Tonasket on an orchard. It was hard times then. Dad was running the orchard for another man. He got a little bit of wages, and we grew everything we ate, except coffee, sugar, and flour. Dad would walk to town and get those articles. We had all the meat, all the vegetables, all the fruit that we needed. I went to school at Tonasket … oh, 12 years. I went to Mount Vernon (WA) to a business college for a year. After I graduated, I worked at the Welfare Office in Okanogan. Then I went to Grand Coulee Dam and worked there several years until I was married.

3. How did your family come to live there?

Eileen: Well, I think Dad was working for someone in Omak, up on Pogue Flat, Peterson... His name was Mr. Peterson, and through Mr. Peterson he moved to Tonasket to tend to an orchard up there. Then from there... That was on the east side of the river. From Tonasket we moved up above Ellisforde and he worked. From there we moved across the river and worked for a Dr. Stingle who was in Pennsylvania. He worked for him for a number of years.. until he retired. Then they moved to Tonasket again.
I should tell you too, that my Grandma and Grandpa Patterson, who was my mother's parents, came to Washington from Virginia. He had a store there and he gave so much credit to everybody that he went broke. So he was moving the furthest away from Virginia that he could get. So they chose Waterville, WA, but they never arrived in Waterville. They stopped in Monitor (WA).
Then my grandpa on my Dad's side, Grandpa Pyeatt, he came to Washington from Texas, and I don't know what part of Texas. [This info may not be completely accurate, as Henry John Pyeatt was known to have lived in Arkansas].

John: Dad moved there, I don't know when. It would have been probably about 1920 or thereabout. Mom came there... she rode on a wagon from Oregon. That's where she came from. Her mother came from Scotland. Grandpa, I don't know where he came from. He died in 1936, so I didn't really get around him very much. 'Course we lived out at the farm, and that was 14 miles from Waterville. They lived in Waterville in the later years, and you didn't just travel that far. My grandma, Charlotte Clark, and her husband, Thomas Clark bought ground out north and west of Waterville, what we've got now. We've got part of it. Dad farmed out there until he... He took his own life really is what he did. Then my brother, Steve, hung on to the ranch for awhile, then they all moved to town. Out of high school, I went to work for the Iverson brothers, a couple of Danes, and I don't think that you could have found a better...


4.Were there other family members in the area? Who?
Eileen: My Aunt Theo Thornton lived about 2 or 3 miles beyond us out of Tonasket, and my Uncle Paul from Dad's side of the family lived with us for about a year and worked.

John: My grandpa and grandma were living in Waterville already after they had a homestead. They had a son named Harry, Elliot, and three daughters, Grace, Myra, and Anabel. I can't forget Anabel.


5. What was the house (apartment, farm, etc.) like? How many rooms? Bathrooms? Did it have electricity? Indoor plumbing? Telephones?
Eileen: When I was little, I mean the first place I remember living, there were two rooms. There was the bedroom, where we all slept, and there was the kitchen/living area. We had a stove and a sink and a table and some apple boxes to sit on. That was the size of it. We had no refrigerator, nothing like that. That's the way people lived in those days. We did have a sink, and we had a washing machine out on the back porch. That was it. It was electric, but after it washed then you stopped it. Then you hand picked the clothes out that ran through the ringers. They went down into the rinse water which were in tubs. That's the way it worked. When you got them rung out from the rinse water, then you took them out... out into the outside in the clothes basket and hung them up on clothes lines with clothes pins. You let them dry―that was our dryer.

John: We had, there at Douglas, I don't really know. We must have had at least 2 or 3 bedrooms, maybe. It wasn't a very big house. I don't even remember what the kitchen or dining room was like. We didn't have electricity. We used kerosene lamps―coal oil, I guess they called it. That house they finally tore down a few years ago. That was in the days of bedbugs. They think that New York has something new. Well, we had it back then.

Eileen: We had bedbugs also, and when they got to a certain thickness, you packed up your night clothes. We moved out into what we called “the shack”. It had beds in there for the apple pickers. We moved out there, and then they put a pot of sulfur inside of a tub of water, lit the sulfur, and let it burn and smoke. That got rid of the bedbugs. Then we had to air the house out for a whole day before we could move back in. [laughs]

John: That house that we were in had kind-of makeshift plaster walls, laths and plaster, and the bed bugs would get into that. The only way that we could keep them out of the bed, which we didn't because they would crawl up on the ceilings and drop down. We'd take a soup can or something and put coal oil in that and then set it under all four legs of the bed so they couldn't crawl up.
Eileen: Yeah, we set our bed legs in cans of water.
John: Oh, no, we used kerosene or something like that, 'cause they just wouldn't live in that. Before we moved out to Farmer, we had horses. Dad farmed with horses. When he left there, he somehow acquired a wheel-tractor, and got rid of the horses. So, we didn't have horses out there.
Eileen: We had horses also. We had a team of horses. One time, Laura and I begged to ride on the horse. They were taking it to the corral. So, Mom consented, and she had to open the gate into the corral. Well, the horse wouldn't stop. There was a wire across the top of the gate, and it just scooped Laura and I off onto the ground. [laughs]


6. Were there any special items in the house that you remember?

Eileen: The only special item that we had that I can think of... We had an ironing board that folded up onto the wall. Then when you wanted to iron, you let it down, and a leg went down, and you ironed right there. Another thing was our stove―it was a range. We had a warming oven over the top of the top of the stove, and so we would put our biscuits and things like that... fried chicken and things like that up in there to keep them warm while Mom made gravy and all that kind of stuff.

John: Yeah, we had one of those. We finally got one new enough that even had a hot-water tank on the end of it.
Eileen: Oh, ours had too. A reservoir, they called it.
John: They put coil pipe deals in where the grates were at, and that heated the water.
Eileen: Oh, it was like this [motions with her hands], and then you lifted this up and dipped out hot water.
John: Out there at Farmer, that's where we got that kind of stove. We had a tank up overhead, clear up in the attic that we pumped from the well up to there. So we had inside water, but with the heating coils there it would get the hot water into the hot water tank until it got to boiling. It would even bubble in the tank up there [chuckles].
Eileen: We never had a hot water tank... just the reservoir.
John: We used to have our baths out there on Saturday in a little round tub. Grace would get her bath first, then Steve or I'd get our bath next, but you didn't change the water [chuckles]. We had a... I don't know what kind of washing machine it was, but it... I think you cranked on it at first to agitate the agitator. Then Dad finally found a little single-cylinder engine to put on it, and we used that to run the washing machine. We didn't have a lot of water out there at Farmer. We were like her (Eileen). We had a garden, a beef, and pigs, and chickens, and a turkey. I remember a turkey we had. You ought to be careful when you went out, because he would tail you around and pick at you. He got us into the barn one time and wouldn't let us out. He finally went by the wayside [chuckles].

7. What is your earliest childhood memory?
John: Earliest? I would say going to school―first grade. Of course, I was six years old too. The only one earlier than that was seeing my grandpa laying in bed before he died. That was in '36.

Eileen: My earliest memory is when I was probably about 3 or 4 and my aunt Theo, Mom's sister, they lived about 2 or 3 miles beyond us. They had a car, and so on her way to Tonasket, she'd stop and see if we needed groceries. Then she'd stop on the way back with our groceries, and she'd usually give us a sucker or a piece of a candy bar or something. We were always glad to see Aunt Theo. [laughs]

John: Yeah, the earliest car I can remember Dad had was about a '27/'28 Chevrolet touring car. It's a full cab. Then he splurged and bought a brand new '36 Ford 4-door sedan for $900. We had that for a long time, 'til brother Tom was driving it to school, and I don't know what it was that he ran into and busted the grill up. So, after that it didn't have a grill. It just had a radiator in it.


8. Describe the personalities of your family members.
Eileen: Mom was very... what do you want to say? She made us mind, but she was kind. Dad was kind enough, but he was strict. You did what he said, or else! Laura and I usually got along pretty good, but we'd have our spats, and we'd say, [makes sound], and then they'd say, “well, [makes noise]”. It would just go right back and forth until we got our face slapped.

John: Our family... We mostly got along pretty good, except brother Tom. We thought he'd thought he knew everything, so... Yeah, he was older than the rest of us. Steve and I got along pretty good. We were within a year-and-a-half of each other, so... Then Grace was... she might have been 3 or 4 years younger. (She was) The only girl... The only living girl in the family there. There had been others, but they had died early. So most of the time we got along pretty good. Tom, when he got drafted... I think he was drafted into the army. So, that allowed Steve and I to rule the roost.

9. What kind of games did you play growing up?

Eileen: Hopscotch
John: How about kick-the-can? Of course we did a lot of hiding... wanted to be it and then go hide. We had a chopping block or something. There was a can sittin' on top of it. Then when every got running around looking for you, if you were hid, you could run in, knock the can off... so you were safe.


10. What was your favorite toy and why?

John: I think our favorite when we was out there was rolling a tire around. We used to roll those through the chicken manure and everything else. We did a lot of that. Then as far as toys, back in those days the inner-tubes were rubber. They'd stretch, and we'd make ourselves rubber guns and shoot each other. If you made a rifle, you'd tie 2 or 3 of them together, you know, so you had something... and if you hit anybody, it would just wrap them. [chuckles] We used to do a lot of that. You know, there was nothing else to do. You never went to town.

Eileen: My favorite toy was a doll. I had a rag doll. Then later years, I got a ceramic doll. You just didn't touch that.


11. What was your favorite thing to do for fun (movies, beach, etc.)?

Eileen: Go to my Aunt Theo's place, because she had 4 girls and 3 boys. I was the baby. I was the youngest of the clan, and I got lots of attention.

John: Well, that almost stems back to the rubber guns again, because usually they were about that long [holds hands 18 inches apart] 'cause that's about all the inner-tube would stretch. We'd walk up and down the lane, because it was just two dirt tracks. In the summertime the grasshoppers would get in there, and we'd walk up and down shootin' grasshoppers... and that's fun. [laughs] We didn't get to town or anything, so we weren't, uh... Other than going to the school there, to the 8th grade, we didn't really mingle with anybody.


12. Did you have family chores? What were they? Which was your least favorite?

John: Oh boy! Hoeing in the garden... Tom and I were supposed to hoe a certain amount of the garden or we couldn't have any supper. So, we fiddled around and didn't hoe and didn't hoe. So, we couldn't have any supper. So, when the rest of them sat down at the table, we knew they were sat down. We had a root cellar. They [Eileen's family] no doubt had one too. We went and snuck down there and got a quart of peaches and ate them with our fingers.
Eileen: We fed the chickens, we fed the rabbits, and we had to clean the table. After a meal we didn't have to do the dishes when we were young, but we did later on. That was most of it.
John: That was something we did too, was trade off washing and drying the dishes. We didn't like that either.


13. Did you receive an allowance? How much? Did you save your money or spend it?

Eileen: We didn't even hear about an allowance.
John: Some of the kids that we went to school with were, but we were always told, “You've got a bed to sleep in, you've got three meals a day, and all the clothes... You didn't have to buy your own clothes.”
Eileen: Once in a while, when we went to town to get groceries, we would get a penny, and we could get a sucker. So we were happy. [laughs]
John: We occasionally got down to Douglas, and the lady down there during the war, she knew we didn't have much. Sugar was rationed, flower was rationed, and we'd go down there more than once, and she'd have a five pound bag of sugar shoved under the counter. Then she'd put it in our thing, but uh...
When we'd ride down, there was a service station right across the street, and whenever we had an occasion to go in there, he'd always have these licorice cigarettes with the fire on the end or pipes. We liked the pipes because they had fire in the bowl. So we'd get those every once... I think they were about a penny a piece. Dad would get us one of those. [laughs] That's about the only smoking we really did.


14. What was school like for you as a child? What were your best and worst subjects?
Where did you attend grade school? High school? College?

Eileen: I started in the first grade in Tonasket and then clear through the 12th grade at Tonasket. I think my favorite subject was reading. Arithmetic was the one I didn't like the most.
John: We went through the 8th grade out at Happy Home. My favorite was math: add, subtract, and multiply. I could beat the eighth graders on most of that. We didn't have... I don't think we would have called it literature... reading, yeah. A lot of that stuff we didn't have out there, but we had the basics―learning to read and write.


15. What school activities and sports did you participate in?

John: I turned out for basketball, and I got to play a little bit of that. We didn't have a very big team. We didn't have a very big school. That's in high school. There wasn't any of that except for playing anti-I-over. Did you play any anti-I-over the schoolhouse? We'd choose teams on each side of the schoolhouse, and then had a ball and threw it up over. If it went up over, you tore around the other side to see if you could catch the ones on the other side. Pretty soon, you had them all on one side. Basketball in high school... I don't know if I got four letters, but I got three letters anyway. I played baseball... pitched in baseball. Football, I turned out for football, but I never did really get to play. I got to keep the bench warm.
Eileen: We didn't participate in much sports. We had noon-hour baseball, which we all enjoyed. Then in high school, we always went to the basketball games and cheered. We never were on a team. I was on a team for a little while, and the girl's basketball was so much different from the boys basketball. It wasn't even fun. We always tried to get to the school's basketball games and cheer for them.
John: One of the entertainments that we had out at grade school, there was one of the kids that had a bicycle. [laughs] We'd take turns wearing his bicycle out. Of course, he had about three miles or so to ride his bike. No buses.


16. Do you remember any fads from your youth? Popular hairstyles? Clothes?

Eileen: We were too poor. In high school, I remember the miniskirts. Other than that...
John: Chewing gum was on of them. We had one kid that would put a whole package in his mouth. Then the same kid had a pair of light colored jeans and a dark pair, and his mother would cut them in in two then sew the two so that one side was one color and the other the other color. That was Gene Armour.


17. Who were your childhood heroes?

John: Well they were on the radio: Captain Midnight, Tom Mix, and I know there's more of them.
Eileen: Little Orphan Annie. I can't remember anybody else.


18. What were your favorite songs and music?

John: We had lots of music. I played in the high school band. The only music we had in grade school was somebody trying to sing. We didn't really listen to the radio that much, of course TVs weren't. So, we'd just listen to the mystery program and that kind of stuff. Dad and mom didn't listen to that kind of stuff either. (Favorite music in high school?) I had lots of them. I've got a stack of sheet music about that thick. [holds fingers about 2 to 3 inches apart]
Eileen: Yeah, we had favorite songs then, but I can't remember what they were.


19. Did you have any pets? If so, what kind and what were their names?

Eileen: Okay, we always had a dog, and his name was Pup. Then I always had a cat or two. If I had any problems, I would take my cat and go out and sit on the south side of the house. That cat would listen to all my problems.

John: We had a dog that I remember. It was during the war. This lady was hitch hiking. I don't know where she was going. She was headed east, and she had this little pup―a little cocker spaniel. It was just a pup, and she walked down to the house with that pup and wanted to know if we wanted to take that dog because it was a burden to her and couldn't keep up with her. She couldn't carry it. So, we had that little cocker spaniel for quite awhile, but we finally had to get rid of him, because when the neighbor kids would come over and we would get to rousting around. He'd try to bite somebody. (His name?) I don't know whether he even had one. I don't know if we really named him, but he was a cute dog. You know, he was small but, he got mean.

Eileen: (Your family had a parrot?) That parrot was given to us I think when we were in junior high. One of the merchants in Tonasket had the parrot, and they had to get rid of it. They were never at home, so they gave it to us kids. Her name was Queenie. She would say, “Queenie's a nice bird! Queenie's a nice bird!” [laughs]


20. What was your religion growing up? What church, if any, did you attend?

Eileen: For me it was the same as it is now. No name, because Jesus took no name. We gathered in the homes. We gave our testimonies, and read a little scripture that had appealed to us during the week, and just took Jesus as our guide.

John: I'll have to say, I didn't have any. The folks belonged to what they called the Federated Church, which was about three different denominations. We never hardly went. When we got older, they had us, myself and sister Grace, join the... what did they call them? It was a young group that uh... Our preacher there was even one of our relatives. We never learned anything. That was about it until I run onto her (Eileen) and started to going to meetings and whatnot, and I joined that too. So, that's what it is today.


21. Were you ever mentioned in a newspaper? What paper? Date?

Eileen: I was mentioned when I had my tonsils out.
John: Well, I don't know, 'cause I can imagine that it was probably mentioned when I got shoved off in the army and overseas and maybe when I got home. Other than that, I haven't done anything to get newsworthy.

Eileen: You and I were in the paper when we got married. We had our picture in the paper.


22. Who were your friends when you were growing up?

Eileen: My friends growing up were my cousins, the Thorntons. When I was in school, my special friends were Jessie Browning and Donna and Vera Stevens. They were our neighbors up the road about a mile or so.
John: Well, I can think of Neil Peterson and Wesley Badger―the three of us. We used to chum around all the time with in a range. In grade school you didn't go too far. We used to go Halloweening together. When we were walking this mile of gravel road, they used to have fences along the side. The ground squirrels have holes there. So, we couldn't take any water from the schoolhouse 'cause they'd had to haul it. So, we'd get up to the end of the road there at the highway where Neil Peterson lived, and we'd fill a bucket with water
and go back down the line and pour it in and scare the squirrels out. I don't think we ever killed any. We got 'em out on top the ground, but then you couldn't catch 'em. But we did. The folks never said anything about us taking so long to get home. Those were our pals.

23. What world events had the most impact on you while you were growing up? Did any of them personally affect your family?

Eileen: The most nerve-shattering news to me was when war was declared in 1941. I was in junior high at that time. The most cheerful news was when the war was over.

John: It affected the family. My older brother was already in. Then when Steve and I come of age, of course we got drafted, then we went in. I went to California for basic training down at Camp Cooke, down there. Then went overseas on that ship. That's the one that I went over to Japan in. It was a converted Liberty ship. They put bunks in it, and it wasn't built for hauling troops, but that's what it was. I don't remember what we rode to go from Japan down to Korea. We were on a ship though. I remember when we were riding over, it took about two weeks to get over there, and we hit a storm up out of Alaska on that poor old Liberty ship. During the night, it broke wave underneath it, and it was just a crash. You would have thought it broke the thing in half. Anyway, for entertainment, we used to play cards out on the hold. This kid from Montana, I don't remember just where in Montana it was, but he always wore these big Ray-Ban sunglasses. He'd get on the side where the sun was shining in his eyes, and we'd get to telling him, sitting clear over across from him, what card to play, because we could see 'em in his glasses. [laughs] It took him the longest time to figure out what we were doing. He was good-hearted though. It was a lot of fun.


24. Describe a typical family dinner. Did you all eat together as a family? Who did the cooking? What were your favorite foods?

Eileen: Mom did all the cooking. A typical family dinner would be fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, a vegetable, maybe a cake, Mom used to make a wonderful chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and then they'd have coffee and us kids would have milk fresh from the barn. We never had company. That was just our way of living.

John: We always sat down at the table. Everybody sat at the table together. Basically, we had practically the same thing. Like she (Eileen) had said, most everything we were eating, we had raised: our garden, our chickens, and butcher the hogs in the fall. Practically the only time that the neighbors really came we would butcher six or eight pigs. Then the neighbors would come over and help. Help to cut them up then... When we first moved to that place out there at Farmer there was a smokehouse out there, and boy, you could smell that off across the yard. It was really smokey, but we never used it and finally tore it down.


25. How were holidays (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) celebrated in your family? Did your family have special traditions?

Eileen: It was like any other day, except mom would bake us a birthday cake. Then IF they could afford a little, small gift, we got a little gift. If not, we had our cake. We had homemade ice-cream all the time, because we had cows and chickens. We needed the eggs. So, we had ice-cream a lot to use up the cream. We'd get the ice out of the river. They would store these chunks of ice in sawdust. (They would last until August.)

John: We didn't have much ice-cream out there. Occasionally. Of course when we got older... Don was about four years old, maybe, when we made ice-cream out there at Iverson's place.

(Thanksgiving?)
Eileen: We'd have fried chicken, pumpkin pies, lemon pies, taters and gravy, salad, and vegetables.
John: We very well could have had mincemeat pie. It would have been venison, cause they used to use the neck muscle. ...and potatoes, probably, chicken and giblet gravy. Yeah, we had a turkey or two, but he was too mean.
I think mostly we ate by ourselves (without neighbors).
Eileen: Yeah, we did too. We didn't socialize in those days, except with the Thorntons, because they were our relatives.

26. How is the world today different from what it was like when you were a child?

Eileen: Oh, it's much freer. I mean, you're free to do whatever you choose to do. Back in those days, you didn't do anything you didn't want the neighbors to talk about, to laugh about... You were very careful.

John: Yeah, a lot of that just didn't get around. We had occasions where, you know, there were tragedies and what... but, everybody felt it.


27. Who was the oldest relative you remember as a child? What do you remember about them?

Eileen: The oldest one that I remember is my grandpa Pyeatt. He lived in Lyndon (WA) with my aunt Ada. What I remember about him was: he had snowy white hair, and I don't think he had a beard or mustache. I can still see him sitting there and reading the papers, and that's about all he could do at that time. Grandma Bates was his sister I think (note: Grandma Bates was Henry John Pyeatt's mother, not his sister. She had remarried later in life and acquired the name Bates.). (The name) Tennant―that was on Dad's mother's side, but his mother died when he was young, so he never really knew her that well. (note: This is also incorrect. The name Tennant was Grandma Adalina (Pyeatt) Bates maiden name. Preston “Poppie” Pyeatt's mother was Laura Jane Ferguson. She died at age 42 of apoplexy.) Aunt Ada was the oldest daughter (likely named after her grandmother Adalina Bates), the oldest of Dad's sisters. She raised a family.

John: The oldest one I can remember was Grandpa in 1936. We didn't even see our relatives a whole lot of times. But he, I can remember him laying in bed there before he died in '36. So, that would have been the oldest one, well, other than Grandma―his wife. So, that would have been the oldest ones.

28. What do you know about your family surname?

Eileen: Actually “Pyeatt” was originally “Piat”.


29. What stories have come down to you about your parents? Grandparents? More distant ancestors?

Eileen: Well, I know that Uncle Floyd was in the First World War. I don't know if he went overseas or not. I can't remember that. My grandparents and my mother and her family came out from Virginia when their store failed in Virginia. That's about all I know.

John: Dad went over to France during World War I, but apparently he didn't get hurt over there. Mom had been a teacher. (Your grandfather?) Sister Grace was supposed to have a picture of his mom. He swore up and down, that if you looked at her, she would have just walked out of a tipi. That was very possible in those days, 'cause that would have been in the early 1800's. That's the thing though. In those days, the past was the past. You didn't discuss it or bring it up, or stuff like that. It would have probably been better if it had been. So, you'd had an idea what you were living through. We used to be out there and entertain ourselves.


30. Are there any stories about famous or infamous relatives in your family?

Eileen: No, everybody was common. [laughs]
John: No jailbirds or anything like that.

31. Are there any physical characteristics that run in your family?
Eileen: We've all got four legs and three feet.
John: I'm short. Physical characteristics?

32. Are there any special heirlooms, photos, bibles or other memorabilia that have been passed down in your family?
John: Not in our family.


33. When and how did you meet your spouse? What did you do on dates?

Eileen: He was working for the Barneses down at Waterville. She was a sister to Emily Laraman, who was our friend. They came up and we all met, and there was John.
John: Oh, love at second sight! [chuckles]
Eileen: (for a date) We drove to Spokane for a cup of coffee with another couple for a cup of coffee from Coulee Dam.

John: One of the times, the two of us were up to Oroville to the Lehman's place, and they had a pond there in the wintertime. We decided we were going to have a game of hockey. We didn't have a puck. We had the sticks, but no puck, and we found a turtle. We'd get him out on his back and hit him with the stick, and the legs would just come out. [laughs] We finally hit him a little to hard. We played with him for quite a while.


34. What was it like when you proposed (or were proposed to)? Where and when did it happen? How did you feel?

John: We were sitting in the car.


35. What do you believe is the key to a successful marriage?

Eileen: Giving in to one another, being honest and true and faithful and loving and kind and beautiful and meek.
John: ...not running around with other women.


36. How did you find out your were going to be a parent for the first time?
Eileen: Well, I probably had nausea.
John: Yeah, she probably felt nauseated.


37. Why did you choose your children's names?
Eileen: Well, I was going to name Don... I was going to name him “John” after John. He said no, there's already too many Johns in the family.
John: Yeah, because my dad's was John.
Eileen: So, it was “Don”.
(and for April)
Eileen: I named her April Elaine after me, but not Eileen... Elaine.
(and Marla)
Eileen: Oh, it was just a pretty name.
John: ...and “Keith”, it just sounds good with Don.


38. What was your profession and how did you choose it?

Eileen: I was a secretary.
John: I was just a dumb farmhand.


39. What is the one thing you most want people to remember about you?
Eileen: Well, I would like them to think that I was polite and nice.


40. Do you have a favorite bible verse or passage? What is it?

Eileen: I don't have a favorite. I believe in the whole bible. I like to read in the New Testament, because the Old Testament was... you might say, put away when Jesus came. The New Testament was the new life.

John: ...more or less is the Old Testament revealed.


41. Do you have any phrases or sayings that you would always use? What are they?

Eileen: “Oh, for Pete's sake!”


42. If you served in the military, when and where did you serve and what were your duties?

John: I was drafted in '52, just before my birthday. Got on the bus just before my birthday and went to Fort Lewis (WA). Then I went down to Camp Cooke, California. That was where I got the impression of California. I never in the world would want to live in California, 'cause it was on the beach, and it was desert. That's why it was a camp. From there, we shipped out and went to... Well, first we went down to San Francisco and got on a boat. ...up the coast up to up around by... stopped at Adak, Alaska and got water, for the ship that is. Then down to Japan. We landed in the neighborhood of Tokyo. Then we spent about six weeks there. Then we went down to Inchon (Incheon), Korea. That's where we landed there, in the wintertime. (Was there snow?) Oh, yeah. All the windows were gone out of the buildings. The Salvation Army was there with coffee and dried-out doughnuts. Then we climbed on open trucks, like a regular truck with cattle racks on it. A bunch of us got on the back of that and likely froze going north. I can't tell you where we landed there either, but it was cold. Everybody just huddled together with what they had on. And we spent... a camp. I don't know what it would have been, but it was right around Pusan (Busan). That is where they brought in a lot of North Korean prisoners of war. I can still see them unloading out of the LST (Landing Ship Tank). They'd just drop the front door, and then the prisoners would come out. They'd throw them out on the beach and made 'em squat down. The reason for making them squat down is because if anybody got up―they had to get up to get away―they'd shoot 'em. So, they pretty well stayed down. So, we spent quite a bit of time around there. Then they moved us up to the line, which was already established. There was no fighting going on there. Down in the Pusan area was where they had a lot of prisoners. I don't know whether the papers had written anything about it, but no doubt did. They had wells there, that they had killed prisoners and just threw them in the well. There was a lot of that going on. 'Course they were... those... boy they didn't... those were North Koreans and Chinese. Boy, you didn't trust them for anything!
(What were your duties?) I was in a heavy duty mortar outfit 4.2―four inch mortar outfit. I had worked up to a forward observer, where you go on ahead and scout out the area and find targets. We'd have to call in coordinates back to our base where they would... work it up on the maps for shooting. (What was your protection) Stay out of sight. We were standing up there on the top and there was a bunker over across the valley... this other ridge, and there was a bunker over there. Every so often they would wheel out a cannon and shoot and then wheel it back in the hill. Well, we finally got zeroed in on that, and we got a navy ship that was―I don't know―I'd say at least five miles out. They called in the coordinates to that ship, and he fired three rounds: one long, one short, and the other one went right in the hole. And it just... logs flew all over the place. I don't think anybody lived through it, but no more cannon, anyway. We didn't get shot at. They'd shoot over us, because they were shooting at something too.
(How were the winter conditions?) Some of them pretty cold. We didn't encounter a lot of snow. We had snow, but it would get pretty cold. We had winter gear. We took our baths in a helmet. [laughs] (How many went with you?) Up on the hill, there was probably three or four of us. There was always a higher ranking person with us, like a lieutenant... a sergeant maybe.
(How long did it take to get mail?) Oh, not long. It goes through an APO first. I would say, probably a week. She (Eileen) used to send cookies over to me. She was the cookie lady. They'd all gather right around. When we were in Camp Cooke, we had quite a few Hispanics, because it was the California National Guard, 40th Division. We were drafted into it to bring it up to war strength. There would be packages coming in and a lot of the Mexican guys in there would... Their family would send them peppers in jars. Boy, they'd gather around and gobble those up in a hurry.
(Did you ever smoke?) Not to really say I smoked. Everybody tries one, until you find out that...
We weren't too pleased with General Eisenhower, or President Eisenhower, at the time, because we were drafted in for 18 months. We got about halfway through that, and he decided that he needed to put another six months on us. So, we ended up with two years, which I didn't stay in. They let me out a couple of months early. That was kind of neat, because you serve time... When you get points up on the front, you collect points faster. So, we were collecting points. We didn't know how many we had. We were in a bunker that somebody else had built. We were all in bed, and they come in and said, “Well, you guys better get your stuff together and ready. You're going home in the morning.” So, it didn't take long to gather it up. (We came back on) the “General”. [USNS General Nelson M Walker] Anyway, we were going to land at San Francisco. We got down there and we got into such a wind, it blew us clear up onto the coast of Washington. We had to go back down (to California). I would have had a short swim―it would have been short!

(Did you have any interesting foods while you were there?)
We were up in Japan. We were in this restaurant, and I was with this kid from Bellingham (WA) and another guy. We ordered soup. We were eating this soup, and the kid from Bellingham asked the waitress what this piece of meat was. She told him it was octopus, and he wouldn't eat it anymore. [laughs]


(Did you keep any of your gear or clothing?) Yeah, Don's got all the clothing.

(What was your title?) Corporal.

(Were you proud to serve?) Well, were were in there, at first, against our will and better judgement, but after you got in there, everybody else is in the same thing. So, you could have some fun too.


43. What wise advise would you give a grandchild on their wedding day?

Eileen: I would give advice to love one another and to consider one another and give in to one another―compromise.
John: Be true to each other.


44. Did you have a honeymoon? If so, Where did you go?

John: We went over to the coast and spent the night with Viva and Edgar.
Eileen: Then we went down the coast and back home.

45. Did you go house shopping for your first house?

Eileen: No, because that one was available, and it was cheap.
John: ...and it was small.
(How much did you pay?)
John: $3500.
(How much was your current home?)
John: I think we paid $15,000 for that one. So, we went from a one bedroom house...
Eileen: To make a long story short, we moved to town.
John: We moved into $15,000 worth. We didn't know how we were going to pay for it.
Eileen: We had six bedrooms then.
John: See, that was pretty good. We went from one bedroom to three bedroom to six.
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