Biography of my Sister Nellie Tippets Haddon.
Written on the April 29, 1992 by Wayne Tippets
Temperature outside at Rosebud South Dakota Indian reservation as I write this is one hundred degrees at four thirty in the afternoon.
I don’t remember Nellie at all in Georgetown. As a matter of fact I cannot remember anything at all that happened in Georgetown. I should, for I was just about four years old when we moved from there, but I do not.
When we first moved down here in thirty four we lived in Riverdale which I do not remember hardly at all other than that is where we lived when Mildred and Lester got married. I remember bawling because I wanted to go watch them get married and did not get to. But we are talking about Nellie now not me so nuff about me and on with Nellie.
Next we moved to Dinkieville then to Twenty Ninth Street where we lived until thirty nine and this is where I can remember Nellie the most. Her and LaRue slept in the room with a bathtub in upstairs for a while then they moved into back bedroom next to Ma and Pa. I think they even were in the south upstairs bedroom for a while too. For they had a cord hanging above their bed where they could reach up and turn the light off by it without getting out of bed. What a deal.
She worked with us in fruit the first year or two if I recall right and then she got on down to the railroad laundry where she earned that great total of twenty five cents an hour.
When we bought the house on Eighteenth Street she was the one that made the payments on it the most although we only gave twelve hundred for the house so the payments were only maybe twenty five dollars a month. But you figure that out it would take her one hundred hours of working to make that payment and I think she worked ten hours a day six days a week so that she worked sixty hours a week which would be fifteen dollars a week or sixty dollars a month so she had maybe thirty five dollars left over to spend on her or us which probably the latter is what she spent on maybe groceries and such for Pappy was out of work during winter but I never did hear Nellie complain one minute about having to do this in those days you just did what had to be done and did not complain for everyone was in the same shape.
I remember Nellie and Ma went to see Gone With the Wind movie when it came out and it cost each one of them one dollar and that was unheard of to pay that much to see one movie for normal was ten cents but all Nellie said when someone told her she was extravagant was the movie lasted four hours and it took her four hours to make that money so it evened out.
I can never remember Nellie arguing with anyone never, never, never and I am sure she had times when she could have done and rightly so. But never did. She was just like my Mom always looking for some way to help someone out as were all of my sisters. But she was special.
I remember when the rest of my family would be upset at me for being a little jerk she would tell them that I was not as bad as they thought I was. Here she was probably mistaken.
I am thinking of the day that she got married to Dave Haddon. I am not sure but I think it was around Christmas and she was thirty two years old and that was old, old, old. It was in our front room and we had to move the table out of the front room so they could stand under the south window to get married and they did make a handsome couple. Ma cried and Nellie cried and Pappy just sat there without saying anything. It must have been around forty two or three when they got married.
The only place I can remember them living was the Terrace in two different houses. The first one was one that the government built which I think had a house on both ends with entrances on the ends of the houses and theirs opened on the west end.
Dave built a house with another man south of their house but I do not think they lived in it. I think they sold it and built the one that she was living in when she died. It was a very nice home probably the best one in the family at the time. Very spacious front room it was square. He did a fine job building it, brick with basement.
She had four kids, Therry Berry, Lonny Plunket, Debby and Rick O Shay. (Theron, Lonny, Colleen, and Ricky)
She was very protective of her kids and got upset when we did tease them and was afraid they would get hurt playing with us and this carried over into their kids for after they got growed up they did not like to play with us uncles for we were too rough especially in basketball.
They may not admit it now but it is so. But they were still very, very good kids and Nellie and Dave did a fine job raising them although they did have trouble with some of them like we all do with some of or all of our kids at one time or another.
Even today they all still like us uncles although we do not see them hardly at all anymore. Which is too bad for we are good kids and so are they and soon us uncles will all be gone and they won’t have any like my brothers don’t have any uncles at all now. Not a one.
I cannot recall Nellie ever working until Dave died and then she went to work for IRS where she was a very special employee working hard all the time and very faithful and reliable also.
I do not think that Nellie ever spent hardly any money on herself. But she sure did help other folks out all the time including some of her kids a lot and never complained but that is normal for all of us to do that sometimes too much.
Nellie was always active in the Church, but I do not recall her ever having a job in church other than being Single Representative for her ward for quite a while and she was a good one, really tried to get everyone involved.
I will write in this area right here what I can remember about Dave for he deserves some notoriety although I do not think he liked me at all. He had a right, but I liked Dave.
I think the one thing that made him not like me was that one year we went to Snake River fishing and he had locked his door to his car and our food was in it and so me and Clunck with a little bit of fanangalin got into it and got our sandwiches and he was very, very upset at us for that. We did not bother anything of his at all but we did wrong by opening it up and he carried that for a long, long time I think.
He may not have done if I had told him I was sorry, but I did not, and he did not forgive me. At that time I do not think I knew how to say I was sorry.
Another time I went fishing with him up to the dam with Festus (Lester) and him and was not catching any fish so I swam across the dam and he was very mad about that just as soon as I got back he said let’s go and he told me he would never take me fishing again because of that and he did not. There again I paid for being a turkey.
Dave liked to go fishing and hunting and he did go with us hunting deer a few times. What he did not like was us brothers lived to eat and he ate to live and he thought while deer hunting you should get up and have a dish of cold cereal and head off up the mountain but we had to fix spuds and eggs and such before we went up on the mountain but that was his prerogative.
One year we went and Thad must have been I guess seventeen or eighteen years old and he never came into camp and it got to being eight then nine then ten o’clock at night and still no Thad and Dave was very, very worried more so than anyone else. He thought that something had happened to him and I guess I was too dumb to worry.
He wanted to get flashlights and go up on the mountain looking for Thad but we persuaded him that it would be to no avail for we did not know which way he went and no one had seen him since about two that afternoon. As it turned out he did come into camp about eleven o’clock and then he left the deer up the canyon a couple of miles and we had to go back and get it the next day. He was so tired he just lay down for a while before he could eat and that is something, one of us so tired we could not eat. But Dave was sure happy when he came walking into camp and so were we.
Dave used to like to play Run Em with us penny anti and he was a very conservative player and it must have paid off for I cannot remember him ever losing. But he would not bet unless he had a good hand and the rest of us liked to play too much to drop out or we never had enough sense to drop out.
Nellie and Dave really enjoyed going to Star Valley fishing and they did a few times every year. Him and Ammon got along like brothers.
Dave and Nellie were both really good dancers and used to go to dances all of the time. They were good dancers.
Now back to Nellie for now.
Nellie always thought of her kids first and herself last. Even our reunions she always wanted us to have them where their kids could go swimming or boating or things like that. I recall telling her that we should cater to older folks rather than kids and this is one time she disagreed with my thinking, and she was right for when we just went to the park the kids did not go, but when we did go to Bear Lake or a place like that you would never see the young kids anyway.
She was the main instigator of us having reunions up to Star Valley with just us as family.
Every month we would get together down here and she is the one that called all of us every time and said when we were going to have it and she never would miss anyone.
Nellie was the kind of gal that would never carry a grudge or get upset at anyone. Regardless of who it was she would never say anything bad about anyone. Even politicians would not get cussed by her.
I am sure that she had plenty of opportunity to get upset at me for I was a little jerk and the rest of my family seemed to get angry at me and they had reason too but not Nellie. She had the love in her heart that Jesus asks that we all have towards our fellow men and turn the other cheek when someone smites you on one to turn the other. Nellie went beyond the seventy times seven.
I made a wall ornament in shop in school and everyone thought it was not a very good job but I showed it to Nellie and she thought it was really neat and so I told her she could keep it and hang it on her wall and she did and it hung there for years and years and may still be hanging for all I know.
She would drive out to my store and go see Mildred and always she would buy some groceries and gas from me and I would invite her in the house to talk to Barbara and she seemed to enjoy that a lot and so did Barbara. For it was a joy just to talk to Nellie and the things she would tell us about the times on the homestead and how she used to drive the car to town in snow and blizzard. I am sure she helped with the chores up in Georgetown as well as housework. For they all did that for that is the way it had to be in those days. They all knew how to work.
She told us about having to go down to Bear River and chasing the cows across the river and bring them up to the barn and it was I would say close to a mile. I do not know if she had to milk them or not. Probably she knew how but did not have to do it with some boys already always around.
The last year or two that she lived she was getting real hard for her to walk and she always wanted one of us boys to walk with her and help her and it was a joy to have her rely on our strong arms to help that frail body along and she appreciated it a lot too. I think she could have got along okay without us but it made us feel good to be able to help her at these times.
We used to drive up and visit with her with our kids once in a while and us and them really enjoyed talking with her and she would always find a cookie or something for all of our kids. But that was bred into her from her Mom and Dad.
I know that there are a lot of things that I am leaving out but I guess this much is better than nothing at all. I hope the rest of my family can do this about her and remember things that I didn’t get down.