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About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 15, 2003)
6 APRIL 15, 2003 Smoke Signals 0' Mairenairelt Mckb Never lonely, never bored, McAbee worked hard and at 75, she still keeps 4 By Ron Karten Today, Tribal Elder Margaret McAbee lives with her daughter, Tribal member Marline Groshong, in Groshong's carefully kept house deco rated western and Indian inside and out on old Hebo Highway in Grand Ronde. In the living room, a photo of bronc rider Dan Mortensen is signed by another of her favorite bronc rid ers, Billy Etbauer. People call her Marge, sometimes Margo. Her occasional sharp response has earned her the nickname, Smokie, and when the family gets together and plays dice, she also has been called, Slick Willie. "Her cousin, Tribal El der Marvin Davis, embroidered it on an apron for her," said Groshong. And when she was younger, her dad and uncle used to call her, Boots, for the cowgirl boots she wore. "She loves puzzles and crafts," said Groshong. "She always loved her crafts." Sometimes, she finishes a puzzle, glues it down and frames it. Sometimes, she puts the pieces back in the box and gives the puzzles away. "She always knitted us sweaters and crocheted." Today, McAbee is working on tiny booties, but also includes among her crafts, beadwork, flower pot hangers, Christmas wreathes, sunbursts, cro cheting outfits for Indian dolls, knit ting ("I'm going to finish this scarf I'm working on and that's it!) and (I'm still making) afghans, (but I'm going to quit that, too)." You can see Spirit Mountain over the fields from their back door, less than a mile from where McAbee was born 75 years ago, and where she grew up among a large and sprawling family that may not have had a lot of extras, but came, as far as McAbee was con cerned, with all the things that were important. The family, as McAbee remembers, "raised our own pork, chickens, beef and berries. We had lots of gardens, did lots of canning." And though there was not much money, there was always plenty to eat. She remembers that they kept the sour dough starter warm behind the stove, and they'd bake sourdough biscuits three times a day. "It was something you kept going all the time," she said. "In those days," she said, "people were very desperate for resources." She remembers because she has been out working for them just about since she could walk. Her first job, when she was only three, had her helping her grand mother, the late Tribal Elder Tilmer Leno. "Grandmother was very crippled in a horse and carriage accident, and all she did was quilt, so she needed a little kid around to help pick up scis sors if she dropped them, and so on." "From the age of 14 on," she said, "it was school and work, school and work. But you know, for me, I really have no complaints. My family was very efficient." Raised by grandmother Leno, who lived to be more than 100 despite her infirmities, and her uncle, the late Tribal Elder George Leno, McAbee built a life for herself and her family here in Grand Ronde that stuck. Though she traveled and worked else where for more than half of her life and though her daughters lived far and wide, they're all back now living within a few miles of each other and family still is the center of their lives. "It was always home," said McAbee. Her daughters, Groshong and Sharon Herron, remember an upbring ing also filled with work but no regrets. "She was strict, but she was good to us," said Herron. Herron and Groshong had their own lessons. 'When we were three," Herron said, "she took us out (picking berries) with a coffee can with a wire handle to keep us busy, I guess, to feel like we were contributing. "Marline was the outdoorsy type and things worked out pretty good that way. We each just had things lined out and you knew what you had to do. It wasn't a choice. You were given chores and you did them. That's the way it was." When the sisters were 11 and 12, they learned exactly what that meant. In those days, it took them an hour and a half to travel to Dayton to pick berries. "We'd get up at four in the morning to catch the bus to pick ber ries," said Herron. "One day we were fired for having a berry fight in the field. Mom was waiting for us at home with a switch. That was the only time we got whipped. We never got in trouble again. "And I think we both turned out to be pretty productive people," said Herron. She now works as a referral clerk in the Wellness Clinic for the Tribe, and Groshong is a nursing su pervisor at Salem Hospital. Still off in the world are Herron's boys, Mick, who is 26, a bail bonds man and bounty hunter living in Kan sas with a daughter, 4-year-old Sierra, and Monte, 30, who works for Voice Stream, the telephone company, and lives closer to home in Salem. Groshong said that she and Mick en- 1 tf T Ft Margaret McAbee stands in her back yard with one of her home made bird houses. joy Harley (-Davidson motorcycle) road trips together, which is a typical ex ample of family closeness that crosses the genera tions. McAbee's parents were the Paul and Elizabeth (Leno) Lafferty. The rest of her direct siblings included her youngest brother, Ken neth Lafferty, who works in the Security Department of the Tribe, her youngest sis ter Tribal Elder Juanita Lee, who lives in Elder Housing, a younger brother, Gerald Lafferty, an older sis ter, Norma Lee, who lives in Grand Meadows, another older sister, Dorothy Lane, who died last November, a twin sister of Dorothy's who died of tuberculosis at age 16 along with "a couple of half brothers and sisters." Everybody remembers the big meals for friends and families on weekends. "In high school," said Groshong, "Uncle Kenny (Lafferty) (and his family) came down every weekend. She'd (McAbee) work her eight hours at Bonanza and then she'd come home and make pots of stew. There's still an awful lot of company here. It's the central place." McAbee remembers long before there were daughters, the river that ran by the Leno family's property with 15 acres on one side of the Hebo Highway and 11 acres on the river side. "I'd take my little horse (Babe) down there," where they caught crawdaddies, and sometimes they'd "cross the river together," or "swing under the oak tree. Uncle George put it up. And he renewed the (swing's) rope every three years so nobody got hurt." She remembers the log bridge that Murphy's Lumber built across the bridge, with a double set of logs span ning the 12-foot divide and planks ham mered to the logs for the wheels of log trucks to ride on, but for McAbee, the beauty of the set up was "you could jump off it and go swimming." She remembers that her mom learned to drive in a similar way. McAbee was 47 at the time. "She kept saying she wanted to learn to drive. Dad told her to get in the car, that they'd drive down the road to Ruth and Tribal Elder Darrel Mercier's. They went 300 yards. He told her to stop, jumped out and told her to go the rest of the way herself. She was scared to death but she got up to Ruth's, and knocked on the door. At first, Ruth invited her in, but then stepped out on the porch to see who drove her over. Mom told her the story, stayed about an hour and then drove back. When she took the (driving) test, I think she got 100 percent on it. After that she went everywhere in the car." From the age of 10-13, McAbee at tended the Chemawa Indian School in Salem. "I loved it," she said. "I learned a lot." When she was 14-15, McAbee did her r,t . I,":? I 1 s ; o -I . t ( S I I Margaret McAbee at age 18. part for the family by helping collect chittum bark. "You see it now in the drug store. It's called cascara. It's medicinal. She remembered it could also be the source of some amusement at home. "They'd con us into drinking it," she said. "Mom or dad or aunt or uncle or anybody. If you just took a teaspoon ful, it was all right, but if you took more. . ." To get the bark, she took horses 14 miles up the mountain and set up camp. Sometimes she would bring a younger sibling or two brother Gerald Lafferty, who "was not very old," would "gather wood and bring water" and sister, Genevieve, would help, too, "she'd tag along and pick bark up off the ground and put it in the sack. "It was a lot of work. You had to peel the trees, roll it up, put it in a big sack (they got $4 a sack, she remem bered), put it on a horse and bring it out of the mountain. It didn't pay to bring one or two sacks. You had to bring a lot. Three pack horses with four sacks on each one." Her dad, Paul "Buffalo" Lafferty, who made his living as a hunting guide and cowboy, would take the pack horses down the mountain allowing McAbee to keep peeling bark off the trees, and it could take a few days to get the job done. Meanwhile, McAbee would set up a tent to get her and brother Gerald, now living with his wife who is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and sister Genevieve Ray, who died in April 2001 last year, through the night, and because they shared the woods with cougar, they went with
