We are Christ-centered Friends who equip and encourage all people
to respond to God's love and transforming Spirit.

My Early Life - Page 5
by Bess King

The Hunt Place:

We sold the big ranch when Nina and I were in the seventh grade and moved to one we called the Hunt place. It was smaller and farther from Spray, so in the eighth grade we went to a one room school in Kahler Basin. My Uncle Fred was the teacher, one of the best teachers we ever had. He zipped us through the eighth grade very efficiently. I have a high regard for a one room school if the teacher is good.

It was that year that we had our first date. I don't remember whether it was a dance or a party, probably a combination of both. There were a couple of boys, brothers, who were about our age. They lived beyond the school house. They came on horseback to take us to the party and the four of us set off, two by two I suppose. It must have been three or four miles. As I remember we had a very fine time and probably had to be home by midnight. The boys brought us home and then had to ride back again.

We got our first car when we lived on the Hunt place, a Model T two seater with removable side curtains. When we went to Kahler Basin (toward the school) it was fine going down, but coming back there was one steep place where the car couldn't make it loaded - so we all had to get out and walk a little way while Dad maneuvered the car up the hill. Then we all piled gratefully back in for the rest of the ride.

Then Mother and Dad sold that ranch too. We lived in Spray that winter where Nina and I went to the ninth grade, then we moved to Condon where we could go to a regular high school. The worst part about the move for us was that we had to give up our horses.

This story is of course incomplete - I can remember other things, but they just reinforce my reason for writing this - to show how much life has changed during the course of my eighty years (now 96). I am grateful that I was able to grow up on a ranch - it probably seemed pretty dull at the time, but that isn't how I remember it. I am grateful to my parents for being so determined that we should go to school, but I am sorry they had to sell the ranch to bring it about.