On a perfect Autumn day when the leaves on the trees had reached the peak of their brilliant orange, red and yellow colors, the branches of the apple trees in the orchard were bent low with their fruit, the golden rod made splashes of color along the road side, Sophie and William knew the time had arrived.  Five times before the same anticipated event had happened.

William’s mother, Frances McIntosh Nickles Stewart, had come to be with them.  A doctor had been called. Angie, Lelia, Madge, Floyd, and Blanche had been taken to Aunt Em’s.  Now began the hours of awaiting the birth of their sixth child.

Near midnight on the 17 of September 1908 I was born.  It seems that with four girls and one boy my parents must have hoped for another boy, but if they were disappointed I did not know it.  Never in my life did they give any sign that I wasn’t completely welcome and wanted.

My grandmother was the neighborhood mid-wife and officiated at the birth of most babies.  Without a doctor present she had delivered my first three sisters but the birth of Madge, the third born, had been so difficult a doctor was present at the last three.

Next morning the five children were brought home to meet their new sister.  Angie, the oldest, was almost twelve and suspected there would be a new baby but in those days such intimate details of a family life was not shared with the children so the four younger ones were probably surprised to see a black haired baby in the arms of their mother.

Never did I feel there was any jealously on the part of my siblings but in later years I asked Angie if my sisters and brother resented finding they would share the attention of their parents with a new sister.  Her answer always was, “Oh no, we loved babies.”

And they did.  They loved and protected this child all their lives.  Our family did not possess many material things but the love they showed me overpowered any thing lacking in this pioneer family of the early 1900’s.

Our home was on a farm in Plymouth County, Iowa.  We always referred to this home as the Nolan farm.  It had been home for many years of my parent's marriage and always held a special place in our families’ memories.  It was on this farm that I spent the first eleven years of my life and where my earliest memories are rooted.

My mother was an excellent pioneer nurse, caring for her family with her home remedies and aided by information from Dr. Nolan who owned the farm.  He lived in Illinois but spent his vacation time each year at the farm.  Sometimes he brought his wife and I remember one time his teen age daughter came too.

As a rule we were a healthy family seldom needing the advice of a doctor.  I don't believe I was ever sick but Blanche, two and a half years older than I, was critically ill of some kind of fever when she was three years old.  Perhaps because our ages were so near together a special bond developed between this sister and me.  She was my constant companion through childhood and extending into adulthood.  She died Nov. 15, 1982 after a long illness enduring all the pain and anguish of leukemia.  Memories of my childhood are very vague.  Sometimes I'm not certain if I remember certain instances or if I'm recalling stories told to me by my family.

The first thing I seem to clearly remember was when they were building a new house on the farm. I remember nothing at all about the old one, which stood just west of where the new one was built.  I was about 4 years old at the time.  Uncle Jud, my father's half brother was the carpenter.  He lived in a suburb of Sioux City.  On Monday morning he rode a train to James and walked to the farm carrying his tools.  It must have been about four miles.  Then he stayed all week, going home on Saturday the same way he came.  We all adored Uncle Jud.  I'll write more about him later when I write about my father's family.

The new house had 4 rooms downstairs and 3 bedrooms and a large hallway and closet upstairs. It still stands in a state of disrepair many years later.  Uncle Jud also built a new barn a few years later.  One incident I remember about the building of the barn.  He put a concrete floor in the part where the cows were milked.  Before the concrete was hard, Blanche and I walked all around the edge, not on the concrete but on the boards around the floor.  We knocked dirt into the concrete.  Uncle Jud was very displeased with us.  His words when he corrected us were always "I'll slap you up to a peak and knock the peak off!"  We thought this time he might carry out his threats.  But of course they were just words.  He was a kind, patient, gentle man.

I remember also the drilling of a well.  Water apparently was a problem and this well was dug very deep.  I at one time I knew the depth but I've forgotten.  A windmill was installed and water was plentiful after that.  I guess the reason I remember this is the well diggers teased me threatening to throw me in the well if I didn't stay out of the way.

One event that made an impression on me occurred when I was four years old was going on a train to Salem, S. Dakota with my father and mother to the home of Aunt Em.  My grandmother had died.  I remember nothing at all about her, except what I was told later. In those days families took care of their own loved ones who died.  I think they called laying them out.  My father lifted me up to see her.  There was grandmother lying on a support, probably a door.  She was all dressed up and seemed to be asleep.  This was my first encounter with that mysterious thing called death.  An interesting story, told and retold, about my grandmother meant nothing to me at this time although I remember the family members discussing it.  Her mother my great grandmother, was a Scottish lassie. She worked as a maid for a wealthy family, Sir Walter McIntosh.  He had been knighted for perfecting a way to cause cloth to shed water and invented the raincoat - the McIntosh.  In the McIntosh home was a young son, Charles. Charles fell in love with the pretty Scottish maid.  They ran away and married bringing down the wrath of the McIntosh knighted family on their young heads.  The consequences of their following their hearts rather than the dictates of the noble family was Charles was disinherited and they were banished from Scotland.

I know nothing of the intervening years - where the young couple went - where my grandmother was born, or even if the story is true.  When I was a teenager, I remember members of the family discussing an ad they had seen in a paper.  It was trying to locate the heirs of Frances McIntosh, who was my grandmother.  No one in the family investigated so who knows, maybe a great fortune lies unclaimed for me in Scotland or maybe a huge debt needs to be settled or most likely the story is not true.

As I have indicated I do not have many memories of my grandmother.  Most of the four years between my birth and when she passed away she had lived with Aunt Em.  She must have been a very kind grandmother to care for all the babies she helped bring into the world.  I remember the family telling how she cuddled Madge, who cried so much when she was a baby, that Lelia asked if they couldn't take the baby to town and lose her!

Grandmother became addicted to the use of opium prescribed to her in unlimited amounts when she had a difficult time at the birth of her last child, Uncle Fred.  Sister Angie told me that grandmother carried it in her apron pocket and that Aunt Em sometimes tried to fool her by substituting sugar for the opium.  I expect in those days it was available for anyone and the disastrous consequences of its unlimited use were unknown.

At about the age of 4 or 5 I must have become more aware of my surroundings.  As I look back the buildings on the farm are important in reflecting on my early childhood. I have mentioned the new house and the barn.  There also was granary.  It was a building in two distinct sections with a driveway between, wide enough for a team of horses and a wagon to drive through.  One side was slotted for the corn so that it could dry.  The other side was enclosed for the oats and wheat my father grew.  After the corn had all been sold or used, Blanche and I played in that section.  Sometimes we fixed up a playhouse with our dolls as children.  Sometimes we gathered all the boxes and bottles we could talk Mamma into letting us have and pretended to have a store.  We put boards through the slats for shelves and lined our bottles and boxes up on them.  We spent many hours pretending to keep house or to be storekeepers in this old corncrib.  One special feature of this granary was a large sliding door at the entrance.  I thought it was wonderful until one day it came off the track and fell on Mamma breaking her leg.  She tried to hold it as it slipped off the track to keep it from falling on a pig. I think the pig escaped!

Another building was a hog house.  It had a number of individual pens inside so all the sows and their pigs were not crowded together.  Blanche, Floyd and I were not supposed to go in there when the little pigs first were born as sows are so protective of their little pigs and often attacked to protect them.  Little pigs have always fascinated me and I’m sure I sneaked in occasionally to watch them!  A special feature of the hog house was a cupola on the roof.  I thought it was real classy.  I knew most old churches had cupolas and a similar adornment on a hog house was special!  When I was about six years old, I found a newly hatched pigeon that had fallen from its nest.  Somehow I raised that bird! It grew into a beautiful bird, with silvery gray feathers.  I could pick it up anytime, as could the rest of the family.  As he grew to maturity he fought the chickens and even the cats. Eventually he found a mate and they built their nest in the cupola.  Soon there were eggs - then little pigeons in the nest.  I went every morning as soon as I got up to see them.  He was no longer tame or friendly as he had been before he had a family to protect.  One morning I couldn't find him anywhere.  I searched the farmyard over for him and was heartbroken at what I found - his feathers and feet.  Apparently he had fought a stray cat and had lost the battle.

Both the granary and hog house are still standing amid tall weeds, roofs leaking and boards broken and missing.  No one cares about the house, barn, granary and hog house like I do but no one else has memories as deeply rooted there as I.  When I was a child these buildings seemed so far apart, now as I saw them two years ago (1987) they seem crowded closely together.

Another clear memory is of the cave.  To get to it we went out the front door, turned right for a short distance and there was our store house of food.  Mamma and the older sisters spent many hours canning.  Refrigerators and deep freezes were unheard of in that age.  I suppose people in town had ice boxes but farms did not have anything that modern.  The cave was deep and cool.  Here in addition to canned goods was where the separated cream was kept until churning day.  Once a week the cream was made into butter and Papa hitched up his team early in the morning and started for Sioux City to deliver the butter, packed into crocks and each crock covered with a paper made especially for that purpose.  You could see through the paper and I used to coax Mamma to let me have some to trace pictures from magazines.  I didn't succeed often because the paper cost money and it was needed for covering the butter.  Making butter was not an easy job.  The cream had to be turned and turned in an old wooden churn.  Finally clumps of butter would appear in the churn and I was always there with a glass ready to drink some of that sweet buttermilk.  The clumps of butter were taken from the buttermilk and then came the process of washing the butter.  That meant many trips to the well for cold water.  When my mother felt it was clear enough, just the right amount of salt was added.  Then the butter was packed in the clean crocks, a little design put on the top of each and they were ready for Papa to put into the wagon to deliver to customers on his route.  This route was in a wealthy section of Sioux City.  On Christmas some of the customers sent us boxes of presents.  I'm sure they had us pictured as very needy children - which we weren't.  I'm sure most of them looked at the fine man my father was and wanted him to know they appreciated him.

We anxiously awaited Papa's return from town, watching the clock all day and when it showed 6 o'clock we could hardly contain ourselves.  We knew he would have a treat for us.

One of the family stories told many times was of Madge’s getting very impatient for Papa's return.  She struck the pendulum of the clock and as it swung more rapidly said “Now it will soon get to six.”  We were never disappointed; he always had something special for us, always candy, sometimes bananas or apples and cookies.  In those days bananas hung in the store window in large bunches, just as they came from the trees.  The store keeper had a special knife with which he cut the individual bananas from the stock.  They were sold by the dozen.  We considered them treats because it was not often they were available.  Another treat was cookies.  The store had boxes on a display rack.  Inside each box was a special kind of cookie.  I remember the kind with a marshmallow topping with coconuts, sometimes colored pink, on top of the marshmallow.  The groceries Papa brought were usually only the staples - flour, sugar, coffee, salt, rice, sometimes some baloney or cheese.  The flour was bought in 100 lb. sacks and it took a sack often as my mother baked several loaves of bread about every other day.  The flour was emptied into a large barrel that stood in a corner in the pantry.  I don't know what kind of wood that barrel was made from, it was light in color and light weight.  I'd give a good deal to have it now but I suppose it was thrown away after my father died in 1946 and Mamma no longer kept a home.

While Papa put the horses away Mamma and the older girls put the groceries in the proper place on the pantry shelves.  The butter crocks were lined up ready to be filled for delivery next week.  Each customer returned the one from the week before.

Then it was time for supper around the round oak table.  I always sat on the left side of my father.  Each family member had a special place to sit.  As we ate Papa told about his trip.  It was always interesting to hear news about the customers.  I’m trying to remember their names but they are long buried among other insignificant memories of 81 years.

After supper it was time to milk the cows.  The older sisters helped, a chore I never learned to do until after I was married!  The milk was brought to the house in pails filled to the brim. In the corner of the pantry was a separator.  A large, shiny bowl on top of the separator was filled, a crank turned at a steady pace and cream flowed from one spout and skimmed milk from the other.  The shinny bowl was filled many times and when the last milk had gone through a bit of water was poured into the bowl and as it went through it flushed out the last bit of milk and cream. I never did understand the mechanism of a separator.  All I knew was that the milk passed through a series of discs on a spindle and that magically separated the cream from the milk.  As I grew older and had to help with cleaning those discs I found it to be a tedious job.  The discs had to be washed one at a time and were greasy and hard to clean.  Boiling water was poured over them and they were threaded onto a special holder to dry.

The skimmed milk was given to the pigs.  Pigs are greedy and apparently believe if they don't look out for themselves no one will.  Such squealing, pushing, fighting took place when the milk was poured into the trough.  Each pig moved down the row, pushing others out of the way.  This is true too, when they are very small and getting milk from their mother.  Each piglet thinks the next feeding nipple might be better and pushes and shoves others out of the way.  That is the reason the smallest of the litter doesn't stand a chance.  If the runts are to live they must be hand fed.  That is the reason I once had a pet pig.  I'll write about him later.