Gladys Hill Bohm's Autobiography

Gladys Hill Bohm

1903-1999

The following obituary of Gladys appeared in the Enderlin Independent shortly after her death.

Gladys Marion Hill Bohm died after a brief illness on December 25, 1999 in Vancouver, Washington. Gladys was born on November 10, 1903, in Rock River, Wisconsin. She was the third of four children born to Walter and Ida Hill. In 1905, when Gladys was two, the Hills left Wisconsin to farm family owned land just east of Enderlin, North Dakota. For a number of years, the Hill Dairy supplied milk to the nearby community. Gladys attended Enderlin schools and, in 1921, she married Fred C. Bohm, the son of Highland Township pioneers Herman and Ida Bohm. For sixteen years Gladys and Fred farmed land northeast of Enderlin, just off what is now North Dakota State Highway 38. They raised two sons, Fred, Jr., and Byron Keith. In 1937 the Bohms moved into Enderlin where Fred, Sr., worked for the Robard and Sallen garages, for the United States Post Office and, for a time, Gladys was employed at Reinhold Utke’s store. In 1947 the Bohms moved west settling in the State of Washington, first in Bremerton, and later in Seattle where Gladys was employed by Frederick and Nelson and Fred took a job with Boeing Aerospace.

Gladys was an accomplished seamstress and was widely known for the beautiful knitted garments, blankets, and Afghans she created. Her husband, “my Fred,” as she referred to him, retired in 1965; he preceded her in death on April 2, 1969. They were married 48 years. For the next quarter century Gladys lived on her beloved Capital Hill in Seattle surrounded and nurtured by friends and family.

In 1996 Gladys moved to a retirement home in Vancouver, Washington. Throughout her life, she maintained ties to Enderlin and to people who lived there, keeping a subscription to the “hometown paper,” the Enderlin Independent, for many years. She was a member of Enderlin’s Trinity Lutheran Church and later Gethsemene Lutheran Church in Seattle. Gladys was preceded in death by her husband, Fred, and her son, Byron. She is survived by a sister, Florence Anderson, of Bremerton; her eldest son, Fred, Jr., of Enderlin; five grandchildren: Dwight Bohm of Tokyo, Japan; Fred III of Lansing, Michigan; Scott Bohm of Kent, Washington; Stuart Bohm of Federal Way, Washington; and Vickie Hoehne, of Vancouver, Washington; ten great grandchildren; and one great-great-grandson, Quentin Palmer Krogstad, also of Vancouver.

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 The Autobiography of Gladys Hill Bohm

Between October 27, 1978 and January 30, 1980, Gladys Bohm prepared an eleven-page, single-spaced 

typescript autobiography based on recollections of her life and the lives of family 

members and friends. What follows is the text of that manuscript.

My folks (Walter & Ida Hill) went to North Dakota in 1905 in November when I was just two years old. My grandmother Catherine (Shortt) Parratt had bought land just two miles southeast of Enderlin, which lies about sixty miles from Fargo, and fourteen miles from Lisbon, the county seat of Ransom County where we lived. At the time, Enderlin was a very small town, with not nearly as many houses as there are there are now, even after this last flood in 1975.

My first recollections are of someone putting me up on the table, or rather standing me up on it. I don’t remember anything about Wisconsin or where my folks came from. Mother (1878-1961) was from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and Dad (1879-1972) was born at Siegal, Wisconsin. My father worked out away from home from the time he was thirteen years old. He worked for a family named Gordon who he said was very good to him. But from the time he started to work, his father took the money he earned away from him until he was about eighteen years old. Dad’s father said they owed him a living. His father wasn’t good to him or any of the family for that matter, except Wally, or his real name was Wallace (1895-1961), who was much younger than the rest of the children in the family. There were six children in the family, five boys and one girl. Uncle Vienie (1875-1944) was the oldest, and, when his father died, Grandmother Hill (1860-1942) married her first husband’s brother Smith (1858-1912). So Aunt Mattie (1877-1916), Dad (Walter), Ernest (1881-1951), Burt (1883-1960), and Wally were all from the second husband. I don’t know why but they always said their Dad was nicer to his stepson, Vienie, than he was to his own boys. One day, Dad and Uncle Vienie got into a fight as boys will of course, and Dad threw a stone at Uncle Vienie and hit him. Grandpa went and got a barrel stave, the kind that is about an inch thick and curved. He beat my Dad until his whole back was a mass of cuts and bruises. Dad said that every doctor that ever examined him wanted to know where he got all those bruises.

They always say that parents who have been beaten like that, always beat their children, but that certainly wasn’t the case with Dad. He was always kind to us. I can remember as a little girl always having hold of his hand and following him wherever he went, and he seemed to have a lot of patience with us. He liked his little girls, although he didn’t seem to have as much patience with my brother, James (Buss) when he was little. Maybe it was because he was six years younger than I was and that Dad was older and couldn’t take as much fooling around the way kids do. Doris is four years older and Floss (Florence) is two years my senior. We were a close family, and we all loved each other very much. I think it may have come from my parents’ love for each other. They used to hug and kiss us a lot. We never went to bed without a good-nite kiss. I just don’t know how I’d have felt towards the world today if I’d had parents who misused me like some of those one hears about these days. I would perhaps have rebelled, too.

My mother came from a very wonderful family so I’m told. Grandma Parratt was kind to us and we always looked forward to her coming to visit us. We always knew she would have a gift for us. She usually came to North Dakota about once a year and we lived not too far from the railroad tracks. Perhaps a mile, in fact the railroad cut across our land. I call it our land because my folks were buying it from Grandma, so when mother would hear form Grandma, in the letter there would always be some mentioning of interest and of how much could my folks pay to keep it up. It was always hard for the folks to make the payments, they just had a very hard time to keep going and Dad worried about owing bills so much. Mother and Dad worked so hard. Mother even used to go out and help plow. She even drove horses on the gange plow just like Dad did. In case you don’t know what a gange plow is, it is a plow with two shares to turn the soil instead of one, which is called a sulky. All of the work on the farm was done by horses in those days, but my Dad could remember when they used oxen. In those days, too, mother had to do all her own baking bread, and we had to carry all the water for washing and then heat the water on the range, also we had to rub all the clothes by hand on the washboard. Then there was no way to clean the rug except to sweep it and mother used to sprinkle salt on the rug when she swept it to keep the dust down. To get back to mother plowing, I was not of school age at that time and my sisters were at school so I had to amuse myself under the few trees along the road. I remember one such occasion; it was spring and the leaves were just coming out and the trees had sort of little buds on them with fringes. I used to pick those little buds and put them in my shoelaces. I thought they were so pretty, and there were so many wildflowers, I remember that I used to see all through my young days on the farm, and that I have never have seen them since. I always wonder where they all went. Perhaps the way the tractors plow so deep may have killed all the roots. To get back to when I can first remember when I was first put up on the table, when we came to North Dakota, the other thing I can remember was that I had a little red coat with a big round collar and Floss had a blue one. I don’t think hers had the large collar though. After that, I have very little recollection until almost the time I went to school. I remember our hired man who didn’t seem very bright according to the other men who were there, and we used to have quite a few men around. This man always wanted me to sit on his lap, and of course, I didn’t take to him much since the rest used to play tricks on him, so I wouldn’t sit on his lap unless he had some candy to give me. His name was Ed Miller. Then there were the Geelan boys who stayed with us at first when we came to North Dakota, Irwin and Lou. That is where I got the nickname “Sip” from, when I was little, was from the Geelan boys. First, they called me “snip.” Naturally, I turned it into “Sip.” Hardly anyone except our family called me Sip, though. Perhaps I couldn’t pronounce Snip and that’s where Sip came from! They used to play with me a lot, and I liked them. Their father, Chris Geelan, bought land right next to ours, and they farmed there for as many years as my folks did. They had a quarter section too, and Grandma’s brother (Uncle Ed Shortt) had a quarter section adjoining Chris Geelan’s, across the road from Grandma’s land. Grandma had a half-section and my folks worked the entire half-section first, then, Grandma sold a quarter section to Frank Barnes (friends of the folks). They were such good friends up until the time they bought the land (he was a railroad man), and the land didn’t produce the way they thought it should, I guess, so it kind of broke up the friendship. Before that, they used to drive out with their lovely horse, Dick, and a buggy. They also had a Shetland pony that we girls thought was pretty nice by the name of Namus. We always wanted a Shetland, too, but never did get one, because we couldn’t afford it. We kids used to like to go to Mrs. Barnes’s place. She always had things so nice, and Mother never had any trouble watching Floss and I because Doris was such a grown-up acting little girl that she would follow us around and say “No-no, don’t touch.” So we never did. Mrs. Barnes never minded having us around. I still liked her when I grew up and used to go to see her.

The winter I was five we had neighbors by the name of Lubins who lived across the tracks. We were very good friends with them and that winter they contracted scarlet fever from somewhere, and, of course, we got it. We were quarantined for eleven weeks. I got it last and had it the hardest. They didn’t think I was going to live for several days. Grandpa and Grandma Hill were staying with us that winter and also Wally. When we got the fever, Wally had to stay away from us. The doctor we had drank so much, and most of the time, he couldn’t do what he should for us. Mother asked him to give me medicine when I was so sick and he said he didn’t dare, and that he had given up on me. So Grandpa Hill, remembered from years back when had known quite a lot about different kinds of herbs and things that he used to give his own kids. So, then he asked the doctor, that since the doctor couldn’t do anything, if it would be O.K. if he gave me something himself, and the doctor said it was O.K. He rolled up tiny balls of asafetida and gave it to me. It was awful-smelling stuff, and they used to say that if one wore it around his neck it would keep one from contracting a disease. After Grandpa gave me the medicine, the doctor the next day in town asked when he saw Dad, and was surprised I was still alive. The medicine looked something like beeswax only it was soft. My mother and Dad stayed up all nite with us kids that winter when we had the fever. I don’t know how many days it was but they were practically asleep on their feet.  Our skin peeled off in such thick scabs after the fever broke and they claim those scabs are contagious. My folks shaved my head. I had such a high fever if they hadn’t I’d have lost all my hair as others had done. My hair was real curly until they shaved it off, but when it came out again it was only wavy. Floss still had the curly hair but didn’t have hers shaved off when she caught the fever. I can remember when I got up after it was over, and was so weak.

The next fall, I would have been six in November, so my folks started me in school. I was a big baby tho, I cried when they left me, so they decided that I would wait until the next year. By the next year I sure was ready and anxious to go, and always liked school after that. We usually walked to school and back from our house, which was about two miles. No one would think of letting kids that young walk that far any more. We usually walked in the winter, too, when we were older.

Doris always gave us directions on what we were to do. The first time I played with kids that were not suitable, she told me I couldn’t play with those kids. That was the first time that I knew we couldn’t accept everyone. I felt kind of bad. I had a lot of fun though, following her around with her friends, and one in particular was so good to me. It was Jeanette Baily, used to be Oehlke. Then later I made friends of my own. I did have one friend whom I got to know before I started school when Mother used to be over at Mrs. Barnes’s. That was Lenore Underwood. I played with her when I was about four years old. She and Peter Burtness were playing together but they didn’t want me at first, but after while, they got used to me I guess. One day while Mother was at Mrs. Barnes’s, I walked up the street and kept on walking up the hill and finally got lost. Just imagine getting lost in Enderlin? Well anyway, I was pretty young, must have been when I was three or four. Some girls brought me back to Mrs. Barnes. I saw a billy goat tied up and that scared me, so I was crying when the girls found me.

I just loved school and was put in the “A” class first thing. I always did quite well because I liked it, and the kids. My primary teacher cried when we left school after the first year. Her name was Miss Ports. I can still see her with her brown eyes and wavy hair.

To go back a bit before I started school, when we first moved out to North Dakota it was hard on the folks to make ends meet so Dad started work for the Railroad. That is, in the winter he worked there. He walked most of the time, and it was quite wild around there then cause there were wolves down near the river. We could hear them howl every nite. Dad worked nites and used to carry a lantern, so the pack would not bother him, though they would walk about 15 feet or so away. One day, us kids were left alone and we saw a lone wolf up the road and were so afraid. Doris told us to be quiet so he wouldn’t hear us. Don’t s’pose they would bother anyone. Perhaps the wolf was looking for chickens. We had such a good dog, though, at that time. His name was Shep. He wasn’t a big dog, just a little shepherd dog, but he sure was a good watchdog. When we girls were alone one day, a tramp came to the house and the dog was o. k. as long as the tramp stayed a distance from the door, but if he took a step nearer, the dog stood in front of us and bared his teeth.

Times kept getting bad for the folks so Dad decided that he would work for the Soo Line regular and we moved into town. We were only a block from the school so that was handy. I think we paid $25 a month for that house. It was without running water or lights. We kept a garden and done some saving. A year later, they planned to move to the house Bangert lived in at the last and that one was only $30 a month and the folks thought that was high. But I guess Grandma wanted them back on the farm, so instead of moving into a different house, we moved back to the farm, and they got cattle and started a milk route. One can never imagine all the work there is connected with anything like that. I used to help deliver milk until Bus was old enough to help.

Somewhere along the line I forgot to mention the year my brother was born, November 29, 1909. I was six that year so I started school. He had three sisters and Doris tried to take care of him some, but one summer Floss went to Wisconsin with mother, and after she came home in the fall, Floss stayed with Grandma all summer Buss seemed to favor her from then on. I think, too, that it was because Floss had kidney trouble, and had to miss school for a year and perhaps he was with her so much more. He was an active little boy and after having to be around all those girls, it was something different the way he had to burn up all that energy. Running through the house pretending he was a steam engine and whatnot. He always did have some project going and so much ambition. It turned out to be that he was quite the smartest one in the family. There really wasn’t anything he couldn’t do once he made up his mind. He never did like school, however, until he got older, and then he really worked at it. And after he was married, he went to nite school and became a naval architect.

Now, to get back to the milk route, the folks still had it when I got married. But before that, we all went to school from the farm, two miles outside of town, and some days in the winter it was so terribly cold. I know Floss and I walked home from school when it was -40. I was crying when I was halfway home I was so cold. We were sick a lot in the winter and I think it was from being so cold.

Before I was school age, we used to have the threshers there to the farm and some years had a machine with a cook car. I used to like to go out to the cook car. The women there used to give me sugar cookies. My mother told me to stay away but I just couldn’t help myself and the ladies were so nice to me. It was Mrs. Dagman and her husband who had the rig. One year, we had a hired girl, Lily Liederman, who helped in threshing. One day, she put blackening all over her face and when I saw her I was nearly scared out of my wits. I cried something awful. I don’t know how old I was, perhaps four.

When I was three years old, in 1906, my mother and I went to visit Grandma Parratt. I can still remember when we stopped in Minneapolis-St. Paul. I made friends on the train with a lady, and asked her name. She said she didn’t have any, and I sure felt sorry for her, so I told Mother about it and thought we should pick out a name for her, and I wanted to call her Rose.

The Hill brothers in about 1895. From left to right:

Burton (born in 1883), Ernest ( born in 1881), Walter (born in 1879)

and  Walter's half-brother Sylvainius or "Venie" (born in 1875).

(Gladys Hill Bohm photograph)

Dad had an old horse named Billy that Doris could drive. His front knees were so bad that he just hobbled along, and he didn’t go very fast. Then we had a two-wheeled cart that we three kids rode in. So we went to Sunday school whenever we could. I liked it, especially at Christmas time when we could sing with a group. The thing I just couldn’t understand, tho, was how it was that some of the kids got presents from the tree in church and we didn’t get any. Our folks never went to anything that we were involved with at church or school.

About this time, about 1908, the folks got a piano. It was a black walnut piano, not like the wood today, but really good wood, and they paid $300 for it. That was a very high price in those days and I remember what a hard time they had to pay for it. Once they almost had it taken away from them, but finally got it settled and it was one of the most happy memories I have of home. My Father played the violin, and played it very well, because he loved music. But he wasn’t as much of an accomplished musician as my Mother. She studied music and voice all through high school, and she played very well. I don’t know where my father got his training, but I think it was about the last year before he got married. All of the Hills seemed to have a little music in them tho, because they could all play something. When Mother and Dad would play in the evenings, Wally would play the bass viol. Too, we had one of those early phonographs of Thomas Edison, one of the ones with a large horn. The records were cylinders and we had a rack on the wall full of records. They used to let us kids play it and one time I broke one of the records my Dad liked, and I felt so bad I went and hid behind the large Morris chair. It was a chair something like these recliners they have now only made a little differently. My Dad wasn’t cross with me tho, but was because I thought he would be cross about it, He didn’t say anything, however and I suppose he laughed to himself that I hid.

We would all be in the living room on the winter eves and the folks would play and sometimes we all would sing. Other times, we would all visit the kitchen on those winter evenings. But, of course we didn’t have Television then, and the piano was our entertainment the year around. My two sisters both took piano lessons, but I never did get any. I always wished I had. Mother’s sister, or rather half-sister, studied music at the University at Appleton, Wisconsin. She was very good. This being 1978, she is still alive and the only one of Mother’s family left. She was somewhat younger than the other two, and is now eighty-seven years old, and lives in Pasadena California. Mother’s half brother lived in Petersburg, and died in 1973. There were just three of them.

Grandma was first married to Richard Gobel in 1877. Mother was only nine months old when Grandma got a divorce from him and her grandparents adopted her, or more accurately took her into their household. Later on Grandma saw Mom’s father. They said he was a philanderer and that it was him who came to the house after she (Ida) was married to Dad. Doris saw the man.

Mother didn’t know she was adopted until she was about eight years old. One day, when Mother was a little ornery, I expect that Grandma’s brother (Uncle Ed Shortt) told her, “You little snip, I wish you’d go home.” Mama was so hurt that she went to ask Grandma Shortt, who is my great-grandmother of course, and who Mama thought was her mother. Grandma Shortt told her, yes, she was adopted. They were very good to Mother though. Mother said she didn’t think there was anyone quite like Grandma Shortt. She was such a good person.

Mama was quite a tomboy, though, when she was young. They said there wasn’t a horse she couldn’t ride. Even if they threw her off, she would get right back on and go to it again. She got hurt quite badly once when the horse threw her off against a big rock.

My Grandmother Catherine got married again in 1883 to Alvin Parratt. Uncle Frank was born in 1884. Then, seven years later, Aunt Elsie came along. Mother never went back to live with her real mother, Catherine, until she was in high school. She graduated in 1896 at Oakfield, Wisconsin. Grandma never wanted Mama to go to dances, and of course, Mama wanted to go. That’s where she met Dad at one of those dances and I never did hear much about their courtship, but I do know that Grandma didn’t like the Hills. Anyway, they did get married and both sides of the family tried to make it miserable for them, and sometimes they succeeded to some extent.

Mother and Father were married at Oakfield, Wisconsin, on September 1, 1898. Even after they were married Grandma Hill tried to come between them. They left Doris with her one time and she didn’t want to let Mama have her back. They almost broke them up once and Grandma Shortt told Dad he would have to support Mother and Doris. Dad told her he didn’t want any divorce. Grandma Shortt was very nice to Dad, however, and he thought a lot of her.[1]

Mother and Dad were married for about seven years when they moved to North Dakota. I don’t remember much up until the time I started school except having scarlet fever and being quarantined so long.

Our birthdays in those days were not made over much, and I can’t recall having a birthday cake made for me until I was married. Then Alma, Fred’s sister, made me one. We always had a nice Christmas tho, the folks always planned that we would have a tree and presents, although we never got more than one present much. But I guess we enjoyed that as much as kids do nowadays. We certainly looked forward to having our Christmas tree, and we always had such nice Thanksgivings to remember. We also celebrated the Fourth of July. They always planned a picnic or something, and if a circus came to town we were always allowed to go and looked forward to that, too.

We also had many friends who would come to visit and stay, and we were allowed to go to stay with our girl to lodges. They used to play for dances, and the children, would stay home alone. We had just got kerosene lamps and the folks were afraid to leave a lamp burning in the house when we were so young, so they got a little box and put a tiny light in it with a battery. You cannot picture what it was like because they have such good flashlights now. This was such a tiny lite. We were just fortunate that nothing happened to us.

When I was about five, in 1908, we drove to Lisbon in a surrey with the fringe on top, to Mother’s brother’s future wife’s folks’ house. He married a girl who lived in Lisbon. He had met her there since he worked on the Lisbon paper at the time. This was certainly a treat for us, as we almost never went that far away from home, having to drive horses, it took half a day, being sixteen miles away.

When I was in the sixth grade at school, in 1915, I had yellow jaundice, then got pneumonia and an ear infection, so that I was out of school a lot. I missed so much that I had to stay a grade behind the next year, but I was so far ahead of the class, that after a month, the teacher put me ahead with my former class, and I got along fine in the seventh grade.

The year that I became aware of boys was in the eighth grade, about 1917, although I secretly had a boyfriend all through the grades. Mother would never let me go to school parties. She said that she could remember what went on at them. But they did go to dances themselves in our small town before we were allowed to go with anyone—meaning boys, of course—they took us with them. That is how we got started going to dances. They really had some nice dances in those days that the lodges put on in the winter. One lodge would try to outdo the other for music and decorations. We always had such a good time. That was where I met my boyfriends and I had quite a few. I first started out going with boys from Sheldon, and they certainly all were nice kids. That went on for about a year. When I was a junior in high school, I started going with Fred Bohm and we were married on September 7, 1921. I had a real nice reception at home. The folks invited all their old friends, Fretlands, Goldbergs, and Geelans and Fred’s folks. We had been married in Fargo prior to the reception, at the First stood up with us. We just stayed in Fargo for a couple of days for our honeymoon, then moved in with Fred’s folks until spring so we could have the house fixed on the place where Fred Jr. now lives. The house needed fixing, as well as the barn. It was an awful job to clean and paint. I had to do the painting inside. Junior[2] was born that spring so there was so much work to do. We had to carry all the water, or I should say Fred carried it. He never made me carry water. But I washed clothes on the washboard. That was plenty hard. I would wash until 4 o’clock in the afternoon every week. In the summer, I usually had a good-sized garden. We raised little chickens, and one year, Fred tried to raise turkeys. It was raining shortly after we bought the birds and, of course, turkeys cannot stand dampness when they are house. In the middle of the night I heard a noise and asked Fred, or woke him rather, and told him to look at his turkeys. The rats had carried away all but ten and he had about a hundred to begin with. He just looked so there were such hard times. This was during the Great Depression, so we tried everything to make a go of things. We milked as many cows as we could take care of. I had never learned how to milk. Mother always said if we didn’t learn, we wouldn’t have to. She didn’t want us to. But Fred was in the barn so long milking that I finally decided to help. By the way, Fred never asked me to. The first day, my arms were so tired, but I got so I could do it, but I never did get to milk as fast as Fred. Two years after we were on that place Byron was born. He was born in August and had the whole winter staying inside so didn’t really have as good a start as Fred, Junior. He had congestion of the lungs all winter and one time had pneumonia. We thought we would loose him. I certainly said a lot of prayers for him, and he survived, but always had a lot of trouble with colds after that.

The year Byron was born, my folks house burned, and after that they were pretty discouraged. They were getting older and had such a hard time all through the years to make ends meet, and trying to buy the place where they lived. They didn’t do well even with the milk route they had all those years. They finally quit the milk route. It was such a hard grind anyway, with delivering every day, and in the summer twice a day, because people in those days didn’t have refrigerators and the milk wouldn’t keep. They didn’t have pasteurization either, so it is a wonder there was any sweet milk at all. But that’s the way it was at that time. It all may sound odd now. I was saying to the grand kids about not having T. V. or radio, and they said what did you do? I said we sat around in the kitchen and visited with each other, and in the evening we would be in the living room and Mom and Dad would play and we would sing. We usually had some of the Hills, Dad’s relatives, there so there was more than our family.

When the folks talked of leaving the farm, my mother had a friend in California that she had kept in contact with through her married years, and this friend was coaxing her to come to California. There was work there in the mine. This Lynn Cullver and her husband had an interest in the mine and she wanted them to come out there and work. So, after a long debate, they decided to go in May of 1924. Buss was just out of the eighth grade then, so they all packed up and went out there to look at it. They didn’t expect to stay that time, just stayed a couple of months and then came back. Byron was born while they were gone. I don’t know how I’d have gotten along if it hadn’t been for Mother that winter. She would come and stay with me when Byron was so sick; he had pneumonia. I would go to bed early because that was my habit, and she didn’t want to go to bed until late and liked to sleep until late in the morning. So that was how we kept track of him, so someone would be with him all nite. I can’t thank my mother enough for helping me keep him alive.

The next summer, the summer of 1925, the Folks left for California again, but to work this time. Dad worked at the mine, it was an open mine, though, and mother cooked there. They stayed a couple of years, then came back to North Dakota for a year, and Dad got hurt when he fell, head first, off of a load of corn that he was hauling for George Fretland (Doris’s husband), He had such a bad time with his neck and the doctor. said that if they tried to do anything with his neck, to straighten the vertebrae that he may have ended up with paralysis in his lower body. They kept track of him and his insurance paid him a small monthly payment.

Then, Mother got work at the Episcopal Sisters Home in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Dad wasn’t very well and stayed with Doris the first two years she was there, and she would come on her vacations in the summer to North Dakota and spend time with the rest of the family. Then, Dad got a little better and he went along to Wisconsin with her and done a little of what he could around the place. He used to drive the sisters to the lake down there when they wanted to go. They thought an awful lot of my dad, who they called “Mr. Hill.” 

They were there for ten years and then Mother fell and broke her arm, so she had to quit. It bothered her for quite a while. Floss asked them to come to live with her. She told them they could have a home with her as long as they lived. But after a year living with Floss and Russell they talked of going out West again. They were never quite satisfied after they had been to California. This time they went to Newberg, Oregon. There were folks from Enderlin who had moved there. It was Bill Cauldwel and Gerald Anderson, and there were others. They got little jobs where they could make a little money, and they just always loved Newberg. They were there from 1937 to 1953 when they moved to Bremerton. Mother had a malignancy and Floss had to go down to Newberg to help them so much. Then Dad had an operation for prostate, so they both were in poor health, and they moved up to Bremerton to live in the house below Floss and Russell’s out at Kitsap Lake. Neither one of them were well. Mother had her appendix removed three weeks before they gave her treatment for cancer. The doctor said if they left her appendix in, it would burst if they gave her those radium treatments. Those treatments were so hard on her that she never did get so she could walk much after that, but she did live 8 years after that, and said she wished she had never had them, she suffered so much, but she did get around and done lots of hand work to take her mind off her suffering. Dad was always sick a lot with his stomach trouble and we always thought Mother was so strong cause she was never sick as much or at least didn’t let us know that she was.

I will now get back to my family. I stayed home so much when the boys were small. There were years that I can scarcely remember. I really worked awfully hard with all the work I had to do. The year Byron was a year old our house burned. We lost everything. I was over to my folks visiting and Fred was working out in the barn, and when he came out he saw the house was burning. I sure cried a lot about that. We had to go over to Max’s and live until a small place was built for us. The neighbors helped us build it; it was just enough to get along in until spring. Then we built the small house that was on the farm until it was sold to Carl Fingers. He built more onto it and it is still there where Jr. Lives, until he tears it down. I made a garden every year and canned as much as I could. I can’t name all the things I canned and put away. And then, threshing was such a chore at that time when those big machines would come with all the men to cook for. Alma used to help me. I don’t know how I would have survived that either if it hadn’t been for her. I really loved Alma. She was sure good to me and both the girls, Alma and Hartha, were good to the boys. If I were away, they too as good care of them as though I’d be home.

I went to Wisconsin and took them with me to the folks when they were there the first time I went. But the second time I went alone. And of course Fred was good to the boys too. They would write me such nice letters, and they were so glad when I would come home.

We had so little to live on that summer of 1934 that I went to take care of a woman who had a baby and who stayed home to have it. It was a hard job, but we so needed the money. And then Fred got sick and couldn’t work for about a month, and Max came over to do the work. The boys were only nine and eleven, I think, but of course they helped.

The year before that, 1933, I was expecting and got so sick I would vomit all the time until I almost lost my life. They took me to Fargo and they didn’t expect me to live. I could hardly talk any more. The first day they tried to feed me and it was the same—everything all came up. Then my heart started to give out and they operated on me on a Sunday afternoon. At that time, they didn’t do abortions—only if the mother’s life was in danger. That nite I was in such bad shape the doctor sat up all night and had a tube down to my stomach and washed it out with a syringe. They left that tube down my stomach for three days. It was so awful. It made me gag. Then they wanted me to eat and I couldn’t think of a thing that I would care to eat. Finally, they asked me to nibble on a cracker, and that’s how I started to eat. I had gotten so thin I couldn’t stand. I can’t recall the number of days I was in the hosp., but Fred carried me in the house when I came home. I didn’t gain much that first year. But we got along O.K.

Then, one day, Fred and Max were fixing something on the well and Fred had a needle-nosed pliers and Byron was leaning over Fred’s shoulder and the wire broke and Fred’s arm came up and the wire went into Byron’s eye. One couldn’t see anything wrong with his eye, so we didn’t go to the doctor that day, but the next A.M. it didn’t look right so we took him to Fargo. The doctor gave him a tetanus shot and said he didn’t know if he could save the eye or not. I went away to my friend’s place in Fargo and stayed and she had nurse’s training and we kept hot packs on it until the next time we went to the doctor. He said it was going to be O.K. but his eye would have to be needled later. His eye showed a white spot and we had it needled later. They couldn’t correct it with the other eye when he had glasses but said in case something happened to the other, he would have the use of it. I have prayed for him. That’s all I can do. I also had an accident with him when he was only four years old. The road was so muddy and the ruts were so deep. I was driving over to one of the neighbors. She had just had a new baby. Just as I came to the corner, this same woman’s husband ran into our car with a load of grain on his truck. Byron hit the windshield and it broke and came down on him and cut the side of his head open. I was frantic, of course, and Byron said, “I don’t want to get killed.” I got turned around and started driving to town to the doctor Those ruts in the road were so awful, and I was having my arm around Byron to comfort him and the ruts threw me out of the tracks in the road and I went down into the ditch I had blood all over my hands. Fred was plowing in a nearby field saw me in the ditch, so he stopped his team and had the neighbor take them hoe. And then, we took Byron to the doctor. The doctor. took three stitches in his temple on the side of his head. He got along good from that.

We also had to have the boys’ tonsils taken out. Byron had such festers in his ears. He was only three at the time and the doctor said he had never worked on such a small throat. But he said it had to be done. Byron was good when he had his out. It was around the Fourth of July and all he was interested in was his caps and his cap gun. Junior wasn’t so good when he had his out. He said he wanted them back and wouldn’t be quiet even when we told him it wouldn’t hurt so much if he were quiet. He was sure ornery. They also had the measles the following winter and I had such a time to keep them in bed and where it was dark.

Fred took the kids to all the rodeos that were around our area, also he took them along everywhere he would go during the week. When they were little, or babies I should say, I had them both all of the time. But when they got big enough to be company, they were always with their dad, which is natural I suppose. They did talk to me a lot in the house, but when we went any place, they stayed with their Dad, so I missed the companionship. I had always wished for just boys because I favor them over girls, but they seem to grow away from their mothers when they grow up. The boys went to country school through the eighth grade. They seemed to do all right, but when they went to high school in Enderlin, they seemed to loose interest.

All this time the boys were growing up, we had an average social life. I joined the Homemaker’s Club and attended as much as I could. Then there were parties in winter and we went to all the neighboring parties. They were dances and everyone would bring some of the refreshments. We did have lots of good times. Usually we took the boys with us. When Jr. Finished the 8th grade in the country things had gotten so hard. To make a go of things, we moved to town. At first, Fred sold Ward’s products and we got along fairly well. Then he had a chance to work icing trains for the Soo Line, because it paid better. Hartha married Frank Sallen in 1937, so that fall Frank asked Fred to work for him. It promised to be more regular hours. So he worked in the garage and I worked in Russell Anderson’s store. I worked there until Russell sold his store. Odegaards bought the store in 1939 and I got to work for them. I worked there until they sold out to Reinhold Utke and they asked me to work for them and I worked there a year. Then I got sick with sinus trouble and had to have atrium [sic.] windows in my sinus area. That was the most painful operation one can ever imagine. They had to do it since they didn’t have antibiotics at that time and there was so much infection and hard buildup of pus in them.

The kids didn’t do well in high school. They got by but just wouldn’t bring anything home to study. However, they finished, and when Jr. Finished high school he worked mostly for farmers. He still liked the farm, as he does today. After he was out of high school for a year, he wanted to get married. He had gone with Toots (Alma) Opheim[3] for a couple of years while in school Fred and I could have said no, but we thought maybe it would be a mistake, so we let them get married. He was only twenty years old. It was really hard, as he was so young, and looking for work.

When Fred, Junior got married, Byron had just graduated from high school and United States was at war at the time. So Byron wanted to go out to Bremerton to work in the Navy Yard. My sister, Floss, lived there and her husband, Russell Anderson, was working in the Navy Yard and so was my brother, Buss. Byron wasn’t eighteen years old at the time, so he couldn’t get a job like older ones had. He threw hot rivets. He worked there until fall and then came home. He could get out of working at the yard since he wasn’t yet of age. That winter he went to college with another kid from town. That following summer, he was called into the service. He joined the U. S. Army Air Corps and served his two years. By that time the war was over. He spent the summer of 1946 just dinging around and doing odd jobs. Then he wanted to go back to Washington. I think this time he applied for work at Boeing. He had taken drafting at school and College, so finally he got to be an engineer. They don’t rate them into engineering like that any more.

After Byron had gone to Bremerton in the summer of 1942 and was working in the Navy Yard, Fred, Junior., being just married and not having a job that paid a decent living, wanted to go out to Bremerton to work. So he and Toots went and lived in a mobile home that Russell had lived in before he and Floss built a small house near Tracyton, Washington. He worked up until Christmas time and they came back to Enderlin because he had a call to go into the service. After going to get his examination, they found he had an injury to his back, so he was rejected. Both Fred, Junior, and Toots went back out to Washington and this time went to live near Port Orchard. This was in 1943. That spring Fred III was born on April 13. Again, they came back to Enderlin and this time they stayed. Jr. Got to rent a little place from one of the Anderson boys, I think it was Jessie, Russell’s nephew. Fred, Junior worked wherever he could. He was a willing worker on the farm cause that’s the kind of work he liked. From that little farm they moved down to the Sand Hills, several miles south of Sheldon, ending up on the Mamenga farm. They lived there two or three years. It was at this time that Byron was called to go into the service for two years. This was before he had gone to college at Bottineau, N.D.

After Russell and Floss went to Newberg, Ore., Fred got the job at the Post Office, which he liked a lot—just a substitute mail carrier on the rural routes. It took him away from his work at the garage quite a lot, and sometimes for a week or so at a time. Of course, the pay was good, too, so much better than he was getting working in the garage. This went on for a while, so Frank finally laid Fred off, unknown to Hartha, of course, and Fred never told her. Fred said that he’d not go to visit them any more and I said, “Oh yes you will. She is your sister.” And I am glad we did visit them cause Hartha was always so good to us. Fred was practically beside himself, and just walked the floor, not having work, and it was so hard to find a job. But everyone knew what a hard worker he was, so Mr. Gilbertson hired him over at his gas station. They did work on cars, also. This way, he got every other Sunday off, while at Frank’s, he worked almost every Sunday and also overtime at nite. But at that time in North Dakota there wasn’t any law on work hours, so one worked as long as there were customers.

Fred was so tired most of the time, but he did get a chance to go bowling once in awhile, especially after he started working for Gilbertson. Hartha made a lot of fun of Gilbertson, said he had such a long neck. But he was good to Fred and Fred liked working for him. He was still doing sub work at the Post Office. and finally worked his way into a regular, at different spots in the Post Office When Carl Newgard left for Hawaii, Fred got in as postal clerk at the window. He held that job until the end of the war. Mrs. Moriarty could have helped him get the job permanent, but she didn’t, so he was out of work again.

The Martin store in Enderlin had changed hands a few times and after John Martin got out of the service, he was at loose ends, too. He had always said that he didn’t want to work in a store anymore, because his dad had owned it and the boys had to help in it as they were growing up. But after a time he thought the store looked pretty good. So he took the store over and hired Fred to work for him. Fred liked the work since he liked food so well anyway, so he worked there until he left to move out to Bremerton.

I worked in Reinhold Utke’s store until 1946, when I became so ill with my sinus trouble and had to have the operation. The doctor told me if I could go someplace where there wasn’t such drastic changes in temperature and so suddenly at times, that, perhaps, I would get better. It was getting so I was flat on my back most of the time, what with colds and the flu. So, my folks said I should come stay with them awhile. They lived in Newberg, Oregon at the time. So I went, left October 29, 1947 by train.

Fred stayed in Enderlin to see how I would get along out in Oregon. I was getting so I was up and around, but still terribly weak. I had tried everything to get well. It was hard for Fred that winter and he really didn’t want to leave Enderlin, but when he saw I was getting along better, he sold all our things and came out west. By this time, Floss and Russell had moved up to Bremerton, and Russell was working in the Navy Yard again, after having been laid off after the war. Rather than taking a chance on getting work in a small town like Newberg, I thought it would be better if we went up to Bremerton. So I asked Fred and he said it was O.K. At first, we lived in a house just below Floss and Russell’s. When they bought their place out at Kitsap Lake, the owner had these two houses he owned together. So, Russell bought them both.

We lived out there and Fred first got work in a grocery store in Minette, a little suburb of Bremerton. He worked there a year and the man who owned it retired and the store was closed. The man had run the store since 1905 and was well along in age, so, again, Fred was out of work, and it isn’t easy to find work when one is over fifty years old, as Fred was. Byron got him to go to Seattle to try to get into Boeing, and they hired him. He commuted for five years from Kitsap Lake. It must have been a grind, since he had to drive into town and take the Ferry to Seattle, then drive to Boeing from the Ferry

After we lived at Kitsap Lake for five years, my folks had been sick after Dad had that surgery and Mother had that arrested case of cancer. So Floss wanted them to move into the house Fred and I had lived in those five years. Fred and I moved into Bremerton and lived on Park Avenue in a house owned by Emmett Burns. We lived there for about a year and Fred had a heart attack in May. He was off work for three months. The boys put a little pressure on him and finally got him to move to Seattle. He wouldn’t talk of moving to Seattle before, you just city and said that he might be out of work here. Who knows? We did move and Byron and Evelyn had looked for an apartment for us. They had two we looked at and we settled for the one at 418 Loretta Place. We lived there until Fred retired in 1964. Fred thought he was just going to hate retirement and thought we’d never have enough to live on. He had worked 4 years past his retirement age anyway, but they wouldn’t let him work anymore. He brought all his tools home and got unemployment for the first six months of that year, then six months of the following year. He then found we could get along on what we had. I was doing alteration, though.

The first three years in Seattle I worked in Frederick & Nelson. Again I had to quit on account of my sinus infection. I hadn’t found out about my allergies until the last year in Bremerton when I had gone to have a test. I found out my main ones were tobacco and tobacco smoke, so Fred had to quit smoking. It was quite hard for him at first, but it was either that or live alone, and he chose to quit. On quitting Frederick’s I had to have another operation on my sinus. One side had grown shut. I thought it wouldn’t be as bad, but it turned out to be just as painful as before. I couldn’t go back to work and that’s when I started doing alteration to help out with expenses.

After mother and Dad had lived at Kitsap Lake for about five years, they found Mother had this malignancy back. This time it seemed to be in her stomach—she vomited so much of the time, and the doctor didn’t say it was cancer, said it could be from gallstones and advised an operation. She was then in bed and not able to be up, but they took her and operated. She came out of the operation, but they didn’t remove anything. They found that she was full of cancer in that area. They just sewed her up and it healed beautifully. She showed it to me and I think she thought she was going to get well because no one told her the cancer had come back. She died just three weeks to the day after her operation. She was 83 years old. That was January 25, 1961. Dad was alone then and was just beside himself. Mom had always made all the decisions, since he had so little education. Of course, they always talked things over. Mother wasn’t a dominating type anyway. She was about the most cheerful person I have ever known, and such a dear mother; I was really heartbroken at loosing my mother. I guess I’d had her around for so many years that I thought she would always be there. Dad went to live with Floss and Russell. They sold their place out at Kitsap Lake and bought a place in Bremerton at 831 Warren Avenue. That was in 1965 I think. That way, they had quarters for Dad that he could be in by himself if he wanted to, or be with them. It worked out until he got so he wasn’t well enough to be up much of the time; then they put him in a convalescent home near their place, and either Floss or Buss went to see him every day. He lived eleven years after Mother died. He died Sept. 18, 1972. It was old age and poor circulation that probably caused his death. He was ninety-three years old. Mother and Dad, are both in the Woodlawn Cemetery outside of Bremerton.

After Fred was retired from Boeing for four years, we thought it may be a good idea to live in a small town, so we moved down to Sheridan, Oregon, where my sister Doris was living. I didn’t have any idea I wouldn’t like it until we had gotten moved and I just couldn’t get used to it, and I think Fred felt the same. That was in 1968. Everyone was nice to us, too, but it was such a change. Then Fred had another heart attack after fifteen years. That really upset me so bad and we were so far away for the kids to come to see us. I asked Fred if we could go back to Seattle when he got better and he said yes. We stayed there just four months and moved back to Seattle the first of Sept. We moved into the same building as before at 418 Loretta Place, only in a different apartment. We now lived on the fourth floor. Previously, we had lived on the second floor in apartment 206 for six years, then we moved down in apartment eight and lived there for eight years. When we came back from Sheridan we lived in apartment 420. Fred lived just 7 months after he had the heart attack in Sheridan. When we came back, Russell came down and drove our car up to Bremerton and Byron came over and took us to Seattle, then kept Fred at their place until I got settled in apartment 420. I had no idea he wasn’t as well as he should be. He never complained and he always went for a walk every day. The morning of the day he died he had come down to the laundry room and helped me fold clothes as he always did after he retired. Also he went up to Broadway to shop, and afterward, was out polishing his car. We had, at that time, rented a parking space across the street (before we had it in the garage down the hill and I thought it was too hard for him to go down there and then climb the hill after putting the car away. So he polished a little every day to keep it nice. Up until we moved to Seattle, we never had enough money ahead to buy a newer car, and Fred acted as though he was satisfied with the old Ford we had. I don’t know what model it was, but I suppose the boys do. Anyway, we must have had it until about 1956, and we looked around and found one we were able to buy. It was a Studebaker. I never saw anyone more pleased than Fred when we got that car. I didn’t know he had wanted one so bad, but he didn’t sleep that nite when he got it, and was so happy with it. I know the boys said it was hard to steer and he was disgusted about them saying anything like that about his car. Of course, driving just short drives like we did (Fred never cared to drive in traffic much, so about all the driving it got was up to Broadway to shop about three blocks away and to church and out to the boys’ homes. About 1967 it was in bad shape and needed cleaning and overhauling. Fred said it needed so much done to it that we traded it in on a Ford Falcon. It was a real light cream color. Again, Fred was so happy with his car that he didn’t sleep that night he bought it either. He had never said a word about changing cars, or that he was getting bothered by the fact the Studebaker was getting bad from making short drives, and that was the car we still had when he passed away. I couldn’t keep it, or didn’t want to, since I hadn’t done any driving since coming to the West Coast. I had good enough transportation to get downtown and anyplace I wanted to go, so I got rid of it. By this time, it really wasn’t in such good shape either, having been driven the same as the other car had been. It was pretty well corroded, too.

Fred passed away on April 2, 1969. The doctor said he’d had a massive heart attack and stroke and couldn’t have survived this heart attack because of the stroke, which occurred down to the shoe repairman’s shop where he used to spend some time. He would stay in the man’s shop while this man would go out to lunch. That day the heart attack happened, he had his lunch and had rested for about half an hour. I was resting, too, since I’d washed and ironed. Fred got up and went out, and I got a call from the shoe man saying that Fred was having trouble to breathe and I knew, and went down as fast as I could. I gave him one of those tablets that are supposed to help them, but he didn’t respond, and we called the ambulance and they took him to the emergency. I called Byron and he called Tex and he was then living in Flint, Michigan. Fred lived until the next day and died about 7:30 in the eve.

I had always had protection, had good parents and a good husband and to have it all fall away is about more than one can take in all at once, I really don’t know how I got thro that year. It is all a blur to me. If I hadn’t had so much faith and prayer to help me, I couldn’t have made it. I didn’t have anyone with me only one nite after Fred was gone. Junior was there and the next day he left for his home. The Evanson girls lived in the building and would call me every nite and ask, “Would you like us to come up, or would you like to come down?” That really helped me a lot, and I will never forget them for it. Then, when they had company, they would make a nice meal. They would always call me and have me come in, too. I thought that was pretty thoughtful of them.

Fred had always worked so hard through the years, and I give him credit for the decent living I have. I helped with what I could do, but in proportion to what he earned, mine was very little, I figure. I gave him a very nice burial and the service was lovely. I think he would rather have been buried back in North Dakota Maybe I was selfish in that I didn’t want to give him up. I called and told Hartha that, and she said, “You don’t have to, Gladys.” So I had him taken to Mt Pleasant, up on Queen Anne Hill. It is a lovely spot and I have a place for me up there when my time comes.

At first, I just couldn’t see any reason for me to go on, but somehow a person has no choice. I have made the best of it, which is a very lonely existence. I lived at the Biltmore for eight years after Fred died, then I moved to a high-rise senior citizens’ apartment called Harvard Court on October 1, 1977. I had lived altogether, with Fred and then alone, at the Biltmore for twenty-three years, longer than I had lived any other place in my life. It is going on three years here at Harvard Court and it has been good for me. I see the family here on holidays and enjoy them. It has gotten to be quite a good-sized family. There are fifteen, and sometimes nineteen, of us at one time on holidays. Stuart tells me I have a lot to live for. I hope I have, and that they don’t get tired of me, like one hears of in other families. I do visit my sister and brother in Bremerton as often as I can and try to visit the other sister down in Roseburg when I can, also her daughter in Orange, California. Of course, I visit my son in North Dakota when I can and a few friends in Minneapolis. So many of the folks I once knew and loved back home in North Dakota have passed on. It don’t seem the same anymore. I noticed it especially on the last trip I made. That was in 1979 in September.

Gladys Bohm

Jan. 30, 1980

***

Addendum to the Autobiography

of Gladys Hill Bohm

About twelve years after finishing her personal memoir, Gladys prepared four additional 

pages of typescript, autobiographical recollections in response to a letter from Fred Bohm III. 

This November 1991 document contained responses to questions Fred asked his grandmother 

about her life and, in particular, about the lives of other Bohm family members. The text 

 of Gladys’s handwritten cover letter precedes that of the actual four-page typescript “addendum.”

Nov. 8-’91.

Dear Fred,

I finished the papers, all I could think of anyway. Some of it I have put down before it was time, but somehow I have it all down that I have a clue to. It’s kind of hard to remember back at the right date. But I hope its a help to you, since I wrote all I could think of and the many mistakes I done in writing it. I tried to correct them so I think you can read it, I know if I recopied it there would be just as many mistakes since I have never learned to do a perfect paper.

So I hope this fills you with things you didn’t know. I am quite proud of my family, cause we never had the kind of unpleasant things that go on in lots of families, like arguing and fighting all the time. We were mostly a loving happy family as I grew up and also later. I am still happy and proud of my family at this late date.

I wish you all the good luck, which you have worked so hard to accomplish. So I hope you have good luck with this writing the history.

Much love,

Grandma Bohm

Please let me know how it turned out.

*** 

I will begin with the Henkels who came from Russia to America in the 1900s. They lived on the place where your folks [Fred, Jr. and Alma Bohm] now live.[4] They had two teen-aged boys who started in that country school where Fred went. They were much older than the other children, but after they learned English they went through the eight grades in a short time. I am just guessing, but I imagine they went to the junior church group that Cecilia went to, so that must have been how she got acquainted with him (Fred Henkel) I mean.

It was Fred Henkel who was the cause of the trouble with her mother (Ida Bohm). My Fred’s dad (Herman Bohm) used to take p ouches of tobacco over to the elder Henkel. That was in the early 1900s. And they used to take meat over to the Henkel’s, too. I guess they didn’t have much, coming from the old country.

Then, in 1905, Hermann Bohm was doing road grading like they used to on one of those road graders. The ground was terribly hard and this machine had levers on it that one had to pull down by hand and Herman pulled on them as hard as he could as hard as he could and they hit the hard road when he pulled. And the machine threw him hard onto the road. It affected his lungs so he got infection and died of pneumonia (in 1905).

Things went on, and they built a new barn in the next year or so. They had very good crops at that time. It seems as if they would put in their crops and would have the rest of the year without much to do, so my Fred said.

After Herman Bohm died Cecilia started to go with this Fred Henkel and finally married him against her mother’s wishes. My Fred said she never would have married him had their dad been alive. Well, after that, she had a baby just about every year.

Fred Henkel bought cattle around the country. I used to see him driving around in his democrat wagon when I’d be walking home from school. Then they loaded the stock up at the stockyards in town and shipped the stock to the Twin Cities. He always went with the stock and used to make pretty good money (so my Fred said) but the trouble was he spent it in the Cities, is suppose on girlies, so he didn’t bring much home, but Cecilia got along as best she could. Her mother would come to the house and Hartha said Cecilia would go upstairs and not come down. They really never talked much, so I am just guessing what went on. Anyway, as time went on, Ida Bohm went out less and less. But after Fred Bohm, Sr., and I were married, Cecilia and Leona, one of her daughters, did walk out to see her mother one day. But first, I must say that Cecilia and Fred Henkel had eight children. The youngest was just a week old when Fred Henkel died. He died of sugar diabetes. My Fred said there would have been that many more kids had he lived. My Fred used to go there to see his sister to see his sister and used to give them money. Those kids all grew up decent, tho, and always found work. The kids were Laura, Alvin, Eugene, Leona, Russell, Raymond, Mildred, and Freddie.

You mentioned about my Fred going to agricultural college, which is now North Dakota State University.[5] He went there before World War I, and I don’t know what year. But he didn’t quit because of not having money. His mother was one to try to hang onto her family and she didn’t encourage him to go. At the time, they seemed to think that schooling through more than the eighth grade wasn’t necessary for a farmer. So Fred just went that one quarter. He was lonely to go home. Then World War I came. Fred registered, but the war came to an end shortly after that, so he didn’t have to go. He probably would have been exempt due to farm work as many were. He was just 21.

I can’t find much to say about Alma’s and Hartha’s going out with boyfriends.[6] They were pretty close-mouthed about them. I don’t know, but suspect, that it was their mother who objected to it. Alma did go with Roy Peterson on occasion, but not often, and later took up with Burt Carter, who was married. She got me to go along with her to a dance in Sheldon one nite, which I didn’t like, but I went, and she met this Carter fellow. But so little was said about that, too. I didn’t like going because Fred wasn’t going. Then, to get to Hartha’s boyfriend. He used to send her boxes of candy, and letters. That went on for quite a few years. I didn’t tell you, he got killed. I think he died of a heart attack. She sure felt bad, of course. I have no idea why she didn’t marry him before that, because she was 23 when Fred and I got married. And when Alma, Hartha, and I went to Fargo that time when I met him, it was several years after that. But, as I said before, their mother just seemed to hang onto them.

Then, Fred kept on coming over to see me. I was just 17 and he was 25. He went with my cousin, Agnes, first, who was visiting us from Waukesha, Wisconsin.[7] Although first in the winter I was to a dance with another fellow and he asked to take me home, and, of course, I wouldn’t go since I was with this other fellow. But Fred hung around and I spilled coffee all over his pant leg. I would have thought he would be disgusted, but he never said a thing. That winter, he came out to our house on the farm and asked for me, but I was living in town and going to high school. So Floss was home and she said, “Won’t I do?” So Fred took her out that nite. Then, by spring, my cousin came from Wisconsin. I had other dates, so Fred started going with her. This went on until the Fourth of July, and one night, when Fred called, I said I would call Agnes, and Fred said, “No, I want to talk to you.” So, from then on, he called for me. We were married on September 7, 1921. We were to live on the place your folks live on but that old house needed so much done to it, I stayed with the Bohm family until spring. In the spring Fred Junior was born. Fred was working on the old house, and, when I got well enough, I went out to help, too. I left Jr. with my mother and Floss was still at home at that time. The baby cried a lot cause he had colic, so it wasn’t easy for my mother and Floss; and Floss said later that she was glad when it came time I could take him home with me. But later, when my mother and Floss brought him to me after the house got so we could live in it, my mother brought the baby over and she cried thinking I wasn’t capable of taking care of him. But they didn’t come over for a month or so after that, since they were always so busy with the milk route, and when they did come over Jr. was doing fine and had gotten fat. He was such a cute baby by that time.

However, in 1920, just before I was married and still in high school, our house on the farm burned and the folks built a new one, which was real nice.[8] I was in school another year, and that next summer, or rather fall, I was married. The folks lived on the farm another three years and the house burned a second time. That is when they decided to go to California. Mother had a friend there who she had been writing to for years. The friend begged her to come to California. They went there to a mining town. Mama cooked for the crew, and dad walked the line for the flume. They stayed there a year before they came back. They had enough to buy a little house in Newberg, Oregon. They lived near the cannery and Dad used to take care of the cannery and lock up nites. They did whatever they could. Those were hard times out west. Floss and Russell had moved to Spring Valley, Wisconsin, and had a variety store there. Russell’s dad lived there with his second wife and he was the one who got Russell into that business. Russell didn’t like being shut in a store all day and was out all the time he could be. So, after a couple or three years, they came back to Enderlin, but started another variety store in Enderlin. In 1937 Floss had a couple of operations, so I worked in the store. That fall, we moved into town. Frank and Hartha got married that fall and Frank had a garage, so Fred worked in the garage and I worked in Russell’s store when I could. We moved into my Uncle Burt’s house and Fred finally bought it from him. In the meantime Russell left his store and they left for Oregon. They rented a place first, then they built a house. There was hard times and Russell worked in an oil station. They built their house in Newberg where my folks lived. Russell always had a nice car.

Now I will get back to the fall Fred and I were married. Alma and Hartha Decided to go to school, so they went to Fargo and Hartha attended business college, and Alma went to the school of music. I don’t think it did very much for her, though, because I don’t think she played any better after going—not to say this because I was prejudiced, because I really thought a lot of Alma. The girls were very good to me, I felt. After going to school they didn’t change in any way, they still stayed home.

The year after Byron was born, Ida Bohm had a heart attack and died after just a week in bed. The family was all older but it sure hit them hard. Byron was just three months old. Fred’s mother thought a lot of Jr., and while she was sick in bed she wanted to hold him so much. They were all crazy about that baby. When I first brought him over to their place and Max saw him, I think he just fell in love with Fred Junior. Of course, I am prejudiced, but he was such a cute baby. We farmed for the next fifteen years and things went from bad to worse with the amount of mostly no crops. So, when Junior. was ready for high school, we sold out and moved to town. And as I said before, Fred worked for Frank in his garage. At first, Fred had every other Sunday off. An as time went on, Frank made him work longer and longer hours, and Sundays, too. Fred never complained, tho, until years later. He told me he thought sometimes he thought he’d die in there with all those gas fumes. They didn’t have any laws about such things at that time. Also, they didn’t have any laws about working hours, so he sure put in long days. He worked for Frank until the Second World War came up. Russell Anderson had been a sub carrier on the mail route for Burt Iles. So when Russell moved to Oregon, they let Fred into carrying that mail. That went on for a while, and, I guess Frank got tired of Fred taking days off carrying mail. The mail job paid so well compared to what Frank was paying him, and I think Frank resented that, so he fired Fred. He only paid Fred $75 a month. When he fired Fred, tho, Fred was just sick about it. He came home and just walked the floor. But as soon as Gilbertson heard Fred was available, he came for Fred to work for him. They all knew what a good worker he was. Hartha didn’t know that Frank fired him, of course, and Fred would never say anything. Hartha made fun of Gilbertson, said what a long neck he had. Well, anyway, he was good to Fred and he didn’t have such long hours and had every other Sunday off. Then Carl Newgard, who worked in the post office, left for Hawaii and told Fred he could have his place at the window. The woman who was postmaster wanted another man who was Catholic, but he didn’t know the people like Fred did, so Fred got the job and held it until the end of the war, and then, of course, a serviceman got the job. It was Buster Martin, who has since passed away. I have no idea who is there now. But while Fred held the job, we got along just fine. After Russell sold his store, Odegaards bought it and I worked for them. I didn’t work full time but worked as much as I cared to. In 1946, that winter, I was sick so much with sinus trouble, I was sick in bed more than I was up, so my folks offered me the chance to come out to Oregon. If I got better, Fred would come out. He came out the next spring the 18th of May, 1947, It was his birthday. He didn’t like being out her in the Pacific Northwest, but I just wasn’t able to go back, so we stayed. He got a job in a grocery store over in Manette and worked there a year, when the old man who ran it retired. He had been in that store since 1902, and was old. So Fred was out of work again. Byron then took Fred to Seattle so he could find out if he could get into Boeing and, of course, he did get in. We were not living in Bremerton then and we lived out at Kitsap Lake. Fred commuted to Seattle and Boeing for 5 years.

To get back to when we moved into town off the farm, the boys started school; Jr. was a freshman in high school and Byron was in the eighth grade. They started calling Jr. Tex because he was always talking about horses. He got into fights with the kids in our neighborhood. Byron never seemed to fight and always had to help Tex out of his mix-ups. Tex had one real good friend, Stuart Douglas, but had a fight with him before they finally got to be good friends. That boy would do anything for him. The first three years in high school went O.K. He still had his horse, or maybe it was two, I can’t recall. But the last year in high school I had such a time making him go to school. One time, especially, he wasn’t going to go and went down to the pasture to get his horse. He was going out to the Bohnsack ranch He had been going there all through high school and Freida Bohnsack paid him a little for doing chores. That was right what he wanted to do. Anyway, when I couldn’t get him to go to school, I called Fred at the garage and he came right home and went down to the pasture where Tex was harnessing up his horse, or rather, putting the saddle on. Fred said to him, “Where are you going?” and Tex said, “No place.” And then Tex came in and got ready for school. Fred never did talk cross to the boys, he just talked in a soft voice, and they never did try to defy him. I never had trouble with Byron, only once the teacher wrote me a note when he was in the eighth grade. She said he was always hiding funny books inside his readers. When I got him home I told him Daddy and I were working hard to keep them in school. I thought he should try to be better. I never did have any more trouble that I know of. Tex, tho, wanted to be out to that Bohnsack ranch most of the time. The kids had done everything they could to earn a little money, but jobs were scarce, and graduation day finally came around. I guess that was a happy day for Tex. He graduated in 1941. Fred was still working for Frank, and he was so small that he didn’t even let Fred off to go to the Kids’ graduation. Although I can say Frank always treated me nice whenever I was around him. Then, Tex started going with Toots, and they went together that whole year, until Byron graduated in 1942. Tex and Toots wanted to get married, but Tex was only 20, so I didn’t want him to. But he was determined, so we finally gave in. I forgot to say how faithful Tex’s friend, Stuart Douglas, was to him. When Tex would go to the Bohnsack ranch, Stuart would cut grass to feed his horses. We had a cow in town, too, so to help cut out with expenses by selling milk. So Stuart cut grass for them, too, since Tex was expected to do that.

Well, we let Tex and Toots get married and you can get the rest of their story from them.

I will now take up, or continue with, the story after we lived at Kitsap Lake in Russell’s house. We moved into Bremerton onto Park Avenue, and into a house belonging to the Burnses. We lived there just three months, and Fred had been commuting to Seattle to Boeing, when Fred had his first heart attack. He had this attack about three o’clock in the a.m., but he wouldn’t let me call the doctor until 7 o’clock. I was just sick about it. When I called the doctor, they carried him out on a stretcher and he was in the hosp. For three weeks. I used to go over to shave him every day. He was always nice to me but wasn’t very nice to anyone in the hosp. When he was allowed to come home, he was so glad, and I spent my whole time taking care of him. He was in bed for three weeks more before the doctor allowed him to be up. I believe he was home for three months before he went back to work. The boys were urging him to move to Seattle, but he didn’t want to go. He finally consented, and we moved on the 3rd of July.

In the first place, I didn’t mention that when I left Enderlin in 1947 in the last of Oct. for Newberg, Oregon, where my folks were living. At that time, Russell had gotten a chance to work in the Navy Yard, so he left Newberg to go to Bremerton. Floss was left behind to sell their house that they got $8,000 for, which was a good price at that time. For a while, I stayed in their house when they would go up to Bremerton before the house was sold. Then, Fred was still in Enderlin and didn’t come out to Bremerton until May 18th, on his birthday. I had written him that I thought he would have a better chance getting work up at Bremerton than he would in Newberg, so he came to Bremerton. That was in 1948.

The reason we moved into town the last year we were in Bremerton was because my folks were coming up to Bremerton to live in the house we had been living in out at Kitsap Lake, because both my folks were sick. Mom had cancer and Dad had surgery for prostate in Portland, Ore. So Floss felt she couldn’t de down in Newberg helping them out all the time, so they sold their house in Newberg, Ore., and moved up to Bremerton and lived out at Kitsap Lake, so Fred and I moved into Bremerton. Mom went to Seattle to get tested for cancer. They first removed her appendix and, three weeks later, they took her back for the treatment for cancer. They put those pins in her that are supposed to burn the cancer. She had cancer of the cervix. The left them in too long and she said it felt like they were pulling her insides out when they removed them. She gradually got better, but it always hurt her to walk. After 8 years, she started having more trouble and they never told her it was cancer again, but, at last, she couldn’t keep anything on her stomach, so they operated on her for gallstones, when they opened her up, she was just full of cancer, so they closed her up, and didn’t remove anything. I came over to see her and that incision was healed so nice that I thought she was better. I didn’t think that, if there was cancer underneath that it would heal so nice. We never mentioned that the cancer had returned and she never talked about it, but she was in the hosp. Three weeks and I would go over and stay overnite with her. The rest of them stayed in the daytime. She would say, “Sis, you are so tired.” I told her that she had sat with me when I was sick a good many nites. And she would say, “That was different.” She was in the hosp. just three weeks to the day and she passed away (Jan. 25, 1961). My dad was just beside himself with grief, of course, and he never did get over it. After that, Floss and Russell sold their place out at Kitsap Lake and moved into Bremerton. They mad a place in their new daylight basement so Dad could be by himself if he felt like it. He lived on until 11 years after mother died. Poor little man, I felt sorry for him. He tried to get along. He was 93 and the years were getting heavy on him and he died in 1972. He was in the hosp. About a week. His mind was good up to the last few days. He died on the 18th of Sept. 1972.

Notes

[1] At this point Gladys stopped working on her memoir for nearly three years.  She inserted a brief comment at this point in her narrative declaring, “The last I wrote in this story was 1978. It is now 1980.”

[2] Junior was the nickname for Gladys and Fred’s first son, Fredric; it was was given to him soon after he was born.  Throughout his life he has also been known as “Juny” and “Tex.”

[3] “Toots” was the nickname given to Alma Opheim Bohm in the 1930s by her older sister, Betty.  The name remained with her throughout her life.

[4] The following commentary was given in response to a query about Cecilia Bohm and her relationship with Fred Henkel.

[5] The information that follows was given in response to a question about Fred Bohm, Sr., attending North Dakota State Agricultural College. a clipping found in a scrapbook belonging to Hartha Sallen and most likely from the Enderlin Independent, announced the Fred Bohm had gone off to attend the Agricultural School in Fargo. Unfortunately, the clipping was undated and no other information was given. Fred Bohm, shared the information about his having attended college with only a few people.

[6] The following information was provided in response to a question about Alma’s and Hartha’s social life.

[7] The following information was supplied to a question requesting additional informa­tion about how Fred Bohm and Gladys met.

[8] The information that follows is Gladys’s response to a question about how it was that her parents first went to Oregon, and then, ultimately, to Newberg, Oregon where they lived until the early 1950s.