Remembering My Father Paul Mathias Staeheli by Glenn Staeheli

February 5, 1992

You did ask for a history of my father and I have taken this as an interest.  In a mailing of several days ago I sent the family resume and some post cards responsive to the history in the St. Gallen, Switzerland area.  Dad was born in 1893 and died in 1966.  Dad remembers playing under the bridges over the Sitter River before they immigrated to the United States in 1899.  He had numerous stories about playing by the river under the 5 bridges, picking wild flowers and running through the meadows to the snow covered Alps. (This is fantasy as there were only 2 bridges over the Sitter River at that time and the snow covered Alps were 15 or more miles away).  He was 6 when the family of 14 crossed the ocean and settled in Wisconsin for several years.  He hardly remembers the Wisconsin experience except he did go to grade school and worked a little in a creamery where cheese was made.

 When Grandfather Staeheli had the homestead proved out and a large two story log house built, the Grandmother brought six of the children with her from Wisconsin to Spokane by train.  Most of the trip was made on the Northern Pacific Railway.  He remembers the wonder of train travel to the west and how they sang to the passengers on the train to gain money to pay for brother Joe’s lost train ticket and additional food other than what they carried in baskets. 

He said little about the rough life on the homestead in the hills above the Colville River 8 miles northwest of Addy, Washington except the years of toil clearing 140 acres of land for grain and pasture.  He never liked sleeping in the loft above the big unfinished room below.  He spoke of it with a negative aspect and still couldn’t control the vehemence in his voice relating how his brother Caspar urinated on him in the loft one night as the beds were straw ticking laid on the floor (it was an accident as Caspar awoke and thought he was outside the house). 

Dad never finished grade school.  He was tracked by a cougar one evening and the image never left his mind.  They were helped by others in the Swiss settlement of adjacent farms.  Meat, fish and crawdads supplemented their own butchering of beef, lamb and pork from the forests and nearby waters.  They found various berries in the woods and dad had a lifelong liking of huckleberries.  They knew where the wild strawberries grew, the choke cherries and gooseberry bushes were, some nut trees and succulent wild asparagus in season thrust forth roots. 

He always spoke with warmth of the yodeling and singing the family did on the homestead and later in family homes in Spokane, Addy and Coeur d’Alene.  He was on the family horse going to hunt rabbits for food and asked his sister to hand up the .22 rifle.  As she handed the gun up to him it discharged sending a bullet from the inner thigh upward through the flesh and muscle.  He had a slight limp life-long from this accident.

He was not certain at what age he left the farm and went to work in the woods but probably around age 15.   The work was rough, demanding and one had to be hard and tough to survive the timber felling and [life] within the camps.  He roust-a-bouted around camps for a number of years returning to the homestead only when the woods operations shut down.  Timber men were fed well.  He only talked of the pleasure of working in the woods above Priest Lake.

Dad was 24, out of work and drifted into Spokane.  He went to the Roundhouse Foreman for the Northern Pacific Railway looking for work.  There were loaded cars of company coal that needed to be unloaded for the Stationary Power Plant at the Roundhouse and the Foreman said Dad could get a few days work unloading the cars by shovel, top down, and throwing the coal from the gondola cars into the bunkers of the Power Plant.  Dad unloaded a full car (40 tons) each day and the Roundhouse Foreman was so impressed he gave Dad a job in the Roundhouse which soon turned into the opportunity for Dad to be hired as a locomotive fireman on May 11, 1917.

Dad found room and board at my Grandmother Alexander’s home.  He met my Mother through the summer prior to Mother’s going to teach in Horse Heaven (south of Prosser in the high plateau of the Horse Heaven Hills).  Mother was helping grandmother (her Mother) with the 4 to 8 boarders she had. 

The call for volunteers for World War I came and Dad in fervent patriotism signed up.  He became a Water Tender [who] fired the furnaces and tended the boilers of naval ships making 8 round trips across the Atlantic on a medium size vessel carrying troops and equipment to France.   They had a single 3 inch gun on the ship and the only naval engagement the ship [had] was when an American submarine surfaced near Le Havre and the gun crew of Dad’s ship fired the cannon at it.  They missed but the ship was penalized by having its cannon taken away.

Evidently torrid love letters went between Mother and Dad in the 15 months he was in the Navy based upon the fact when sister Pauline and I found them in the bottom of the family steamer trunk [and] we took them outside to read.  I was age 12.  We read and laughed so hard at a few the neighbor woman wanted to know why.  WE showed her a letter and she went into gales of laughter but immediately reported it to Mother.  Mother was devastated and before the day was out she burned every love letter over a small fire in the backyard.  Her tears made Pauline and I feel so bad.  I never did know what the endearing phrases meant as we were too young to know of love. 

Dad stayed with a German Swiss family in New York City while in port.  There were four eligible daughters in the family.  The Father told Dad, take your pick of one of the daughters and marry her and I will set you up.  Dad had to turn the opportunity down because he was smitten with Mother but my Uncle Joseph was introduced to one of the girls and married her.

On my around the United States trip in 1939 I stayed with the three other girls and their families in the New York City area.  They were all neat women with interesting families.

Dad had been back to his job as a Fireman for the NPRy upon discharge from the Navy and married my Mother June 6, 1920.  They moved to Coeur d’Alene where dad could hold a well-paying run.  He bought Mother a piano for a wedding gift that was very expensive.  The Assessor came to the apartment one day and was appraising personal property for the tax.  The Assessor commented, “That piano must be valued at about $200”.   “Oh, no”, said Mother, “Mr. Staeheli paid $500 for it.”  None-the-less, that piano was the focal point of our young family life with Mother singing and playing, Dad on the violin and Pauline and I trying to respond to the songs and words.

I was born March 9, 1922 in an apartment in the East Central business district in Spokane.  I cried and fussed a lot as an infant. 

Dad felt the need to have a place to live so built a little 3 room shack on a piece of Grandmother Alexander’s property about 1924.  It was a haven of love and warmth for us.  This was in Parkwater and walking distance to the Roundhouse.

In 1928, Dad felt we had to move into Spokane to obtain a good school for Pauline and I.  He remodeled that house for many years. 

The Depression struck Dad’s work in 1930 and for the first time since 1917 he couldn’t hold a job working on the railroad.  As children, Pauline and I were really unaware of the Depression.  Dad found seasonal work for Peters and Sons Nursery, the Spokane Central Heating Company in the heating season (all Spokane was heated by this company) and free-lanced planting homes, parks and roadways at every opportunity.  He had taken correspondence courses in Landscape Architecture in the early 1920’s and loved this supplemental work.  It turned out he was very good at it and a decision had to be made after much soul-searching whether he would return to the railroad or go into the [landscape] business full time. 

 Dad made $1 an hour throughout the Depression for landscaping plus the fees from the contracts and trees.  He was Swiss, a very hard, efficient worker and drew beautiful plans.  After several years he was much in demand.  On any contract in which he had to hire men to help they were paid $1 an hour but had to earn it.  I remember Dad at 5’-8” and 170 to 185 pounds.  He had tremendous integrity.  He made “handshake” deals and they were better than a bond.  He earned 33 cents per hour with the Spokane Central Heating Company, plus some overtime, and we lived well. 

 As a teenager I felt Dad was a severe, authoritarian Father.  He had an emotional temper but got over it in minutes never to refer to the explosion thereafter.  We did know we were loved fiercely and Mother, Pauline and I were given complete security.  Dad provided so well we had new school clothing every year.  He took us by Pullman to Wisconsin and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934.  He bought a new Ford sedan in 1935 and thereafter took great driving trips around the United States and Canada.  We went to National Parks, huckleberry camps and in 1959 he took Mother to Switzerland for four months.  Dad loved to travel.

He was a great hunter.  For 43 consecutive years he filled his game tags (and those of others not so expert with the rifle).  He was meticulous in  loading his own shells and took great pleasure in combing books, working out trajectories, impact power and making stocks and refinishing his guns.  He would build a fire on the spot he killed his annual deer to immediately eat the liver which seemed to be a talisman for the ensuing year.  Dad used to go into deep Canada for huge fish.

In 1940-45 Mother and Dad bought a 4 acre orchard which was the joy of my Father.  It helped heal his body.  He had experienced 7 major surgeries to his stomach, intestines and colon.  He never complained about the damage wrought to his body.

Dad could never sleep until I was home from my dates with girls (he shouldn’t have [worried] as nothing ever happened primarily because I was so naïve).  He met Alice May early in our 4 year courtship and never lost another hours’ sleep.

I think you have read enough of my railroad memoirs to know Dad was an exceptional Engineer.  He was a lifelong Democrat but dedicated to producing a profit to the Northern Pacific Railroad.  He would really “get-on” Firemen and Trainmen who failed to do their utmost to provide efficiency and service to the public and railroad.

Dad spent many layovers in Paradise walking in the woods and especially frequenting an old abandoned orchard where he would cook a steak over an open fire and supplement it with the products of the surrounding meadows and woods.

Dad never had an accident with a train.  He took responsibility as if it [was] a mandate.  The experiences he related to me or taught me proved to be invaluable as I was promoted and went through my railroad career.

He worked as an Engineer for the Northern Pacific Railway until he was age 70.  After that, Mother and Dad wintered in Mesa, Arizona taking their trailer back and forth.

Dad developed cancer of the colon in 1963.  It spread to his liver after his colon was cut and the effluent was carried in a bag outside his body.  He only admitted to the pain within his grotesquely shaped body two days before his death and resisted medication throughout believing in the regenerative abilities of the body.  He died October 23, 1966.

His memory permeates my personality.  He was a role model.  He was a severe father, ultimately fair in every way and provided absolute security for the family.  He also had a great love for his grandchildren.

Signed by Alice May and Glenn