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My Early Life - Page 1
by Bess King - written in 1988

Living on a ranch in the early 1900's was certainly different from our lives today -
this is an account of my life as I remember it.

Kahler Basin: The Smith Place. (Near Spray, Oregon)

My first memory is of being lifted up on a horse to one of my uncles. He put me in front of him in the saddle. I don't remember that we went anywhere so he must only have been showing me what I had to look forward to. There is one other memory of about the same time. We had a small white dog who had puppies, four or five, I think. There was a slope from the house toward the road, and my sister, Nina and I undertook to give the puppies a ride. We borrowed a flat bread pan from the kitchen and tied the mother dog to it so she could pull the puppies which we put in the pan. They started down the slope toward the road, then the mother dog saw another dog invading her territory, and she took off running, spilling puppies everywhere. Fortunately, they weren't hurt. I have forgotten the dog's name.

This place where we lived at that time was a ranch in the Kahler Basin. It was situated on both sides of Kahler Creek. The road went between the house and the barn lot, and the creek was just beyond the barn. I don't remember much about the barn but behind it, on the bank of the creek, someone had set up a stove for heating water. My mother did her washing down there in the summertime because it was much cooler and the water was closer too. We had a good spring just a little way up the hill behind the house but wash day meant keeping the stove roaring hot to heat water and to boil the clothes, so in the hot weather it was more pleasant to take it down by the creek. They used the buggy to take it there and back. Nina and I enjoyed the outing very much. We weren't old enough to help much at the time. I must have been three and Nina five or there about. That would have been about 1909.

My father's parents were William Wesley Hawes and Martha Rebecca Moore. They were married in Utah, moved to Idaho, then on to Montana, where my father was born. The family returned to Iowa by covered wagon when my father was 2 years old. They eventually had eleven children, ten of whom lived to grow up.

Mother's family were Nelson Eugene Austin and Lucinda Cavendar. Mother was born in Missouri in 1883, the second of twelve children. They moved to Iowa and lived near Lamoni.

The Hawes family came to Oregon in 1900, the Austins in 1903. Mother and Dad were married at Condon, Oregon in 1903. Mother was a teacher - she taught at least one term in Oregon.

Both families were very close and visited one another. We often had several uncles at our house, usually helping Dad with his work.