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I’ve discovered, looking at the past, puts a high-powered microscope on the changes in the present. About once a month, Before Morning Breaks, travels back to an 1871 Oregon pioneer settlement named Two Pan. Whores, mercantile men,  and miners mix with settlers trying to “prove-up” their free land.

The goings-on of Two Pan are inspired by real-life journals.  If you’d like to catch up on their humor and hardships, click Weekly Gossip on the Two Pan tab above.  I’ve known for a year this post was coming, but when it came time to write it…I kept putting it off.

To my long-kind subscribers, who’ve e’d me with requests, “We haven’t heard from Two Pan lately.”…thanks for the nudge.  There’s not a speck of humor in the following missive Violet Spinrad sends to her sister in Nebraska. Not even a light side…

…it’s the post I’ve dreaded to write.

September 10, 1871
Dearest Sis

I barely have the will to put pen to paper. My heart bleeds and will surely stop beating. A man rode by the homestead, hell bent for leather, telling us the Indians were angry about the broken treaty. What with Bricker dead, he urged us to move to the stockade. I didn’t tell him Bricker would’ve been drunk, and I would’ve gladly given him to the Indians if he were alive. We weren’t leaving our land.  Me and the 6 kids carved dug outs in the hard earth to hide in.  Nothing came of the scare…another enemy attacked instead.

McAllister, our oldest came down with diphtheria.  I gave him nettle tea and that seemed to help, but Maggie started coughing two days later, and Jedidiah had the croup the next day.  We covered our mouths with kerchiefs, but in the following week, the two 10-year-olds, Sophie and Rowen, had skin of a bluish color and they broke out in lesions.

Maggie and Jedidiah were the first to pass. They endured the strangulation disease 5 days. Mag’s thirteen-year-old heart stopped in the morning and Jed, who was a year younger, died that evening.

Oh, sis. I keep staring at my hands. No matter how many elixirs and poultices I made, no healing came through these fingers. Sophie lasted 5 days. McAllister buried her in one of the dug outs, then layed down in the next hole and died. He had lasted 21 days, I suppose because he was the oldest and strongest.

We’d all been happy that our youngest, little Lizzie, had escaped the pestilence, but when I checked her mouth, I saw those black-gray fibers of death growing up her throat. She lasted two days.

Henry Woolsey came over to look in on us. He said the doctor told him to smoke twist tobacco and fumigate his house by burning sulfur. I don’t think it worked. Although he wasn’t sick, the disease had taken his wife, child, and the school teacher that was rooming with them. Most of the children of the valley have died.

In the last three weeks, I have lost all my children but one. Henry asked me, “Where will you go now?”

 ______________

This popular video game is known as The Oregon Trail. It’s often parodied because most grade schoolers who play the game (as part of class) will tell you almost no one makes it to Oregon alive…or lives long thereafter.

NOTE: Today in the U.S., there are about 5 diphtheria cases per year.  Even with anti-toxin and meds, the death rate is 10% and recovery is slow. Since 1990, diphtheria has made a spectacular comeback in several European countries, with a high proportion of cases in adults. Protective immunity lasts only 10 years from the time of vaccination, so it’s important for adults to get a booster of tetanus-diphtheria (Td) vaccine every 10 years. (PubMed Health)

Change…Someday…we may wipe out this preventable disease.

Photo by taborcarlton
Photo Parody by Smosh

It’s been a month since I’ve shown up here.  Someday I’ll tell you of my secret carousing,  but until National Enquirer finds out and blows my cover, I’ll just keep it hush-hush and instead gust here about change in the past and present.

It’s been a while since we visited the Oregon town of Two Pan.  And you know what? No matter how much time passes…some things don’t change.  The end of the school year, even for “school marms,” has always incited dreams of another vocation.

In the beginning, Two Pan’s one-room teacher, Miss Hackbert, fought to get her job. Folks didn’t want to hire her because she wasn’t a man. It took muscle to whip or backhand a child into a respectful attitude toward education. But Miss Hackbert…oh….she had her ways.

This is what you get for wearing a Hawaiian shirt to school

She’d make an urchin stand for hours with his nose on the blackboard until the poor kid was so cross-eyed someone would have to whack him on the back of the head to get his sight untwisted.

During the last week of school, she had one of the Spinrad girls, who walloped her brother during penmanship, balancing one-legged on a stump of wood at the back of the classroom. The Spinrad boy was sitting red-faced on the girls’ side of the room. He wore a bonnet, his punishment for stabbing an ink quill in his sister’s hair.

All this was going on while the 1-3 grade pupils were chalking up their slates with a particularly challenging arithmetic problem:

A buffalo will feed 10 people for 1 month, how many buffalo will you need to feed 20 people for 3 months?*

 Miss Hackbert rubbed her eyes as she listened to answers that included deer and several wild turkeys.  She’d come to realize teaching on the edge of the world was about as easy as catching snowflakes with a candle. No one, including her, wanted to be there and classes went until July 4^th because the children couldn’t bust through the snow drifts to get to school during the winter. Maybe she should return to teach in St. Louis and civilization.

The door to the classroom smacked against the wall so hard everyone jumped. A gangly red-headed boy was shouting, and the Spinrad brother and sister scrambled out of the classroom dragging their 2 younger siblings with them.

Miss Hackbert yelled after them, watching their backsides disappear as she calculated her personal arithmetic problem.  She received a penny a day per child. She’d just lost a nickel; the equivalent to a pound of cheese or a pound of flour**. Five children she wouldn’t get paid for: the 4 Spinrads and Gus Hopkins, the red-headed truant who rarely came to class in good weather. “What was Gus shouting about?” she yelled.

Several of the girls’ hands shot up. Mary Woolsey, a seven-year-old, stood and addressed

The ringing you hear, is me, whacking you with this bell.

the teacher when called on. “Gus said they found a raggedy skeleton in the snowmelt on the trail from the mines. He had a gold-capped pocket knife, and his skull was bashed in.”

“I understand it’s hard to stay interested the last few days of school,” the teacher huffed, “but bones are not an excused distraction.”

“Everybody knows the only thing Bricker Spinrad had of value was a gold-capped knife. He was always showin’ it off,” Mary said. “That was their daddy’s bones they ran to see.”

The teacher sighed, staring out the door. The bonnet lay in the road where the oldest Spinrad boy had tossed it. That was it. On July 5th***, she’d be on a train—headed back to St. Louie.

NOTES: *Taken from White’s First Book for Arithmetic, American Book col, New York, 1890.

**From Washington.edu curriculum packets

** *2012-School still runs late here in Oregon. Kids just got released from desk duty. And the last days of the term are still full of distractions—thankfully, they aren’t skeletons.

The historical information is documented, but names changed here. Some of the birth control practices were gross and questionable. Please click here if you’d like to read something lighter.

This past week  freighter, Jonas Hopkins was set upon and robbed as he brought a wagon load of dry goods from LaGrande. He was forced to dump the mail satchel on the ground. “The perpetrators took a brown parcel of Dr. Power’s French Preventatives from the mail bag,” he said, “and two pounds of coffee beans from the buckboard.”

In an easy to carry tin

This is the 3rd incident involving the theft of condoms in the territory.  Due to the rarity of mail delivery in this hard-to-reach mining valley these hygienic products have become first-class barter goods at Opal’s Sporting Palace.

Mr. Hopkins refused to disclose who the parcel was addressed to. Until these larcenies can be stopped, the tome of Moral Physiology recommends coitus interruptus or women should wash their private inner parts with alcohol or vinegar. While not foolproof, this action may keep births to a manageable level.

Unlike large city newspapers, whose economic mainstay are notices for condoms, and cures for venereal disease, the Tattler does not run those ciphered ads in which “French” is code for contraceptive and “Portuguese” for something that induces abortion.

However for hygiene sake, we do support the

The French are so practical.

sale of cleansing syringes. Particularly the latest with changeable nozzles that can be used for both sanitizing and watering houseplants.

Also for hale living, some women wear pessaries or “womb veils” (available by mail) to correct inner problems. Doctors’ records show many ladies keep them [diaphragms] in for thirty to forty years.

Big Opal, proprietor of the Sporting Palace, said stealing all the condoms in the territory “won’t change the price for a good roll in the hay.  I tell the girls to use quarters as womb veils. It’s cheaper. Then they give ‘em to the church ladies who demand we donate to their charities, but cross the street if they see us in public.”

Woodcut from the graphicsfairy

Grubbs Mercantile would like to announce soap was on the wagon-load of goods and may be purchased immediately.

(And according to the soiled dove who shared the story, she thought the donation of “used” quarters was pretty funny.)

Source(s):America’s Women, 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges; Helpmates and Heroines by Gail Collins;

Part 1: Often, pioneers learned the hard way.

“Why do you have six children?”

Violet Spinrad nailed the young woman with a look. She hoped her stare would shut up the amply-endowed, nosy little bar nymph. She was only at the Salt Lick Saloon to see if any of the women would hire her to make a fine dress for them.Violet needed the money, so she kept her pride-filled words to herself.

We're not supposed to talk about those body parts, much less have accessories for them!!!

“Haven’t you ever heard of rubbers?” Amanda Lou dug through a chest and tossed a wax-paper packet on the dresser in front of Violet. “They used to make ‘em from pig colon, but when Goodyear vulcanized rubber in [18]44, we were freed from all that ‘with-child’ crap.”

Violet wanted to examine the packet, but she was a decent woman.  She stared straight ahead.

“Course, you got to wash them real good,” Amanda Lou sighed. “Then anoint them with petroleum jelly and put them away to use later.” She gave a wink as she tapped a narrow wooden box on her night table.

Violet wanted to ask if it worked, but she was a decent woman. She stared straight ahead.

“Bricker didn’t tell you about any of this did he?”

Violet looked at the woman.  She couldn’t help herself. What did this bar-strumpett know of her husband.

Amanda Lou gave a sad shake of her head. “I hear the gals over at Opal’s Palace use vaginal sponges and womb veils…a little cap that fits up in there.” She gave a jab to her corset- covered abdomen.” Whichever you use…it’ll keep you from having another kid.”

Where there are kids, there's always a dog you have to take care of too.

Violet couldn’t help herself.  It wasn’t decent to talk in the open about such things…but….but…. …She picked up the packet. “I’ll make you a smocked blouse in trade for this.”

Amanda Lou, nabbed the packet from Violet’s hand .  “Sorry. These things are worth more than gold out here. I’ll pay you to sew a crinoline skirt for me. Besides…” she smiled and gave Violet a light pat on the shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about Bricker. He’s never coming back.”

Part 2: In three weeks.

 (NOTE: In 1873 The U.S. Congress passed the Comstock laws. Written by dry goods merchant and anti-obscenity crusader Anthony Comstock, the law made all forms of contraception illegal. The contraceptive industry continued to flourish — but the devices were now sold to promote “feminine hygiene.”)

25cents a pull

The town meeting to build a school was held in the newly constructed Grubbs Mercantile. Ignacius Grubb has sold mule shoes, single sips of wildfire hooch through glass straws, and tobacco out of barrels since the first gold claim in Two Pan.  And still these are the only items he carries. He claims he’ll offer more variety in dry goods as soon as wagons can get over the mountain. He gladly pushed barrels against walls and corked the whiskey straw as folks disputed the necessity of schooling.

THOSE ARGUING AGAINST:

"Repugnant" is not in this speller, but erysipelatous is (see footnote)

“I need my boy in my smith shop.” Leander Dooley, best known for the distance he can spit and the speed he can hammer out a horse shoe, made a convincing argument.  “The only book-learning my son needs is to add up 50¢ per shoe. 75¢ for ox.” This brought a mumble of complaints about the 12 pennies he charges to make an ax wedge.

Mrs. XX interrupted, waving a copy of McGuffeys  ^2nd reader. “We’ve gotten along quite well with my dame-school.” Many folks felt the two days a week she taught little ones their letters in her home was sufficient.

“My girls don’t need book-learning either,” added XX. “They need spinning and cooking lessons…and how to keep a house clean.” However, a few people added that learning a bit of writing wouldn’t hurt.

THE TWO ARGUING FOR:

Mrs. Patricia Woolsey, the most vocal proponent for the school took the floor, shaking off her husband’s last-minute clutch on her arm. “If I can’t get the whores out of Two Pan,” Mrs. Woolsey stood with a shout, “I’ll at least educate our children how to spell “repugnant” when they pass them on the street.”

At this point Big Opal, matron of The Sporting Palace, arose from her back-row seat, pointing her umbrella at Mrs. Woolsey. “ I’ll donate the land and pay the teacher’s wage for the first year, on the condition that woman never pickets or publicly slanders my girls and my fine establishment again.”

A silence fell over the crowd. Mrs. Woolsey stared, then finally gave a hair’s width of a chin nod and sat down.

I'm ready for you. You little bean-nose urchins.

THE CHANGE

It was agreed the valley-folk would build the school.

Clella Hackbert would be hired at one-cent-a-day-per pupil.

And each family would provide a cord of firewood to heat the school house.

The times…they are a-changin’

*erysipelatous-an acute, febrile infectious disease. This and a number of other poly-syllabic diseases are lessons in the Speller.

Patricia Woolsey had a sewing get-together, today.

My heart wasn’t in it.  I didn’t go.

The last sewing bee I attended was at home in Nebraska.  All my neighbors gathered and helped me stitch like wildfire to make jackets and clothes for my family’s trip across the Oregon Trail.

They also sewed a Friendship quilt.  Each woman made a square with a sentiment. My best friends wrote:

Always in my heart and Prayers. Margaret

            Friends through the miles. Ada Powell

            Elspeth appliqued a bent tree on her square—she always was a little strange in the head.

Over the lonely miles, that quilt was like having a thread connecting my heart to theirs.

We wrapped Mom in that quilt. Buried her on the trail.  The cholera took her so fast we’d hardly said goodbye. There wasn’t time for a proper burying, the wagons had to keep moving. So we wrapped her tight in the quilt she’d sweated and messed and put her in a shallow grave. I watched them pile rocks on top.  The wagon leader read from a Bible.  The wind kept turning the pages as though it were in a hurry for us to leave this place.

For miles,  we’d come upon piles of clothing and quilts lying on either side of the path.  Abandoned—if they weren’t buried with the loved one. No emmigrant or Indian would touch them for fear of the cholera and typhoid.

by "KidDoc*One*

They’ll stay there until they become rags—blown away by a wind erasing the last shred of our passing.

Violet Spinrad

NOTE: More than a half million travelers passed over the Oregon Trail. Each day they traveled 15 miles, and each day they passed 250 graves—totaling 30,000 souls that never reached their intended destination.

Poor Violet.

I didn’t know what to do, but I needed money.

Do I look silky, or have I had too many Pink Elephant Childs?

I’d heard Silky Sue, had built a house next to her saloon.  I left 14-year-old, Mc’Allister in charge of the other 5 kids,  rode our spavined workhorse into Two Pan, and knocked at Mizz Sue’s back door.

I was shocked when a maid/cook/laundress woman named Georgette answered. She invited me in and told me Silky Sue would receive me in the parlor.

I about swallowed my tongue when she appeared in a blue high-necked morning dress trimmed with pleats, flounces, and ruching. I felt under-dressed, like a bucket woman in a sausage factory. I didn’t explain or apologize, but introduced myself and asked if she had any sewing I could do.

Shape them while they're young

She seemed to know of me, though I’ve never set eyes on the woman.  She asked if I could fix a corset so it couldn’t be tight laced.  I told her I could sew anything, even a saddle. She instructed Georgette to take me over to the saloon and collect corsets.  We went upstairs over the bar to see “the girls.”

They invited us into their room, even though they were attired in undergarments. I didn’t know where to look when talking, so I followed Georgette’s example and stared them in the face. It seems the saloon girls only wore their fancy Italian silk and velvet dresses when they worked. Those soft fabrics required a firm foundation and they had the strangest corsets I’d ever seen special ordered from Spain.

Their foundations didn’t slip over their heads like mine to be tightened by someone else (which I never wore taut). Theirs had metal busks down the front so they could be taken off and on without help…just like a shirt.

The gal named, Elyse, threw a fit when she learned I was altering the lacing.  “A girl’s ambition is to have a waist measurement not exceeding her age, and marry at 21,” she yelled, throwing one of her corsets at me.

Eat grits, Scarlett O'Hara!! I"ve got your 17 inch waist beat.

Georgette pointed a finger and told her, “Missy, that boat has sailed. If you’d stop squeezing off your air and passing out every night, you might be married to one of these toothless miners by now.”

The other saloon girl, Red, had nothing for me to sew.  She was a singer and never wore her corset tight. She was explaining how she needed to breathe big when we heard yelling and the sound of  fighting on the stairway.

Georgette pushed me against a wall, murmuring a prayer as the door flew open.  A man lurched in. Drunk. Cussing. He stumbled toward Red with a knife and stabbed her.

The two men who’d wrestled with him on the stairway scrambled into the room and knocked the drunk down. Red banged him on the head with her porcelain wash basin, shattered pieces flying over the room.

“Hades Fire!!” Red said, examining herself.  The knife had slit her silk camisole, but bounced off the whalebone stays of her overbust corset. She was fine except for the sliced undergarments. “I guess I do have some mending for you, after all, ” she told me.

(Note: True resource material.  The names have been changed to inflict humor on the innocent.  Thanks to Fifty-Four and Half, Momma’sMoneyMatters, and GeorgetteSullins for making comments in previous posts which auditioned them for the characters they played here in Two Pan.)

February 9, 1871                                                Editor: LinkingModifiers-LateBloomerBuds

In the past week, Big Opal has employed her usual form of advertising. With her white steeds hooked to her carriage and seats piled with  loud buxom sporting women, she visited the mining camps

Fully clothed, the horizontal experts still offered “a little lookie” as they bent over, handing out hollow-centered chocolates containing notes such as: “Ask for Roamin’ Retta”.  Others gave calling cards and flyers announcing their big event.

The hussy-laden conveyance also traveled back and forth through Two Pan’s thoroughfare.  The only customers in the street were two old dogs lying in the sun. It therefore seems the scarlet ladies’ only purpose was to harass Silky Sue in her saloon.

What'd're you starin' at?

Big Opal pointed toward the Salt Lick, shouting at anyone who would listen. “This should put that hog waller out of business.”

Not to be outdone, the Saloon is offering half price on their most popular drink: A Pink

Takes away whatever's weighing you down--including your gold.

Elephant Child. A generous mix of  whiskey, beer and a big shot of iodine. Miners believe it offers health benefits as well as being lucky.

Love is in the air this week.

It is recommend that all decent citizens stay off the streets.

Alice Hopkins showed up at my door. She was out of salt.  Can you imagine? That’s like

Violet's Tasty Chicken Bone-Salt Soup.

being out of air. We’re so poor the only thing on our kitchen table is elbows—but we’ve got salt. She warned her husband, the Colonel, they were almost out of salt, but he said it could wait.

Honestly, if the Colonel hadn’t hired some men to bring them across the Oregon Trail, he’d be tramping through South America right now, wondering where he’d made a wrong turn.

Alice was proud of her little salt throne. It sits on her table with a tablespoon of salt in it. Said it was a family treasure, passed from mother to

via Association of Small Collectors of Antique Silver (ASCAS)

daughter since the old folks left Russia.

Holds 3# of salt and my whole fist

My big salt box hangs on the wall right next to the stove so the salt won’t clump.  I have my hand in it at least twenty times a day.

• Perspiration stains: Dampen with a mix of saltwater. They fade right out. Of course, I doubt if the Colonel does enough work to sweat.
• Insect Bites: At times mosquitoes were so thick on the Trail, we’d eat them when our mouths opened to talk. A paste of salt and lard ends the itching.
• Candles: After a quick soak in saltwater, they smoke less and burn longer. I soak my clothespins, too (but I don’t burn them).
• Wash Day: A final rinse in salt water keeps the clothes from freezing on the line.
• From rinsing a sore eye to descaling fish—I use salt.

When a person says “You’re the salt of the earth,” it means you make yourself useful in any situation.   Bricker hasn’t been around in a while.  I believe he’s abandoned me and the 6 kids for the gold fields of California. The best I can say of the man is—his salt has lost its flavor.

(NOTE: Besides seasoning food, there are over 14,000 uses for salt-*Saltworks:America’s SeaSalt company)

It’s hard to change an empire when you’re stuck in the house. The Daughters of Two Pan marched in front of the whore house and saloon, but we scattered like twit sparrows when that hussy with the jutting big bosom shot at us.  We haven’t been back since.

A colorful colorectal cure

My two little ones came down with the grippe*.  I sliced up a huge bowl of white onions and a few wrinkled radishes, just like my grandma used to do.  Covered it with oil and forced the boys to eat it. Then they washed it down with a hot tea mixed with honey and schnapps.

From the way they sulked and hollered, you’d think the cure was killing them.  Silly boys.

Then I wallpapered their chests with a mustard plaster and put them to bed. The whole shebang made sweat ooze from their pores like they were being roasted alive. (Although, Henry, my husband, said it was the schnapps tea that made them mercifully delirious.)

Perhaps, he’s right. I startled awake from my beside vigil and Elias, the six-year-old, was absent.  Henry found him headed down the road—sound asleep. I attached a string from his toe to my arm so I’d  know if he tried to fly the coop again. I’m literally tied to the bedside, pouring water into sweating boys, instead of running harlots out of town and bringing a school teacher to this valley.

Henry says the west has its own culture. “Don’t hurry change.”

Bull Hockey!!! Even though Henry has a touch of frostbite from busting ice off animals’ water troughs and caulking cow’s ears,  he’s talked himself into loving Oregon. There’s not a doctor for 18 miles, and for that, I’m making him take off the mustard plasters attached to the boys’ chests.

Let me tell you, it’s hard to change an empire with kids hollering that it feels like a layer of their skin is being ripped off.

These remedies are journal memories of the 1800s and not recommended for use (even if you like onion, radishes and schnapps)

           (*grippe=influenza, sweating sickness, Spanish fever)

“Can you stitch up the dog?”

That’s what every woman wants to hear when she’s cooking dinner.  The kids were poking each other with sticks and into this chaos, Henry put the hound dog on the table. I swear my husband grew up in a cow pasture.

Oregon was not Patricia Woolsey's idea.

The dog lay there, quaking, with a big flap of skin hanging off his side. The children began crying.

Kaiser, the dog, who was savvy enough to avoid oxen hooves and coyote teeth for 2,000 miles across the Oregon trail, wasn’t quick enough to avoid the horns of our bull.

This was the kind of thing Roxie Poley enjoys. “Haul the hound over to her,” I said. They have a coyote that helps her husband track bears. She’d love stitching fur together.

Just a quick left turn, and we'll be in Oregon

Besides….tromping  to this isolated place was never my idea. I wasn’t even asked. Henry just showed me a flyer and announced we were moving to Oregon.

I finally poured carbolic acid and warm water over the wound and sewed the flesh shut with big Xs.

All I could think was: This  dog better not break my only needle. I covered the stitches with turpentine and lard when I finished so flies wouldn’t get into the wound.

That mutt lay around for two weeks, barely eating, before he decided to live. I threatened the boys with a whooping if they told anyone I stitched up the dog.

Try and lose this in a haystack!

There are only 4 darning needles in the valley. We women lend them to one another. The needle is threaded with a long measure of thread then stuck in a potato for transport.

I don’t want people referring to my needle as the Dog Needle. I’d die of shame. I’m trying to bring a bit of culture the the settlers, whores, and dirt of Two Pan.

They stink. And soot off. But what are you going to do? Besides, through the whole process, I learned why Violet Spinrad won’t picket the whore house or saloon.

We Woolseys are probably the most prosperous folks in the valley, but with oil being 18 miles over the mountain and more expensive than a miner’s widget, we rarely light a lamp.  When my last wax candle was down to a nub, I asked Violet Spinrad if she’d help make tallow candles. I have a 12-hole mold which forms a nicer candle than what she does (puts dirt in a jar and hollows out the center.)

Violet Spinrad renders the amount of fat in a pizza if it had been invented yet.

Even though it was a gray freezing day, she arrived bundled against the cold with her three youngest children. I made Mr. Woolsey build an outside fire to keep the rendering stink out of the house. It took about an hour to dice and cook the fat into oil. During that time I found out…

Moving to Oregon, was all Violet’s idea. It was the only way they’d own a piece of land because Bricker’s a …she didn’t use the word, laggard, but that’s what she meant.  And then Bricker—

She got quiet when the kids gathered around as we strained out cooked gristle. I told the children to give the crispins to the birds, but her little ones ate it like it was candy.

I thought I could get the rest of the story while we simmered the oil again to get more stink out, but she suddenly became busy herding everyone into wick-making duties.

One child held an end of a fabric strip and another twisted the free end until it kinked up on itself.  I have to say, Violet is the best there ever was at threading a homemade wick in the candle tube. I rarely get the knot centered and oil leaks out the bottom. Or my wicks are slightly crooked, and the candle won’t come out of the mold. Violet’s the best at needle work in the valley, but hardly has a pot to toss out the window, much less anything to sew with.

A 12-pack for those dark winter blues.

I shooed all the kids away before we poured into the mold. It’s a delicate process, besides…without little ears around, I wangled the rest of Violet’s story.

It seems…she knows Bricker’s a drunk. She went to thank Silky Sue for bringing her cookstove over the mountain and found Bricker face down in front of Opal’s palace. The whores had covered him with a blanket. Can you imagine?  A decent woman going to see a saloon hussy?  What I didn’t know is that Bricker hasn’t been home in a month.

She suddenly stopped talking. Thanked me and bundled up her children and her share of the candles. She wouldn’t let Mr. Woolsey give her a ride. Nor would she take the nice calf liver I offered.

I watched her walk down the trail until shadows overtook her.

It’s times like this I regret the person I am and wish I would change. Back in Nebraska, we had lamps shining in every room. Now, I feel shamed for wishing for a well-lit room that doesn’t smell like burnt cow.

Patricia Woolsey fights for culture, a 6th grade eduation, and keeping your pants buttoned.

Last’s week’s horse race down Main Street by gauzily clad ladies of negotiable virtue set off a roaring firestorm.Prairie mesdames Patricia Woolsey and Alice Hopkins began a campaign to remove the “underbelly of indecency from our small settlement.”

Darn It, Roxie, You've always been ahead of your time.

Holding wooden signs, the women marched in front of both the Salt Lick Saloon and Opal’s Palace. “But the signs were too dang heavy,” said Roxie Poley. “So we leaned them against the building and  just strolled around in front of the doors, trying to peek inside.”

Sugar Cherie, one of the “flowers of the night”, hung out of the second floor window of the bordello and poured a bucket of water on the women, ending the first day’s siege.

Photograph taken before Alice Hopkins got drenched. Who knew she could speak like a mule skinner when wet?

It was several days before the women returned. Fired up by traveling preacher, Vig Noyes, the  settler women, who call themselves The Daughters of Two Pan, yelled and shook fists at any man trying to enter the establishments.

Despite the rain/sleet, the Daughters continued to beleaguer the doors to both the saloon and the bordello across the street.  Silky Sue, saloon owner, sent hot coffee out to the ladies. Half accepted it. While warming themselves with beverage and giving this interview, two intrepid miners approached the brothel, spat a chaw of tobacco at the women’s feet,  and offered “the tall loose-footed one” $1 for a roll in one of Opal’s beds.

“I hit him so hard, his eyes wove a nice little braid, criss-crossing back and forth.” said Roxie Poley.

At this point, Big Opal herself stepped outside of her building and discharged a shotgun over the women’s heads.

“This is a heinous crudity.” Mrs. Woolsey told the Two Pan Tattler as she ducked. “Every woman of the valley, except Violet Spinrad, is here supporting these hussies’ removal.” Mrs. Woolsey gave an aggravated sniff when asked why Mrs. Spinrad hadn’t joined the cause.

Aunt Tilly gets confused. (What do you expect when she looks like a guy? And no, he doesn't know. Don't any of you tell "Aunt Tilly" either.)

Big Opal has another hissy fit.

At that point  a protest sign, next to the women,  splintered to pieces as Big Opal reloaded her shotgun.

The Daughters ran followed by Big Opal’s bellowed curses which are too loutish even for this tatty newspaper to print.

(Thanks volunteers for joining against Prairie Indecency. Let me give you a shout out for your good-natured, unknowing participation.)

Roxie: http://sannasbag.blogspot.com/

Alice:  http://alicelynn.wordpress.com/

Honorary Editor: Pat (for finding the dangling participle

in the last edition) http://www.patriciaklichen.com/

Honorary Editor: Words Swiderski

The catastrophe began with the piano in the Salt Lick Saloon.

Bring me back my tail feathers or bring me a drink.

Being the only musical instrument in the valley, folks came from miles around to listen.   Silky Sue, proprietor, waved her ostrich fan in the face of tradition and invited women to accompany their husbands inside to  listen. But, even here at the edge of wilderness, Two Pan ladies did not break the taboo against women in drinking establishments. They made their husbands stand on the street with them to hear the melodies.

Silky Sue, with a quick eye for opportunity, quickly jerry-rigged a canopy to protect listeners from rain. Then she tried to ply them with overpriced coffee and cocoa delivered by properly clad maids.

Sigh....I hate corsets. Let's take them off and yell at people.

Across the street, the ladies at Opal’s Sporting Palace lounged on the porch. Sugar Cherie, a tall woman who claims to be French but is known to lose her accent when excited, waggled her buxom bosom and cat-called across the street, asking the men to come see her when they were in town without their wives.

Go ride a Cow!!!

When a few of the settler women told the whores to shut up, the prairie doves became wilder. Later, when asked about the incident, Big Opal, owner of the Palace said, “All rumors that I’m losing business because of that clinky-dink piano and tone-deaf player are filthy lies. Men always want the bodacious bounty I’ve got. We don’t cater to families. If they’re offended, they need to move their dried-up little carcasses off the street. I don’t know why those self-righteous women are in such a pucker. The girls simply became carried away with the music.  The piano is the culprit.”

Two of Opal’s girls, Roamin’ Retta and Kitty Galore stood in mid-street in gauzy white dresses, yowling  and goading each other into a horse race.Then they worked bets from the bystanders. The saloon emptied to watch the two women fly down the street on Big Opal’s white steeds, the girls’ hair and gauzy garments flowing behind them.

Life is a bed of roses and ferns in Two Pan

The settler wives were outraged at the foul language and public indecency. Silky Sue was livid at the loss of business. The bettors were angry because neither horse reached the finish line. A winner was never declared. Having had a few shots of stout liquor for luck, Roamin’ Retta fell into a garden at the end of the street. Kitty Galore rode into the SaltLick Saloon  where the horse broke glasses and chairs.

“Damn fine advertising,” was Big Opal’s only comment. “And it’s still the piano’s fault.”

(Based on a true historical event)

From the Old Design Shop Blog

How in the ^%$#*!! did I get into her blog?

I’m William Woolsey. Silky Sue, owner of the Salt Lick Saloon came to me with a proposition, I tried to be civil. I told her there were other men in town who’d be her freighter.

But she didn’t want miners and roustabouts whose only skill was busting rock. She wanted someone who’d carried goods across the Oregon trail without beating everything to sawdust. So I hitched two teams, and Cousin Rard and I crossed a river and a mountain to fetch what would be the valley’s most precious cargo.

We arrived early and camped for a day before the wagon from the La Grande Depot rolled in and transferred a solid-built crate.  In the other wagon we loaded up a cookstove left sitting at the base of Smith Mountain.

There was great commotion when we halted the wagons back in Two Pan. It took two stout

The Salt Lick Saloon Gets a Little Ivory

men to pry the sides off the crate.  Inside was a Sterling Company piano. It had come around the Horn and it was the only instrument besides a harmonica in the valley. Someone tried to plunk the keys, and the Professor cold-cocked him, yelling the stops had to be removed from the strings.

Miss Sue told me to go around to the back to get my payment.  Now, I’m a solid married man and was a mite worried, but she met me at the rear door with a tiny pouch of gold dust. Then she asked if I’d load a slat-sided box in the oven and deliver it to Violet Spinrad.

Maybe she did it because Bricker Spinrad completed his evolution from no-account miner to worthless drunk in her saloon. Maybe it was because when the Professor tossed him through the doors, Bricker lay in the street until sober enough to wander back inside instead of going home.

Violet's Stove is Home for Christmas

I’ve never seen a woman hug a stove, but Violet Spinrad practically lay on the thing while Cousin Rard and I lugged it into the cabin. When I told her it was from Silky Sue, she got quiet. Her face changed into something cold. I thought she was going to tell me to take it back.  But the kids, crowding around, found the slatted box full of sugar, salt, honey, and small sacks of hard candy. Six of ’em. One for each child.  There was also a sewing needle pinned to a swath of velvet. I’d added a hind beef leg when I passed my homestead, but Violet wouldn’t accept such charity from neighbors if she knew, so I let her think it was from Silky Sue.

She wiped her eyes with her apron, looked at the kids, straightened her back and told me, “Bricker’s been doing work for the saloon. He must’ve taken his wages in drygoods.” We stared at each other daring the other to step over her story. The kids began rustling kindling and pots.  As I drove my wagon away, I heard truth break her voice in a “Thank you.”

I took the long way back through Two Pan.  Light streamed from the saloon. Decent folks stood, listening  on the street, a respectable distance from the doors.  Peaceful notes drifted into the night.  “All is calm. All is bright.”

There would be Christmas in Two Pan.

A big Thanks to the fine women of the Stevens-Crawford House at the End of the Oregon Trail for sharing their Historical Home.

And while this isn’t from the 1890s. Let the Woman who’s seen her share of change help you through a  Hard Candy Christmas. Check out the HAIR. (Starts quiet)

Violet Spinrad says:

After a body experiences thirty Christmases, the thrill of the season crumbles into another day of work.  A child is needed to inflate the holiday. The wee ones know how breathe life back into Christmas.  Bricker, curmudgeon that he is,  says he could do with fewer kids and a little less Christmas. I told him he knew how to stop more kids from arriving, but there wasn’t a power on earth that could stop Christmas.

I wish a bear would hibernate with us, so we could "share the warmth"

He hasn’t been panning for gold much since sleet began punching the mountains. Air whistles in 2-part harmony thorough the chinks and cracks of the cabin,  and the children have taken to calling it the singing winds. All eight of us pile into two beds. It allows us to layer-up the few blankets we brought over the Oregon Trail. And kids in our bed put the kibosh on any of that procreating hanky-panky Bricker talks about.

I told the three younger children Santa wouldn’t find us in this valley.  They believe it. Not even the mail has found a way over the pass and into Two Pan. My children took this as a challenge.  Presently, they’re gathering wood and are angry at Bricker for burning down the Stick House. Its flames would’ve been better used  to signal the reindeer.

“I’ll shoot any damn deer that lands on my roof,” Bricker jokes. This set the youngest, Elizabeth, into sobs.

“Now, Sissy. A critter that size prancing on the roof would cave it in and kill us,” he says. Elizabeth stops crying. It’s believable. The cabin isn’t a sturdy building—evidenced by the singing winds and the ant-hill mounds of fine snow on the floor, after blowing through the tiniest of holes in the walls.

“Besides,” Bricker adds, proud that he’s thought up two related pieces of logic, “I hear reindeer make fine eating.” This sends two other children on a crying jag and Bricker riding off on a horse to find a quiet place in town. He’s been spending a lot of time at the Salt Lick Saloon. Says he’s doing odd jobs for them, but I catch the smell of hooch on his breath. The Christmas dolls and statues he’s whittling for the children will probably have their heads on backwards if he continues to “work” for the saloon.

I hope my vinegar pie is done

The children have made gifts too. I told McAllister his gift of wheat flour was enough.  The next oldest boy, Jedidiah has been cutting and stacking wood for weeks. We’ll be able to keep the cabin warm and even cook in the mud oven (if they don’t try to signal Santa.)

Because we don’t have a cow, Maggie, the 13-year-old, said her gift was to walk the 5 miles to the Woolseys and trade needlepoint for some milk.  The three little ones miss milk so much. It’ll be a treat for them to have it with their biscuits on Christmas morning.

I’ve used the last yardage on my material bolt to make shirts for the kids, sewing after they’ve gone to bed. Moving here has changed us.  Having nothing for Christmas makes the smallest kindness as big as the sky and the stars swooping over our heads.

It’ll be a good Christmas, even if the only thing that can find us is the wind.

When one of the Woolsey children came banging on our door, Bricker was out seining for gold, as usual. The boy had been sent by his papa asking for Bricker’s help getting in his wheat.  I sent our oldest, McAllister, in his father’s place. He’s 14. I hoped he would do.

Mr. Woolsey watched McAllister swing a scythe, then put him on the threshing floor, saying it would be better if no one died harvesting his grain.

I don’t know what the man was thinking. It’s just as dangerous being around McAllister swinging a flail. Why, one night on the Oregon trail, the boy about killed one of the oxen, pretending to be a knight and jousting with the animal. But Mr. Woolsey gave him a flail and told him to have at it. At first McAllister thought it was great fun to whale away on the wheat stooks. He soon learned wheat berries don’t easily separate from the chaff like it does in those convenient Bible stories. The grain has to be beaten loose over and over until your arms fall out of their sockets. Took the sass right out of him.

Whole grains are full of fiber.

There’s no steam thresher in the valley. They haven’t figured out how to successfully double-team something that size over Smith Mountain. They’d need to lock wagon wheels, sledding it down the other side and floating it across the river.  So Mr. Woolsey started manual gleaning with a horse and a skid, but his oh-so-delicate wife, Patricia Woolsey, saw the horse plop a load of droppings as it tromped the grain out of the stooks. Let me tell you, the operation came to a screeching halt. That’s when they scoured the valley for men to help hand thresh. I admit she’s right, the grain is impossible to clean, when it’s been crapped on and stomped in, but I wonder if she knows that’s what she’s been eating most of her life?

Poor McAllister was so sore he could hardly walk home from the Woolseys. I rubbed his skinny arms with horse liniment, and he went back the next day and thereafter until he’d worked the whole harvest.  They paid him two bushels of wheat per day, valued at 25cents a bushel.

The adults got three bushel and McAllister says he worked harder old Mr. Virgil who spent most of his time spitting tobacco into the pile and laughing, “Let her bake that into bread.” Nonetheless, McAllister gleaned enough grain to last us a year, so I suppose I cannot think of him as a child anymore. Even if he still plays pirates and accidentally leaves a few lumps on the other children.

The Woolseys will haul McAllister’s sacks of grain along with theirs to the mill. It’s an 18 mile trip one-way to Enterprise, but of the five gristmills on the other side of the mountain, they make the better flour.

McAllister is proud and bossing the rest of the children. Maggie, 10 months younger, will tolerate none of his guff. He calls her the Chicken Queen since she’s takes care of the hens. She calls him an Indian word meaning full of skunk scat. I don’t know where they pick up these things.

This is hard country. The children have traded their years of tomfoolery for work and the opportunity to eat. I believe every loaf of bread I bake in the mud oven this winter will make me ask. Is it right to trade their childhood for our dream to own land? Bricker says when he strikes it rich we’ll buy their childhood back.

I’ve got to learn that word for “full of skunk skat.”

Opal’s Palace for sporting women opened its brass-plated doors this Friday, December 1, 1870. Construction had begun months ago with granite quarried from Huber’s. However, masons recently stopped, and the building was quickly completed in milled timber.

Big Opal throwing a Hissing Fit

“Big Opal came here with two of her girls,” William Farlick, Lumber Mill owner in Enterprise reported. “She was mad enough to drown puppies because the Salt Lick Saloon had opened right across the street before she could get her parlor operating.  She demanded four  wagon-loads of board immediately, using befouled words and whacking my desk with her parasol.   ‘Impossible, Madam!’ I told her, but she sent her girls (who are considerably better looking than Big Opal) out to talk to the boys running the saws and planers. She got what she wanted in two days. Even men who had put in orders before hers didn’t complain,” Mr. Farlick said.

Big Opal’s business operations have been known, but not conspicuously noticeable for the past 18 months, Most folks looked askance at her line of four cat wagons parked near the gold claims in order to mine the miners before they came to town for supplies.  With the announcement of a rail line passing through Two Pan, she began construction of her two-story establishment. “The town will grow and Opal’s Palace will encourage many a visitor to get off the train and stay a while,” she told the newspaper. Rafter and beams were flurred into place quickly after the opening of the saloon.

A coach full of Opal’s girls have been rolling through the countryside this past week, passing out the following Grand Opening announcements and showing off their ample smiles.

Opal’s Palace

• 7 Elegant Parisian Girls; Rounder, rosier, and more beautiful than you have ever seen
• They’ll move you through the mazy movements of the Waltz  in such refreshing steps, you won’t  “care a cent whether school keeps or lets out.” *
  
• Enjoy the clink of silver on four Tables of Chance
• Whiskey of Excellence
• Plush décor with chandelier.

Silky Sue, owner of the Salt Lick Saloon, rolled her eyes when asked about the new parlor. “The closest Opal’s gals have been to Paris is St. Louis.  They look like barrels on pegs, and the only French they know is oui, oui. Their hooch tastes like kerosene. And the chandelier is a glass wind chime. That sow’s ear is trying to knit a silk purse.”

In added conflict, the homesteading women of the valley have not been pleased. “Flaunting such debauchery is intolerable.  We were planning on building a school here soon,” Patricia Woolsey said.

“And I don’t appreciate any of my business with my husband being diverted,” Alice Hopkins added before she could blink and blush. “We’re going to do something about this,” she mumbled. “You wait and see.”

(* description taken from : *from Baumler, The Tales of Dumas Parlor House.)

It had to be a man who invented the iron. No woman would’ve said, let’s whack a cannon ball in half, throw it in the fireplace, then roll it over the shirts to flatten  the wrinkles. Supposedly, they’re called sad irons from an old world word meaning: “heavy as hell and half of Texas.”  But I’d guess the real reason for the name is how cruel it is to expect any woman to sling one of these across the cottons of eight family members.

I’ll admit to you, and only you, there are some things I miss about walking 2000 miles across the Oregon Trail. Nobody gave a diddle about wrinkled clothes.  You could wad up a skirt and use it as a pillow under your head, then slip it on the next day, and look like a queen to all the other dust-covered, grease-faced travelers.

It was that Patricia Woolsey who ruined it all. The first get together we had after arriving in the valley, she showed up pretty and pressed like a shiny penny. That put me back on schedule:

The Way It Works Around Here

• Monday: Wash Day
• Tuesday: Ironing Day
• Wednesday: Sewing Day
• Thursday: Work til you Drop Day
• Friday: Cleaning Dirt out of Dirt Farm Day
• Saturday: Bake til you drop Day
• Sunday: Pray Bricker Strikes Gold Day

Having no portable ironing board, I covered the table with blankets and a sheet, and heated up the iron, glad I’d purchased a Mrs. Potts with wooden handle. Leave it to a woman to figure out how to keep your hand from blistering like a sausage.  Someday I’ll get one of those new box irons. The charcoal goes right inside to fire it up.

I’m embarrassed to say, even though I spit on the iron, I scorched the back of Bricker’s good shirt and a handkerchief. I guess I’m out of practice.
Usually, I save the water tinged with lavender for our eldest boy’s pillows. It keeps him from snoring. Knocks him plum out. I sprinkled a bit of scent on Bricker’s burnt shirt to cover the scorchiness, but he still goaded me about it.

If you see Bricker, just ignore his squint and black eye.  He forgot to duck. but then….he didn’t know my new iron could fly so far.

Most of us walked the entire Oregon Trail to stake a piece of land in Two Pan. We’d never see our kin on the other side of the country again. (Some of us were excited about that). So when the Woolseys told folks Thanksgiving could be at their spread, we were all over that invite like ducks on a june bug.

Nobody knows the trouble this bread has seen.

Alice Hopkins suggested we have some Fall Contests to make it exciting.  (Her husband was some big sword-rattling Reb in the Civil War and I think she’s still looking for a way for him to be victorious.)

All the men (except my Bricker, of course) snorted, lied how they’d outdo one another, then grabbed their guns, and tromped around to see who could shoot the biggest turkey.  Bricker said if a bird happened to fly into his sluice pan, while he was panning for gold, he’d wring its neck and bring it in. I wasted a lot of words on him because none of the men got a turkey.

Roxie and her Bacon Maple Muffins with added crunch

On Thanksgiving eve, they dug a big pit and started roasting a hindquarter of elk.

If I am to be completely honest, I was mad at myself but taking it out on Bricker.  The women had a baking contest and I felt prideful to enter, as ill equipped as I am.

(My cookstove sits at the base of Smith Mountain where we lightened the oxens’ load because they were so wheezed out they could barely haul the wagon over the top. Bricker hasn’t gone back to  get the stove yet.)

On the day of the feast, Roxie Poley won the blue ribbon for bread. My loaf tasted good, but cooked like it had been tortured in the mud oven.

Alice Hopkins and Violet Spinrad discuss recipes

Roxie’s dishes always have crunch.  We’ve learned not to ask about it. Crickets or chestnuts…it’s all good.

Alice Hopkins got the blue ribbon for her pie. (“An old Southern recipe” she cooed. UGH.)

The judge, Elias Kral, said my pie looked like a tapeworm had crawled on top and died. But in the end, my pie dish was licked clean along with the others.

Never Fear! It's all looks the same when cut and served!

With our bellies full, and the children playing games by the creek, Alice started singing. We all joined in–there being no instruments in the territory.We sang. Told stories. Laughed.

For one afternoon, it was just like being home—it was Thanksgiving.

(Click Here for Roxie’s Bacon-Maple Muffin Recipe.

You can click all over Alice, but you’ll never get her secret recipe.)

A few of you neighbors have commented how good I look for the hardships I’ve endured: crossing the Oregon Trail, having 6 children, outrunning wild animals, and putting up with Bricker.

Here’s 2 ways to check if your hair is tuckered from all the changes in your life.  If so, follow my beauteous secrets to middlin’ good looks.

TRAIL HAIR

1)      Pull out a strand of hair and drop it in a pie plate of water. (Remove the pie first). If the hair sinks, your tresses are dried out, sucking up water like rain on an old board.  If it floats…LaTeeDah…aren’t you special…like that Alice Woolsey who has hair curlier than a sheep.

2)      Thread a small needle with the end of a strand of hair. (Not the scalp end, silly, the thin end). Can’t do it? Either you’re blind, or the hair is dry and frayed.  Proceed to my wondrous treatments

HAIR CONDITIONING: Dip those dried out tresses in oil before laundering them every 10-14 days. Oil from olive is best, but hard to come by out here, so Roxie Poley has been selling  a product she renders from bear fat.  It works all right. Keeps the dog away from the house.

SHAMPOO: With a few changes, I use Patricia Hopkins cleansing recipe of: potash, soap, and wine heated and stirred with a stick of wood.  I alter it a bit by drinking the wine.  I use milk with a dab of honey to wash my hair. And throw the stick at the bears which keep dropping by because 7 heads of oiled hair make this place smell like a friendly lair.

RINSE: If you can spare any apple cider vinegar from your pickling, add some to your rinse water for a good shine.  Dunking your head directly in an ice cold stream will do the same thing.  Put a few drops of vinegar in your ears to take care of the ear infection caused by dipping your head in the stream.

FINISH:  If you were born with hair that coils like a snake, then drop to your knees and give your Creator praise.  The rest of us use a curling iron. Stick it in a lamp chimney for a minute, then wind a strand of hair around it. Try not to burn your hair off.  (May smoke a little.)

BETWEEN WASHINGS:  Wrap your hair around your fist, to make a bun. Tuck the whole rigamarole along with loose ends up under a bonnet which will protect your locks from dust, rain frizzies, and can be waved at bears so you’ll look bigger as you run.

Grand Opening of the Salt Lick Saloon

Events promise to become more heated with the Salt Lick Saloon’s move from canvas tents to a new wooden building. Owner, Silky Sue, hired settlers to erect her building in a two day house-raising. Settler wives carped about their husbands’ participation. “Because we haven’t even proved up our own land,” said Mrs. Bricker Spinrad. Miners, castabouts, and men on the street, helping with the move in, were rewarded two free drinks.

“Our whiskey is local made; not like the hooch across the street,” owner Silky Sue told the editor of the Two Pan Tattler. Since her recent arrival from San Francisco, Silky Sue has been at war with Big Opal who has serviced miners and mountain men with her 4 catwagons for the last year. Masons had laid part of the granite on Opal’s Palace, a bodacious 10-room bordello, when Silky Sue bought a parcel across the street and “flung up a saloon,” according to the ample-bosomed Madame, adding, “She’s a floozy in molt, and better stay outta my business.”

The Salt Lick.: Strong Liquor. Honest Poker. Wonderous Women

Last week the two women got in a slapping fight in the middle of the Mud Street when Silky Sue hired away Big Opal’s cook. “She shoulda paid her better,” the saloon owner said. “The Salt Lick is a safe place for any single woman to survive. If a woman’s divorced, widowed, or broke there’s no place she can work except my saloon—unless she wants to uncross her legs in Opal’s wagons.”

Settlers in the area disapprove of both establishments. “Well…maybe their wives do,” Silky Sue said with a smile. “But the pioneer men? I didn’t have any trouble getting them to build me a saloon.” When asked how she had the capital for this business venture, she intimated it would cost a lot of liquor to find out. “I know how to survive.” She winked. “We’ll see if Big Opal does.”

Bricker, anxious to begin panning for gold, put little effort on “proving up” our farm.  So me and the 6 kids went about building a stick home like we had in the Midwest prairie.

It allowed a breeze through and kept the coyotes away.  I couldn’t cook in it, but after months in a moving wagon train.  I could make anything in a Dutch oven.

So I whipped up the chili recipe given to me by a Curmudgeon who sold us supplies as we passed through  Colorado.  He had peppers that would make you go blind and give you the runs for a week.  I used deer instead of pork (like his recipe called for) because we have deer lounging behind every tree out here.  They’re sagey tasting, but I added more peppers to kill the deer flavor.

Bricker , ravenous from sluicing grit out of a stream all day, ladled up a heaping bowl of chili stew.  After a few bites, he broke into a sweat, and drank out of his snake-bite jug.  By mid-bowl he swore he couldn’t feel his tongue.  Food was sliding out of his mouth, and he was acting like he’d been kicked in the head.

After the first issuance of intestinal gas, the kids and I cleared out of the stick house. However,  Bricker stood in the doorway,  emitting gases and lighting them like a torch ( much to the delight of the children. And while I thoroughly disapproved, it was touching to hear their laughter.) His eyes were spinning in their sockets,  and he swore his lips had burnt away.  I’m not sure if that was the chili or the snake-medicine talking.

For a finale he tried lighting both ends of his body, by spitting 100 proof and spewing gas at the same time. He succeeded in burning down our hovel.

The resulting guilt and hangover weighed on Bricker like ravens on a carcass. (Perhaps a bit of nagging on my part also helped?)  He gave up prospecting long enough to build a new domicile for me and the kids.  How quickly things happen in this new country.  I’m hoping this “new”  Bricker, who says his gut has finally unkinked and his eyes uncrossed , will be inclined to return to Smith Mountain where we abandoned my 4-burner stove before we started up the pass into this country.

I have just enough peppers for one more batch. I’d like my stove by Christmas.

Bricker’s been thinkin’ again.  That means hold onto your skirts, a new adventure will beset us. According to him, we need a team of horses.  Not work horses,  mind you. We’ve still got the broken-down oxen we brought over the trail.

from anyjazz 65 collection

No, he wants a team to pull his mining supplies around.  I think it’s because his jackass, Daisy, is smarter than him, so he wants an animal that’s so timid and stupid it believes everything will eat it. An animal that’ll spook at its own shadow.  A horse. Last week, it was a miracle moron horses didn’t kill the Woolsey children.

Mrs. Patricia Woolsey was driving her wagon back from Elgin  where she’d been visiting her sister.  Her two small children, Walt, and Elias were in the back.  They were four miles out of town when a gust of wind blew Mrs. Woolsey’s parasol onto the road. (She’s from Nebraska and too fancypants to wear a useful sunbonnet).

She hauled the horses to a stop, handed the lines to her six-year-old, Walt, and climbed out to get her parasol.

Well, what else would you expect a child to do, but shake the reins? Of course, the horses started up.  Mrs. Woolsey’s petticoats fouled her step and she wasn’t able to hop in the rig before it got going. (Maybe this will teach her not to get so dolled up just to go visiting kin.)

In a quarter of a mile, those horses were flying the downgrade to Two Pan. The wagon was bouncing in the air at every crossing. Roxie and Icel Poley saw the team race by their place, and expected, “that wagon to turn over and smash to pieces with every bump.”

Somehow little Walt hung onto the reins until opposite the Hopkins place, then he was thrown out.  They say he only showed some bruises and no serious hurt.

Those horses kept going until they reached the our place, two and half miles distant from where they started. Both wheels on one side of the wagon had broke off, and both axletrees were dragging and thumping the ground.

That hat would make anyone faint.

When the horses were stopped, the other child was still sitting in the back of the rig.  Less than a year old, little Elias wasn’t even crying and only bruised from rolling in the bottom of the buckboard like a beer barrel.

Patricia Woolsey fainted dead away after it was all over. Good thing her kids are knit from her husband’s iron constitution, and free of her lacy bones.

Bricker’s going over there tomorrow; he figures he can get a team cheap. He can have ‘em.  Me?  I’ll take the slow, intelligent jackass.

Do These Tomatoes Make Me Look Fat?

(Some things never change….sigh).