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About Smoke signals. (Grand Ronde, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2007)
NOVEMBER 1, 2007 Smoke Signals 7 Murphy's sawmill as a planer for many years, "until he wasn't able to work anymore. What everybody got then was asthma," Ruth says. (Lynn calls it emphysema.) Made your own fun in those days Along Grand Ronde Road in those days lived friends and now fellow Tribal Elders Diane Linton, who is now Diane Giffen, married to Bill, and Joyce Dowd, who is now Joyce Mam, married to Tribal member Dan Ham, who passed on many years ago. "You made your own fun in those days," Diane says. She lives in Sheridan today. "Fun" meant a lot of swimming in the South Yamhill River where it ran behind the Smith farm and where it also ran behind what is to day Darrell Mercier's house out on Route 18, just east of the beginning of Grand Ronde Road. The Dowds used to live there and the children used to swim behind both homes. "We did that a lot in the sum mertime," Diane says. "We'd set in the sun and then go back in. Maybe we'd see who could stay underwater the longest." "We were swimming down there, me and Joyce and Diane," says Ruth, "and catching wild crawdads and eels, and we'd cook them in a coffee can. Eat 'em all day." Joyce remembers playing dress up and with paper dolls. "In sum mer, we had two weeks of the sisters that would come out (to St. Michael's) for religion talk. It was a Catholic school. We'd go in the morning and in the afternoon we'd all play together." "And we'd walk up and down the block a lot. They had a steel wheel that they used to roll down the street, guiding it with a stick," Diane says. The girls and other Tribal mem bers in Grand Ronde used to go to the Government Hall for their medicine. Diane Giffen remembers getting cod liver oil there. Lynn re members "sulfa drugs, the miracle drug of the time." Both remember pie socials and basket socials where folks brought a basket lunch for two, and they'd use it as a fundraiser with the pur chaser sharing the lunch with the person who made it. Every few months there'd be a dance drawing 30 to 40 people from the community. And the whole community came out for the school Christmas plays. "We all went and enjoyed the parties," Diane says. They included bridal and baby showers, too. They grew up in a time when elec tricity and indoor plumbing were just coming to Grand Ronde. High school separates friends The girls separated for the first year of high school when Ruth went to St. Mary of the Valley Catholic girls' school in Beaverton. "I learned a lot," Ruth says. "And we had fun there. They'd lock the door at night and me and a girl friend sneaked outside at night and ate some of their garden food, because that was all there was to do outside. We got in trouble getting back in. You didn't get away with anything there." "She was cute as a bug," Joyce says. "She was a cheerleader." Ruth also was a very good dancer, Joyce remembers. "In high school, we all wore these ugly slickers," Diane says. "And we had a movie theater in Grand Ronde, just passed the Bonanza. We went quite a bit. I remember seeing Jane Russell in that movie they said was too racy. We all were waiting to see that show because it was going to be banned." The girls later lived together in a succession of Salem apartments. "When we got out of school," says Joyce, "we all went to Salem and got jobs and lived together in apart ments. I lived with Ruth, Diane and Shelley's mom, Bonnie Myers (Houck), and Arlene Houck (Beck), and others came and went. (Ruth and Diane) worked in a restaurant. Nolgren's Cafe. I started at busi ness school, and went back to the restaurant business." They peeled off one by one to get married and headed their differ ent ways for many years, but have shared much of their lives since in travel and visits back and forth. "We traveled a lot together," says Joyce. "I have this van. She and I would go down to Yuma to stay with friends. Like snowbirds. We'd go stay like a week together. "Until she had that stroke we did everything together." Ruth goes north to work in Alaska Ruth had a range of jobs in social service settings and also restau rants. When her children were in high school, Ruth worked in Salem at a city homeless and domestic violence shelter. Her children married early - just out of high school - and Ruth took advantage of her newfound freedom to go with a co-worker to Alaska, where the state was starting a council for domestic violence. "Mark and Patti lived in my house," she says. "Melia went into the National Guard. I packed my clothes and went. "I liked it very well when I en- V or s Tf O .A n - ' Ruth is the little girl standing in the center of this photo. Sister Lillian is the baby, held by grandmother Isabelle Sorenson. Celia Smith, mother to Ruth and Lillian, is in the center and at right is Isabelle's sister, the girls' Aunt Maude. The location is the family's old farmhouse in Grand Ronde. tered," Ruth says of the work. "I talked to them, visited, helped them find a place to stay." "She had a lot of bad cases," Melia says. And a year later, Laurie says, "I missed my mom so much, I went up there with my daughter, Shannon. (She's 34 now, but she was in the third or fourth grade, then.)" They all lived together in a condominium. "We always had a lot of fun," Lau rie says. "She knew all the places to go when I went up there. She knew all the best restaurants in Alaska." There is a five-photograph series framed in Laurie's house. Each of the small prints shows mother and daughter, dressed for the evening. They remind you of Shelley Winters in two stages of her life. Snow is everywhere and Ruth is carrying the wine. Mother and daughter are laughing contagiously. In one pic ture, Ruth goes down. In another, Laurie goes to help. In another, Lau rie goes down. Yellow evening lights spill onto the scene. It is a Rickard original: Alaska in winter. "In Anchorage, Alaska," Mark says, "she worked for a Native hospital; she did administrative work in Anchorage and then they . ,:rt 1 1 if; J ft 1 it' J L - V ' -'- T ' ii "i hi I 'in i Ruth Rickard, plopped in the snow, laughing with her daughter, Laurie Cathcart an evening out in Alaska. shipped her up to the Barrow, Alaska, hospital where the polar bears look in your window." "I remember lots of fun," Ruth says. "It was really entertaining for me because I got to see the people and how they lived. Barrow is mostly snow the year-round except for the springtime. Polar bears and that kind of stuff was just fascinat ing to me. They're curious." "And one stuck his head in your window one night?" Mark says. "We had heavy thick glass on our windows. But most were heav ily covered at night with this like screen. But (bears) would break in if they smelled any food," Ruth says. "I loved seeing all those things. It's a different way of living. It was nine years before I realized time had slipped by," says Ruth. "Before you know it, the time was gone. I decided to come home. The kids, the grandkids were growing up." An eventful life The times included Hawaii, Mex ico and Crater Lake. They included sunsets. "If it was a beautiful sunset, we were always ' driving up someplace to watch it," Laurie says. , One summer, the family worked on the Warm Springs reservation. Ruth brought the children up to Kah-nee-ta when the resort was being construct ed, and she and the children worked on the project for the summer. "We had a free room and all the swimming we could do," Ruth says. "At the time, it was just the big swimming pool and a few teepees." In recent years, Ruth has par ticipated with the Elders when, for example, they went on their annual New YorkTomanowos pilgrimage. Though Ruth's life has slowed down since the stroke last year, her sense of humor has not faded. When she had the last stroke, Laurie says, funeral homes started sending her literature. "You better hang on to that," Laurie remembers her mother saying. "She rolls with the punches," says sister Lynn. B
